Occupation of Independence

Ouray, CO. So why would a reputed curmudgeon, who typically belittles postcard scenery, bother with this postcard, taken today on a hike with both of my dogs? The key word is 'both'. My little poodle is acting older now that he is almost 16 and a half years old. That's like a person in their eighties. So I haven't been taking him on hikes with my younger dog, Coffee Girl. Today we actually drove (blush) the van up to a trailhead. The little poodle was so frisky that he wouldn't stay in the van and sleep like I expected. He insisted on going on the hike. I had to improvise a leash, since his collar wasn't even installed. Instead of tiring in five minutes, he charged the leash, and acted like he could go for hours. This isn't the first time that I've underestimated him. By the time we crossed the creek and got back in the van, I was getting pretty misty-eyed just thinking about the wonderful life we've had together and how, miraculously, there

It's rare for me to experience gadget lust. Normally all the sex appeal has gone flat for the boring ol' gadget by the time this late adopter gets one. But recently I've gone crazy reading about Tablets; not the iShackle line of products made by Apple, of course. Their gadgets are for aspirational consumers, whereas I am a maximum bang-for-the-buck, no-nonsense type of customer. This is about the Toshiba Thrive tablet, 10 inches, with the Android 3.1 (Honeycomb) operating system. The Thrive is distinguished from all the other Android tablets by its user-removable battery and its ports: it has a full-sized USB port, a slot for a full-sized SD card, and a full-sized HDMI port. Thus, the Toshiba Thrive tablet is the one most suitable for functioning as a substitute for a mini-notebook computer. So you can see why I got excited. Then I searched for Android versions of the programs that I use now on my Paleozoic laptop: Firefox with AdBlock, Picasa on disk (not in the cloud)

Artists, artists everywhere! From the northern Rio Grande Valley, Sante Fe, Taos, Abiquiu and Ghost Ranch, and into Colorado, the whole region is infested with artists. I'm even squatting on the driveway providing driveway security services at the home of a couple Colorado artists. You'd think that art was a major part of the economy. Since when did Americans become so arts-oriented? If a traveler takes travel seriously -- that is, if travel is more than trivial sightseeing and generating digital postcards -- he needs to ask: what is this place good for? What is special about it? Then he needs to do some thinking about a topic that the location brings up. I reread Tolstoy's What is Art? (*) Before showing some juicy quotes from that book, let's first try to imagine an elderly Tolstoy -- with his beard and earnestness, now an ex-novelist, working to reform Christianity, and totally outside the intellectual mainstream of Europe -- walking through an art festival in

...comin' home, to a place he'd never been before. Or something like that. Being back on the road I am mindful of doing things better; hence all the preaching about being flexible and avoiding rigid habits when traveling. There is a fair bit of adaptation necessary here in Ouray, although the deck was stacked in my favor by the generosity of my "clients", Mark and Bobbie Johnson, over at Box Canyon Blog . When walking the sidewalks in downtown Ouray, it is fun to imagine what various people like best about a scenic mountain town. I almost feel sorry for the bourgeois matrons from a big city; they must be bored to tears with nature and scenery, after a few minutes. When I watch them it is always with an impish smirk on my face. Think of the classic Disney movie, Homeward Bound (The Incredible Journey) , in which a cat, Sassie (voiced over by Sally Fields), and two male dogs try to make a long distance journey over the mountains to get back to their people. At o