Lunch@Penelope's

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Downtown Estes Park---a complete dive, to be sure, with mediocre service and not-cheap food, but it is the only place I know in the world with photographs of both Isabella Bird and Marilyn Monroe on the wall.

I was just about to head out of town when I realized how hungry I was after showshoeing, and I just had to visit my favorite hamburger joint. The place was crowded for lunch. I ordered an elk burger and fries and took one of the only tables left, all by my lonesome, while I waited for my order. Fortunately it was the one right below Isabella, where I always prefer to sit.

I was feeling a bit guilty about hogging up so much space, but then after about five minutes who should appear but my new friend Jonathan, who had come there independently.

While we waited for our food, I pointed at some of the old photographs on the wall. Jonathan is from Wisconsin and just moved out here last year. He asked me if I knew much about Colorado history. "Probably more than most people here," I said.

It was an unexpected pleasure, sharing lunch on a sunny winter day after so much exercise. I might have even said that it was the whole point of it all.

Bear-Dream-Emerald

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So I guess I'm smack in the middle of one of my outdoorsing phases.

This past week the organizer of /r/coloradohikers on Reddit (link) proposed two meetups, one on Saturday and Sunday. The Saturday meetup was another hike outside Boulder, to the top of the mountain that is above the Flatirons. The Sunday one was to be a snowshoeing adventure in Rocky Mountain National Park.

I briefly considered committing to both of them, but decided it was folly. I decided to go with the snowsheoing expedition on Sunday, for various reasons. One is that the snowshoes that my sister bought me for my birthday have been languishing unused and even unwrapped in the trunk of my car since October, and I dearly wanted to use them at least once this winter.

It also seemed quite appropriate to go on the showshoing expedition, because we were to meet up in RMNP at Bear Lake, which would continue the "bear" theme of my life lately.

So I skipped the Saturday meetup. That evening I heard from the group organizer. Evidently it was to be just him and me for the showshoeing trip. That made it much harder to back out, which was a good thing.

So early Sunday morning before dawn I drove to Estes Park, earlier enough to grab a donut at the Donut Haus just outside of town, where I like to visit, but which is usually jam packed in the summer. I also discovered the fun fact that if you get to the park early enough, you can enter without paying the usual twenty dollars. Already the day was off to a good start.

I found the Bear Lake trailhead without problem. There was hardly any snow in the park at lower elevation, but there was plenty at higher elevation.

About half a dozen cars were already parked there---I felt like a true early bird. I fumbled using the scissors on my keychain to cut the plastic straps on my snowshoes. I felt like a real amateur. The truth is that this was the first time in my life I had ever been snowshoeing. When I was younger, it always seemed like something quaint and weird, like something the Hardy Boys would be doing.

The group organizer, Jonathan, found me in the parking lot and waited for me to get ready, in my obsessive compulsive way. We carried our snowshoes up to the benches at the trailhead and I found myself hoping that I knew what the hell I was doing, while pulling the bindings onto my feet.

But it wasn't too hard to figure it out, and in a few minutes we were off. He obviously knew I had been the slowpoke on our trip up Bear Mountain, so he didn't mind when I apologized in advance that I might be slowing him down.

We decided to make a hike up the trail from Bear Lake to Bierstadt Lake. I very much liked the idea, since that exact trail was the very first Colorado hike I ever made, with my family, in the summer of 1978, when we first moved out here. I hadn't been back to this trail since then.

We started up Bierstadt Moraine, but about halfway up, we ran into a woman in microspikes coming down who ironically asked me, "Have you been on this trail before?"

"Not this time of year," I replied, not mentioning that it had been over three decades.

She said that she hiked this trail a lot, and had been up to Bierstadt Lake two weeks ago, but today she had been unable to even find the trail, because of the snow that had blown over it. She cautioned us to be careful and not get lost, if we proceeded.

"Where are you from?" she asked us. "Fort Collins," I said. "Boulder," said Jonathan.

She seemed quaintly relieved at that, as if she could trust us not to kill ourselves on the trail. Turns out she was from Loveland.

So we climbed up to the top of the moraine. It wasn't too hard. I was barely winded and doing very well in the snowshoes. But the woman turned out to be right. The trail was completely unidentifiable, so we decided to turn around, but not before discovering a complete igloo that someone had constructed. I decided not to climb inside.

So we descended the Moraine back to Bear Lake, where we decided to take an alternative route, up from Bear lake towards Dream Lake, and then Emerald Lake, which was about two miles in, and right at the foot of the mountains on the Continental Divide.

It was a steep trail, and I did very well. Getting winded or fatigued wasn't my main problem this time. Rather it was the strain of the muscles right at the top of my thighs, at my hips, where the tendons were sore by the time I got to Emerald Lake.

I only embarrassed myself once, when I foolishly walked too close to a sunken tree and discovered the nightmare of being caught in the loose snow there (people actually die from being "drowned" in snow pits). It took a great amount of my remaining energy to get myself back on my feet. But I believe people should be forgiven when they fall down while snowshoeing (or cross-country skiing).

It was a great warm day, overall. We put in about 2000 feet of elevation gain, topping out around 10,500 feet. But I barely felt it. I must be getting back in shape.

By time we got back to Bear Lake, the parking lot was crammed full of people just starting out for the day.

There was something so oddly satisfying about the whole experience, beyond the physical exertion. I can't quite explain. Maybe there is part of me still trying to be a real Coloradoan after all these years, and somehow I fulfilled part of that.

One of the best fun moments of the day was when a woman on the trail who had been following us told me, when she caught up to me, that because of the tan color of my gaiters, she thought I was hiking in bare legs. "Hard core!" she said. It was almost as if she granted me the benefit of that, even after she found out it wasn't true. It made a better story, I suppose.

Only one minor screw-up: I forgot the Toblerone bar!

Here are some pictures that Jonathan posted of our trip. That's me in the red down jacket standing in front of the Igloo on Bierstadt Moraine, and on the frozen surface of Emerald Lake.

Rest stop on Lumpy Ridge

Gear shown: trusty Nalgene bottle (one of the first pieces of gear I bought two years ago at REI), Natl. Geographic trail map for Rocky Mountain National Park, Toblerone (of course---for the bear theme, see this), REI Flash containing trail food, emergency stuff, etc., Black Diamond Trekking Poles (also an early purchase from two years ago). Fixed to outside of pack are heavy mittens (unused) and small packing cube containing my microspikes.

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The Pleasure of Swiss Chocolate at High Altitude

The fun I had hiking with the reddit group that went up Bear Mountain had me eagerly volunteering to go on the second scheduled hike, which was to be down near Colorado Springs (because of weather, supposedly). It was to be a long hike up Mount Rosa, which supposedly was the peak the Zebulon Pike actually climbed instead of the one named after him.

The trek would be even more daunting than the week before, at higher altitude, and with a greater vertical rise, but a little voice kept telling me to follow through and commit to going ,which I did. I've learned to follow that little voice as much as possible.

For the half the week, I wasn't sure I could make it physically, however, because it took that long for my thigh muscles to recover from the flexing they took the week before. But by Friday I was all psyched to go. I went out to REI and bought a bunch of trail goodies, and went to the Mountain Shop in downtown Fort Collins and got the National Georgraphic Trails Illustrated map for the Colo. Springs area. I was even so motivated as to go to Office Depot and make color copies of both sides of the map, to splice them together to get an impromptu map of the entire trail.

I spent Friday afternoon getting my little REI flash pack prepared, using my new twist ties to fasten my microspikes and trekking poles to back. I looked like a real alpinist.

Then on Friday evening I got a message via reddit from the group organizer saying that almost everyone had canceled except for two people, so he was calling the trip off for this week. Part of me was disappointed, of course, but in reality I was quite relieved. I knew the physical challenge might be beyond me right now, until I get in better shape. Yet I felt I'd earned "cred" among the group for having stuck my guns until it was canceled.

But I couldn't just stay at home on Saturday. I was all geared up, literally, and needed something to do. So I kept my alarm on, and in the morning I left around sunrise and drove by myself up to Estes Park, one of my favorite places.

I drove up to the Lumpy Ridge trailhead just north of town. From there you can walk right into Rocky Mountain National Park (for free!). It's a popular place to access the park, as one can imagine, but on this morning, there were only two other cars in the large parking lot.

I spent the next six hours hiking up the canyon along the ridge into the park, passing the curious towering rock formations that are popular with rock climbers in the summer, including the famous "Twin Owls" that are visible from Estes Park proper. There are some amazing views of Long's Peak and Mount Meeker along the way (like this one).

The vertical rise over four miles was less than two thousand feet, yet I was quite winded along the way (partly because it is at a higher altitude than I'm used to lately). I was glad that the other hike was canceled. I probably would have embarrassed myself, or wound up torturing myself to death. A light easy week was in order.

I turned around and headed back just in time to get chased by a snowstorm coming down off the continental divide.

It was a great solo day.  Just a little over nine miles total. I had to (or should I say, got to) use my microspikes for the top part of the trail as I got to the crest of the ridge.

I even saved most of my trail goodies for the next week. The only thing I wound up eating was my Toblerone bar, a staple of mine on the trail since I bought a huge one in Switzerland in 1985 with virtually the last money I had while heading home. Good memories always make a good hike too.

And my thighs feel great. All ready for the next one.

Spotaneous Puppet Show@Chez Westminster

It had been weeks since I'd been to a legitimate show of any kind. Thus it was very nice to be treated to a spontaneous puppet show after school staged by my three nieces this afternoon, using the family room sofa as a stage. The first show was a three-act drama involving homemade paper bag puppets (show here with cousin Becca looking on). The revolved around a girl looking for her lost dog and cat.

The second show was used conventional puppets, involving a princess and a unicorn. Wasn't quite sure about the plot of this one, but it was marvelous nevertheless. Much applause was given.

What I missed out on in Amarillo

So I didn't go to Occupy Congress in Washington, D.C. this week, as I planned.

I originally planned to join the folks from Occupy San Diego on their cross-country Greyhound bus ride. I was going to take the bus down to New Mexico, or to Amarillo, Texas, and join their convoy. I had even contacted the organizer in San Diego about joining them, and donated money so that others could buy bus tickets.

But I got signals in my guy saying not to go to D.C. right now, for various reasons, among them being my discovery that the Occupy Congress thing was going to be just a one-day event. I thought they were going to try to set up an Occupy encampment on the National Mall.
I thought that would be the end of it.

As it happens the big story of the entire Occupy Congress event has not been what happened in D.C. on Tuesday (the day of protest), but what happened to the Occupy San Diego people on the way there. The entire group was kicked off the bus in Amarillo by the Greyhound driver, who stated that he disagreed with their politics and did not want them on board.

The entire S.D. contingent spent the night stranded in the Amarillo bus station, until they got an apology from Greyhound and were given an express bus all the way to D.C.

It was a huge thing in the social media, and made the national news in multiple outlets. Keith Olbermann called the driver, Donald Ainsworth, his "worst person in the world" for that day (not that I'm a big Keith Olbermann man). The "Amarillo 13," and the stranded occupiers came to be called during the event, were greeted with a hero's welcome when they got to D.C.

Here's one article on what happened.

So that's what I missed out on. That photo in the article of the Occupiers in the bus station was probably taken about the same time as the one at the top of Bear Mountain that I posted. I traded one experience for another, I suppose. Quite an adventure they had in Amarillo---yet one I felt like I wasn't mean to participate in. How weird.

3000 feet above Boulder

I didn't mean to do it---to take my first ever real video using my cellphone. But that's exactly what happened, when I standing on the very top of Bear Mountain on Saturday with the /r/coloradohikers group from reddit. I was actually trying to take a picture, but somehow, with the clumsiness of my thick gloves, I wound up hitting the video button instead.

Actually I took above three short videos. I was not aware of it until I was looking at the photos last night with my nieces.

Today I decided to take the plunge and join the modern video era---I decided to upload my first video to Youtube. It was suprisingly easy. It was so easy that I'm ashamed I was intimidated about it.

So here's the first one, a mere eight seconds of footage from the top of Bear Mountain, looking down on the city of Boulder. Keep in mind that I didn't think I was taking a video at the time. Also that's me huffing and puffing after four hours of hiking to the top.

Here's a second one, a bit shorter but with a few of fellow hikers in the shot. As you can tell, I'm got a long ways to go to be a decent videographer.

Atop Bear Peak

Last year my life seemed to have a curious recurring theme about bears. This was especially true when I was living in Boulder, and no incident was more indicative of this than when I actually walk right past a bear right in town in June.

I spent a lot of time hiking while I was there, but one of my regrets was that I didn't climb Bear Mountain, which is essentially the highest point on Boulder Mountain, the mountain that flanks the south side of the city. It seemed like an obvious thing to do, yet I was still somewhat intimidated by the steepness. Right at the end of the summer, one of my co-workers---a cheerful Swede named Lars---invited me along on a hike to that spot, but I didn't quite have the gumption to do it. Also I worried I might slow him down, given that he used to be a ski instructor in Aspen.

It's this latter thing---fear of being the slow person in a group---that has kept me from going on a group hikes in the past. It's not only that I feel out of shape compared to others, but also simply that I like to take my time, to preserve my energies over the long haul, and also, most especially, I like to just daydream and stare off into space. I don't like the idea of racing through things, as many like to do.

So it was with some trepidation that I decided to go along on a group hike this weekend. I found it through the website reddit, which I've used as my primary news source for the last five-plus years. Recently someone started a coloradohikers subreddit there with the idea of soliciting group hikes. Since I've been planning to do more hiking this year, it intrigued me. When I saw that the first hike was to be to none other than the top of Bear Mountain, I knew this was absolutely something I had to do.

To make it easier on myself---meaning, harder to back out---I replied to a message on the message from someone needing a ride from Fort Collins. Thus I committed myself early, and arranged by text message to pick the person up near campus at a quarter to seven on Saturday morning. Thus there was no backing out when I woke up yesterday morning.

My companion for the ride down was named Franklin. He was a student at CSU studying pre-vet-med, and wanted to go vet school after graduation. I told him about my job at CSU many years ago, where I had milk and slaughter goats. Franklin turned to be from New York---from out on Long Island.

We got to the South Mesa trailhead right at 8 in the morning. There were about ten people there. I had to scramble to pay for parking so I could leave with the group.

The first couple miles were gentle. It was sunny and warm. I was wearing my new Golite down jacket over my new Kulh wool fleece, as well as a hat and balaclava. About a mile in, I was sweltering. Some of the others were almost stripping down to their t-shirts and shorts by this time, but when we got up into Shadow Canyon, it got cooler quickly and I was glad I had worn all my layers.

It was about then that we started hitting snow and ice on the trail, and all of us who brought them got our microspikes. This had in fact been my purchase the day before, upon recommendation of the hike organizer. I had used my entire REI dividend for a new set of Kahtoola Microspikes. I had debated whether to buy a pair, but on the trail, it became obvious that I wouldn't have been able to make the hike without them.

The hike was brutally steep in the snow, nevertheless, especially the last few miles up to the top. My arms grew very weary pulling my trekking poles out of the snow.

I was by far the slowpoke. The group had to stop and wait for me to catch up as the last one. But I didn't feel so bad. It was obvious that I was probably at least twice as old as every other person in the group. Slow and steady wins the race. I know how fast I can go, and I wasn't go to go any faster.

Sheer willpower kept me going the last few miles. Each step seemed like the last one I could take. I would look up to the summit and think: no way can I make it, but also "I'm not going to stop, no many how long it takes me to get there."

Finally, at a little past noon, we got the very windy summit. Those without layers were surely suffering then, but I felt toast warm, except for my toes that were freezing in my non-waterproof boots. I scrambled to the top of the rocks and touched the USGS marker at the summit. I'd made it to the top of Bear Mountain at last.

On the way down I lagged behind the group again, not because of exhaustion, but because I didn't want to twist my ankle. In this case, a few others lagged behind with me, including Ben, who was from New York City and had grown up in White Plains. We talked about the military history and the Revolutionary War as we walked together.

That was one of the quirks of the whole trip----the first four people I introduced myself to were ex-New Yorkers, and everyone else was from somewhere else. As far as I could tell, I was the only person there who had grown up in Colorado.

By the time we got to the trialhead, I was walking in spirit with the group, not lagging behind, and with a smile on face. I'd preserved my energies just the right amount. By this time everyone was talking outloud about all the food they were going to eat.

As we stood at the trailhead in the parking lot, everyone said how much fun they had had, and they we should do this on a regular basis. Already there are plans for another hike next week.

On the way back to the Fort, Franklin and I stopped at my suggestion at the A&W in Berthoud where we wolfed down burgers, fries, and root beer. That A&W is my favorite place to stop between Boulder and Fort Collins. Berthoud is a nice little town. Franklin said he had never been in an A&W before. It was the perfect end to the day.

I've included the photo that another hiker took of us, at the top of Bear Mountain. I'm the guy in the back, in the red down vest, happy just to have made it to the stop. My friend Franklin is down in front with the yellow hat.

Here's the map of Bear Mountain.

My favorite thing in the world

This is what my bed looked like this morning in Westminster shortly after I got up--full of stuffed animals. They weren't there in the guest room the night before when I went to sleep. Instead they were piled on me as I slept (or rather as I pretended to still be asleep) around six thirty in the morning.

My nieces love to do this to me---pile their "aminals" on me while I'm in bed. They started it when I was staying with them back in Massachusetts in 2008-2009.

On the first night of my visit this time, they told me to make sure to stay in bed so they could do this. But I got out of bed anyway, thinking they had forgot. But they hadn't forgotten. Instead when they saw me, they made me get back in bed and pretend to be asleep with my eyes closed. I can hear them sneaking up to my bed with the animals. Maura giggles while Sarah whispers directions to her: "put those ones over there by his head."

This morning I made sure to stay in bed until they were finished. Then I pretended to awake with a giant roar, flinging all the animals off the bed and sending my nieces running out of the room in delight.

Did I mention this is my favorite thing in the world?

Android Baby

One of the surprises of this past Christmas was my father's gift to me of a new Android smartphone. I had thought about taking the plunge and finally getting some kind of device like that, but hadn't settled on it (I'm always way behind any electronic trends). I was really excited when I opened it.

It took me a week to finally set up the account and get in working. The first use I got out of it was to use the clock to count down the new year with the homeless people at Occupy Boulder.

For a couple days after that, I was sure it was all a horrible mistake. It seemed like it was "too much connectivity" and had the possibility of driving me insane (literally). Fortunately I think I'm learning to mitigate the downsides and have learned some fun upsides of having this kind of device.

I really like being able to call up Youtube videos and watch them, or listen to the music on them. I've been using the Youtube app to explore  a New Year's resolution to finally educate myself about classical music, starting with Mozart. I spent a couple days listening/watching various versions of Exsultate, Jubilate, which Wikipedia tells me is Mozart's earliest works that is still performed in concert on a regular basis. I watched at least ten different versions by ten different sopranos.

This was particularly fun when I was down in Westminster visiting my nieces. I showed them some of the videos and they watched various versions with me, huddling right next to me as we watched on the tiny little screen. It's the kind of the memory that I hope they keep in their minds in the years ahead, partly because it is so "of the times" of the year 2012. Someday they talk about doing such things, and it will seem wonderfully quaint.

Later on that evening, Sarah came into the guest room and decided she wanted to play a version of "house" with me. She had brought her baby doll into the room in her toy stroller. She left the baby with me and told me to change its diaper if it needed that.

"Just throw the diaper away into the trash, and then pick it up and use the same one," she told me. Then she took the stroller and left the room to go off to "King Soopers" to go grocery shopping.

When she was out of the room, I dutifully changed the diaper just as she instructed, throwing it away and then picking it up out of the trash again to use the same one---just so I could tell her truthfully that I had done it.

Then I decided to have a little fun of my own. I used my Android phone to search Youtube for a "baby crying." I found a video and confirmed it was what I wanted. Just before she came back into the room, I pressed "play" on the video on the phone and then slipped it into the crib behind the doll's head.

My little stunt was a big hit. Children always appreciate it when you make a sincere effort to participate in their games, but this was extra special. It made me feel like I wasn't so behind the times after all. Old dogs can learn new tricks.

Ultralight Rainbows

Yesterday was a beautiful day down in Westminster. It was sixty degrees when I arrived in the mid afternoon. I walked around for a hour before heading over to the school, where I ambushed the girls on their way out the door. They didn't expect to see me there. Maura rode home with her mom, but Sarah insisted on walking home with her uncle, holding his hand most of the way. We raced the last couple hundred yards through the park in order to beat my sister's minivan to the front door.

When I got back to my sister's house, the new tent I had ordered had arrived. My current tent is way to heavy---not something one can carry in a pack. As part of my Ultralight '12 initiative, I had agonized over which shelter to buy, and after much deliberations on weight and utility, I had settled on a Tarptent, because I liked the concep. I specifically chose the Double Rainbow, which comes it at a mere 41 ounces for the full set up.

Fortunately it was a great day to set up a tent. I wasn't even planning to set it up, but the girls were very eager to help me try it out. So with them "helping" (mostly by swinging on the swingset while I fumbled with the directions), I got the tent set up just as the sun was setting. The first order of business was to pack the three of us inside and engage in a game of coloring with markers of many colors of course. It is surely an auspicious start for the Double Rainbow.

Helium

Another trend for the new year---ultralight. Two years ago I went on a weird binge of deciding I needed to get real outdoor gear. I had been motivated by my trip to France the year before that, when I realized how poor my gear was, and how it limited my movements and options. Then when I got back to Colorado in spring 2010, I got obsessed with visiting REI everyday and figuring out what I wanted to buy. I went through a phase of buying out lots of gear with the idea of being able to take off on the spur of the moment and hike up into the mountains, if need be.

This phase culminated in the trip I took this past summer/fall to the west coast. I camped using much of my gear, although some of it turned out to be a bust, and hardly useful at all. I guess that's a common experience. Nevertheless it did allow me a great spontaneity of travel---being able to camp anywhere I wanted, and to take off into the mountains in my car on whim, as I did when I left Fresno and headed up into the Sierras. I felt very mobile.

But now I feel like I've entered a new phase again. For one thing, I've decided that I'm going to take to the road again, but I am going to ditch my car. I'm either going to sell it or store long-term, I haven't decided which. I'm going to go back to being on foot, and carrying everything on my back. Where I'll go...well I haven't decided that, but I know this is the right thing.

As part of this, I've decided to embrace the concept of "ultralight," which is a trend in backpacking that, as it sounds, indicates that one tries to travel as light as possible. Every ounce counts.

I've learned that many of my gear choices from 2010 were poor choices on this score. They were okay for car camping, but were not ok when one tries to minimize the weight one carries on one's back. So it means buying a bunch of new gear. I've been making out a list of what I need, and using the site geargrams.com, which lets one keep a gear library/list organized by weight and category.

My first major purchase was a new backpack. This stung somewhat, since I'd recently bought a 350 dollar Gregory Baltoro internal frame that is awesome, but is over seven pounds in weight. I never have really used it, except to keep it in the trunk of my car. But it's too heavy.

I wound up purchasing a new Golite Odyssey on sale for a mere ninety bucks at the local Golite outlet in downtown Fort Collins. It's about three and half pounds. I could have gone even lighter, but I wanted to keep some excess capacity in the bag, because I figured I may need it for the various kinds of travel I might do.

It was fun to buy it. I thought about it for a couple weeks and finally dove in while the clearance sale was going on. It was especially fun to buy it here in my hometown. It reminded me of buying my old blue Camp Trail Explorer pack way back in the spring of 1985, at a little now-defunct store on South College, earned with money I made delivering singing balloon-a-grams. Lots of helium involved. I took that to Europe that summer, and trekked through the Eastern Bloc,  Turkey, and all the way to the ruins of Troy. It was "the trip that changed my life" right before I went off to Oregon as a transfer student.

I need that kind of energy of transformation again, and I felt a little of that old magic buying the Golite backpack. I was all of twenty years old back in the summer of 1985, and the world felt so different. Times have changed. It's freaking awkward trying to feel that way again. It's more than a little bit painful to feel how the world has changed, and trying to feel that optimism about life again. It seems so easy when you are young, to think you can summon newness into your life no matter what age you are. When are approaching fifty, it is a different story. You have to find a way to give yourself permission to be new, and that is not so easy to do sometimes. Or least it doesn't feel that way. I have to fight the voice that says "who the hell do you think you are, getting another chance to be new?"

Or as Satan himself once told me, in play:

Can't be born twice over, Can't be!

I thought it was good luck that while I was trying the pack on, I remarked to the attendant that I felt lighter with it, than without it, as if it were filled with helium. He replied that they had actually joked about helium-filled packs.

Then I walked down College with my back and stopped at a food cart vendor (something that didn't exist here in 1985). It was directly across the street from the offices of the long-defunct Balloon Family, my place of work. The building was bought out a decade ago by a locally famous billionaire businesswoman and turned into the headquarters of her charitable foundation.

I looked at the chalk board of food items and realized they were all Greek items, exactly the same kind that one buys in Greece---spinach pies, cheese pies, baklava. I could tell at once that the proprietor was Greek, so I used some Greek phrases interacting with him while I ordered. I showed him my new Golite Odyssey backpack.

"Maybe I'll use it in Greece," I told him, before biting into my spinach pie.

Nutritional Upgrades

My new regimen:

1. Beyond Tangy Tangerine, 2 scoops daily. The directions suggested four scoops daily for my body weight, but I decided to halfsy on that for now, because this stuff costs fifty bucks a jar, and I wanted the first jar to last a whole month, rather than fifteen days before reordering. I'm very pleased with the results. Among other things, it's like coffee for me---I never forget to take it. My body seems to like it a lot. I'm getting down to the end of the first jar now and need to reorder, which I'm going to do without delay. I'm also getting a jar for my dad, after telling him about it.

2. Powdered Whey, two scoops daily with milk as chocolate-flavored shakes. I bought some off the shelf from Whole Foods for about fifteen bucks for a large jar. I have one shake for breakfast, another for lunch. It has pretty much replaced all the sugary crap I used to eat, including Starbucks Frappucinos, which I don't miss at all. Very pleased so far.

3. Omega-3,-6,-9 gel tablets. I take three of these a day, one with each meal, for "essential fatty acids."

4. Magnesium chelate tablets, three per day. I bought these for my tendonitis. They seem to have really helped. It really makes me think that the off-the-shelf fruits and vegetables we are eating are truly stripped of basic nutrients.

To say that I feel like a new man, and that I feel in the best shape of my life, why only exercising mildly, is just for starters. Among other things, my mood has great improved, even in the midst of things that would otherwise cause me grief and sorry (including the state of the country and the world).

I don't weigh myself, but from my beltline it's obvious that I've already lost a few pounds (all the while gorging on chocolate over Christmas). It has definitely cut down on my sweettooth cravings in a huge way, and I no longer seem to be prone to overeating (both lifelong problems for me). The key point is that this has taken zero willpower on my part. I has just "happened" somewhat like magic.

One final bonus I noticed today while looking in the mirror is that the chronic rosacea on my nose seems actually be subsiding. My ex-wife was concerned about this years ago---my nose was always beat red and broken out in small lesions. I had given up that anything would ever change it, but today, in my mirror, my nose actually seemed more brown than red for the first time in living memory.

Of course I know that none of this is scientific at all, but I'm not out to prove anything, just to feel better---and that seems to be happening.

Finally, the New Year

The last few years, I watched less and less network television to the point where I don't have any regular comedy or drama shows that I watch anymore. Nearly all the television I enjoy watching anymore is Turner Classic Movies (which I don't have access to right now). But I decided after the end of Lost on ABC that I was done with the regular networks forever.

One of the last events on network television that I make a point of watching is the Tournament of Roses parade. I love waking up on New Year's Day and flipping on the television just in time to see the floats coming down Colorado Boulevard in Pasadena.

This year New Year's fell on a Sunday, so it was all delayed a day. The parade wasn't until today---the second of January, so yesterday didn't even really feel like New Year's Day, but like an extra day in between New Year's Eve and the real New Year's Day (today). I took the opportunity simply to rest and meditate.

Today finally felt like New Year's. I even watched the Rose Bowl game as well, and was pleased that Oregon won, since my visit to Eugene this past year was a definite highlight of 2011. I stayed there on a game weekend, and my motel was right near the stadium. I woke up there on a Saturday morning to find legions of fans streaming past my window.

But now it's time to face 2012 for real. Yes, I realize it's just a turn of the calendar, but New Year's Day is actually my favorite holiday of the year. I love the chance to start new things, and to leave old things behind. I love making resolutions. I love giving myself permission to overhaul my entire life if I want, and to reorient my thoughts and goals all at once. One can do that at any time of course, but it is never so easy for me to day as it is during the first week of January.

This past year was a tough year personally, as it was for many people out there, but I actually accomplished a lot, and ended the year in a much, much better position in many ways than last year. Financially, I not only was able to get off my back and out of distress, but am in the most solid position I've been in for many years.

Physically, I'm in very good shape too. I spent the last couple months of the year in sharp pain from tendonitis, but the good part was that I discovered the magic of magnesium supplements and was able to cure myself of it. That encouraged me to go further and I've developed my own regime of vitamin supplements, protein whey shakes, and fatty acid tablets.

Never have I felt so good in my life. After years of thinking that my body was in inevitable decline, I've felt like I've been granted a new lease on life. A couple days ago, I went for a walk and wound up going all the way to downtown (five miles). I was going to take the bus back, but decided to walk part of the way back and catch the bus on the way. I wound up walking all the way back as well---ten miles just spontaneously on foot, and at the end I felt no fatigue or foot pain at all. I could have kept walking easily. I haven't been able to do that in many years.

Feeling financially stable and physically fit is a great way to start the New Year. It means I can concentrate on other resolutions for 2012, a year that everyone seems to be dreading.  But not me.

Who knows? Maybe next year I'll go to the Rose Parade in person.

Resolutions

As if fulfilling the appearance of Jupiter, the new year began with a rather auspicious start. On the way home from Boulder, on a dark highway south of Loveland, I was pulled over by the flashing lights of a police cruiser from a deputy of the Larimer County sheriff's office. Knowing that cops were everywhere, I had been making sure to drive very carefully.

It turns out I had a headlight out. The deputy could tell I hadn't been drinking so everything was chill (I was glad I turned down the beer in the tent at Occupy Boulder) After scrambling to find my registration, everything turned out OK. He didn't even write me a citation. Instead he just chatted with me, rather sympathetically. I told him I'd been to see a movie, and he asked which one. I told him that I went to see the new Sherlock Holmes movie. He asked me what I thought of it. I told him it wasn't as good as the first one. So that was my first movie review of the year.

It was actually quite a nice feeling, when I drove off without any damage at all. If only all of life's stresses could be melted away like that.

As I drove on into the dark, my mind focused on something that had been going through my head. I thought of how in the past year, I have felt the sharply mounting distress across the country, and have tried to warn and share this insight with as many people as possible. Partly this has been through Facebook, where I have "come out the closet" after a couple years of being laid back, and have been posting many links that have actually caused several people to defriend me. I knew that would be the price. It was part of my plan all along, I think. If they defriend me, then I know at least they read and absorbed what I said.

Facebook, I've said, has felt like a ministry. Although I've found it to be like a quagmire of nothingness at times, I've felt like I had to participate in it, because this is where our culture is right now. I wanted to understand that, and know why things are they way they are, and to "take the pulse" of that part of the world.

But now I feel as if I've reached a limit of my ability to do that. I think I've said what I needed to say. I can't go on with that form of "ministry." It's time to let it go.

While driving, I meditated about how I need to shift into a new mode. While the world is cracking up---and it surely is---it no longer serves the world for me to convey the kind of distress I've been relaying. I'm not doing myself or anyone any good by doing that.

I need to shift into a mode of trying to show people that there is a way forward out of this. I need to start conveying the confidence that I feel inside, that through all of this, there is a miracle that is available to us---a way forward. I need to embody that in my words and actions. I need to inspire that feeling in others by how I act, and what I say. It is time to start focusing on that.

How I'm supposed to do that, I'm not sure. One of the huge themes I am facing in so many things right now is that I don't have any idea of the master plan. That has freaked me out, because I tend to want to know the longterm route of things. But I have to trust that there is a step-by-step way forward for me at every turn. I truly have to take it day by day. Or as a friend of mine said, step, breathe, step.

In the spirit of that, I knew what the first step I had to take. I have to get off Facebook. I was thinking of simply deactivating my account, but I realized that this might erase all of my posts on other people's pages, and leave no way for people to contact me, if they wished. So I decided the best thing to do would be log out, and simply resolve to not log back in. I'll have to tell my sisters that they will have to relay any important family news to me by other means.

So when I finally got home, one of the first things I did before going to bed was to fulfill my first resolution. My ministry is over. It's time to start actually meeting people in person. And also it has given me new impulse to write this blog as much as possible, perhaps every day, after letting it lapse. Of course now I write about much more than movies, as I once did, because I don't go to very many movies any more, and I need to say things beyond the vehicle that once provided. The same with theater performances. But I still want to go to as many as possible. That won't change.

So what's out there for me? Where I am supposed to go in the new year? Who I am supposed to meet? What am I supposed to say? Like so many others right now, I am completely at a loss to furnish answers to those questions. But I know that this the way it is meant to be. I'm not supposed to know the answers to those questions right now. I'm supposed to voyage out and learn what the answers are. So here I go.

Stargazing@Occupy Boulder

For New Year's Eve, I decided to end the year 2011 where it began---in Boulder. I drove down in the early evening and treated myself to a movie, seeing Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows at the Regal Century, the multiplex that is part of the outdoor lifestyle center on the site of the old Crossroads Mall.

It had been a couple years since I'd been at that theater. The last time I was there was to see The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus in early 2010. I noticed that the tickets now cost ten dollars and fifty cents. Wow.

I really enjoyed the first Sherlock Holmes movie two years ago, but this new one was a real eye-opening. It simply confirmed how quickly Hollywood, and America as a whole, is disintegrating. The story seemed chaotic and meaningless, lacking all the cleverness and wittiness of the original. Gone was the intricate mystery-solving of the conspiracy in the first one, replaced with the blunt tropes of the War on Terror, projected back in time to 1891. This is what happens when we live in tissues of compounded lies, I thought. I takes it toll on art.

The movie got out just after ten p.m. I decided to drive up to the illuminated star on Flagstaff Mountain, where I spent midnight last year. It was much warmer evening this year---last year it was one of the subzero end-of-the-world cold type of nights. There was also much less snow.

I didn't stay and climb up to the middle of the star, as I did last year. I just stood outside in the mild air by the road and meditated on the incredible year that had just passed, and all the ways I felt so different than one calendar year before. A young couple was playing and sliding up in the lights on the mountain side. I could hear their laughter and voices. It was very pleasant.

But the best part was that above the star, hovering above the dark shape of the mountain was the bright light of the planet Jupiter, almost like a heavenly mirror of the star on the mountain side. It felt like a good omen for the year ahead.

With about an hour left before midnight, I decided to fulfill my resolution to spend midnight down at the Occupy Boulder encampment at Sister Cities Park. On the way up to Flagstaff Mountain, I had driven by it and seen the tents beside the creek on Broadway, just south of downtown.

On the way back down there, I stopped at a convenience store and bought several large cups of hot chocolate. I drove back down the hill on Broadway and parked on Arapahoe across the street from the library. I filled my backpack with several boxes of Clif Bars that I had been toting around as provisions for several months on my travels, and took them and the hot chocolate over to the encampment in front of City Hall on Broadway. It was ironically right across the creek from a hot dog stand that I had remembered visiting on my first trip to Boulder in 1978, when we moved to Colorado.

When I had driven by earlier, I had seen several people standing out by the tents, but now I saw no one around. It seemed like the camp was deserted. But I heard some guitar music from inside one of them. I called out "Free Hot Chocolate!" I guy in his twenties with dark hair came out. He said he didn't want any hot chocolate, but he invited me into the tent, so I went inside. There were two other people there, a guy with a beard and a young woman wearing a stocking hat. I took a seat in one of the shares. The young woman took eagerly took one of
cups of chocolate and started sipping on it. I poured myself some from the other cup, using a red squishy cup that was part of my camping gear.

A couple other people came into the tent after a few minutes until we were all crowded inside. Beer and other things were passed around. It occurred to me rather quickly that none of the people there cared anything about the political ramifications of the Occupy "movement." This was simply a homeless camp. Everyone there was simply trying to survive. It seemed a world away from the community meeting at the Nomad Theatre. None of those lawyers was done here tonight.

Everything seemed broken. It was hard to carry on any time of conversation with anyone, except the guy with the bear, whose name with Sean, and who said he had been homeless for three years. I tried introducing myself and shaking hands with the people who came in the tent, but the idea of greeting each other that way seemed to be a foreign concept. I felt like I was I was smack in the middle of the American Crack-up.

"Do you think we had actually make one complete brain here, with the people here?" Sean asked me.

"I don't know," I told him. "Maybe eighty percent of one."

I felt awkward being there---as if I were an interloper in some degree, but mostly because I realized how tense I was, and how the vibes of my tension were apparent when I was trying to hang out with these people. I could feel so strongly how have been under so much self-imposed stress lately. I felt like I was too high strung to be sitting there. I felt embarrassed and unworthy, as if I needed to peel off layers of ego. I had to struggle to overcome that. It made me wish I could relax more, and be a better listener.

I wound up emptying my backup of all the Clif Bars I had, and leaving them there, also with the camp glow stick in rainbow colors.

"Do you carry around a whole supply of Clif Bars?" one of them asked me, incredulous.

"You're not going to believe this," I said, "but I actually lugged these boxes of Clif Bars all the way out to West Coast and back."

That just blew their minds. "I took them to ocean and back," I said.

"Were they blessed by the Pacific Ocean?" Sean asked me.

"I guess they were," I said.

For a few moments things took a spiritual tune. Sean even did a rendition of Kum-Ba-Ya, which the young woman (whose name was Alex), hadn't ever heard before. Then we all agreed for God "to bless America and everyone else."

After midnight I went outside and showed Sean the planet Jupiter, which was still above City Hall. I listened to his theories on the "Collapse" that it is progress.  He asked me: "are you one of those religious people?"

"Absolutely," I told him.

"What are you? Christian? Catholic?"

I thought about it a second. "Yeah, I guess so," I told him. "I try to be a bit of everything."

Then I said good-bye to him, giving him my pair of gloves, which he was grateful to receive. Then I went back to my car, walking back across the creek and past the old hot dog stand.

In a couple days from now the City Manager has resolved to clear out the camp from in front of City Hall. I could understand why it is probably going to happen, despite the efforts of the well-meaning progressive lawyers. But at the same time I was thankful that the tents were there that night, so that Sean and his friends could be inside a tent that night, and not out in the cold.

Now what about those layers of ego that I am carrying? What am I going to do about those?