A hearty, happy and heartfelt congratulations to our dear friends Jason and Alicia – as of this evening they’re engaged to be married!

I planned to get back to our hotel around 6PM – leaving plenty of time to take Kelly to see Red Rocks Park and stand on-stage at the ampitheater made legendary (at least to us) by Dave Matthews and Tim Reynolds, among others. Instead, in a dirt-filled rental car, toting a half-functioning rented Ellsworth mountain bike covered with red-clay mud and snow, I pulled into our hotel parking garage a little after 11PM. I still couldn’t feel my fingertips, and the mixture of mud and blood that washed off me in a hot post-ride shower would have been well-suited to an action-movie recovery scene.

The warm cafe where I’m sitting and typing this entry – with jazz, the smell of espresso and the sound of lighthearted conversation floating through the air – feels almost as otherworldly as the landscapes I just endured with two other riders…

The madness actually began the day prior. I picked up an Ellsworth Glimpse from the Golden Bike Shop in (wait for it…) Golden, Colorado. The owner suggested I give the Chimney Gulch Trail a try – “an easy out-and-back with some climbing.” Sitting in the rental car at the trailhead, waiting out a rain shower, the trail didn’t look too bad. Then – knock! knock! - a knuckle on the passenger window pulled me out of my internal pre-ride self-pep-talk. Another rider had gotten an ear bud cord tangled into his freewheel, and wondered if I had any pliers. After a few minutes’ conversation, through the combined dexterity of the rider, his friend, and I, we managed to extricate the remains. I learned their names – PJ and Dave. Both were paramedics – and had recently returned from stints as civilian professional firefighters at Al Asad airbase in Iraq.

A few minutes an an enthusiastic invitation later, we were saddling up at the summit of the trail. My perception of a quick 2-mile out and back rapidly disintegrated as PJ’s truck had sliced switchback after switchback, climbing to the far-end trailhead. The town of Golden, far below, looked like a miniature model. After a few quick seat adjustments and a rattlesnake warning from PJ, we clipped in and started descending. It only took about 100 feet of trail to put massive grins on all our faces – shuttling this descent was a decidedly good idea!

At the bottom, after we exchanged all the requisite post-awesome-descent fist bumps and exclamations, came the invite: Kenosha Pass tomorrow? I was in. I’d head to REI that night to pick up some cool-weather gear, and we’d meet a little before 9 to head 45 minutes into the Rockies.

I did. We did. And moments after cresting Kenosha pass on Highway 285, I got the news – the plan had changed, and we were actually headed much farther into the Rockies, to the Monarch Crest Trail. Starting elevation: 11,386 feet. Length: 32 miles. We’d leave my rental car at the bottom, then shuttle our bikes and ourselves to the top in PJ’s truck. Ride time? About 3-5 hours, according to most of the reviews. My response? What the heck – let’s go for it. After all, this ride was apparently #6 on someone’s list of the 10 epic rides you should take before you die.

We arrived in Salidas, Colorado at about Noon, and headed to the Sinclair gas station whose owners operate a shuttle service for mountain bikers. The shaggy guy slinging roller-dogs behind the counter – who warned us he was new to the area – told us that 6 inches of snow had fallen at the pass overnight. With clear skies and bright sunshine, we figured most of the new snow would have burned off through the morning – even when we reached Monarch Pass, only a dusting was clinging to the ground in the shadows. We suited up – gore-tex socks, insulation layers, fresh-powder-worthy rainproof jackets, and sunglasses all around – and headed up the fire road toward the trailhead. A few minutes’ pedaling and pushing gave us the view pictured here: the summit of Monarch Ridge. Pulling in a shred of a Verizon data signal, we downloaded directions for the route – which would prove, quite literally, to be a lifesaver a few hours later.

While the trail started snowy, it was completely rideable. The sticky layer of high-country white stuff allowed surprising traction, and within minutes we were 2 miles into our adventure. That was about when things started to get interesting… The Monarch Crest route, for the most part, follows the Continental Divide Trail (or CDT) from Monarch Pass to Marshall Pass. Our portion? It winds around the windward (Western) peaks of Mt. Peck, Pahlone Peak, Chipeta Mountain and Marshall Pass, predominantly above the tree-line. With precious little shelter from 40+ mile-per-hour winds and sporadic bouts of snow and hail, we trudged along the 9+ miles of trail separating us from the leeward face and the miles of grin-inducing downhill we’d set out to find. In many places, early October snows had drifted to thigh-deep – we mixed slogs through snow with occasional frozen trail riding and crunchy pedaling over the permafrost tundra.

Just prior to reaching Marshall Pass, we reached a spot sheltered enough to allow a few gloves-off minutes, and a short break in the snow allowed a quick photograph:

Just to be clear: our starting trailhead was on the far side of the most distant mountain visible in this photo – at the top of an even higher summit that’s shrouded in clouds. The view is Northerly, so the wind was out of the left side of the frame – the Pacific drainage – the same side of the mountains our trail followed. The only visible trail here drops from left to right, just above the pine forest on the pass.

After clearing Marshall Pass, we found a clearing and took a few minutes to recover. Since the Camelbak hoses were frozen, we took the opportunity to crack into the not-yet-frozen bladders and take on some much-needed hydration, as well as load up on calories and lash our cold-weather shells to our packs. Safely out of the wind, we started descending toward the Silver Creek Trail – which past reviewers assured us was composed of long, sweeping single-track descents.

Before we could reach the Silver Creek Trail, however, we had more dues to pay: another mile of climbing on the Continental Divide Trail that took us nearly an hour, followed by a long uphill fire-road slog to reach the Silver Creek trailhead. By the time we arrived there, the sun was ominously low in the sky – and not knowing how long our dirt road descent into Poncha Springs would be, the risk of not making it back to the car by nightfall was very real. The climbs paid off, though: the final stretch of fire road to the Silver Creek trailhead was a fast descent over drainage ridges that had all three of us airborne, alternating with banked berms around tight corners.

At last, with PJ nursing a slow front tire leak and fighting exhaustion, and me thoroughly motivated to get a message through to Kelly that we were OK, we started down the Silver Creek Trail. The descents were as-promised: fun, fast and technical. Frozen fingers struggling to stay anchored on my ice-cold brake levers, I pushed the Ellsworth and myself as hard as I could – and the O-rings would later indicate I used every bit of its 5+ inches of front and rear suspension travel. Silver Creek offered a vast array of lines, with terrain ranging from glassy, banked, sweeping red clay single track, to tight-packed gravel, to steep roots, rock gardens and switchbacks. At the bottom of the trail – with minutes of dim twilight remaining – we even encountered a trifecta of stream crossings, one of which offered no bridge or stepping stones – we forded this one on nothing but knobby tires.

Finally – 6 hours after we set out – we reached the dirt-paved Silver Creek Lakes Road, descending from 9,000′ to Poncha Springs at 7,500′. With one final food stop to stave off an imminent bonk, we took on energy for the last frigid descent, and beelined for the car. Our way was lit only by moonlight, diffused by a thin layer of cirrus clouds and the headlights of occasional passing cars. Thankfully, Dave had a small headlamp to provide a bit of supplemental illumination, as well. I arrived at the car at 8:03PM – over 7 hours after we started with the sun high overhead – and the others would follow shortly.

All told, taking those first few pedal strokes to set out on the Monarch Crest trail was likely the riskiest, most reckless and dangerous endeavor I’ve ever undertaken. Between high altitudes, bitter cold, unfamiliar (and unforgivingly-rugged) terrain, and complete ignorance of how long or how difficult the trip would be, the adventure could quickly have turned into a nightmare. But it didn’t – we prepared as best we could, we pushed hard and worked through each challenge as we encountered them, and we reached our goal. I’m sure there was as much praying as swearing, and as much fear as confidence, but when we arrived at trail’s end there was nothing but agreement: it was hard, it was scary, and it was as fun as it was insane. And at one point, sometime during the hours we spent plowing across the wind-battered tundra on the Western face of the ridge, the horizon tearing away at 45-degree angles to vertical on either side, I thought back to my first “real” mountain bike ride at Dryer Road Park. If you’d have told me the pursuit of great mountain biking (mixed with a touch of peer pressure and blissful ignorance) would someday take me here, I’d never have believed you…

Featured “IRL” Comment: ”So, you do know how close to death you were?” – Craig

They say that coincidence is when God works a miracle and chooses to remain anonymous, and that serendipity is the art of making an unsought finding. And if there’s ever a time that you want these sorts of things to happen, it’s when you’re trying to piece together a special weekend to celebrate your wedding anniversary. As it happened, Kelly and I found ourselves trying to do just that – just a few weeks ago – as we searched for a B&B within driving distance that might have space available over the weekend that plays host to both Independence Day and Canada Day, depending on which side of the border you’re looking…

As it happened, we found a place, and booked a 3-night stay at the Timberhouse Lodge, nestled at the edge of Prince Edward County, Ontario. After a 5-hour drive with a dinnertime pit stop in Alexandria Bay, we settled into our room, too tired to spend much effort looking through the brochures we’d picked up, or planning the next day’s adventures. At breakfast, a charming retired couple joined us at our table – after the usual greetings and pleasantries, they explained that they were visiting the area for a special concert. Apparently, they were on the mailing list of a local winery and had tickets for a concert. And the artist? Just a singer from nearby Kingston – maybe we’ve heard of her? – her name is Sarah Harmer.

As it turns out, we had heard of the delightful Sarah Harmer. She’s been a darling of local indie station WBER, and even came to Rochester for a concert at the Water Street Music Hall, years before Kelly and I were married – a concert that we attended and enjoyed! So, needless to say, we were excited, and kept our fingers crossed that there’d be a few extra tickets available if we showed up at the winery, smiled real big and maybe bought a few bottles of wine to take home.

Thanks to the efforts of Robert, the owner of Chadsey’s Cairns winery, we were able to get the last two tickets – sealed with a rooster hand stamp. After trying some wine in their barn-turned-tasting-room, we took a quick peek at the venue: a nearby barn lined with chairs and hay bales, complete with a stage, endless strings of tiny white lights, and a cool breeze through the open pasture door.

A couple of hours later, we arrived alongside a hundred-fifty-or-so other (far more invited) guests. Kids climbed around the stacks of hay, parents mingled over glasses of wine, and we found a comfortable bale on which to park. Streams of afternoon sunlight cut through the barn’s siding, painting bright stripes over long-dormant farm equipment and highlighting what little dust floated through the air as if it were fireflies brought in just for this occasion. The concert opened with the lead singer from the Canadian band Bahamas playing a solo set, just as Sarah would not long after. A witty and likable amalgamation of Willy Nelson’s guitar, John Mayer’s voice and lyrics landing somewhere in the triangle connecting the Barenaked Ladies, Jason Mraz and The Weepies, Afie Jurvanen played a set of original songs that made us smile, and set the stage of good vibes perfectly for the rest of the afternoon.

After a short break, Sarah stepped nonchalantly from a small room off to one side, finished in the same slatted siding that was now casting long strips of amber late-afternoon light over the stage. With no fanfare and just a short introduction from the winery’s owner, she started into spinning her unique flavor of indie-infused folk that’s simultaneously brilliant and down-to-earth; through the delightfully-clear concert sound system, the pitch and intonation of her voice would have been at home right alongside Sarah Mclachlan or Regina Spektor. She ran through some favorites (Basement Apartment, I am Aglow), a handful of covers, and even a few new songs – one highlight was her performance of an upbeat commissioned song for the Canadian National Parks Service (presumably) titled “Won’t You Come With Me?“ that put a smile on all our faces. Though she only speaks English, she did impress us with one verse in French after describing the difficulty she had in recording the French version. At another spot, when she forgot a chord for a cover song, she just started experimenting with the audience – eventually someone called out “B-flat!” and as she played it, a satisfied smile washed over everyone and the song casually resumed.

As Afie and Sarah played, I stopped at odd intervals and looked around. I watched people in the audience pouring wine and smiling, watched a small spider work across one beam of sunlight building a web that would have shamed Charlotte herself, watched as kids played on the broad, well-worn floorboards at the performers’ feet, prompting occasional smiles from behind the microphone that tinted the lyrics with joy. It reminded me of an article I read while we were on our honeymoon. I thought, This – right here – is the kind of thing you only read about in magazines and food blogs. It was a rare, special, once-in-a-lifetime treat, indeed.

Ten years ago, I sat in a conference room with a group of ambulance officers and paramedics. My clearance papers were on the table – a collection of training data that, taken together, was the basis for my being allowed to run the show in the back of an ambulance, alone. After I received my clearance that day, the brass left me with a parting thought: Remember: You’re never alone out there. A paramedic unit is just a radio call away. Medical control is on the other end of the phone. Your driver can help you. Ask the dispatcher, and you can even have a helicopter in fifteen minutes. But you’re never alone.

A year ago, I started a new chapter in life – pursuing a master’s degree in software engineering. My reason for returning to school: I could do a clean-sheet design for a piece of electronic hardware, but the same wasn’t so for software – and there was software in nearly everything I was creating. So, I left my cooshy job, turned in my comfy car and spent the year that followed studying my ass off.

As of yesterday, that chapter is over. My degree is finished, 64 credits and 12 months later. And I realize, in much the same way as I was never alone in my decade as a medic, that you never really start from nothing. In the software world – as in the engineering world in general – you build on the shoulders of the great people who came before you. Gauss, Tesla, Maxwell, Ohm and Shockley were all with me as I designed circuits, just as Gamma, Bass, Booch, Pressman and their cohorts have my back when it comes to creating software. Among other realizations, this past year has brought me the understanding that there’s no such thing as a clean-sheet design in the first place.

Next week, I’ll start a new job, working on new projects in the company of new friends and partners in innovation. It’s an exciting time, built not just on the foundation of intellect and creativity, but also on love and support: so my family and friends, and especially my Dad and Kelly, deserve the most thanks of all.

Yeah, I know, I fell off the Project52 wagon. Things have been just a wee bit busy, and I’ll leave the bellyaching to that.

Why? Because in this day and age when it seems like the vast majority of people would rather spend time dreaming up reasons why they can’t do this or that, there’s a never-say-die amputee somewhere out on the continental divide that’s turning people from victims to victors at the helm of a take-no-prisoners off-road Econoline.

When I think of “making something of one’s life” and “people that do meaningful things” I think of people like Lance Blair. While I’d be fine with keeping both my legs, I hope I get the chance to do something half as meaningful as he does. Keep up the great work Lance – you’re an inspiration.

(Hat tip: Engadget. A great read.)

Visually-deemphasized, marginally-interesting note: This is DaveRea.com’s 500th post! As if you cared! Woohoo!

As I recall, it was the early ’90s, I was somewhere between age 10 and the threshold of teen-aged, and was developing an appreciation for the value of loose change. Loose change could buy you baseball cards or candy at the corner store. Loose change could be hooked to batteries with alligator clips in glasses of salt water (wait…don’t all tween males at some point attempt to electrodeposit copper onto paperclips?!). Loose change could be used to test out the snack vending machine you just built out of Construx. Most importantly, loose change could be found between couch cushions, wedged into car seats, rolled beneath appliances and dropped under beds.

And so, on the occasion that my Mom ducked outside to work in her gardens or complete some manner of seemingly-boring, adult, home-ownerly task, if the thought occurred to me, I’d roam around the house collecting change. My brother’s room wasn’t very productive – he had just finished potty-training, after all – and our guest bedroom was occupied far too rarely to be much of a coin-magnet. The couch and easy-chair in our family room were convenient targets, but once in a while, when everyplace else left me empty-handed, I’d head for my parents’ room. It wasn’t off-limits or anything; heck, the door stood open unless they got tired of finding cat hair on their bedspread. And, on occasion, I’d find a coin or two hiding behind the ruffles of their bedskirt, or under the recliner in the corner, or peeking out from the gap between the carpet and the bottom drawers of each dresser.

On these occasions, and indeed any occasion that I had to visit my parents’ bedroom, I noticed that they each had a small wooden box on their dressers. The boxes weren’t the same shape, nor were they the same size, or correlated in any way other than that both parents had one. I noticed the boxes during my covert change-collecting missions. I noticed the boxes when I’d sit with my Dad, listening to TalkNet on his clock radio while he flipped through Corvette magazines. I noticed the boxes when, as a refugee of malfunctioning plumbing, I had to use the master bathroom in the mornings before school for a month or so. And I noticed the boxes when I’d sit with my Mom, talking little but experiencing much, during her final battle with breast cancer in 1998.

Every time I noticed the boxes, I came to the same conclusion: They must be for storing Very Important Things.

Just what Very Important Things were stored in my parents’ wooden boxes wasn’t terribly concerning to me. I didn’t bother looking inside, having already concluded that whatever Very Important Things were there would probably be boring adult things, things that I either didn’t understand or wouldn’t find all that interesting. I memorized the boxes from the outside – Dad’s was a smooth, dovetail-jointed oak box, stained reddish brown, while Mom’s was traditional maple, with an overhanging hinged lid, a yellowish finish and a texture that revealed the roughness of the wood’s grain. I’m sure neither box contained anything unseemly, because neither box bore a lock, and I’m sure my parents would have happily shared the contents with Andy or me had we so much as expressed an interest.

As children tend to do, though, I grew up and moved out. I lived at RIT for five years, my dresser topped only with framed photos, an alarm clock and – in most cases – a few dirty dishes or half-finished electronic projects. Self-absorbed in the process of becoming an adult myself, I didn’t give the boxes any thought, and somewhere along the line moved into an apartment in Rochester, lived there for three years, got married and bought a 3-bedroom postwar-era house in suburbia. It wasn’t until a month or so before our marriage, when I considered what I might want to give Kelly as a wedding gift, that I recalled those constant wooden boxes. After a trip to Craft Company Number 6, I made my decision, and upon our return home the day after our wedding, I gave Kelly a hand-made maple jewelery box, expressly for the purpose of storing whatever Very Important Things our life together might produce.

My wooden box had arrived a few weeks earlier, when I traveled to Pennsylvania over Fathers’ Day weekend to retrieve some of my late Grandfather’s furniture and personal effects. Looking through it today, I suspect I finally understand the sorts of Very Important Things that my parents stored in the boxes I observed so many times as a child. As you go through life, and growing up, and all of the experiences and impracticalities and profundities that inevitably accompany the process of living, you inevitably accumulate Things that have immense value to you, almost no value to anyone else, and no other proper storage place. These are the Things that inhabit the keepsake box on your dresser – sometimes they’re Things you consciously decide to save, and other times they’re Things that only become Very Important by virtue of their deposition in that wooden keepsake box on your dresser, to be rediscovered years later, waiting to help you relive some experience or time or feeling.

Often, I think we inadvertently confuse very important things with Very Important Things. We panic when we misplace our cell phone, we throw a fit when the twenty-something barista uses half-and-half instead of skim in our coffee, or we expend precious frustration on situations we cannot control. We confuse the tools of a life lived effectively with the artifacts of a life lived richly, not realizing that these two mutually-exclusive collections can – and must, but often don’t – coexist in proper proportion. Perhaps these are the times when we ought to pay a visit to those small wood boxes that witness the beginnings and ends of each of our days, for a reminder of what really matters.

The end of October has arrived, and as surely as tonight will bring scores of trick-or-treating young’ns to many, tomorrow will bring the start of NaBloPoMo to the blogosphere. For those who didn’t (wait…who wouldn’t?!) watch the DaveRea.com NaBloPoMo escapades last November, or who just don’t wanna click the link, NaBloPoMo is the National Blog Posting Month, where bloggers with the time and inclination post at least once a day for the entire month of November. Think of it as the “online” version of NaNoWriMo, the National Novel Writing Month.

As much as I’d like to participate in NaBloPoMo this year, I probably shouldn’t get your non-existent hopes up… Because life is a little different going into this November than it was in ’08. The week before Labor Day, I took a leave of absence from my kickass job at GM, said goodbye my cooshy 250 horsepower Saab and took a few final photographs of our home’s former kitchen. In the days that followed, I purchased my awesome brother Andy’s 2-door Honda, tore apart the kitchen, and started my first day back at school. Graduate school. Pursuing a Master’s in Software Engineering (as if I weren’t geeky enough…)

Since then, life has been somewhere between a blur and this:

Despite being welcomed by 4 courses, 16 credit hours, 5 projects and 2 research papers, I think transitioning from “upstanding adult with a full time job” to “grad student living on coffee and pulling all-nighters” has gone quite well. And despite wanting to curl up in a ball and hide a few times, or asking myself “why the hell did I do this?” on several occasions, I’m still convinced it was a good choice. New chapters in our lives wouldn’t be all that interesting without a spectrum of emotions to go with them, and heading back to school is about as easy as it is an exception to that rule – which would be not at all.

So given that our kitchen still isn’t all back-together (but it’s coming along nicely), and my commute takes a little longer now (though I get 35 MPG and I’m thoroughly attached to the adorable Civic), and (oh-by-the-way) I’ve got homework to do, I hope you won’t mind me taking a pass on this year’s NaBloPoMo. I’ll try to keep up with posts – and I’m sure I’ll have some experiences with the new Droid to share in a little under a week – but to assemble a daily post that’s anything approaching intelligent, in the background of exams, Thanksgiving, homework and projects would be about like to trying to clear the leaves from our yard by blowing through a bendy drinking straw.

And with a pair of maples out front that are a decade older than either my wife or me, we have a lot of leaves…

…to these two dear friends…

…who, as I learned last night, got engaged on Christmas morning!

Congratulations Brie and Jason!

It’s that time again – time to “ring in the new year” and celebrate the kickoff of the next 365 days. There will be champagne, noisemakers, food and silly hats. There will be counting and ball-dropping and kissing. With any luck, it’ll be the last year whose double-consecutive-zeros appear in countless pairs of novelty glasses.

There are plenty of bloggers (among others) out there recapping 2008, and probably an equal number making predictions, listing resolutions or setting goals for 2009. Looking back at past DaveRea.com new year’s posts in close proximity to the last three new-year’s celebrations, it’s interesting to observe just how life has evolved.

In lieu of listing all the ways my life has changed over the last year – there are 12 months’ worth of archives to account for that – I’m curious what you see when you look back on 2008. How were you different the last time you tuned in the Times Square new-year’s broadcast? How do you think you might change between now and the final ten-second countdown to 2010?

I think I’ve told Kelly the stories at just about every winter holiday, but – to me at least – they never get old. For some reason, whenever I find my hands coated in cinnamon, sugar and bits of apple, or whenever I feel the texture of floured dough and a rolling pin beneath my hands, it’s just like I’m there. There are certainly stories I tell when – this time around – she rolls her eyes and sighs as if to say “here we go again”, but never my stories about Mom.

As we stood at the counter together last night, peeling and slicing our way through a bag of McIntosh apples for Thanksgiving pies, I recounted the story once again of how my Mom and Aunt used to compete to see who could peel the longest thread of apple skin. They’d pick out the biggest apple they could find, and deftly slide their paring knives around in a meticulous spiral. There were no potato peelers here! Slowly, a pile of ribbonlike apple peel would appear on the countertop, until someone finally exclaimed… “eergh!” as the cut end of the ribbon fell to the counter. We’d all laugh and one sister would congratulate the other – and the piemaking would continue.

Sadly, I never learned the art of marathon apple peeling, though I doubt I’d have the patience for it anyway. But there is another favorite childhood tradition I can share with Kelly in the present-tense. One of the reasons I loved watching (and, in my own small-fry way, helping) my Mom bake her pies was, oddly enough, leftover crust. What didn’t go into transforming her pies into utter works-of-art went back into the bowl … and that’s where I came in. We’d toss some fresh flour on the counter, and hit that tablespoon-or-three of crust dough with the rolling pin. It usually ended up about the size of a saucer, with the thickness of a Christmas cut-out cookie. But what came next was the real magic.

Mom always kept a shaker of cinnamon-sugar in the spice rack, and after brushing a little butter or egg white over my newly-flattened masterpiece, we’d apply a liberal dousing of crunchy-sweet flavor over the top. Along with the pie, my doughy little confection would go into the oven, to emerge (a looonnng ten minutes later) as an inimitable sweet treat.

Well, almost inimitable – because last night, after we assembled our crumb-top apple pie, we managed to have just enough crust left over for a little trip down memory lane.

This Thanksgiving, I’m grateful for memories like these, and for a loving family to share them with. I’m sure there are thousands more, shrink-wrapped just beneath the surface, waiting for the right touch, the right smell, the right place to bring them out. I’m thankful for those, too.