A home amongst the treetops

I sat in our study today, our study that is home to boxes, mostly empty boxes, some "green" shopping bags, a hammer and one lonely bookcase.

The study is light and bright and airy, even though it faces north. It looks out into the trees. It was very pleasing to me. At the moment the trees are green but soon enough they will change colour and the leaves will fall.

Whilst I look forward to seeing what Fall is like (we have Autumn in Australia, and autumn means some trees lose their leaves but only the imported ones, 99% of the Australian species keep their leaves, so the colour is not exactly spectacular), I fear months of no leaves on trees and gacky pathetic grass that has lost its colour after being snowed on.

So I guess I had best enjoy the study whilst I can, whilst it looks out onto dancing leaves and sparkles of sunlight (maybe I should move the computer up there out of the loungeroom!). Same with the ever-drawing-in evenings - get out there and enjoy them, quick, quick, like the ephemeral insects I saw dancing in the late afternoon sun today. It really feels like summer is done for now and we are heading for cooler weather. The evenings are cool now, not uncomfortable, just below 20 degrees C. Crickets call incessantly for mates, a sound which I like. It is gentle and soothing, unlike the shrilling of cicadas. The days start cool and warm up - we will still occasionally get temps in the 90sF, but I am hoping we won't get such oppressive heat as we have had recently. A thunderstorm every afternoon is exciting but tedious when you have to ride home on a bike in it....

Funny mood and a whinge

Today is a very odd day. DH has just been whisked off to Denver for his flight to a conference in Canada. Sniffle. Noone to talk to at home for days and days!

So I will go to an SnB (unless it rains, which it is threatening to) and a LYS knitty gathering and annoy our lovely neighbours.

I am sorta out of sorts at the moment. Since we got here, we've made friends with the neighbours and with one of Nathan's workmates/family and our new un-aunt-mother. That is it. (I've probably offended someone already by saying that.) We've met people and they seem really nice and welcoming and friendly but if you actually do ring them up or email them after they give you their card, they seem rather surprised. Hello! We are lonely! Of course if you are nice to us and give us your card we will contact you. In Australia, we give out our details to people we like, not just anyone we meet.

We think we are probably breaching some Unwritten Rule of Etiquette. Since it is unwritten, we do not know what that rule is. It is probably a cultural thing. It is like when I say I don't know where to go to get something. Quite often noone will tell me cos they think I am pulling their leg or something. How would I know what are good places to shop at here? How do I know where to find various items? We don't have the same shops at home. (We do have our own Kmart, which is slightly less scroaty than here, and our own Target, which seems aimed fairly much at the same market. Oh and Safeway in Oz is owned by Safeway here. And Shell.) We don't have the same products at home - there is probably a 50% cross over in some areas like shampoos and stuff but.

Ah well, could be worse. I could've been involved in this ballooning accident. I feel sorriest for the people who were having a nice holiday in an RV park (or maybe a nice quiet life) and then BINGO BANGO a flaming hot air balloon lands on their RV or their car and burns it to the ground.

Like Hello! How unlucky is that?

Word of the week

CRAWDAD!

Golly, I love crawdads almost as much as I love the word "cooty." Of course now I think about it, cooty probably has racist overtones. Ooops.


(that one is real fresh btw - his eye is clouded but he is actually alive and crawling on the bike path)
But CRAWDAD? Almost as good as yabby! And the self same sorta critter - a crustacean that lives in ponds and creeks. I play with the ones in the creek down the bottom of the hill several times a week.


At certain times of the month or maybe when the current is stronger, they like to all pile up in the bit where the creek comes through a big drainpipe under the bike path. I think they are feeding there. Anyway, there are lots of swirls and eddies, and every now and then (ie very often) one yabby gets caught in an eddy and goes around and around and around and around - hope they don't get dizzy! They often knock other crawdads off their safe perch too so five of them go around and around and around. Sorta like a merry go round for crawdads. Other times the current just picks them up and deposits this flailing critter about 3m downstream. Then they start crawling back to where the food is oh so good@

Two monthaversary

It's two months since we got here. Wow, time flies when you are having fun!

So far it has been grand. We are getting fitter (well one of us is) riding our bikes around. The odd drive to 12,000 feet or so and a little hike around the mountains is helping too. We are seeing lots of nifty new stuff. We are getting to know our new home, at least in its summer face.
We've found all sorts of critters in the local creek and surrounds - racoons (mama and a youngster), a turtle, spiders, yabbies, fish... All sorts of plants and rocks and interesting natural stuff. It's mighty pleasing to me that we have such a nice spot down the bottom of our hill. Wonder what it will look like in winter?

Now that we are mostly settled in, it is time to start making new friends. We have a handful but we need a wider circle. I have all of next week to myself (DH is away Mon-Fri at a conference) so I'll be hitting the local yarn shops and hanging out. I might even make an SnB on Monday night!

Word of the Week

Cooties.

Man I love that word! Cooties! Every time I go into a thrift store now I worry about cooties! Of course anything that I bring home that has not been washed or obviously needs to be washed/cleaned gets washed/cleaned so hopefully I'll only have my own cooties and not anyone else's.*

My other current favourite word will have to wait until next week, when it can be Word of the Week.

(*I can't believe that they sell underwear - knickers, bras, jocks, socks - and even worse USED makeup !!!! at some thrift stores. Like who wants some nice cold sore ointment, aka used lipstick? Ick! But I still shop there for good things like sweaters to pull apart and the odd tshirt. I'm getting a good collection of tie-dye tshirts now :-)

On homesickness

Homesickness is a PITA. You think you are travelling OK, then something suddenly comes and bites you in the butt and you sit around feeling wanty of something familiar. I've been avoiding it by keeping busy (ie shopping and checking out the thrift stores for jumpers to shred into yarn) but today is a slow, hot day and I only have about 80 cents in my wallet. I've been to the library and picked up some books I had on hold - one is an Alice Starmore knitting book but it turns out to be one on ganseys, not her fair isle ones. Dang! I've been to a yarn shop and dropped off my yellow bear. I've been to Home Depot and checked out storage options, Ryobi one+ kits (we love one+, we have it at home and it is great for home handypersons!) and oddly enough the kitchens. Very disappointed in the kitchens - where are the pull out whole cupboard pantries, etc? I love looking at the weird storage organising things for kitchens. It seems Australians are kitchen snobs - we have so many kitchen places getting in the latest designs from Europe.

Looking at pictures of the cats is probably a wrong move, eh? Like looking at pictures of an ex when you've just broken up, except you don't sit and cry miserably, you just feel a bit sad. Anyway, the sods (cats that is) probably won't even remember us - they haven't exactly pined away.

Homesickness is worst when I have not had anyone to talk to for a while. Even someone in a shop is good enough. Yep, the introvert needs some human interaction. The extravert of us goes completely pear shaped with noone to talk to.

So if you want to talk to us, get online and fire up your chat program. We are on jabber/gaim but I am told that AIM, ICQ, MSN Messenger, Yahoo!, IRC, Gadu-Gadu, SILC, GroupWise Messenger and Zephyr will all talk to gaim. We want to talk to you! I can email you our names/servers if you want to chat and maybe even provide some options for chat programs, but I'm not advertising our identities online! Plus we have webphone and webcam now too (though DH sets all that up - it always needs tweaking, silly stuff!).

Mt Evans, the Summit Lake episode

Last we were driving up Mt Evans, we were feeling a little challenged by the road. After all, you don't get views like this one

very often.

So we drove up through the clouds and the gloom and suddenly came out at Summit Lake. This is a really pretty spot, even in clouds and gloom. I'll let the pics do the talking, though our knees and teeth could've told a whole story by themselves. It was almost literally freezing up there!









I've put together a panorama here, though it doesn't show the lake.

DH and I felt the cold acutely, and scuttled around madly trying to stay warm, looking around the place. To the west was a deep valley that wavered in and out of view as the clouds rolled past:


One thing that fascinated us was the condition of the road. There is a warning sign saying "rough and uneven surface" or words to that intent. Uneven surface is not the best description. It seems that the road has suffered frost heave - it goes over a patch of permafrost. The road undulates madly. It is certainly not something you want to drive over at anything more than speed hump, real speed hump not these fake things that don't slow anyone down, speed. Totally bizarre, but we didn't take a pic cos we didn't know the significance then. Apparently this is an area that has arctic flowers that are not known so far south anywhere else - not only is it alpine but it is arctic as well. I guess the flowers are there because of the permafrost....

On the monsoon season, 2

Umm, what happened to the rain and humidity? Suddenly we are back to temps averaging 33-35 (mid 90s) and hot bright sun! Hot hot hot! Plus the irrigation channels have been closed down so there is a lot less water flowing around town.

In six months I will be dreaming of days like today as my poor little (ahem) Aussie butt freezes off. But at the moment? Nope! I'd like say 25 C (mid 70s). That would be very pleasant indeed!

Driving to Mount Evans

Two whole weeks ago, we went for a drive. We drove to Boulder - we had thought we were driving to Denver to get on the I70 to get up into the mountains but the I25 to Denver was horridly clagged up, so we went to Boulder via highway 287 instead.


Boulder is interesting. We want to look around Boulder some more when it isn't so hot and humid. Nathan ate at moronic Craig's, or some such place. Foolish Craig's, that's it!

We visited Boulder in March when Nathan did his interview but we didn't see it very well as it was snowing at the time (but gee it was fun that it snowed! The locals were over it, naturally). This time we saw a bit more and had a look around town before heading up Boulder Canyon.



Now after a while, these canyons don't look quite so un-ewes-ual and different. After all, this is the fourth one we've seen now! But if you are into rocks then it is interesting seeing how the rock types change as you go further and further up the canyons.

We stopped to look at Boulder Falls, supposedly one of the bigger (accessible) falls in the Rockies. Only problem is you can't see most of the falls! Here's the lower bit:


The creek is verra nice.

I like the creeks and rivers of the Rockies as they are so energetic (at least until autumn when I am told they calm down). Lots of water in a hurry to get to the plains, where it gets stuck in reservoirs and used for drinking or agriculture or industry or whatever. It is very unlikely to make it to the Gulf of Mexico.

We drove around and around and around. We drove to Nederlands, where the toilets were pretty feral when I finally found them (and we had a barney over toilets, believe it or not simply cos I couldn't find one and NEEDED one!). They had some sort of event happening but we had a fit of the grumps and only took a picture of a steam shovel


(what is the name of the steam shovel in the kid's book I seem to remember?)

On we drove after I did a, umm, ooh about a 450 degree turn around a roundabout (and blasted someone upon entry as he decided he had right of way over the person who had already entered the roundabout on his left and was half a second from occupying the same spot in the roundabout (ie me)).

At this stage we had no particular aim in driving anywhere. The navigator had given up on the job and my directional sense is useless in the mountains. So we drove.



And we drove


And we drove, and suddenly after passing by a bizarre school with a turret connected to the rest of the school by a bridge, we were in a casino town! There's been virtually nothing in the way of towns or "civilization", we think we are in the middle of nowhere and bingo, bango! Bizarre! Everywhere in the canyon was gambling related. Even the crossroad is called Richman.



We gambled a little too - the Jeep (cousin to Crazy Aunt Purl's Jeep and I mean the red car not the yellow Hummer) two cars ahead actually stopped to let someone merge, which the mitsubishi star wagon behind me did NOT expect. I don't know how he missed us. And us in a rental car and all! He backed off a LOT after that!

Eventually we ended up in Idaho Springs, really rather lost. Idaho Springs is in the Colorado Rockies, not someplace in Idaho like you might expect. Don't ask me why. The lovely lady in the visitor centre was very helpful (but slightly challenged on the map she gave us). She suggested we drive up Mount Evans, or at least do the scenic drive up to the entrance.

What a fantastic idea! So we drove up and up, having been promised alpine tundra and bighorn sheep and all sorts of wonders if we coughed up $10 for the Mount Evans Scenic Byway.

Turns out that if you don't stop along the way, the nice parks people will waive the fee, but like who would only want to drive to the top of the highest paved road in the USA and turn around and come back?

So we drove up and up and up (it gains 7000 feet over 28 miles). At first you drive through forests and do a few switchbacks, then you hit areas that are treeless and it starts looking a bit Scottish


We saw Bristlecone Pines, though I don't think these ones were particularly ancient


As we pushed further up the mountain, we hit the clouds. All grey and misty!




But there were worrying signs




And I was rather glad of the clouds, cos if we looked over the edge of the road

it was a loooooooong way down! Plus the edge of the road had quite frequently fallen away... eek! Vertigo was kicking in for one of us!

(to be continued)

On the monsoon season

Ah, the weather has cooled a bit now. I am told this is the monsoon season. I thought monsoons involved torrential rains and floods.


Oh. That'd be our "yard" being submersed - the spouting she canna take nae more! It can't take the amount of rain falling and we have our own Niagara Falls every time it rains for more than about 10 minutes. This time, though, we were going for Victoria Falls instead....


If that isn't a flood, I don't know what is! Four inches, that's 10cm, of rain in about two hours got most of Fort Collins quite excited! The creek down the bottom of the hill got very excited! So did we! We went and inspected the creek and huddled in the rain, afraid to get under the big trees due to the excessive displays of lightning but afraid to leave their shelter.... Our neighbour took us out driving around town to see how bad the floods were. Some houses had to be evacuated - they are too close to the flood plain or in a drainage area. No trailer parks got washed away this time, and only small lives were lost (two critters that I know of) unlike the flood just over 10 years ago.


Our place was nice and high on the hill - it will have to be some flood to wash us away (though water did get in the garage and found the ONLY thing worth anything in there - our brand new unassembled chairs....). However, the watering systems around here are working on undermining us - the amount of water that is poured on the grass around here is astounding!

Some during and after shots (excuse the dimness of the flood shots - it was twilight):

The bike path at the bottom of the condos


the "falls" (a concrete weir)


Sunset on the 3rd, I think, when the creek is still running hard but much lower :-)


The clean up crews worked overtime clearing out the paths. They were still hard at work yesterday when I rode out eastwards along the Spring Creek path but in most areas apart from the flattened grass and the odd bit of mud you would never know it had flooded a week ago. Bravo to them for getting out the waders and going above and beyond (including above the waders) in clearing things up!

Crawfish Dreaming

Last Saturday in the evening, we went for a teensy tiny walk to take pictures of sunset.


Oh pretty sunset! Colorado does good sunsets I must say.

Even some of the creek lit up.


Then we noticed something moving on the bike path. It was a squashed yabby, or crawfish or crawdaddy or whatever you like to call them here. We call 'em yabbies, but I do like the word crawfish for whatever reason.

Then we realised there were LOTS of them, not just squashed and dead/dying ones on the path! The local creek (Spring Creek) obviously is a good place for yabbies to live. There were quite a number of them in the creek itself, all of different sizes, a crowd of them like Bondi Beach on a sunny day. Plus there were some big ones on the path, mebbe playing Russian roulette or more likely looking for a home that was a little less crowded.


No Mr Burns and pollution here - the ones we saw all had appropriate numbers of appropriate appendages for yabbies.

We tried backing some off the path but this one got aggro.

Grr! I wave at you with my big nippers! Grr! I scary! You go 'way!

We went.

On American formalism

One thing we are noticing here in the States is how formal people are.

Sir and Ma'am are very very common. Even when someone who knows you is talking to you, they might call you sir or ma'am, depending on your gender.

Odd.

Very odd.

Australians don't use sir and ma'am/madam much at all. When these terms are used by Australians, it means someone is trying to sell something to you. Therefore we don't trust people who say sir and ma'am to us. The person is being overly obsequious in our understanding. Or they are being sarcastic.

Of course if someone served in the military it does modify our perceptions some, but even then, if you know our name, you are expected to call us by it, not sir or madam.