Hail to the Chief

One of the joys of Denver is the number of the trails close in to the city. Oh sure, there is great hiking all throughout the state, but Denver’s trails are special because they are both spectacular and within an hour or so of the city. It’s also possible never to hike the exact same one twice—a change of season means the trails can be vastly different—and there are plenty of them: a Forest Service map shows just how many.

We’ve done a lot around Golden and Evergreen, but yesterday we found a gem: Chief Mountain. Even though we were told it is well-loved, we’d never heard of it before, nor of the ski area, Echo Mountain, just across the road from the trailhead. But before I get to that, a little background.

A few weeks ago, finding myself grown a little tubby, I proposed to Sid that we start climbing again rather than just walking. He was happy to agree. He’d taken me up to the top of Loveland Pass on our second date (the first one was snow shoeing at Jones Pass—you can’t say I wasn’t warned), which was nearly our last date. But I survived and realized that Colorado is best seen from the top of things—high things like mountains.

The apex of my climbing career was getting to the top of Gray’s Peak and Mount Bierstadt, but then I encountered a snowboarder at Copper and hurt my knees, which promptly swelled up like little melons. I suggested that for a time at least we hike around the Denver foothills instead of sleeping in the truck and trying to bag fourteeners. That’s when we started hiking the Denver trails and I realized how differently Sid and I look at things.

Sid will do the same trail repeatedly if he likes the degree of challenge and if it fits into his training routine (be that what it may at the time). I, on the other hand, am fickle. I want new trails and new scenery. The challenge for us is to find a trail with enough pitch to keep him happy and his heart rate up and with enough scenery to keep me not thinking about my knees. The Chief Mountain trail is all uphill although it’s never to the point of bouldering (except at the very top and you don’t have to do that unless your pride demands it), so Sid had a nice workout and once we cleared timber line, I had all the scenery I could ever want. Sid is not given to superlatives. His “not bad” means “very good” (I think). He proclaimed the Chief Mountain trail, “very nice,” which is excellent, again I think.

I find it interesting that even after eight years together I still have to guess what Sid is feeling. I know he enjoyed the mountain as much as I did, but I also know that if I try to press him further to explain, he will look at me with exasperation and say something like “I just told you.”

I suspect this has to be a guy and maybe a generational thing. The men I've been around seem to have a shorthand that they intuitively understand when they talk with one another, and if they don’t understand one another completely—well, they seem able to live with it. Women on the other hand, speaking for myself, seem to have the need to communicate something purposeful, even if it is just gossip. Men gossip too—oh lord can they—but not for the same reason. They don't seem to be bonding or trying to see if everyone is on board or trying to find some hidden motive for why people behave as they do (as if anyone can ever know).

I wonder if there is a new proposition here: that men not only think vertically but also communicate that way (if this doesn’t make sense to you, check out my previous blog on vertical and horizontal). Abraham Lincoln once said something like it's better to be thought a fool than open your mouth and prove it. I look back on the number of times that I have done just that. But I gave other people the chance to shine and I learned something in the process. I guess I would rewrite the president a little: sometimes it is generous to open your mouth even if you do look foolish--but I wouldn't make a practice of it.

When we got back, I had delusions of grandeur since I’d done so well on the trail and suggested that we try for another fourteener. We slept on it. Today I am gloriously stiff and even Sid admitted that he took an advil. Mais, ou sont les neiges d’antan?

Into the Fun House

I’ve just woken up from eleven hours of sleep preceded by two day-naps and am finally feeling more or less alive—that means I’ve just come back from Las Vegas. The Strip these days is a marathon survival course: 105 degrees in the day and non-stop temptation at night. I overheard the cabin attendant on the plane back to Denver saying that she had spent four days leave in Vegas and had slept only eight hours during that whole time. That’s not surprising because the hotels have nothing in the rooms to encourage you to stay out of the casinos. There wasn’t even a coffee maker in our otherwise luxurious room in the Bellagio—just tons of booze in the room fridge.

After a couple of drinks, though, it didn’t really seem to matter where you were. Hotels began to look alike—one large casino room in the middle of a theme park. You had to look for the lions to know it was the MGM or the Italianate marble floors and elaborate garden for the Bellagio, the Egyptian frieze to know it was Ceasar’s, the close-up of a woman’s behind in a thong to know it was Bally’s, or the New York shop fronts or the French stores etc. etc. Otherwise the machines were the same, the card tables were the same, the mini-dressed cocktail servers were the same, the important-looking people in a hurry with their with walkie-talkies were the same, and the gigantic statuary (griffins, lions, athletes etc) were the same.

But if Las Vegas itself has a sameness once the novelty wears off, that can’t be said for the people. English was definitely only one language among many. This wasn’t the Manolo shoes or Dior and Armani crowd. These were people happy to wear t-shirts spelling out the words Las Vegas in rhinestones. Children were few and far between and even those were misbehaving as if they knew they were where they shouldn’t be. When we checked in, three little Asian girls were playing chase around the fountains in the extremely crowded lobby. No one said a thing. What plays in Vegas stays in Vegas, after all.

The Bellagio’s casino floor was actually fairly quiet except for the din of atonal chimes and the occasional loud music announcing some bonus spin. Husbands and wives occupied side by side slot machines, playing what looked like traditional diamond games. Single women went more for the theme machines: hoot loot, wheel of fortune, Texas Tea which made a mooing sound if you won, Cleopatra, Blue Coyote which howled etc. Single men tended to either play the card tables or sit seriously at the slots, dragging on their cigarettes or cigars and taking a long time before pushing the spin button or pulling the arm—as if willing the machines to produce the solid payline. Some spent hours at the same machine. They probably broke even with the free drinks though, which was about the only free thing in the entire city.

The casino floor at the Wynn did come alive at 1:30 am—which is why I was short on sleep. A group of young women on a girls’ night out took up station in front of the Oz machine. They cheered everything. They cheered the wicked witch, they cheered Judy when she said they didn’t seem to be in Kansas any more, they cheered Glenda, they even cheered winning two quarters when they were playing five. Only the action from the men over at the dice table rivaled them. A roar would go up when the dice fell out the right way. There’s nothing like doing something physical, it seems, when you’re out for a night on the town and just want fun.

In the end having fun—or trying to—is really what Las Vegas is about. I’ve found that after the initial novelty wears off, gambling can be rather boring unless you’re serious about it and unless you are winning. It’s always amazing to me how everyone says they win. Maybe losing is not something you want to admit. I will. I won and lost several fortunes in my two days: up $40, down $40, up $30, down $30, finally ending down $30 again. Like everyone else I hate losing money, but I look on it as a money raffle. Just maybe one day I’ll be lucky.

What I really do appreciate are the fabulous food, the amazing opulence, and the glorious over-the-top excess of casinos trying to out do one another. It’s something like Oz—over the rainbow, a yellow brick road through the casinos, confusion about how to get out of the place, no sleep unless you lie down in the poppies—and, like the wizard, not real at all.

Fantasy and Unreality

I’m off to Las Vegas on Sunday to spend two luxurious days with Kimi at the Bellaggio Hotel, where she’s got us very good mid-week rates. We try to get together on our birthdays which are close together in August except that she is one year younger—something she reminds me of now and then. She drives up from Los Angeles and I’ll be flying Frontier—I like their tail animals and they still let me check one bag free.

Given the fact that I am not only one year older than Kimi but that I will also be celebrating(?) my 65th, I decided that my usual slacks and t-shirts needed some updating so I trekked on down to Saks Off Fifth at Castle Rock Outlets (I never said I wasn’t going to be cheap chic) and happily found myself in the middle of a sale. There was even the magic word clearance.

On the way home. It suddenly occurred to me that I might have gone about the whole business backwards. I hadn’t done any research. I didn’t know whether the things I had bought were last year’s rejects. I know designers say to make things your own, but what if I was going to be what my mother called “mutton done up as a lamb”? I wasn’t about to take anything back, but the niggle of doubt led me to pick up the latest copy of Vogue at the supermarket to see what was “hot.”

I haven’t looked at Vogue for years—make that many years—not since I figured that anything the models wore was going to look awful on me. A particular model, in fact, was probably one of only about ten women in the nation who could wear the outfit and not look like something I would flee if I met her in the street. Actually, there were a good number of models that I would run away from—the dark circles around their eyes made them look like depraved raccoons. But I digress.

This edition of Vogue attracted me because it was supposedly about looking good at any age, a topic dear to my heart. The sections were devoted to the decades. Women in their nineties were represented by John McCain’s mother who is 96. Somehow this lady occupies a different universe from mine: when she was told she was too old to rent a car in Europe, she bought a Mercedes Benz and left it there for future travels. She looks aggressively good and she has opinions to match. I’m afraid that I found her more intimidating than inspiring. Diahann Carroll represented the 70s, looking impossibly gorgeous with smooth, unwrinkled skin. Mia Farrow was the 60s and Chrissie Evert, looking like a mermaid in sleek evening gown, was the 50s.

Each of them was a reproach to those among us (like me) with wrinkles and bulges we have not addressed. Clearly, Vogue is suggesting that to look our age is our own negligence. Of course, each of these ladies has one thing in common—they all have uncommon resources. That makes all the difference, and lest anyone not understand how such unreality and fantasy of eternal beauty and youth come about, Vogue includes an article on the latest miracle surgery, including knee and elbow lifts, all of which is pricey. But then Vogue always was about money just as Vanity Fair was always about edgy eccentricity.

If I were willing to part with the money, I might consider a neck lift if only to feel socially responsible. After all, what I have done lately for the cause of remaining perpetually forty and for helping the surgeon buy his wife a new Mercedes? But I’m not willing to either shell out or put up with the recovery. I suppose I might consider it if I was worried that my husband was eying younger, dishy girls who had no scruples about the latest “tweak” (as Vogue calls it). Otherwise, I look at the costs and imagine what else I could be doing with the money. For me, it's like playing golf--around about the 9th hole, I start thinking of all the other things I could be doing with the time. That's why I don't play any more. To slightly misquote Groucho Marx, I wouldn't want to be part of any foursome that would have me.

I guess I'll just have to make do with visiting to Las Vegas with Kimi--that's probably as close to fantasy and unreality as I am going to get.