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Twenty-four years ago DH and I discovered Rocky Mountain National Park, while taking a quick trip to investigate Colorado and family connections to the place (my father’s family came from Colorado).  We fell in love with RMNP and have made several subsequent visits.  Three trips were focused on RMNP; the remaining four trips were associated with other reasons to go visit Colorado (String Cheese Incident concerts, Worldcon).  Oddly enough, we’ve never visited the park at the same time as previous visits.

This year was the earliest we’ve been in the summer (we found our way there in March 2011 and drove as far as we could).  We were hoping to see some megafauna (elk!  lots of elk! and maybe a moose and bighorn sheep or two).  As we discovered, the big herds of elk cows and calves aren’t that high up early in the season, but for the first time, we actually spotted a bighorn sheep in the area bighorn sheep were supposed to be.

We did see some buck deer, a bull elk and some young cow elk.  Obviously early July is not when you see herds of elk at the higher elevations.

What we did see were these guys.  Lots and lots of them.

Marmots on rocks, marmots on the road, marmots grazing in alpine fields, and this fellow, quite calmly and happily destroying the wood frames on the bathroom structures.  Lots and lots of marmots.  While we were out hiking, one marmot took quite vocal exception to our presence and squeaked at us while running and wringing her tail.

I also finally caught a picture of the elusive pika.

It only took about nine shots to get a pika picture that wasn’t part of a nose, ear, or butt.  They move fast, those little critters.

Besides another visit to RMNP, our main purpose for this trip was to attend another three-night performance by String Cheese Incident.  DH and I discovered this band a few years ago and we’ve liked their mix of rock, electronic music, and bluegrass.  The venue at Red Rocks is also stunning.  From the upper levels it’s possible to see Denver and suburbs, and on a good day you can see all the way to Denver International Airport.  Well, this time wasn’t laden with good days.  The Thursday night performance opened with one of my favorites, “Sometimes a River” and took off quite nicely from there until closing with another favorite, a sequence of “Desert Dawn.”

SCI is best classified as a jam band.  One feature of this sort of rock is that instead of playing a song or two, stopping, then picking up more tunes, each set is an integrated mixture of songs with very rare speaking interludes.  They’ll start one song, segue into one or two others, then return to the first song.  The mix generally includes songs which either have similar topics or similar musical themes.  Plus SCI has some very nice lighting stuff going on (especially at Red Rocks).

The first night was warm and dry.  Not so the next two nights.  Friday night, the show had barely gotten started (with a very nice Birdland mix) when the thunderstorms that had been flashing lightning all around the venue moved in, dumping massive amounts of rain and creating a small flash flood in the venue.  We watched the amazing light show (don’t get storms like that here in Oregon, even in the mountains and the high desert).  But when the lightning started striking in the canyon behind the stage, a weather hold got declared and we were told to take cover.

Um, yeah.  9000-some people present.  You can imagine the challenge.  Nonetheless, it’s Colorado and we figured they knew the weather, so when we were directed to take cover, we got down off of the high seats and started toward the car.  About halfway down the 193 steps to the exit, we realized that–uh, maybe not.  Water poured down the steps, three to four inches deep in places.  Most people kept their cool but there were some folks getting panicky about the water.  We looked at the narrowing corridor down the steps and decided we were low enough in the arena that risking lightning was a bit safer than risking getting trampled in a panic flight.

So we held at a lower level.  Eventually, the rain went away.  The crew cleared the water off of the stage, and the second set started.  Another lovely night, including me dancing with a bunch of folks to “Bumpin Reel” on a lower landing.  Lightning still flashed in the distance, with long strokes of ground to cloud and cloud to cloud types.  If I’d had my camera I’d have gotten some good shots…but I had decided not to risk the camera in the rain.

The third night was wet but the rain was more of a Western Oregon type of slow, steady, mist rather than flash flood downpour.  More dancing, more friendly people.  One young woman commented to us that she hoped she could still keep going on like us when she got to be our age.

Which leads to another element of SCI concerts–all ages are well-represented, from babies to grayhairs.  The younger adults openly appear to enjoy having us middle-aged (and older) folks sharing the music.  And DH and I apparently appear to project a lot of happy couple vibes that the younger set pick up on.  SCI crowds are for the most part pretty social and friendly, even more so than at Dead or Furthur concerts.  It’s not just the music but the overall positive feel of the crowd that works for us.

I also got quite a bit of writing in, with the exception of the travel day yesterday.  Overindulgence in caffeine, alcohol and rich food did my gut in and I felt wretched.  OTOH, not too bad a way to spend a travel day.  Southwest did its usual fine travel management (I’ve rarely had a bad experience with them) and we got home with little fanfare.

And now, another short week before more adventures.  July is the adventure month this year.  Fun times ahead.

Once again, a snippet in the raw:

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Melanie shook out two Burnout tabs and gave one to Cat.  “Take this.  This process sucks a lot of energy and I don’t want you collapsing before it’s done.”  She sat on one of the comfortable chairs Angela dragged over.  “The other chair’s yours.  Activate your datasuit to its highest level if it isn’t already.”  She picked up two pairs of datagloves and tossed one pair to Cat.  “Put those on.”  She pulled her own gloves on.

            “Done.”

            “Good.”

            Angela scowled at her.  “What am I going to tell Marty?”

            “I’m doing what I have to do to save our people.  We’ll be fine, Ange.”

            Angela sighed.  “Good luck.  Do it right, Mel, and come back in one piece.”

            “We will.”  Melanie waited until Angela stepped back to activate the secured globe.  She waited until it was stabilized.

            <Hear me?>  she speeched to Cat.

            Cat startled.  <Voice, not text?>

            <Yep.>  Check.  One point for Enforcer potential.  <I’ll gather you once I’m fully virtual.>  She knew she could do that easily.  But going virtual?  She closed her eyes.  Visualized turning sideways, stepping out of her body–

            The Net came alive around her, much more vibrant than what she could access through viewscreens and hologlobes or even those brief scans she did.  She turned to Cat.  Tapped on Cat’s shoulder, took her hand.

            Cat screamed once as she separated.  Fluctuated.  Then settled.

            <So this is Netwalking?>

            <As close as we can get and still be alive.  Follow me.  I need you to back me up.>

            <Done.>

            Melanie pulled up Andrew’s link.  Traced it to its furthest distance.  Began the process of broadcasting the recall code.  Identified the dead links and flicked them over to Cat for storage and later identification.  Directly contacted Andrew’s Renee and ensured she was on a fast traveller out of the sterilization zone, though she needed to shout to get through to the poor-quality headset.  She’ll have to go through isolation protocols but not too long.

            <Melanie!>  Cat speeched.  <What’s that?>

            Melanie turned from checking the squad she’d just routed to see what Cat meant.

            A gray nothingness hung behind them.  One malign tendril whipped toward them but pulled back before it struck too closely.

            <Let me deal with this!>  she told Cat.  <Continue getting staff out!>

            Not waiting for acknowledgement, she strode toward the gray that was beginning to spread.  Marty and I stopped Sarah when she was like this.  Codes.  She blinked up her recording of those codes.  Whispered them as she traced a blocking line.

            Gray shoved against the line.  Backed off.  Pushed on and through.

            <NO!>  Melanie projected her full Enforcer vocal command tones.  <STOP.>  It halted.  Then it pushed again, forcing her back three steps.

            <Not enough.>  Sarah materialized next to her.  <Not enough!>

            <What the hell are you doing here?>

            <You haven’t the faintest clue what you’re up against, girl!>  Sarah’s shape changed, forming a black cloud that swarmed around one of Melanie’s hands.

I had undiagnosed asthma years before anyone, including me, figured out that I had it.  One factor was that my asthma, silly thing that it is, didn’t present itself as wheezing but as coughing, otherwise known as cough-variant asthma.  In my teen years I had what appeared to be a nervous throat-clearing/coughing tic that annoyed the heck out of my family and elicited comments about knocking it off but was, in retrospect, asthma.  I’d also wake up in the middle of the night, coughing and gasping for breath (sleeping on a feather mattress with feather pillows) more nights than I care to admit, panicked and afraid because I Just.  Couldn’t.  Breathe.  At the time we thought it was just sinus stuff (at this point I was also presenting with allergic nosebleeds) and I took a lot of Actifed and Chloro-Trimeton, both of which addressed the sinus allergies but didn’t do squat for the asthma.  In fact, one doctor’s dosing schedule overdosed me to the degree that I couldn’t stay awake for classes after lunch, which included an algebra class.  And the drying action of those meds only made the asthma worse.

The only time I showed up with classic wheezing asthma was the day I started wheezing in the junior high PE locker room while changing after class.  Fortunately my teacher at the time realized there was an issue and stayed with me.  It had been a hot, stuffy and polluted day and I’d gone out and run hard in class.  Eventually I stopped wheezing without the benefit of rescue inhaler, rescue meds, or anything of that ilk.  I was lucky.  Other people have died in similar situations.

Eventually I got diagnosed in 1992, after multiple attempts to try and figure out what was going on.  Cough-variant asthma is wickedly difficult to initially identify, especially when it turned out that food (wheat, dairy, eggs) was as much of a trigger as were my other sinus respiratory triggers (smoke, some scents, mold and pollens).  It took the use of peak flow meters and mucus production to the degree that my lungs felt awash in liquid to get the diagnosis.

The diagnosis turned my life around.  I’m more active now than I used to be, and the addition of Singulair and inhaled steroids (lung and nasal) means that 95% of the time, I’m able to keep on top of things and can tolerate small exposures to triggers such as cigarette smoke which used to send me reeling (I had to give up going to indoor music venues for many years and even outdoor venues used to possess a pattern of negotiating with smokers around me because people Just.  Didn’t. Get. It. that lighting up might be a right for them, but was depriving me of a pleasure that I’d paid just as much money as they had to enjoy.  Moving away from the smoker was not a solution because then I’d just find myself next to another one.  The current nonsmoking trend has done wonders for my social life).

Still, springtime with pollen is always a dangerous time.  Add in the nature of the current Day Jobbe (middle school teaching), and, more often than not, I get clobbered with an end-of-the-school-year respiratory crud.  Some years I can manage to hold the crud at bay until after my last day at school (I can’t even begin to describe the excruciating negotiations with the body that can take sometimes, the delicate balance of OTC/prescription meds as well as various teas and such to help things along).  Other years the combination of pollen blooms, end-of-school-year stress, and virulent bugs means I get pulled down before the end of the year.  Nonetheless, any year where I can manage to a.) survive without taking time off from work (absolutely rotten time of year to get sick because of the need to wrap up all the paperwork, end-of-year-sped assessments, close files, grading, etc) and b.) go without a Prednisone burst is a win.

This year I think I earned a semi-win.  I really started having problems about Wednesday, but struggled through that day.  Thursday and Friday were colored by the darkness of “oh hai, breathing Is. Not. Good.” (cough, cough, cough, barely swallow, ears closing down).  When the breathing starts to go, the mood crashes.  Lack of oxygen and all that, y’know.  The dance between antihistamine, rescue inhaler and decongestant became more urgent. My mood got darker.

Friday night I came home and collapsed.  At that point I knew it was a dance between keeping the stuff out of my lungs (i.e, keeping the lungs as asthma only and not an infection) and the eventual gut revulsion (unfortunately, at some point in the dance my gut will rebel.  Decongestants upset it.  So do antihistamines.  So does albuterol over a certain amount).  Until the gut rebelled, I planned to attack the system with the stuff that would clear the ears and keep the lungs open.

Eventually the gut rebelled on Saturday.  But by that point I’d also managed to crest the worst of the infection.  The rains also kicked in to reduce the pollen.

I was worthless all weekend.  Well, I did get three volumes of Poul Andersen’s Polosotechnic League stories read, along with some other good stuff.  But for the most part, I spent the time from about 4 pm Friday until now flat on the bed, coughing and moaning like a zombie.  Still, I appear to have recovered enough to function this week, albeit at about half-speed (which means I might visit horse tonight but no riding, no working out for a couple more days).  Hopefully the Scotch Broom around work will have diminished in pollen vigor over the weekend (Scotch Broom and cottonwoods are the last big seasonal triggers and both were clobbering me last week).  As long as I can keep infection at bay, I might just have a fighting chance at making it through the next week and a half.

No guarantees about the degree of collapse that will happen when it’s done, though.  But by then it’s my own time.  Just gotta make it through until then.

Yes, I did leave out a ski day.  And other stuff.  What can I say?  It’s been a busy month, and even with various snow days thundering through, I’ve had a lot going on.  For whatever reason, I didn’t feel like blogging.  Not sure why, it’s just the way things are.

So.  Various things.  I’m going to sell my Collegiate saddle, pretty certain of that one.  It’s either update my English show wardrobe and get a new bridle, or pull the plug on English.  Considering that I think the saddle’s not fitting Mocha that well these days, I want to simplify my life, and I sure don’t want to go through the saddle dance…well, I put the KK Ultra into the Western snaffle headstall (which is a much nicer piece of strap goods, anyway) and I’m resuming riding in split reins.  I have to say, riding in the splits is sure showing me where I’ve been cheating in the English reins.  It enforces a better hand position because of the different feel–which is good.

On the writing front, I started out Spring Break by reading from a nonfiction project I’m slowly developing, “The Strike Dance.”  I’m taking my notes from the 2005 strike and consolidating them with commentary and reporting on a potential situation developing in East Multnomah County, where three school districts may shortly be on strike.  The issues are predominantly working conditions, not money, and let’s just say that the working conditions are nasty things.

(Photo by M.F. McAuliffe)

I’m not sure where I’m going with that piece as of yet.

I’m also busy preparing for the Allan Schore workshop on Friday, doing union stuff, doing teaching stuff, busily trying to do some revisions to send off a MS to the Angry Robot open reading, and embarking on the huge world building project WRT to Netwalk.

Plus house stuff.

So ski days were good.  #14 was lovely and powdery, #15 was a bit icy and firm but still nice.

Horse is moving right along.

New car is nice.

I’ve planted sweet peas, sugar snap peas, California poppies and nasturtiums in the yard.  We’re definitely getting a running start at the spring garden.

And now I’m off for another busy day.

No skiing this weekend, primarily because we spent Friday and Saturday night at a Poor Man’s Whiskey/Railroad Earth concert at the Crystal Ballroom.  Talk about a sweet bluegrass session…despite working all day, once PMW started up, I was on my feet and down on the famed bouncing floor, clogging my heart out.  An eminently danceable band, with a good mix of bluegrass, rock and spacey music (to give you an idea, one of Poor Man’s Whiskey’s CDs is titled “Dark Side of the Moonshine” with one disc being PMW’s version of “Dark Side of the Moon” and the second their regular stuff).

Railroad Earth was its usual stupendous self.  We had an interesting mix of old folks sitting around us both nights…one night was a Texas lady who had moved to Yreka (and didn’t miss Texas worth a bit) who despite her Very Straight Hairstyle and looks, was, um, shall we say, quite the hippie chick?  The other was a couple from Eugene.  Folks were friendly, social, and from quite a few other places besides PDX.  Like several other bands, RRE attracts a tour following, and it was definitely a mellow evening.  We didn’t last to the end on either night, but hey–a fun time was had by all.

Saturday, I primarily rode Mocha and scraped winter coat off.  She’s shedding heavily now and so, after a hard work, I was able to skin a lot of hair off of her.  More to come, but she’s distinctly less hairy than she was.  This week has been interesting.  She’s processing stuff from the horse show, things she observed and things she started yielding and doing.  I got more softening from her this week, and she’s stepping a bit higher after watching the Saddlebreds move.  No, really.

She had a good attitude after the show.  You always have to wonder, first time back up after a long spell in the saddle.  But she showed no soreness, no sourness.  If anything, she was more intense about doing her work.  I started adding in some Horsemanship-type patterns and she’s really getting into that.

Today, DH and I did yard work.  Here’s some before and after of what I did:

Before (well, halfway through)

After:

Now maybe the day lilies and columbines will have a fighting chance against the grass.

Meanwhile, DH attacked the Norfolk pine that’s threatening to conquer the back yard, overshadow the garden and the Grimes Golden apple we planted last year, and encroach on the neighbor’s property.  A big branch broke off of it during our heavy snow this winter, revealing that the durn thing is pretty brittle.  So we decided to take it down before it got too big to take down easily.

I’ve always liked feeding the birds, but until now haven’t had much luck with it here in the city.  The feeders at our other house attracted mostly house sparrows with the occasional fly-by of something more interesting, but even a thistle seed feeder didn’t do much.  Perhaps it had something to do with the numbers of walkers going by our yard, or the heavy dog population, or something.  I don’t know, but what seemed to be an ideal feeding site just–wasn’t.  Lots of cover nearby, easy to avoid hawks, etc, etc, etc.  I resorted to watching crows harvest walnuts and drop them on the pavement so that cars would break the shells.

Then we moved to this house eight years ago.  The more time I spent in my office area that looks out on our big, relatively isolated backyard, the more I noticed that despite the lack of feeders, we had a larger bird variety here.  Little bit less dense, more open setting, it was surprising.  But there was definitely a finch family and year-round hummingbirds (who liked to perch in the cherry tree and sing a buzzy evening hummer song on summer evenings).

Nine months ago, DH got me some bird feeders.  And oh my, the circus began.  For the first time since I was a kid, I’m seeing goldfinches on a regular basis.  Bushtits swarm the suet.  Crows, jays and juncos war over suet.  I had to put out corncobs for the squirrels.

The bushtit horde.

The finches.

I like watching my little birdies.  And now I need to go feed the ravenous maw.  East winds in wintertime.  Little tweeties need all the energy they can get.