Thank You, China, For Your Explosive Technology

I never grew up with the fireworks tradition. Yes, we'd have a Fourth of July cook out every year. We'd swim and eat hot dogs and potato salad. Sometimes, we'd go to a parade. Sometimes, we'd make our way to Fullerton for some professional displays of glowing metal and gun powder flares. A couple of years, someone would even procure some bottle rockets or fire crackers and light a few off in the backyard. Where Monkey and I come from, however, fireworks are verboten. There are no stands, no tents, no sales. You buy sparklers at the grocery store, if you want, but you are not buying, or legally lighting anything else, in the Old Line State. As a result, July 4 is a holiday that troubles me. Certain aspects of it, at least. I expect, here in the corn belt, where they celebrate America's independence with an orgy of flaring paper tubes and exploding sticks, that someone will either be seriously injured, or that someone will set a car or house on fire. Don't mistake me, I am all for celebrating our nation's independence from the "bad king" (as a friend of ours' four year-old once put it), but I had a few moments of fear and loathing last night, once the rain stopped and the sun went down.

It has been mentioned here before that our oldest dog, Ripken, is a bit on the skittish side when it comes to noise. A rattle of pots in the cupboard will send him bolting for the living room, head down and tail between his legs. It makes it easy to distract him if he ever does anything wrong. All I have to do is raise my voice, and he immediately stops doing anything. This is only a problem when I am correcting Parker, the puppy, since Ripken is then the one who immediately goes into "submissive" mode. If only Parker were as quick to get the message, but he'll learn.

As a result of this skittishness, Ripken hates hates hates the 4th of July. For him, it's three days of scary noises which cause him to hold all bodily functions until the coast is clear. It can't be healthy. He's been this way since as long as Monkey and I remember, and neither of us can think of what might have caused this personality trait in our handsome old boy.

Yesterday, the actual Fourth, was of course, expected to be the pinnacle of bangs and booms, of high pitched rocket whine and foundation-shaking shell bursts. We held out hope, however, that it wouldn't be too bad. The previous two days had been acceptable, as far as the volume and density of explosives-related noise in the general vicinity. On top of that, it was raining heavily from the early AM hours, and the forecast was for unrelenting rain and storms all day. Surely, that would put a damper on the fireworks, we thought. Ripken would be able to spend a wet, but anxiety-free holiday for once.

Unfortunately, around four in the afternoon, the rain broke, and by seven PM, the sun was out. Like roaches in the dark, the pyros filled the streets almost the minute the last raindrop fell. As a result, our after-dinner walk was curtailed, as nearly every corner in our little neighborhood was stationed by an army of children and adults with that wild red-eyed look they get when shit is blowing up.

Truth be told, Money and I had an invitation to a party, so we snuck out for a few hours. We left the stereo playing for Ripken (he spends the loudest parts of the fourth in our relatively sound-proof basement), and could tell by Parker's behavior to this point that his time in the crate would have no detrimental effect upon him...he is, to this point, fearless to a point of stupidity.

At the party, as the sun began to set, boxes and bags, crates and truck beds full of fireworks appeared. In the cul de sac on which our party was being held, a seeming free-for-all of children and "supervising" adults were firing off every kind of air- and ground-based entertainment explosive that could be bought, smuggled, or finagled from the various tents and stands around town. Who was I to complain? Part of the tradition of the holiday is the lighting off of fireworks, and IT IS LEGAL in our town to shoot fireworks on July 3 and 4, until midnight. If it's legal, then okay.

But, honestly, it's still annoying. Especially when Monkey and I arrived home at 9:30 to find our entire street engulfed in gun smoke, and populated with cars and people there to watch the fireworks at the country club down the street and to explode the rest of their soon-to-be-illegal stash. The video above is from the street right outside the Monkey House. It doesn't capture the scene as it truly was. The sounds in the background, while difficult to hear throughout the video, were constant and everywhere. The pall of smoke, visible in the streetlight's glow, was more prevalent, in truth.

The funny thing that dawned on me this morning: all of this mayhem (welcome to the war zone, it seemed) is legal (albeit for two days) just outside my front door, but I have to keep my chickens fifty feet away from your house? My chickens are not going to explode and set your roof on fire, are they?

Where The Wild Things Are, Part Five: The Bear Trap

The start of contract time has curtailed my blogging the past few days, but it is my intention to offer finish this multi part story as soon as possible, beginning today with the story of our hike to Lulu City, a former mining town that thrived for only four years in the mountains of Colorado before succumbing to the economics of the times and becoming a ghost town known mostly for its still-visible bear trap (of which, I neglected to take a photo--I didn't realize it was such a famous bear trap until afterward...hell, I didn't even know it was a bear trap, at the time, but, I digress).

The morning of this hike, we intended to mosey into Allenspark and eat at the wonderful Meadow Mountain Cafe. When we arrived, at exactly the time that they opened, we found the small parking lot full, and the small dining area fuller. Not wanting to wait too long for a table, some coffee, and some food, we decided to head into Estes Park for an alternate breakfast experience.

After a not-so-good-as-Meadow-Mountain-would-have-been breakfast, we drove over Rocky Mountain National Park's Trail Ridge Road, to find the Colorado River trail head, on the other side of the Continental Divide. This trail is relatively level, until the descent into/ascent out of the Lulu City site, and follows the Colorado River for a distance, revealing along the way several mine shaft sites, and the ruined cabins of the man who once owned the mines (I believe his name was Shipler). It was a nice trail through riparian wetlands and wild flowers. Earlier, one of the Ambassadors had purchased a book on RMNP wild flowers, so we had a fine time trying to identify some of the more common flora along the trail. Unfortunately, the wetlands also breeds some local mosquitoes, so we didn't stand still over the flowers for too long.

Once we arrived in the vicinity of Lulu City, we discovered that the only living inhabitants of the site are golden-mantled ground squirrels. We debated whether it was a good idea to feed the squirrels pumpkin seeds (we decided not to), and whether a golden-mantled ground squirrel was any match for a chainsaw beaver (of course, not). Most importantly, we found a beautiful river bank of stones in a river, upon which to have a mid-day snack. It truly was one of the more beautiful places we spent time (of course, there were many of those).

Of course, on our way back to the trail head, it rained. The only difference was that, today, everyone had adequate rain gear. Hooray! The backs of my pant legs did get awfully drenched, however. I think next time, I am toting my rain pants, as well. We stopped by the Ranger's Station after the hike, to get a last check on the weather, but it was not good news. The weather we had been having, we would continue to have, and that, we all decided, was not conducive to scaling any 14000 foot mountains. So, with disappointment, we scrubbed our Longs Peak hike for that trip.

That left us with a decision to make about our last hiking day in the area. Where would we hike? How far? How high? How early? We spent the evening, over dishes of not-very-good Tuscan bean soup (my fault), discussing our options.

Banana Bread? Yes! Chickens? No!

Thursday night, Monkey made banana bread. She makes really good banana bread. But, I couldn't have any. It was for her running club breakfast pot luck on Saturday. Lucky for me, she made an experimental loaf, with peanut butter chips in it, last weekend, so that I didn't feel left out of the banana bread love.

The peanut butter/banana loaf was good. I think we can make it better by adding actual peanut butter to the bread, itself, but then we'd have to adjust some other liquid amount. Maybe we'll experiment at some other date. Also lucky for me, there were leftovers from breakfast this morning. So, I got to enjoy extra banana bread today, after my bowl of Raisin Bran (Kellogg's). It was good.

And a good thing, too, since I was reeling from some serious bad news I had discovered on Friday night. I have, for some time now, been interested in keeping chickens. I was doing some research online about local codes, and I discovered that here in Lincoln, I might keep fowl, as long as they were kept fifty feet from any neighboring dwellings and five feet from all property lines. Sadly, that is an impossibility on our lot. So, I just have to wait on the chickens. The same regulations apply to rabbits, also, so I won't be keeping any of them either. Nor bees. (I think about a lot of agricultural things when I ain't typing at y'all.)

So, the disappointment of the arbitrary capriciousness of the Lincoln zoning board was tempered slightly by some moist and tasty banana bread. It is all good.