The Avocato

Well, all 486 miles of the Colorado Trail got hiked!  I did it in 35 days which included two zero days (which took place in mountain towns, which means no hiking and lots of eating).  If I were to do it again I think I could easily shave off another four or five days. Some of the highlights:  met some awesome people, saw some unbelievable scenery, lost 17 pounds, encountered a black bear (and about a million marmots), hitchhiked multiple times, destroyed one pair of shoe insoles and one pair of underwear, overnighted  in a yurt, bathed in rivers, came to detest granola for breakfast, and became a bad-ass, among other things. At some point I will post a streamlined, bullet-point accounting of the trip.   Better than nothing, I guess. In the meantime, here are at least two hours of trail videos from the trip for you to watch. One Two Three Four Five Six  Seven Eight Nine Ten

Wednesday is the day.  Wednesday is the day we go. We've got all the food boxed up and ready to mail.  We've got all the loose ends tied up.  We've got a ride to the trailhead.  We've got the house booby-trapped. We are ready. (I think we are ready.) Yeah, we're ready. One more training day tomorrow.  8.4 miles in Evergreen. That will make 197.8 laden miles hiked since we decided to go. 

The next morning we woke, ate breakfast, choked down instant coffee and got back on the trail by around 7:30.  The rain had ended for the trip but we didn't know that then, and we were ready to throw on our foulies in a moment's notice.   We came to the end of section 3, tidied up in the Little Scraggy trailhead restroom and continued on to the infamous section 2, where some asshole human started the Buffalo Creek fire in 1996, clearing out 12,000 acres of Pike National Forest.  The landscape still looks pretty raped nearly 20 years later, but for lack of forest it does make for nice, unobstructed views of the mountains. After crossing a forest road, the trail passes by a firehouse that has a water spigot available to all hikers. Linda and I decided to top our water off, even though we we would soon come across the water we stashed when driving up to the starting point two days earlier.  I accidentally dropped one of the one-liter plastic bottles I was c...

On Monday, May 18 I met up with Dick, Linda and Anne at a Park-N-Ride in Conifer, Colorado.  Dick had arranged a MeetUp group for a four day, three night hike along sections 3 and 2 heading East along the Colorado Trail.  I joined in at the last moment wanting to get a few hiking miles in, hoping that Dick, Linda and/or Anne weren't serial killers. They weren't.  Aren't.  At least as far as I know. Dick and I drove in his car to our end point with Linda and Anne following in Linda's car.  Once there, we all transferred to Linda's car and drove to the start point, dropping off a few gallons of water at the halfway-ish point. It had been raining and snowing an unseasonably large amount for weeks.  The trail was going to be sloppy, we knew that, and this would be a good chance to work out the kinks in my kit in less-than-favorable conditions.  When we arrived it was drizzling so we put on our rain gear and headed out.  It was already pretty ...

Tuesday Afternoon It's been 39 days since I dehydrated some Chicken Teriyaki with Rice and Vegetables.  Having never dehydrated chicken before--and working in the hospitality industry where food safety paranoia governs your every move--I made up seven and a half portions, Zip-Locked them all up, put seven in the freezer and left the half portion in a cupboard.   I've read that cooked/dehydrated proteins may go bad after about a month if not refrigerated or kept in a freezer if the meat wasn't properly dried or--also bad--they may go rancid if there is too much fat left in it.  My Colorado Trail hike will, I hope, last a maximum of 39 days, and I wanted to test one of these dehydrated meals at it's maximum oldness so I just boiled it back to life and ate it for lunch.  It's probably a smart thing to do a couple of hours before I head in to work...eating food that may or may not have gone bad. So I'll let you know tomorrow and/or tonight how I feel. ...

Three months since my last post?!  I am so sorry to both of you who have been reading this for making you wait so long for updates.  The agony you must have endured is immeasurable and I am so so sorry. Well, in the three months since professing my love for the world's subway systems I got a new job--which, since it earns me money, I will definitely not be talking about here except to say it involves teaching the general public how to stop cooking like total jerks and introduce a bit of classical technique and finesse into their rut-based home cooking.  Also, Spring decided to finally mosey on in and make the trails usable again. So, for the past six weeks I've been making myself hit up a local foothill trail once a week to at least get into a semblance of thru hiking shape.  Before I go any further, how about a big round of applause for the Jeffco (Jefferson County) Park system. Really...it is unreal how many foothill parks they have with all types of int...

A quick thought on subways:  I love them. They are Lola's and my favorite way to experience a city without the hassle of traffic or the expense of taxi fares.  Most interesting big cities have subways, or at least have light rail.  Great cities have rail lines that go from the airport into town (I'm looking at you, Denver.  Let's get it together!).  Sometimes we will take a cab into town after stepping off the plane, simply because we don't have our bearings yet and our random violence paranoia and new-place shyness are both set to high, so we cab it to the hotel.  After that, though, it's all subway all the time.  Our trip to Mexico City last week was just like that.  No different than many other subway towns we have visited:  Paris, Madrid, New York, Washington D.C., Seattle, Boston, San Francisco.  I thought that because the D.F. (I can call it that since we're basically Mexican nationals now after four days o...