Lafayette, Colorado cars and coffee - first Saturday of the month rain or shine

Get your ‘Ass up the Pass’ is the rallying cry for those who like to jog up a pass with a burro.  In lieu of watching Sunday’s F1 we did this.  Lots of fun.

Nice evening drive from Buena Vista to FairPlay.

Once again spending the weekend camping here in Colorado.  What a great state to live in.  I am thankful that most tourists go to Rocky Mountain National Park in Estes, Colorado and make that their Colorado experience.  Leaves the rest of the glorious state to us natives!!

Fairplay is right at 10,000 ft ASL.  From here there any number of places one can go including Alma at 11,000 ft and Breckenridge.   

Our trip to Breckenridge was simply to go to the distillery.  As is typical for most distilleries, they start with Vodka and Gin as there is no maturation time like Whiskey or Bourbon.  I favored the 86 proof straight bourbon.  It was $44 which is average.  They had a single barrel for $199 which is way too much to spend.  They also had Scandinavian Ocuvite which is horrible in my opinion.  Not sure why as I can imagine that it has limited demand.

Airstream rally to Steamboat Springs.  There was the usual eating and games (corn hole which I don’t play) .  We were able to go to dinner with two other couples to celebrate our July anniversaries.  Also the same couples invited us onto Steamboat Lake on a covered pontoon boat which was glorious.

Spent several days in Upstate NY - first we were north of Syracuse at Oneida Lake and then onto my son’s wedding in Saratoga Springs.  Here are the pics from the lake adventure

Kris at the BBQ

Hilary and Lula

George

Vicki and George

Kris

Vicki and Hilary

Oliver

Sadie

Oliver

Oliver and Hilary

George

My audience was not happy that I didn’t feature any photos from my heart surgery.  I am making amends by showing you my Gall Bladder as it is being removed from me.  This happened about 5 weeks after the heart surgery.  There will however be NO photos of the scars left behind- even I don’t like to look at them!

In a fit of defiance I decided right before going in for open heart surgery to dump Adobe.  Mostly it was because of their subscription model and the word that they were going to start charging $20 instead of $10 for the LR and PS subscription.

To say the least it was NOT easy to get away from them:

I am still working my way thru how to use Capture One.  I agree with the experts that is a better platform in many ways.  I’m not sorry I ditched Adobe. I thought on this 4th of July I would send this message of independence!!

During our remodel we lost the use of our kitchen…… who am I kidding we don’t HAVE a kitchen now.  We are using the ‘studio’ as our kitchen.  It works reasonably well.  Here’s a shot of the prep area.

This by the way is the patron saint of remodeling.  He’s grumpy looking although so far our project is going along fairly well.

Last time I was here was May 4th.  On the 7th I had open heart surgery to replace a bad valve and two vessel bypass.  This takes a bit to recover from.  Then on June 13 I had to have my gall bladder removed because of attacks.  A week later I was back in the hospital with pancreatitis which is not an uncommon complication of the gall bladder removal.  I am back in the saddle albeit without much strength of stamina.  In honor of being released from hospital….

Without giving out names or locations, we were treated to a viewing of a most awesome Airstream Storage solution - put the AS into your house and use it for the bedrooms.  This has to be one of the most unique builds that I’ve seen.  I guess there are those homes where someone has their Porsche in the house but the scale of this is amazing.

Original Grundig Tube Stereo

Mid Century Lighting

MCM Sconce

Aluminum Sprial to the 2nd floor

2nd floor overlook

Sample of how some people have really taken up the charge to redesign their Airstreams - another way to sink more money into your Aluminum Can

Todd’s VinStream

Vintage Trailer - Rob’s

On the BarStream

On the BarStream

Janelle and Bob’s rig

Base Camp - interesting concept

Annual gathering of Airstreams for the Maintenance Rally where the experts in the group talk about how to maintain your rig.  Very instructive.  I didn’t  go preferring to try to learn a new piece of software.  I know I missed something important but I’ll just have to learn it the old fashioned way - which is to say I will make the mistake and then learn the concept. 

Out on the eastern plains of Colorado there are many small towns.   Hugo is one such town that I go thru often.  It has about 600 residents and is the Lincoln County seat.   They even have a building on the historical list - their swimming pool  which pays Art Deco homage to an ocean liner

Not on any registry is their drag racer on top of a garage

Part of RTD’s expansion of the Light Rail system in Denver, the G line goes from Wheat Ridge where I live to Union Station in the heart of town.  $3 and 20 minutes later you are in LoDo .

Lenticular Clous

This is the anniversary of the disaster in Chernobyl.  The largest of its kind in history.  I just finished the book and have to say it appears to be the authoritative tome on the matter written for the lay public.  Incompetence, arrogance and the bravery of a few Russian patriots are on display. Highly recommend this book!

A companion book which also just hit the shelves is Death and Decay by David McMillan which is more of a photographic exploration of just that - the death of the towns around ground zero and regrowth, albeit highly radioactive. Gorgeously printed by Steidl.

Previously I spoke about the Contax line of cameras.

I decided that I should get a Contax TvsII.  I have come up with my shooting scheme for Japan - which I am hoping to visit in October. 

Simply put it will be my new Pixel 3 phone camera plus a film camera.  The TvsII is the perfect small portable camera albeit a slow lens on the upper end of the zoom.  It has a flash so you won’t miss anything important.  I think a film camera in Japan is totally appropriate given their undying devotion to the film camera and to film.  I have done this a lot lately - meaning using both film and digital.  I’m anxious to get over there to try it out.

Good Witch

Tazwell

Scala is an Agfa black and white slide film. Not easy to find and even harder to find a place to develop.  Hard to shoot as it really accentuates the contrast.

From the 2000 Oz Fest in Chittenango, NY.

picked up this camera in Ex+ condition for only $69.  The Contax 167 is a marvelous camera combining all the bells and whistles available to Kyocera in Japan AND the use of Zeiss lenses.  Some of these older film cameras have skyrocketed in price while others seem to languish like the 167.  The Contax G2 and its lenses are now hard to touch without dropping serious coin.  Part of it is that the G2 is cute and has been featured in a number of ad campaigns recently. 

Fairplay, CO

Fairplay, CO

Fairplay, CO

Shot on a round trip tour of Fairplay, Hartsel, Wilerson Pass and then home thru Colorado Springs.  The 167 worked flawlessly.  It also has the advantage of using just 4 AAA batteries to power it rather than some esoteric battery.