Tag: travel

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my first rodeo

Image via Flicker user chispita_666.
Image via Flicker user chispita_666.

When I woke up this morning, I remembered the strangest snippet of a dream I had last night.  Jon and I were at a rodeo, walking around “backstage,” petting horses and meeting cowboys.  And one cowboy would just not stop making fun of me because I was wearing flip flops.

Now, I spent many years of my girlhood riding horses, and though I tended more toward equestrian than cowgirl, I know enough not to wear flip flops to a rodeo.  My husband even teases me because I kind of like the smell of horse manure because it reminds me of the smell of a barn: grassy and leathery and dusty with hay.

If I were to get all psycoanalysis-y on my dream, I’d say it’s really about an upcoming trip we’re taking.  My husband is about to turn 30, and as part of the celebration, we’re taking a weekend trip to NYC with our two best friends.  I’ve never been before, and I guess you could say it’s sorta like going to my first rodeo.

I’ve been to London, where I was mistaken as a local several times by fellow tourists.  I’ve been to Washington D.C.  But I’ve never been to the city that never sleeps. Mostly, I’m a girl who grew up in a small town who has not-too-often traveled out of the South.

I do not want to be a lame tourist.  So, I’m counting on anyone who reads this blog to help me figure out what the “flip flops” would be concerning this rodeo.  I mean, I know not to wear a fanny pack, a scrunchi (thanks SATC!), or mom jeans.  My friend who is going with us said she was planning to pack skinny jeans, tees, and scarves, but I don’t want to be balls hot, so I was thinking I’d stick with my usual summer uniform of solid jersey dresses with ballet flats.  Will this get me made fun of by “cowboys”?

Not to mention, beyond figuring out what to wear, I have to figure out what we’re gonna DO!  I want to really plan ahead so as not to waste a MINUTE of this trip, so I need suggestions of what to do!  Our group will include two girls and two guys.  I’m a literature nerd.  My friend is a design nerd and music buff and tends toward the hipster end of the spectrum.  My husband thinks he wants to go to a Yankees game, which shocked me considering he’s a Rockies fan and I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard him rant some variation on the theme “teams like the Red Sox and Yankees buy all their wins and they don’t have to nurture talent from the ground up and they’re everything that’s wrong with baseball.”  Anyway, suggestions are much appreciated.

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fly away home

Ladybug, ladybug, fly away home; your house is on fire and your children are gone!

Last week my husband and I flew away home to Colorado because his grandfather passed away.  On our first day there, we decided to take a drive to the mountains; my husband thought it would be a fitting tribute to his grandfather who loved to drive in the mountains, though he assured me that our drive would be less terrifying than a typical drive with Grandpa, who enjoyed driving quite fast on mountain roads.  We had initially planned to drive up to Mount Evans, only to get there and realize it was closed Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays in July for road work.  So we turned around and headed back to Denver.

On the highway back to Denver is a sign that says “Buffalo Herd Overlook.”  Naturally, this lil Bufflo wanted to see some buffalos.  So we got off at the exit and drove around looking for a spot to spy some bison.  This really meant driving all over Genesee Mountain, as the signs for the overlook were somewhat less than clear.  We’d drive up the mountain a while, and then get out and look around and try to see some big brown, wooly beasts, then strike out, get back in the car, drive some more, and repeat.

DSC05254Finally, we got to the top of the mountain, and we still hadn’t seen any buffalo.  We decided to get out of the car anyway, and headed toward a flag planted on the very top of the mountain.  As we reached it, we noticed that the air was buzzing with small insects.  “Wow, this place has lots of ladybugs!” I said to Jon.  A man wearing overalls and standing on a rock nearby said we should walk over to a nearby tree if we REALLY wanted to see them.  We headed toward the tree, and slowly, what looked like orange bark turned out to be crawling.  Crawling with hundreds of tiny ladybugs.  They were swarming on every surface imaginable.  Another old man, who seemed about a million years old and was hobbling around the mountain with a walking stick, told us that he’s seen this phenomenon a few times before.  He acted like we weren’t seeing the craziest thing ever.

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But seriously folks, millions and millions of LADYBUGS! IT WAS THE CRAZIEST THING EVER! We sat for a while and watched them swarm and crawl over rocks and trees and grass.  Eventually I think they began to accept us as part of the scenery, because they slowly started to land on us! That’s pretty much when what had been the “cutest infestation ever” began to seem creepy.  I imagined my entire body covered in ladybugs.  I had visions of that scene from “The Mummy” where the scarabs swarm out of the mummy’s mouth, only with ladybugs flying out of MY mouth.  My skin began to crawl.  So with that, we snapped a few pictures and headed out.

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The next day, we picked Jon’s sister and her husband and daughter up from the airport after they arrived home from a vacation in Chicago, and we told them about the ladybugs.  “Crazy!” his sister said, “We actually saw that on the national news when we were in Chicago!” Sure enough:

And it gets even crazier! In preparation for Grandpa’s funeral, we all pulled out old family albums and were flipping through them.  And in an album from 1987, we found photos Grandma and Grandpa had taken of the exact same type of ladybug swarm on the exact same location: Genesee Mountain.  So, if you’re curious about seeing millions of ladybugs, and you’re wondering where to go (the hermits in the news reports seem not to want other people to come see them), Genesee Mountain is a public place, and you should go check them out!

And if you’re curious about the nursery rhyme at the beginning of this post, here’s the scoop: “Farmers knew of the Ladybird’s value in reducing the level of pests in their crops and it was traditional for them to cry out the rhyme before they burnt their fields following harvests ( this reduced the level of insects and pests) in deference to the helpful ladybird.”

UPDATE: found a source as to the “why” of the ladybug swarm.

The insects are out in force in the Front Range region of Colorado thanks to increased rainfall during spring and early summer. The additional moisture has made their food supply plentiful so their numbers have increased by 15 to 20 percent.

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bufflo roams back home

a pic from our trip: a weed near Red Rocks in CO.
a pic from our trip: a weed near Red Rocks in CO.

So, I’m back from a week spent in Colorado with family, and I’m catching up on all the things I’ve missed out on during what was probably a much needed break from the internets and news.  Seriously, my Google Reader had “1000+” items in it when I got on for the first time this morning since Tuesday (besides a little BlackBerry powered browsing while sitting in airports).  And since I’m motoring through it, I figured I’d put a few of the hits right here.  Sorta like a less-timely Bufflo Tips.  I will probably be blogging more about my trip later, but for now, enjoy some linkylinkys.

First up: I love Jenny Lewis’ video for her song See Fernando.  She’s definitely a girl crush of mine.  If someone would PLEASE teach me how to embed non-YouTube videos on WordPress, it would be much appreciated.  In the meantime, you have to watch this 60’s spy-thriller music video here.

Next, check out the trailer for No Impact Man (and Family)’s documentary!  I’ve loved following their journey on the blog and look forward to seeing the film.

  • We have been out of town for a week.  Duh.  We were staying with family who probably had every toiletry that I could possibly need and thus could have preventing me from needing to pack any.  We didn’t check any bags.  We were gone less than a week.  I overpacked.  It’s chronic.  I should have read this post, from one of my fave bloggers, Decorno.
  • Journalism great Walter Cronkite died this week, and Glenn Greenwald points out that most of the journalists marking his passing and running retrospectives are nowhere NEAR the journalist Cronkite was, and are opposed to doing the kind of reporting he did.  Greenwald writes:

    Cronkite’s best moment was when he did exactly that which the modern journalist today insists they must not ever do — directly contradict claims from government and military officials and suggest that such claims should not be believed. These days, our leading media outlets won’t even use words that are disapproved of by the Government.

  • I used to respect John McCain, even if I didn’t always agree with him, until he ran such a despicable campaign for the presidency and chose an idiot to be his running mate.  Now, he’s losing even more points from me because he’s blocking nominees to the Department of the Interior because he wants a copper mine to be allowed in a national forest.
  • Via Jezebel, I never thought Charlie Brown could be creepy.  Turns out he can.
  • Nate Silver notes that Sarah Palin really *isn’t* all that much of a fundraiser.
  • Meanwhile, in my absence, Palin decided to try to string a few coherent sentences together (a huge undertaking from the Queen of Fragments, though I’m guessing this piece was heavily edited by someone with at least a bare-bones knowledge of basic grammar) in opposition to cap and trade in the Washington Post.  Alex Koppelman of Salon’s War Room blog summarized the op ed thusly:

    While the piece is certainly more coherent than her resignation announcement or some of her past interviews, the article makes numerous unsubstantiated claims and reads like a greatest hits list of Republican talking points on the Waxman-Markey energy and climate bill currently working its way through Congress.

    The entire piece refuting Palin’s points is worth a read if you haven’t seen it yet. I like this part: “She does not rely on any scientific evidence to back up any of the bold statements she makes in the piece.” BECUZ SARAH PALIN DON’T NEED UR FANCY BOOK LERNIN’.  ALSO, SY-ENCE IS FUR ATHEEISTS.  Another good reaction to the Palin op ed can be found at The Daily Beast, written by Edward Markey, of Waxman-Markey fame.  I think I’ll trust the chairman of the Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming and the Energy and Environment Subcommittee of the Energy and Commerce Committee over a less-than-one-term governor with a degree in communications that apparently failed to give her a basic grasp of Standard English any day.

  • Ezra Klein says Palin probably didn’t write it.  She signed her name to it.  He’s probably right.  He also writes:

    The term “global warming” is absent. So is “climate change.” It’s a bit like an op-ed that attacks firefighters for pointing pressurized water cannons at everything but never mentions fires, or a column that condemns surgeons for sticking sharp things into people but never mentions illness.

  • Conor Clark at The Daily Dish says “Palin’s op-ed displays an ignorance for the subject so profound it’s almost gutsy. Almost.”
  • Obama nominated a Surgeon General who isn’t Sanjay Gupta and who seems to be an all-around awesome lady.  Apparently some haters think she’s too fat to be Surgeon General, 4rlz.  Frances Kissling of Salon’s Broadsheet addresses those haters.
  • Meanwhile Ezra Klein has a sensical piece about why we as a society should worry about obesity.
  • So, a bunch of “Blue Dogs” are threatening to derail health reform.  Nate Silver points out that this could hurt them in the end, as their districts have higher rates of uninsurance than most.  He writes:

    Mike Ross of the Arkansas 4th, where almost 22 percent of the population is uninsured? This is a bill designed to help districts like his. And the same goes for most of the other Blue Dogs. A lot of the time, these guys are stuck in a tough spot between their party and their constituents. Here, those interests are mostly aligned.

  • Yay for good news when it comes to SAVING THE ANTIBIOTICS.
  • And finally, check out this piece on How Outlet Malls Rip Us Off, and maybe next time you head to the outlets, take a smart phone so you can check reference prices online and find out what retail price REALLY is.