Sundays in Paonia Coloraado are awesome!

The day had been long on Saturday what with the miles covered and the subject-matter subjugation on a whole host of topics ranging from soaringly intellectual right down to the satisfaction of the gullet, i.e. Sunday I was tired. Aunt Suzanne and I ate a light breakfast strapped the bikes on her car and headed for the Black Canyon of the Gunnison, man what a sight. Driving up to the rim you'd never know that there would be such a gapping slash in the mantle of our earth. Having not yet seen the Grand Canyon I think this one might take the cake in a few regards, I believe that it is one of few canyon's whose sides are taller than the distance between the rims hence the name "Black" because the walls are almost always in shadow.
When we headed back to the compound we stopped in a couple places to see if the famed rocker/cowboy Joe Cocker was to be seen but no he wasn't. We did however find some great fruits and vegetables, the western slope of the Rockies and therefore Colorado are known for many wonderful varieties, which we promptly ate upon setting home. The next project was the window into the wall of the Art Shed/Studio which went rather quickly what with the promise of some nano-brewery beer from right there in Paonia down the street around the corner and bellied up to the plywood bar and mason jar glassed. Yes sir y bob I thinks its the fastest window I've ever put in. The brewery was small but they knew their craft pretty darn well and were brewing to my estimation the "greenest" beer you can find in the country.
Last event of the day was playing the open-mic at the local bar/pizza joint which advertised with a foldout sandwich board on the side walk. We got there about 8:00 and I ended up playing for a good hour they kept askin for another song, well we hung around and heard some of the other acts and before long the place cleared out and me and the owner were havin a jam session. Turns out he's a luthier that builds about 3 guitars a year and owns the bar on the side, or the other way around I'm not sure which is the side business, I had him take a look at my little lady (my guitar) to see how she was on the trip and she got the a-o-k. We bumbled home after the beers on top of beers sequence that the day had taken both of us enriched and floating from good people and libation abounding. I really did like Paonia and cannot wait to head back through when the time is right. That reminds me I do have a standing invitation to play at the pizza joint when I do roll back through so I guess that means I'm gonna.
I love Sundays in Colorado

Corrections

Yeah that window didn't get installed on Saturday it wasn't until Sunday afternoon.

Rocky Mountain High

Route 70 entering the foothills of the mountains is a continual climb as you would imagine the fence wire zig-zagged across the high meadows I stopped for gas in Limon had a bite to eat at a non descriptive fast food place. The Song Rocky Mountain High has been in my head for most of the morning now and I have been stuck on the lyrics about being "born in the summer of his 27 year" which this is and I am heading for the Rockys but just maybe 2 months late. Dad called and told me that his cousin David Linke was expecting me in Denver, now my plans had been to drive straight on to Aspen but this should be interesting. So I called David up an got directions and a tangent that I will not soon forget had begun.
In a suburb west of downtown up the hill a bit I found the humble abode of a second cousin that I had never had the pleasure of meeting, so many stories were told of him that I wasn't quite sure what to expect. A big man in body and spirit he and his wife Linn took me in like a son we toured the city ate wonderful food had conversations about most anything and everything from the economy to solo bass guitarists. Thursday night they hosted a dinner party that they insisted I stick around for well it was quite the do. Cocktail hour of Colorado peach margaritas, corn shucking and the insistence that I serenade for my supper. I left Friday about noon to head over the pass to Aspen with a full belly a refreshed mind and some new books not sure if the vans transmission would like the climbing....
The Eastern slope was nifty but the drive down the other side through a magnificent valley with a river and train and the highway with old telephone cables running 30 thick and the water alternating rapids and calm till the whole thing spits out into Glennwood Springs where I turned off to get down to my Aunt Suzanne's house in Paonia where the cell reception is just awful. I pulled into town about 5 and we had a tough time playing cut in and out phone tag till it finally stuck and then there I was the famed cottage on the edge of town. As I write this Suzanne is on a kayak trip in the Baja down Mexico way eating great food paddling between the main peninsula and the different islands along its coast. Anyway we had a great ole time packed so much into 2 days my head nearly poppped off. Saturday morning we shot up to Aspen and poked around went to a thrift shop, ate lunch in a park by the river, went up to Independence Pass (which was kinda like the moon), drank a beer or two at the Woody Creek Tavern (Hunter S. Thompson's Fav. bar), stopped in to her pottery studio, went dumpster diving, bought and ate tortillas from a tortillaria, installed a new window in her shed, ate dinner and went to a Bluegrass concert that night.... man was I tired.
I'll flesh this out tonight for the next installment

Edifice of Eternity

So here are some shots in the first one you can make out the Hollywood sign, I will get a better shot of the skyline at night during the day the smog is so thick that is obscures the horizon, crazy. The Deck is in pieces note the small dog in the third shot that would be Elvis a very skiddish dog that annoys me to no end. I bought a doggie gate to keep him away from my big feet. The saga of traveler will continue tomorrow so tune in and tighten up it get hairy from here on out.

Full Moon

Here's a quick one I am safe and happy but super busy and I am trying to get into the swing of things sorry that my correspondence and blogging are slow, however they are on the list of things to get moving again, kind of like a band in the river jamming up the logs I gotta lotta logs goin right now. Miss you, Love you heres a pic of my room!
Talk to ya real soon.

Wolverine and afro-sheen

So about 3 months ago I went down to Richmond and visited my cousin's Alex and Ashley to celebrate one of their friends birthdays with a good ole fashioned backyard kegger. The entertainment for the evening was The Code Talkers, a favorite of mine and my cousins, anyway while I was helping them load their equipment out of their van the lead man Bobby Lee Rodgers said "hey Dave ya know who you look like Hugh Jackman." Within about 10 minutes he had spun the whole thing abound a few times and said wait a minute yeah that Hugh Jackman guy has been stealing your gigs man, you should take em back go out there and say that he's been diggin into your piece a pie. At that point in the summer I hadn't cut my hair in a while and my side burns were pretty big and I looked liked one of the characters that he has played called Wolverine from the X-Men.
The picture above is from my good friend Hilary who is now living over there in Germany and snapped this shot because it looks like, well you know. There is now proof that Hugh Jackman has been stealing my gigs because I had the part first!

Signing off,
The Wolve

Where was I...

Oh yes we were just getting to the part where the who-knows-what-the-hulluva prairie dog is bigger than the thigh of my left leg just off the road with an assortment of other barn-yard oddities when I decided not to stop and go for the border because Colorado was calling me. More than once that day I got to fumbling around with the lyrics to a John Denver song where he sings about a young man finding himself and the meaning of his life in the mountains of the state. As I mulled over the words I realized that I was that character about to see those majestic mountains for the very first time, I am in my 27th year but it was not summer so I didn't fit the song to a "T" but non-the-less there I was.
If a sign heralding the crossing of the ever so important imaginary demarcation did not exist you would never known the difference between the adjoining states, but there it was all wooden and hippy and liberal (just jokin around). Just like Kansas had felt like I was steadily climbing up a hill Eastern Colo. was just the same but maybe a little more so with bigger plateaus (mesas) and steeper valleys. There were some clouds on the horizon that would grow and shrink with every topographical feature and then some of them would stay up when I went down and thats when I realized if was them! the Rocky Mountains posing as clouds (as they are sometimes known to do). From that point on they were my fixation both of eye and spirit as I made my way to the city at their feet; Denver.
I have to break up the story now as it is dinner time and Rob is ordering us Indian Food, it was delicious chick pea curry and chicken curry and rice and nan and samosas and...and ... (I don't know what the names) was delicious, now I am off for a drink or two at a famous bar called The Cat and the Fiddle I read that it is where some scenes from Casablanca were filmed.

Caravan Continuations

By the stroke of midnight on Tuesday I had successfully navigated rush-hour traffic in Cincinnati and Cleveland, dropped back into "long-haul" mentality and found myself on a bridge over Old Man River. I was thinking that maybe St Louis would be a place to stop and get a drink at a blues club with well dressed patrons swizzling martini glasses of gin while thick wafts of cigarette smoke and muted trumpet danced the in stale air. But it was only Tuesday after all
and the enthusiasts of musical soul dripping save the two ended candle burning for select nights and I wasn't about to cruise for troubles unknown. I decided to keep to the highway and drive till I was tired which ended up being quite a few miles more than I envisioned.
Kansas City came by 2am I was all the while station surfing passing in and out of the different broadcast strengths and signals trying to make sense of just pieces of news stories and opinions till I got tired by 4am and pulled off to sleep in my van. The platform that I built behind the passenger seat proved to be quite comfy and warm with the blankets and sleeping bag I brought. I picked the last spot on the left in the bank of spaces at a rest area, you know if you were facing the building with the toilets with the side walk in front. Loud noises roused me a couple of times those air brakes on 18 wheelers can sound like a banshee when your in dream sleep. I finally got up about 8 and hit the road kinda tired I hit up the next Travel America truck stops and chowed down on the cheap breakfast buffet ($5.95) and expensive coffee ($2.19) filled my tank and my tires, checked the oil and the trans fluid and I was off.
The Scenery driving though Kansas leaves something to be desired if your frame of reference is forest and trees. But if you think about it for what it would be without the corn farms and ranches then its an amazing track of land like nothing else on earth. Sun beaten and battered by the never ending breezes coming down from the as yet unseen mountains and all the while there is a slight incline up driving east to west. The long rolling hills with a gentle up and down with a peak and valley taking minutes to traverse at 70mph. I decided not to stop and see the "World's Largest Prairie Dog" which I had been seeing signs for since that morning all the way along the highway about ever 50 miles.

enough for now. another post to come tomorrow.

The Journey begins.

Let's see where did we leave off? I believe that it was somewhere in the last few pages that we learned our heroes' tragic flaw; but of course our hero knows nothing of it. Let's tune in now as he takes on the challenge of his youth and talents in the battle for nothing more than quality.
It was about noon on that fateful Monday when he set out to travel a great distance in his Grand Caravan all things considered and properly stowed and lashed on his 158 horses powerfully blazing a trail from the high country in the east. Behind him the royal court of his Father's family gathered to comfort the ailing Matriarch of the clan, some had wished him well as they themselves made haste with sorrowful feet to meet up with their own destinies to the south. Winding through steep passes along wonderfully hilly orange foliage that played counterpoint to the clear blue sky he day-dreamed of times gone by when life was simple, marked by skinned knees and climbing trees surrounding the family's meager manor in the great valley of the collectors atop the filled in swamp. He once cut open the flesh of his scull with the blunt end of an ax while preparing the fields for plowing, those were different days.
Onward and upward the Grand Caravan made its tight way to the top of the plateau the land of Buffalo and the Seneca Nation where great halls for revelry and games are built. All the while the ever green forests growing thicker like a great green bib pulled up around the Great Lakes to protect those in the East from their wrathful snow. But just before he fell into The Lakes he directed the caravan south and diverted a disaster of dreadful proportions (who really wants to dry off 158 horses), and ended the first leg of his journey in and frightfully outdated town called Erie. The house of Bryan opened it's gates and stabled the safaring ones for the night. Much was made of this visit and tours of the great shoreline were ordered for the morning but not before ten dollars of 25cent beer was polished off by all.
As we leave the hero is laying back easy in a cabriolet touring the beautiful Southern coastline of the lake that shares the city's name; Erie. Remembering to thank the fine tavern folks at The Dockside for letting him regale them with a song on guitar the night before, to which they promptly asked if he could return that way and play a full night of entertainment to which he said yes. For a parting meal Bryan took him to a fine foreign restaurant and all by himself to his dismay later, ate 2 tamales, 2 enchiladas and many tortilla chips with hot sauce.

Tune in next time as our hero battles the great weight of the eyelid and the whiteline fever monster. dun dun dun.....

Rain on me!

Left the hostel this morning in a drizzle got a chance to try out my new boot's water-proof promise. Happy to say that they are impermeable to the elements, so far. The backpack is as well holding up to be a great idea much better than the rolling bag from last year although because it is so large and heavy I am not sure if I should have gotten the smaller one. Getting on the boat in an hour and then its "off we go" will have much time to write but not much internet access for the next two weeks so bear with me if the posts are long winded. I will also be posting some philosophical and political musings on my other blog. theonlyson.blogspot.com

all for now. ta ta

davey