Leadville

Got here on Tuesday... relieved to be looking at the world without the windshield barrier. This town is pretty special to me and I'm glad to be spending a short stretch here. Besides the natural attractions (10,000 feet, big mountains everywhere) I think Leadville's appeal lies in its personality. It's hard to describe but I like to think of it as a ghostown/shitshow/throwback mountain town and I mean that as a compliment. Coming from the sterilized culture in Telluride that seems as if the "locals" are all following a guide on how to summer(yes summer as a verb, you won't hear that in Leadville) in the mountains, Leadville is a real kick in the pants. For comparison, Telluride has glossy magazines sitting on newsstands around town dedicated to architecture and interior design on the new "cabins" in town while Leadville apparently has a problem with too many loose pitbulls running the streets and attacking people. No crazy Leadville story would surprise me. Obviously I love it here. I'm sleeping in the peace and quite of my friends' (Jeff and Bonnelle) driveway and am making an effort to lay around a lot. Oh yea, and I am also working my way through a tour of the LT100's greatest hits, having gone up Hope Pass (as in HOPE your lungs don't quit and make you walk on what is a very runnable climb) Wednesday and the powerline trail today. I wish over and over again that Auburn had at least one tough 4+ mile hill, as the combination of the length and average altitude on these climbs is beating me up. Difficult as mountain running is here, it's the little things that get to you. Walking up some of these hills in town as I wander in the afternoons takes way more lung power than it oughta. I have some moderately more ambitious plans for the next couple days before I head to Boulder so hopefully they all work out.