Hello. Goodbye.

Colorado…all of it---Up until now, this road trip has felt paced. Visit someone or somewhere, write a story, move on. But Colorado found me with seven homes I wanted to visit and 11 days to do it.

I went from Fort Collins to Boulder to Manitou Springs to Rocky Ford back to Manitou Springs to Monument to several people in Denver and still squeezed in a trip to Pikes Peak and Garden of the Gods. More than the feeling of exhaustion is the feeling of renewing friendships and then having to leave.

The overwhelming feeling I have experienced as I have looked up people who once played a role in my life, was the quick reconnection and remembering instantly why I loved them, or getting to know someone better than I had in the past and then leaving them only to miss them more. It started from the very first stop in Destin, Florida and has been a predominate feeling.

Hello! Goodbye.

But as I have experienced this once in a lifetime sort of trip looking up old friends, seeing them, hearing them talk of life’s struggles and triumphs it has left me clearly remembering who I am. And wasn’t that the initial purpose of this trip? I forgot the depth that old friends bring to a sense of being. A grounding. But I have gotten so much more. Seeing where these people are in their lives, the mark they have made by families, by careers, by ideas and opinions that have molded them into incredible people---except for the two duds along the way, incredible, wonderful American people.

I know I’m not alone. That if everyone could pick out 50 people they could look up and reconnect with it would be very similar. The only difference is I’m 7,500 miles into actually doing it and it’s amazing.

And as far as saying goodbye, it’s a part of the cycle of life. It sucks. But then there is always tomorrow and the fun anticipation of seeing the next person.

Hello.

Casa Bonita

Lakewood, Colorado---I remember sitting in a cave and watching cliff divers performing for an audience of eating onlookers. I remember that there was a tiny Mexican Flag on a small pole at your table and if you raised it, a server would stop immediately and bring you additional food per your request. It was the very first “all you can eat” restaurant I had ever experienced. I was on a road trip with four other girlfriends from our college five hours away.

But that was 33 years ago and when I heard that Casa Bonita Restaurant, in a suburb of Denver, Colorado, was still in business I had to go see if what I remembered was real.  The friend I looked up was with my first cousin’s daughter, the same person who happened to be in the Dominican Republic when I sailed there and met me down town Santa Domingo for a well needed catch up. Now in Denver, she had not revisited this restaurant for over 20 years either. Her text informed me that it “looked as cheesy as ever” and was up for the silliness and agreed to meet me there.

Why is it your memory of things always appear bigger, larger, grander than reality?

 

It is still there. It is beyond cheesy.

The cliffs that I remembered to be the height of the sides of Santorini, Greece were actually about 30 feet. The gorgeous speedo clad male cliff divers were replaced with college aged females in leopard patterned one piece suits. The food, it was the same: terrible…except for the yummy sopaipillas with honey.  

Actually, Casa Bonita claims itself voted as one of America’s top 10 roadside attractions. Having been in business for 39 years, some locals laugh at the idea of going, but for the couple in front of us in line, they visit monthly and love it. For $14.95 you can choose an all you can eat Deluxe Dinner of a crispy taco and two enchiladas, rice, beans, chips, queso, salsa and sopailpillas; a turnover sized triangle flour puff pastry that you rip open and pour honey into the empty inside.  Okay, now I’m hungry and it really wasn’t that terrible.

And just like all those years ago I was in the company of someone who I loved being around. We took it all in, including the walk-thru kid’s ghost ship experience. We ate Mexican food, raised the flag and asked for more, laughed, took pictures and watched the divers from several angles.

Just like last time.

Congress vrs Rocky Ford, Colorado

Rocky Ford, Colorado----She did not set out to get recognized by Congress, my high school friend and Kansas State roommate Deanna only set out to make a difference at her job by volunteering to organize a recycling program a couple of years ago for the facility where she is a nurse.

 

But one thing lead to another and gathering a small group of volunteers, she has led the effort to unite four communities’ and start “Clean Valley Recycling” an effort to keep things out of an already overburdened landfill. Two more cities are planned to be included soon.

On a farm, outside the tiny community of Rocky Ford, in an area of the flatlands of Southeast Colorado near Pueblo, suffering from the worst draught since the early 1900’s, Deanna started out small and with absolutely no prior knowledge of what and how be a facility that recycles, she learned it by researching. It was all self-taught. There wasn’t an option, there was a job to do.

Today, they lease a huge warehouse and bundle tons of water bottles or plastic jugs or plastic bags or cardboard. They currently started recycling electronics and want to soon add paint, chemicals and more.

She confesses that she would leave nursing and do this as a full time job if it paid. But as a non-profit fighting for just a little financial help from the county government who consistently rejects them, she explained that even with a newly hired full time employee/executive director, because of the amount of work and lack of funds she has to continue to stay heavily involved in the operation. Any financial statement would show that no one is making big money.

Luckily there are a few more like Deanna. Volunteers put out and pick up the recycle bins driving and unloading their stash to the warehouse where another volunteer fills a compactor called the "Cram-a-lot" (no kidding and I love that) and uses a small lifter to neatly stack the organized bundles into amounts that will fill a semi. At this point it can be sold and it is with this income and the drop off fees that they can continue to operate.

I never thought about it because I live in a city that you put your recycling in green plastic bins and it magically disappears once a week. I pay a fee for my garbage pickup but I never thought about this fee being a part of the cost to recycle. I always felt like I was “giving them” something that can be used. Now I feel dumb. Basic math: cost of goods sold must be equal or greater than cost of operation. And now looking at Deanna’s challenge, they not only have to encourage people to recycle but people have to pay to have it recycled verses taking the easy way out and just sticking it in the trash. People can pay $3.00 for a bag that holds up to 40 plastic gallon jugs and then drop it off.

“Cardboard is the single largest component of waste from businesses going to our landfill," their flier reads. 

 

 
 

 

And as I looked closely at a bundle I realized it was tightly bundled plastic grocery bags, I have a new hate for these bags that has been born only on this cross country road trip.  From interstate highways to small country roads I have noticed these plastic bags caught in the fences and the sage plants, the cactus and the tumbleweeds in every state, everywhere. It’s an outrage. Totally gone is my lazy attitude of not bringing in my own cloth bags and every chance I have to refuse a bag, I do.  Without this trip it would have never resonated so greatly.

I walked the length of what seemed more than a football field through the recycling warehouse and thought about what one person could do with just the willingness to learn and the desire to make a difference…even if it was only in a small farming community.

I had no idea she was involved in this until this trip. Her efforts reached the ears of her congressman and I looked over a shelf in her homespun farmhouse where the plaque of “Congressional Recognition” sat and pretty much freaked out over what she had done. She laughed her signature laugh of a burst of loud laughs that climbed in tone and felt like she had been holding it in for far too long and said, “that doesn’t mean as much to me as this,” and showed me a small simple plaque naming her Rocky Ford Chamber of Commerce Citizen of the Year.

“But this is THE CONGRESS,” I pleaded.

“Ah, they don’t know me,” she said, “but this, this means a lot because these people know me,” she said about the small chamber award.

And I think that is how making a difference works.

There's 60 seconds in every minute.

Boulder, Colorado---If you’re lucky, there will be one friend or a tiny handful of friends in your life that, for whatever reason, hold you to a higher standard. And for that, they make you want to be a better person.

For me there is a woman that shares a bond that’s hard to explain, it’s just something I feel.  I think she is just a little bit more daring, just a little bit more adventuresome, just a little bit more entrepreneurial,  just a little bit more. Her constant encouragement without pressure lifts me.

While skiing, she was hit full blast by another skier a few years ago. Even though she was wearing a helmet she had severe head trauma and was airlifted off the slopes to Denver. She remembers being put in a helicopter. She remembers saying goodbye to her husband. She believed it really was good bye.

Lisa and I met in College.  We share over 30 years of memories and secrets about each other. At school, like many journalism students, we spent a lot of time in that department. Because we were often together, the department secretary nicknamed us “Sunshine and Smiley” and would leave us messages on the board under that name.  As seniors, she was president of the Student Public Relations Society of America and I was president of the Society for Collegiate Journalists with both serving on each other’s boards. It was a busy college life of fun and academics.

Before class we would sit impatiently awaiting the teacher’s arrival and she would look at me and say, “I could really use a Diet Coke.”

I’d look at my watch and see six minutes before class started and would say, “There's 60 seconds in every minute.”

That was our cue. At the same time we leaped into action.

We knew that it would take exactly 120 seconds to run across the street to the Student Union. Another 60 seconds at the soda fountain, another 60 to pay followed by the grand return with 120 more to dash back and fall gasping in our chairs. Happy with having our Diet Cokes for the duration of class, it was only the launching pad.

This became our creed. But for us it meant more than the obvious: a minute has 60 seconds.  It meant that if you use every second in your day, in your life, you could truly get more done than you really thought you could.

And years later every minute would count as the helicopter lifted her off the snow covered mountain, leaving her husband and one son below to look on helplessly. The miracle happened and what seemed to be a possible end didn’t happen.  With time, she fully recovered.

Time is a funny thing. We think it passes very quickly. But if you think in seconds and take the time to live those seconds, it can stretch to “just a little bit more.”

Fire on the Mountain.

NOTE: This is a story about loss of possessions and the fear that fire brings, not the loss of life. This story was written prior to the tragic events that happened in Arizona with the loss of 19 firefighters. Nothing is more important than life itself.

Fort Collins, Colorado---On June 9, 2012 fire raged through 87,284 acres of the High Park area leaving 259 homes destroyed in its path and one death.  Now one year later I drove up the mountain to my friend’s house on June 9, 2013 and started noticing the damage getting worse and worse the closer I got to their home.  As asphalt turned into gravel that turned into dirt I started wondering if I might have got my information wrong and they no longer lived here. There were few homes and charcoal black burned trees everywhere.

But my GPS remarkably lead me to their mountain house and as I hesitated at the driveway, out popped my friend and her husband from the front door.  Before I even said hello I blurted out, “What happened?!”

2012

A year later...2013 regrowth

They explained that it just happened to be the one year anniversary of the High Park Fires that swept their area and was the state’s largest disaster until later that year; a larger fire had an even worse result.

I felt terrible. Living in my own little world in Florida, I had no idea that out of eight homes on their long winding street, they were the only address to not burn to the ground. Weirdly the fire had come as close as 6 feet from the house but left the house, barn, shop, garage, wood shed, and chicken house.

For the next couple of days I not only learned more about what they and neighbors had gone through I would soon start smelling smoke and as I traveled around the state of Colorado, I would get a current experience of people losing their homes in two more communities.

But a year ago, for my friends in the mountains near Fort Collins, it was a Saturday and they saw the fire at 10:30 am but it was 7-1/2 miles away. Having had similar scares, they started packing up things. By 2pm the official call for evacuation came and at 6pm the police physically were at the street warning people to get out. Because they had several vehicles, they were shuttling down the mountain to a friend’s house, she left around 11:30pm and he left around midnight.

He tried to return one more time at 12:30am and one of the officers from the Sherriff’s department said they would shoot him if he crossed their line.

At the friends, they had a clear view of the range of mountains that was being consumed. They all stayed up until 3am watching the burning mountains and described entire trees exploding as the intense heat overwhelmed the dry forest.

They fell asleep in their camper parked at their friends and were awoken at 4:15am to their friend pounding on their door and telling them the fire had turned and now they were being evacuated from this location.

They shuttled everything down to an elementary school in Fort Collins by 4:50am and just stayed up attending the 11am information meeting that morning.

From here, they described the emotional roller coaster.

This was more than a mountain house. It had been the life work of her husband who, as a master carpenter, had bought a tiny house and added several additions on to it using interesting recycled wood that he refurbished to make this mountain house truly unique, all the way down to the kitchen cabinet handles that he had hand forged himself!

Now there was little hope. They had a neighbor who was a firefighter so even though the information meetings, that grew so large they had to be moved to the fairgrounds, were only general information with little to nothing specific, they were getting some inside information about their street.

Then word came. Their house was gone. Everything was “to the ground”.

The firefighter called it “Armageddon” and because the fire had burned in a horse shoe shape and then started filling in, it had been so bad that all firefighting had to stop and wait as the heavy winds within the inferno allowed any thing more to be safely done.

So for 24 hours they processed this information. They cried and mourned the loss. They got to know an entire Canyon of residents that they had had no reason to see or even knew there was a house on that lot due to the surrounding trees. This was a fraternity that no one wants to be in, yet having others that felt the same does help.

Then everything flipped. New word came that their house was standing.  The fire was contained enough that an opportunity came up to join a quick “drive and grab” for neighbors business equipment so her husband went to help and got to look and visually confirm their buildings were all standing.

Spinning them from a feeling of loss to a feeling of guilt that they had been spared, they waited for three weeks to return to their property.

My friend told me that when the area was contained actual news of properties were released. This was done at the Fairgrounds in a room that had been prepared with voting booths. The booths had signs above them with names of areas within High Park Canyon. Families would stand in line and when it was their turn, could go behind the curtain to look at the list of addresses. If your address was in yellow, it was burned down. If it was not, it was still standing. She described the anguish that she watched as some people just found out.

Why were my friends spared? Was it the ongoing clearing that he had done, cutting down trees and cleaning up the underbrush? He had said he felt ridiculous doing it each year when no one else was but he continued. Was it the huge tanks of water that he kept on property and had burst that may have created a fire line six feet from their home? Or was it fate and the mystery the fire brings?

As I spent time in their home, they showed me one house that still has not been “cleared”. Photos reveal one home’s damage. This older couple had passed away prior to the fire and the property is owned by relatives. I spent time imagining what their home was like with many clues as to where rooms had been based on burned appliances or only the metal of the mattress springs on the ground. I walked away feeling physically sick to my stomach.

A cat collection

Wine Goblets

Note how some are not melted

 

And later as I visited Boulder, Manitou Springs, Monument and Denver I would experience smoke every day from Black Forest Fire and Royal Gorge Fire as well as several more that burned in June.



In Boulder I stayed with another college friend and we went to one of the staging airports and watched a tank being refilled with Slurry as these huge planes flew directly over my friend’s house flying low with this heavy load. 

In Monument, my friend’s house came within ½ mile of the pre-evacuation line and their car was loaded and parked ready to make a quick get-away.

Headlines everyday covered the loss and the smell in the air most everywhere I visited in Colorado was a constant reminder of what people had, and were going through today.

A look back at the High Park Mountain Ridge lined with charcoal colored trees

 

 

 

 

State Crossing: Colorado

Sights Along the Way: Wyoming