Moving On

I'm definitely not on the Western Slope anymore, so WesternSlopeExile is going to go dormant. You can still follow all the transitions, observations, season changes, and discoveries. Change those bookmarks to:

www.bozemanographer.blogspot.com

My three years of western slope life were amazing. It's hard to even remember life before the move. Colorado has been home for most of my life. I try to leave but can never find a place as good. How can you top the scale of Crested Butte, the high desert and orchards of Paonia, the vibe of Fort Collins, Denver's proximity to the goods? Montana is a very close rival, and has it's own twist. Nature is a conduit for the connection between God and man, and presents a unique interface as the geography and culture changes. Montana is vast, rugged, wild, and a little unnerving.

I am always investigating the question, how important is our geography to our happiness? Why do I need open space and topography? I don't know why it's important, I just know that it is. And, how important is career? Is it crazy to leave family and friends behind to make a living? I feel like my adult life is a pie cut into thirds. One piece is career/purpose, another place/adventure/discovery/recreation, and the third is family/friends/relationship. The three share mutual exclusivity as well as some interdependence and commonality - meaning that I can get two of them down at one time, but I've never been able to get three. When my career is on fire, it's not always in the place I want to live; sometimes I'm in a place I want to live and my career is going, but then I'm isolated from friends and family. I spent a lot of years being bitter about all of this, anxiously wondering where and when it all comes together. I've said that I'm more about the question than the answer. I don't always live that, but lately it's coming true. Bozeman is not about fixing problems. I reluctantly admit that there is no perfect place. It's about experiencing a beautiful, wild place; taking an active role in a company that strives to be different; righting my career; schralping some fatpow. Here's the real deal (and pardon me for getting all spiritual, my roots are showing):

Jeremiah 29:7 "seek the peace and prosperity of the city to which I have carried you into exile. Pray to the LORD for it, because if it prospers, you too will prosper."

Move on over to the new blog.

Pump It Up

So I'm driving to REI to look at collar heights on Backpacking boots - I know, who really does that on a Friday night besides footwear developers - and I see an Indian restaurant. One of the hardest things about living in places like Paonia, Crested Butte, and Salida is the absence of Indian food. So I'm stoked. I'm smiling really big and I turn to drive past it just to make sure I remember where it is. I circle around the block to get back onto N. 19th street, headed toward the highway exit and big box stores and I catch a flash out of the corner of my eye. It's a kid launching himself into the air on a dirt-jumper. Not only did I find Indian food, I found a cultural center of bike sub-culture. I walk up and start talking to the riders who are MSU students. I figured they'd either brush me off or wonder what the old guy is doing at the pump track without a bike; but, as people who ride bikes generally are, they were all super friendly. They asked me where I'm from and I said Crested Butte and had instant credibility and was granted temporary, peripheral bro-ness. These guys were destroying it with a really fluid style - tail whips, creative lines, and soft landings. They told me about some downhill trails outside of town. It's a scenario that is universal to mountain towns where the guy starts talking and all the other guys looks at him like he's crazy to give away the goods. He hesitates, sizes me up, and offers up the name of a trail - Leverage Canyon - and then stops short after saying something like "there's some other cool stuff around if you look for it". I'll have to spend some time here before they tell me where the real goods are. All the way to REI I envisioned a pump track session followed by some Tikka Masala, then spinning home on a Shonky in a ridiculously low gear with the saddle all the way down.





I get to REI and spend some time scoping out shoes. It's funny how all the brands "borrow" from each other. Not a lot of innovation out there. I did see some very interesting stuff though. Teva has some beautiful women's autumn boots - calf high, nice full grain leathers, beautiful patterns. Something about them felt very familiar when I realized they were almost identical to what we were doing at Ulu before they got bought out - with the cork/EVA midsole even. Hmmm. TNF has a shoe called the Snow Sneaker that is very cool. The upper is similar to a standard 5.10 or Patagonia causual/outdoor upper, but it has aggressive, spike like outsole lugs (without being clunky), a burly textured toe bumper, and 100g Primaloft insulation - all without being bulky. It looks like a normal shoe, but it's a winterized tenni. On top of it all the quarter has a beautifully executed way of incorporating a pattern split (pattern splits are used to reduce material usage but are often hidden under other pieces or are just exposed and look ugly). Man, I try to hate that brand, but with products like that it's difficult.