Posts by Jonah

He called me when he finally made it back to JFK last week, 5 minutes into his day off, to see if by some miracle the Jet Blue flight hadn’t left yet. I checked, and by some miracle it hadn’t even arrived in JFK! I told him the gate, and he hurried across the airport, getting to there right as they were letting everyone off. He got home at 5:30 Monday morning.

This was his one break with three days off in a row this month, so I took Tuesday off and planned our day. We drove up to Woodland Park, gassing up along the way, then headed north up 67. This is a wonderful driving road with twists and turns and few places to pass. If you’re stuck behind a group of slow-moving Harleys on the weekend, it can be miserable. But on a Tuesday morning, it was utterly empty.

At Deckers, we veered west on 126 to 285 and up through Evergreen on 73, then took back roads that Street Atlas promised would take us to Squaw Mountain Pass. It did eventually after turning to dirt and getting more and more narrow. We took Squaw Mountain Pass to Mount Evans, which is a 14er overlooking Denver.

At some point, Denver decided it needed its own highway up a 14er, since Colorado Springs already had one, so it built the Mount Evans Highway. While the Pikes Peak Highway is owned by the city of Colorado Springs and has a pretty high price tag, $35 a car, though they usually just charge us $10 a person (and if we take two Miatas, for one car), the Mount Evans Highway is a US Highway and is free, but you have to pay a recreation fee if you want to stop. They have a ranger at the entrance gate to try to talk you into paying the fee. “Well, you’ve got to keep in mind that it’s 45 minutes up and 45 minutes back. No stopping, no using the toilets, no taking photos. There are mountain goats and big horn sheep.” We told him we figured we could handle it.

The Mount Evans Highway is a beautiful drive. It isn’t nearly as steep as the Pikes Peak Highway, and it hugs the side of the mountain’s broad shoulders going up instead of switchbacking. This is useful for passing people who are driving slowly. The road is also paved all the way up. We found out why this isn’t such a good idea when we got to a high lake that was slowly draining down the mountain. The road had buckled to such an extent that the road resembled a series of monster high speed bumps. I decided the permafrost melting had to do with it. Fortunately, it didn’t last for too long before flattening out again.

The road doesn’t go all the way to the summit, like it does on Pikes Peak, so those who actually want to stand at the tippy top were snaking their way up a sidewalk to the peak. We couldn’t stop, so we just circled around the parking lot and headed back down again. We were in our t-shirts with the top down and didn’t get cold, even at 14 thousand feet, with the sun shining on us. Berck’s head was bothering him. He’s lost his acclimation to living at 6500 feet and is used to sea level now.

After descending back down, we took the other half of Squaw Mountain Pass into Idaho Springs. The diner I wanted to eat at was closed for a private party, but I had a back up plan. Berck got a delicious roast beef sandwich and I had a yummy breakfast wrap at Two Brothers Deli. Then we headed back out on the road and up the Central City Parkway to join 119. This is a beautiful but short drive up a canyon. Then we headed north on 119 up the Peak to Peak Highway. Unfortunately, there were doing some construction along there, we got stuck in a long line of cars behind a very slow cement truck doing about 20 mph. So we turned around and took a short cut up a dirt road that took us up over the ridge to the Golden Gate Canyon Road, which is another gorgeous drive. Berck was having all sorts of fun burning up my brakes.

We took 6 down to 470 and exited at 85, then veered off back on to 67 again. We’d never been on this part of 67, and I was looking forward to it. What I didn’t know is that 67 is dirt from just a ways away from Denver to just outside Deckers. About now our beautiful day had turned to Colorado afternoon rain, and we were going too slow around tight dirt mountain curves to keep the water off us! Fortunately, we were out of it soon, and it had taken the dust off the road. Much to Berck’s amazement, I think, the road finally did go somewhere, and we were back on pavement the rest of the way home.

My plan had been to drive up the Peak to Peak and through Rocky Mountain National Park, but we didn’t even make it that far. I’ll have to plan on taking some faster roads, I think, if we’re going to make it up there next time we try.

Berck got me a hummingbird feeder and hung it for me outside the study window. There it sat, very lonely, for a couple of months. If hummingbirds don’t know where a feeder is already, they have to discover it.

Finally, I heard the unmistakable jingling of a male hummer. I didn’t look up at first because I’m so used to hearing them at work. Michele has three hummingbird feeders and has to refill them daily. He tasted my aged brew that had been there since I put the thing up and flew away. Berck laughed at me, “He said, ‘Ugh! This is some nasty stuff!’ You got to change the food if you want them to eat it.”

I bought some bright red petunias thinking that might attract some hungry hummers. I got a couple of lonely customers here and there in the weeks following, but they just seemed to be passing through. More likely the house finches would perch on one side of the feeder, letting their weight pull the fluid down to fill up the hole so they could drink up the tasty sugar water. Berck wasn’t too thrilled with the house finches. He claimed it just gave them a place to perch and scream at him.

Yesterday, though, a female hummer came by a couple times in a row. I took the fan out of the window to give her a fresh batch of sugar water. This afternoon she’s been coming by every five minutes! And she announces her presence each time, cheering commenting on the quality of the nectar inside her special flower. I noticed that my freshly filled feeder had some floaters in it already, so I took it away and heated up some super solution.

When I brought it back to the window, she was waiting for me! She didn’t even wait for me to hang the feeder up before she approached it. When I did hang it, she took a deep drink (with me standing right there) and then hovered a little higher and examined the metal hook that attaches the feeder to the chain that hangs from the roof overhang. I had to try pretty hard to keep from laughing out loud. I just stood there with the screen in my hand while she drank and drank the hot liquid, looking up to comment about it in her trilling voice. Finally, I put the screen up, and she thought she should get out of the way.

A couple of weeks ago, I arrived at work to find Michele complaining about how one of her new yearling ewes was attacked. She was still alive but not in great shape. I helped Michele catch her to give her a dose of penicillin. She had a puncture in her rear leg that was oozing red serum every time she moved, and her throat had been slashed. Michele said she could see saliva running down out of the slash. All I knew is that it was a bad wound, but the fact that the ewe was giving us a hard time catching her was a good sign that she wasn’t dead yet. Michele gave her another shot a couple of days later. She seems to be doing fine now. Still, Michele has been keeping her and her “brother” (I call him that, even though they’re not related that closely, because they look alike), who we have high hopes of being the next ram, in the little sheep pen by the small arena, far away from hungry coyotes.

It seemed Daisy, the new sheep “guarding” donkey, wasn’t up to the job. She just doesn’t seem to like hanging out with the sheep.

Eli left for the Olympics yesterday. The night before, we threw him a reception after the Saturday evening service at his church. I was there to help out, and his wife Cami made sure Duncan, Michele, and I were there plenty early. We were so early, in fact, that we had time to get smoothies at the church’s cafe. Three Peach Plantation Smoothies later, our frozen beverage purchases had also qualified us for the weekly “sweepstakes” for a Target $15 gift certificate. There was one other entry in the jar when Duncan dumped our three tickets in, and I told him I thought our chances of winning it were pretty good. He looked at me incredulously. Sometimes I get a feeling about these sorts of things, and I knew I was going to win. Those of you who know me know I’m philosophically a pessimist, so you may be surprised to hear I even started spending it in my mind.

The next day I had a voice mail saying I had indeed won the gift certificate. I could pick it up next week at church.

This morning I proudly announced to Duncan that I’d won. He told me he had some news too. On Saturday night after they’d come home and gone to bed, the donkey started braying like crazy. Duncan said he would have slept right through it, but the Harmons were staying there, and Mark Harmon woke him up. They each took a portable spotlight.

There in the sheep pen was a mountain lion chowing down on the whether. Duncan grabbed the thirty-ought six. Mark pointed his spotlight at the cat’s forehead, and Duncan took aim. The cat stared at them with a caught-in-the-headlights look. Duncan hit him right between the eyes, one perfect shot.

They skinned the cat and butchered what was left of the sheep. The Division of Wildlife came out and filled out a report, giving ample credit to Daisy the Donkey and taking away the skin. It will be auctioned off, and the Bremers plan to bid on it. Max wants it for Beniah (get him used to killed lions and stuff). The next day Bob brought his rotisserie over and grilled lamb. No sense letting good food go to waste.

Duncan is now the hero of the neighborhood. Some people down the road lost an llama last week, and the Delacroces have been missing cattle.

But of course, most of the credit goes to Daisy. Although, she still doesn’t hang out with the sheep.

Here’s a picture of the big cat. The blood is all from the sheep. As you can see, Duncan is still in his bathrobe, and Mark is presumably still dutifully shining his light on the lion’s head.

I think I probably would be too.

Well, I got up at 4:30 this morning and drove to Denver. I didn’t get on the Delta flight to JFK at 8, and then I didn’t get on the 11:10 flight to Cincinnati. Berck said I had a good chance of getting on the next flight to Cincinnati this afternoon that would get me into LGA late tonight, but he’d also said that about the other flights. All I wanted to do was go home and crawl back in bed, so I gave up.

Eli leaves next week for China. We’re all very excited.

USA Today had an article today taken from Eli’s blog post. They’ve also got his blog on their Sports page with a cool picture of him.