Redeeming Colorado

So, I've always been 'meh' towards Colorado. I mean, sure, you have mountains, and because of that you're pretty, but it's kind of scrappy and the high elevations have been tiring. Not to mention that after an exhausting 700 mile snowy run through 1/2 of Montana, ALLLL of Wyoming and then another chunk of Colorado in one day I was just ready to be home. But, Colorado, you have been redeemed. We thought we were done on our coffee journey, but then we looked up the winners of the Mountain Region Barista Championship and found Ozo Coffee Co. in Boulder. Greg, their resident bar guru, won the Mountain region title and is heading to Anaheim next week for the National Championships and will be up against Billy Wilson, the owner of Barista in Portland and my ex-roommate's ex-boyfriend. Yes, that's my claim to fame.




The shop itself was unassuming, set in a strip mall with a parking lot back up to the street with Wendy's drive-thru traffic. But inside it had charm and all of the curly headed Boulderites (Boulerians?) working behind the counter were incredibly friendly. Nolan, their roaster, took our orders and chatted us up with Greg, who was on bar. Ozo definitely wins for friendliest shop. Even though they were incredibly busy Greg kept up conversation with us about the championship he just placed first in, and the upcoming nationals and Nolan and Greg went back and forth with us about their different roasts. They gave us a free half pound of their micro-lot single origin Brazil with the farmer's, Henrique Dias Camraia, name right on it. They made it up specially to take to the nationals next week. I'm looking forward to tomorrow morning's french press :) Greg made us cappuccinos with their Isabella, a Sumatra/Brazil blend which was smooth and chocolaty and while they said it was their darkest roast, it still held more origin notes than roasty ones. They had two different espressos, so I went back and ordered their other, which they called their 2012, it was a Mexico/Peru/Brazil/Guatemala and this is me realizing now that the name must come because the origins are in Mayan country... I was surprised at the notes within it and their origins. While most Mexicans I've tasted have been bright and annoying, this one was chocolaty and buttery like I'd expect from the Guatemalan, but the blend of South American flavors was intoxicating and complex. The 2012 was the definite winner. I think there was also a difference in ordering a short cappuccino rather than the standard 12 oz. size. With too much milk you lose so much of the flavor, so I think my impression of the Isabella was tainted by too much milk - but that fault is my own for not specifying.

We've decided on this trip that the new criteria for amazing coffee is that it's so complex that you can't stop drinking it for the curiosity of defining each flavor within it. And at each shop we've been wowed by, that's been the exact sentiment. I HAVE to have more. This, like Verve, Heart and Ritual left us with that feeling. Unfortunately though, unless we can find some PT's coffee somewhere in Kansas, our coffee trip may very well be over. Fortunately, I have a batch of Heart that I bought that is still fresh, this single origin Brazil and then some older Rwanda Intelligentsia that's still surprisingly okay drinking despite its age.

Okay, so with all my coffee talk out of the way, we can go back to talk about the rest of the trip. But, I warn you, I was pretty grumpy. We spent the night with my friend Missy in Manhattan, MT, but only got about 4 hours of sleep for Jack's crankiness and Kate's coughing. Literally, I fell asleep at 1 am and he woke me up at 5. Ugh. Then we had our long ardurous journey through Montana, Wyoming and into Estes Park. The first 30-40 miles of the trip it was not only snowing, but the roads were hard-packed snow, so we had to watch our speed, and then the rest of the trip as we changed elevation we went from rain to snow and in why-oming we stayed pretty much at one level and were kept in the snow and occasional hail. We got really cranky on the drive, and decided to change our attitudes, so we started getting excited about small rocks we'd drive by, finding more than two houses in a one mile stretch, the occasional windmill and finally drawing things in the fogged up windows. Oh Wyoming. I won't miss you. If I see you again, it will be too soon. Yellowstone excluded though, of course ;)

We got into Estes Park just ahead of a storm and got a couple of inches the first night we were there. Between the sleep deprivation I've been experiencing with Kate's persistent cough, Jack's whininess for being cooped up in the car and altitude sickness (really? Yes, apparently I'm THAT big of a wuss, I grew up in mountains, just not ones at 8500 feet) I was grumpy. Kate woke up and woke Jack and I up several times because she was coughing and kept flipping over to her stomach which made it all the worse. Oh sleep, how I miss you! So excited that in just a few days I'll be at home, in my bed, in a seperate room from my kids with John again. I got to video chat with him last night and all day I've been comtemplating if there is a sane way to get back tonight, but after lunch, dropping off Kristen in Tulsa and then driving back it'd put me back at 3 am in a best case scenario, with, with kids waking up at 7, does not sound like a sane choice.

So, we just drove into Littleton, we're going to meet up with Kristen's friend, Beth, and then we're off to who-knows-where, KS for a decent night's sleep. We hope.

Yes, I know I still need to write about Portland and Tacoma :)

It's been a different kind of great day. The last week in Chewelah was great, relaxing and done too soon. We rested, skiied and hiked and slept in, and it was glorious. And today, on our last day, we left at 10:30 and found, by glorious chance, "The Elk Plublic House', where Stefanie works, and they served us Anderson Valley Brewing Company Winter Solstice on tap. We've been looking for that very thing all trip! Wonderful fantasmacisims, it was great! But I'm jumping ahead. Chewelah. We got in on a Tuesday night after driving over from the coast and swinging far to the south of Washington to have dinner with my aunt and cousin in Kennewick. We were exhausted and did little that night but sleep. Time went too fast, so I can't give you a detailed play by play of our time there. But I can highlight the highlights. Mom and Fritz took the kids outside every day. Serious highlight here. They got up with the kids ever morning and took them outside to let them play and wear them out.


On Easter, our last full day there, Kristen and I took the kids on a walk down to the meadow and then into my favorite part of our property, down in the - holy cow, we're now in montana! - meadow there's a grove of cedar and aspen trees on the edge of the pine woods with an old logging trail going through them that creates a little clearing. By the time we got down the hill into the meadow Kate decided she was done and sat in the middle of the meadow crying and refusing to walk. By the time Jack, Kristen and I got to the edge of the woods though she rethought her position and got up and ran toward us. We had a great time exploring the forest with us and part way up the trail we stopped and just sat on the forest floor and played with anything we found. Earlier in the day, after church, we had walked onto the neighboring land to an over look, which had been my favorite reading/alone/thinking spot growing up. It's funny, because I look back on my time growing up and think 'I was always so social', but then I realize, I spent so much time alone just because I lived in the middle of the woods. I miss that balance.

On Friday of last week we went skiing. Strangely, the whole timing of our trip revolved around this one opportunity to go skiing during free ski week at 49 Degrees North, our local hill. We got up there around 9 am, rented skis and set off for the bunny hill on chair 3 (don't be fooled, it was a bunny hill, but it had an actual lift to the top, not one of those bitty tow rope bunny hills). Unfortunately, it was a little too late by the time we realized that my shoty out of touch ski skills were supposed to be the basis of Kristen's into to skiing. It took her about an hour to get down what would normally take me about 5 minutes. I didn't really know what to teach her, so I just said, 'hey, go side to side and use weight in your heels to stop', when apparently, the proper instruction would have been, 'make your skis look like pizza to go slow, and french fries to go fast'. Whoops. As we wandered back into the rental shop to exchange her skis for a board we ran into Josh King, an old... um, I don't know. We were in band together for 6 years, and he was a musician I'd always looked up to, but I can't say that 'friends' would be the right term. He was someone I spent a lot of time with. We had a mutual (?) respect for the other's musicianship and were constantly around each other because of it. Matt, his brother, who was in my grade, was there also, and we spent a few minutes catching up, and then another 20 minutes or so chatting up Josh and his very - I don't know how to describe it - mature, adult-like, well mannered - son, I couldn't believe he was 7, he was so socially aware and respectful. It always gives me new respect for people who can raise kids like that.

We took the bunny hill a few more times with ease after switching out Kristen's skis and then rode up chair one for a top to bottom run. I hadn't been up on the hill for years and ended up taking us down a run that only let us go about halfway down and then making you take a lift back to the top. Unfortunately, on the way down that run I took a spill, it wasn't bad, but when I got up, I saw Kristen laying on the ground about 30 feet beyond me, I skied down to her and a few other skiers were gathered around her asking if she was okay. I'd missed her spill, but she described it as realizing she was about to crash and then doing a one eighty so that her face wouldn't take the brunt of the fall. She said she remembers her air time being a little too long before the mountain rose up and hit her. She was pretty dazed, but able to get up and ski down. But, like I said, the trail didn't go all the way down to the lodge, so we got some assistance from the ski patrol to the top of the hill so we could find our way back down. While I regret to inform you that I have no media proof of this, Kristen got a ride down on the back of a medic tobbagan skied by a guy named Steve. I followed them down. In the words of Kristen, "What a hoss.". The wind was biting and it was nearly blizzard like conditions, so I took it a little slower. When I got home my face was wind-burnt and my knees didn't work quite like they should've. Kristen was none the worse for wear except for a head ache that lasted her a few days. Still glad we went, I probably won't be able to go again for a few years.

On Saturday, I drove down to Spokane with my mom and the kids to see a friend of mine I've done a superbly mediocre job of keeping in touch with. Stefanie was a girl I'd met my senior year of high school. I'd done a crappy job of getting my science credits in, so to graduate I had to go back to Freshman science to get the easiest credits possible to graduate, and while there I ridiculed our teacher (fear not, he was one of those that definitely hated children) mercilessly together. Also, during that year we were in a few plays/musicals together. Anyways, I seem to keep missing her, and as I've done a poor job of keeping in touch with anyone from high school, she got the short end of an already short stick. It was great to see her though, and to reconnect and find common ground again as adults. That night Kristen and I met up with two of my girlfriends from high school and ad a few pints at -the- bar in Chewelah while catching up.

Other than that, it was a week of just relaxing. And it was heaven. The scenery was beautiful, the company was great, the weather kept going from sunny to a light hail to snow and the only dull moments were great ones.