Adventuring

This morning the last of the construction and painting equipment left our basement. (Woo!) To celebrate, we cleaned up our bikes and rode the Cheshire Rail Trail 3 miles into town where the Walldogs Mural Festival was underway.

In short, the Walldogs is a group of mural artists who travel the country creating public art murals related to local history.

One of the murals was dedicated to Miss Catherine Fiske’s Female Seminary which you can hear more about here. Most importantly, we got to enjoy a decadent food truck lunch.

For the second year in a row, we were asked to speak at the regional SBDC New England Conference which took place in Stockbridge, Massachusetts. We had a lovely stay at the historic Red Lion Inn and were surprised to find this familiar face in our room.

It’s an American folk portrait of Mary Jane Smith by nearby Springfield MA resident, Joseph Whiting Stock, and we have our very own copy of it in our living room!

Happily we learned that Mary Jane Smith has a companion painting by John Brewster of Buxton, Maine. It’s appropriately titled, “Boy with Finch”. (I secretly think they’re siblings.)

That evening we enjoyed a wonderful meal at the The Lion’s Den…

…and the two portraits watched over us while we slept.

So this is our FIFTH Jamboree?!?!?

Well, what better way to test Ruby Jean’s new upgrades than a series of intense rock gardens and the famous “Roller Coaster” (which was more like a slip-n-slide after a night of rain?

As always, we learned lots of new things, but it is the people that make these events so freakin’ wonderful!

I like to camp. A LOT.

Zorro and Fletcher like it too. (especially Fletcher) And wherever we camp, Ruby Jean is there. Which is why after 7 years, it was time to upgrade to a proper towing suspension that’s still at home off-road.

Enter the Teraflex 3″ Outback Overland Suspension…

I think camping time is coming soon…

I spent this last week in New York with my good friend and colleague Jeremy Gill as we prepared for the premiere of After Rochberg.

In many ways this was a fabulous way to end 2018 — not the least of which is that this concert represented several milestones for my work on the Isomer Project. We worked hard this week. Even so, I got to visit with old friends…

taste test incredible restaurants…

try new cocktails…

rummage through bookstores in search of rare scores…

and take in early-morning NYC views.

We spent an early fall weekend camping on the nearby coast of Maine.

With more than 3,478 miles of coastline, we always find something new when we visit. This trip we camped at Bradbury Mountain State Park and spent a long day hiking the Oven Mouth Preserves.

The fall color was just starting to hit in places so even a casual drive to the sample the local brew was full of interest.

Anytime we’re headed out West, a stop in St. Louis is required. Because we were here fairly recently, it felt (in some ways) like we had never left. I met up with old friends, stopped in at our favorite restaurants and museums, and caught up on work at Nebula. Is there anything St. Louis can’t do?

Today, Ruby Jean took me up. Higher than we had ever climbed before. The California Pass reaches 12,960 feet. And there just isn’t much up there.
Just silence. And beauty. In all directions.

Oh, and an old, abandoned mining town called Animas Forks. Now, that’s my kinda town!

This morning I awoke to find that the fall color was moving in. And quickly.

Many of the local mountain trails connect Ouray, Teluride, and Silverton, so if you’re in the area and you’re Jeepin’ around, you’ll most certainly end up visiting Silverton. Silverton is a former silver mining camp, most or all of which is now included in a federally designated National Historic Landmark District called the Silverton Historic District.

Here’s a nifty little video describing Silverton and the surrounding area: