Up the Mesa

The peaks that dominate the sky over Boulder (a sky that's incredibly clear at night, by the way -- this urban refugee is enjoying the stars immensely) are the Flatirons.  As seen here, even during a time of day that doesn't allow for crystal-clear contrasts, one can't escape their looming presence.  Such a backdrop had to be a major draw for new residents when this place went from gold rush boomtown to a sleepy & forgotten burg to a growing college town...and eventually to boomtown again.

 

My buddy and I and his energetic puppy Bodie hiked briefly around NCAR Mesa a couple of weeks ago, shortly after the upward-stabbing peaks received another coating of snow.  It was a pretty unforgettable scene for me...as much as I think they allowed the spread of development to creep too far up the sides of the range, I can completely understand why people desperately want to live there.  Maybe I'll let the pictures tell the story of seeing this place for the first time, more effectively than I can...

By the way, I love that the main road to this area is 'Table Mesa'.  Or, you know, Table Table.  Which makes sense.  It certainly would be one of my naming ideas, right after Boutros Boutros Ghali.

 

 

 

 

 

Looking back East toward Greater Denver...one of my favorite aspects of any hiking on the Front Range is the way I'm reminded every time of how geographically crazy this place is.  In one direction stretch endless plains, with an oceanic horizon blend-off into eternity; in the other, confrontation by imposing jagged walls.

 

 

 

 

 

No bearded bums were actually harmed in the making of this photo.  In fact, the cactus wasn't even aware it was being taken.

 

 

 

 

It was one of those days when I couldn't help but eloquently say, "Life doesn't suck out here, does it?"

 

 

North Boulder

 What is a wannabe storyteller to do when there is a backlog of a thousand photos -- and tales or at least little anecdotes to go along with most of them -- that I wish to post?  More pressingly, how in my bizarrely logically structured mind can I feature some recent episode when I left the trip out West completely hanging, and the rest of the trail across Europe hanging before that?  And how can I do it when I need to get up in 5 hours?  I suppose the short answer is that I adequately can't...but here are some snippets of my current surroundings anyway.

Pictured below is my street in far north Boulder.  My good friend Randy is putting me up here for now, and I can't think of a change of scenery for which I've ever been more grateful.

This here is "Broadway"...not quite the same Broadway I've been traversing -- or more likely, avoiding -- for the past eight years!  But there it sits, just a few steps away, and provides a route down into the main part of town...which I imagine looked a lot more like this Foothills area a couple of decades ago, minus the high-end cafes whose business seems to rely primarily on silver-haired moneyed residents.

And this would be a puzzled Mustang, wondering how a lifetime of NC-PA-NJ-NY could possibly have prepared her for a series of snowfalls followed by an Arctic deep freeze.  Although I'm searching for my mountain wheels, there is something awfully fun & nostalgic about having taken this car out here for one last environment before we part...until the local roads remind me that it's time to cut the cord, now.

Boulder Creek Park, just one of the many fine spots around town in which you can access a trailhead and get on your way...or take your dogs and yap on your cell phone the whole time, whichever you prefer.

 

Speaking of parks, this one sits just a door down from my temporary dwelling, and provides a nice scenic scape over the foothills and the Flatirons beyond.  Let's call it "Reference C" in the ongoing list of reasons why I just had to move.

Speaking of the happy wanderer in his new home state, this is me immediately after dropping off the U-Haul last month...so it's technically not Boulder, but Longmont, off to the Northeast.  But it's happiness at being "here" all the same.

 

And this is to say a long-overdue goodnight...taken from the 3rd-floor deck at the tail end of a crystal clear dusk one evening.  I love that glow of the last bit of fading blue on the horizon, and there's something about the way jagged mountains frame it that just makes it pop even more starkly.  G'night, all...

Home (?)

I'm home.  What that means anymore, I don't know.  For years it's been New York City, the Big Apple, Capital of the World (UN kinda proves that), simply "the city."  And that's where I am, but with my belongings tucked away in a storage unit, ready to move.  Think of that science lesson about passive and kinetic energy; that's how I interpret it.  If I'm wrong, oh dear science teachers who tried so hard over the years, then so sorry!  My stuff seems to be loaded with passive energy, just stored up and ready to burst when I set in in motion...waiting for the spark.  Guess my eventual U-Haul provides it.  It's all...up...to...me?

The travels of two weeks (plus) left me drained, jet-lagged and physically sick, as if my body really patched it together as best it could through all-night parties, all-day wanderings, brain-taxing attempts at learning at least a couple words of each new language...while suffering the ravages of a fierce cold which accompanied the early burst of European Winter.  It ends up being one of those experiences upon which I say, "Wait, I survived that?"  And following that, "Why on Earth did I push myself so close to the breakdown brink?!"  To which I can happily say that I'd do it all again...

On the flights back (Zadar, Croatia to Stuttgart; Stuttgart to Frankfurt; Frankfurt to JFK, NYC), I mused on how I've been taking air travel for 30 years now and the only strange part to me -- rather than the old observation that we are but hundreds of people hurtling through an oxygen-deprived atmosphere at 35,000 ft with only a microscopically thin metal skin between us and said atmosphere, propelled by the most dangerous of means we could have in proximity, flaming jet engines -- is that I actually rather like the distinct scent of a (CLEAN) airplane john.  Not the smell after Aunt Hilda is done following up her third meal of wurst for the day, but the still-fresh odor.  Maybe it brings me immediately back to all those trans-oceanic flights as a kid -- I mean, crossing the International Date Line is a mind-blowing thing for an inquisitive eight-year-old!  I was fortunate, plain and simple, to have parents willing to trot our little butts to the other side of the world for a few truly educational years...and will never forget that, nor quit bearing out its vast influence on my mindset as I thirst for more, more, more of the globe in my index of experience.

(Only the last photo, the Lufthansa turboprop I took from Munich to Stuttgart above, is from this European adventure. The others are from a previous return to NYC, a domestic flight -- hence, the Laguardia vista.)

Berlin blues

Thoughts while wondering why Germans use tag lines in English (such as "Breaking News") when the rest of the text or report or story or what-have-you is in their native tongue...

I've learned that Berlin is the kind of place where you should avoid the temptation to throw down the gauntlet and say, "OK, bad ass capital of fun times...what you got?"  Because it just may kick your tail for having challenged it so.  Let's just say that getting up early to see sights is a mighty mighty challenge when you consistently are representing with the last stragglers to make it back to the hotel each morning.

And then there's the thieving.  It's someplace actually as bad as advertised.  On consecutive nights I've had my cell phone swiped from my jacket while it was checked, then the jacket itself taken while it sat on a table not ten feet from me.  So that kind of puts a damper on things.  Oh, and apparently girls from Dusseldorf assume you are a "cokehead" if you wear an Irish cap and look to be in good physical shape.  They won't tell it to your face, but they'll insist it to your Aussie friends.  Cocaine is a hell of a drug, as I learned only from Rick James.  It's about the last thing I'd ever try.  How wearing a Murphy cap and displaying your Kanonen Shau (my ridiculously badly translated version of "gun show") makes you a fiend of the white powder is a connection I'd never make!  And after I refused to indulge their repeated attempts to have me strip for them.  How rude.

It's time to get back to the Mitte and see more of this incredibly vibrant city.  Before I do, I want to share that I had a look at our likely future in the realm of grocery store habits, and it's pretty interesting.  If you're in the know, you place your plastic and glass bottles in a machine at the back of the market, which sizes them up and spits you out a receipt for your refund.  And you don't get offered a bag, not plastic or even paper, for your purchases.  Bring your own, or you're walking back with an armful.  It's one of those days where I'm glad I took the time to pay attention to the locals.  When in Berlin, do as the jelly doughnuts do (fun fact: President Kennedy famously said "I am a jelly doughnut" when he proclaimed himself "ein Berliner").  Tschuss!

(These images are just wacky random shots from Berlin websites, not meinen photos)

Bidin' time in der Bodensee

I took a solo excursion to Lake Constance, known by the Swabian Germans as the Bodensee, a couple of weeks ago, and fell for the "seaside" ancient town of Meersburg.  Konstanz itself (the big town) was cool too, and really did have the feel of a late season resort town on a gulf somewhere, rather than a large lake sitting directly below and in sight of -- on a clear day, anyway -- the Swiss Alps.

 

 

 Hey, this is a gallery window on the stately main drag of Konstanz, therefore it's art.  Stop giggling now.  Besides, my night on the town was kind of a bust - standing there taking this photo was the most fun I had!

 

 I don't know how many hostels are this cool, but I dig the whole converted-water-tower thing.  In my very first hostel experience, I checked in to an empty room, went out for the night, and greeting me when I flipped on the light at 2am was an old german dude in one bunk with little to nothing on.  I managed to not look closely.  He bantered on in German for awhile, even after I made it clear that I speak "nicht Deutsch", so thankfully the ipod was on hand.

 

 And the view I looked out to in the morning mist?  Something I didn't detect when I walked up at night...a freakin' cemetary next door!  Good morning campers - look to your left now for a view of the deceased and contemplate mortality as you break fast for the day.  Yowzah.

 

 Those of you who know me well can imagine the supreme coincidence of staying in a neighborhood of Konstanz named apparently for the greatest jamming rock band that ever did exist.  I'm going to have to write Gregg and ask what he knows of the pre-redneck family tree.

 

 Just a local church.  Mein Gott, do I love Germany sometimes.

 

 It was full-blown election season at this point, one week from the big day, and campaign posters abounded.  They were rarely billboard size, though.  Here's the eventual big winner, in the standard 'look nice and smile for the camera' pose that must be mandated by German election law.  Really, every poster is large and has a full photo of the candidate...they dotted the whole long walk I take each day to the base.  It's far more entertaining than our boring and ubiquitous name placards...I put words in their mouths and imagine what pearls of wisdom they dispense.  Good times.

 

 The Allmansdorf neighborhood and harbor in the rearview, I headed off on a Sunday morning ferry for Meersburg, across that piece of the Bodensee.  Rain came in bunches, and it did not look like a promising day for wandering, but I was determined.

 

 

 Who let the sporty Irishman on the boat?  He must be suffering an identity crisis, pre-lederhosen.

 

 

 The vineyards of Meersburg's surroundings hills emerged from the mist only minutes after departing.  The lake is crisscrossed by ferries all over the place...it's the efficient way to travel in the area, unless you sport gills instead of boring old lungs.  I wonder if my Aquaman underoos would have helped.

 

I wish more local maps were this cool.  A 3-D wood carving of the area showed some routes at the small ferry terminal.  They moved like clockwork, transported cars on and off more efficiently than anything you've ever seen, and had hot coffee and cold beer inside.  Again, they got it right!