So I know I promised to do a new entry real soon... which was over three weeks ago, but I guess I got a little busy. And I never really liked blogging anyways as I stated at the start of all of this, but I will entertain you all with one more - and maybe some more later on but no promises this time - before I leave.
The last few weeks have been quite eventful. In short, I went hiking in the Colorado National Monument, Arches National Park, and Canyonlands. I also went on a few more hikes including the Maroon Bells and hiked to the summit of my first 14,000 ft mountain (fourteener for those who know the lingo). Additionally, I just finished up my sub-consulting job for the City of Aspen. And now I am spending my last weekend in Aspen (might go white water rafting on the Colorado River tomorrow) and then leave for Denver on Monday. The following day I fly out and head to Asia (!). While I am excited to leave Colorado and eventually be back on the east coast to see all of my friends from home and school, I definitely will miss some of the great people I met out here that have made me feel at home. I surely won't forget this summer and it has been really fun being out.
But much fun is to be had over the next 2 weeks. As I said before, I leave for Asia on Tuesday and I'll be getting into Bangkok, Thailand on Wednesday and finally seeing my girlfriend who I have really missed :) After a couple days there, we head to Cambodia to tour around Angkor Wat and Siem Reap for a weekend. Lastly we fly to Phuket to finish off our vacation along the beaches. It's gonna be awesome :D
Then it is back to Denver to retrieve my car and begin the road trip back to east coast with stops in Topeka, Kansas City, St Louis, Louisville, Cincinnati, Columbus, Pittsburgh, and Hershey until finishing back in Philly/NJ. By the end of the road I will have racked up somewhere around 25,000 miles of travel (air and land) for the summer. Putting my frequent flier miles to work no doubt.
Phew, so that was the most shortened version I could do about all my goings on. Alrighty, I'll update this if possible on the trip but like I said, no promises. Later!
Jacob
Saturday, August 6, 2011
Thursday, July 14, 2011
New Entry Coming Soon
Heading out to the deserts of Western Colorado and Utah this weekend. Will update all the fun travel tid-bits when I get back! So something to look forward to. Also, if I'm up for it, I'm gonna try working on a blog about my work and just being out in the real world and away from school for the first time.
Have a good weekend everyone!
Have a good weekend everyone!
Wednesday, July 6, 2011
Aspen Goes Red, White, and Blue
I’m starting to realize that blogging becomes kind of taxing, so an update once a week should suffice. So some topics this week to cover are work stuff, adventures, and my 4th of July weekend (hence the title of this entry). I’m also glad I’m taking a lot of pictures because not only are they fun to look at now and down the line, but they also remind me of actually what I was doing earlier in the week. I’m also starting to realize that in Aspen it helps to know someone with money because it makes the times here that much more enjoyable (and that is an understatement), but more on that later.
While I’m in Aspen mainly for work, it also part vacation. I wouldn’t be doing my stay here justice if I wasn’t taking time out to have fun. But work has been going really well and so far I haven’t had any second thoughts on not continuing in the planning profession. I guess the thing with planning and is that while there may be time when you are not liking what you are doing or are fed up with the plans you work on never coming into the light, planning is so interdisciplinary that you are always finding something interesting to work on or learn about. The past two weeks at work I have had to look into Aspen’s green building portfolio and put together a document and description of all the green programs that Aspen has in place… which is quite a substantial and sometimes dizzying list. I feel that they need to consolidate their efforts into a more streamlined approach that everyone can easily get information on and participate in. Aspen is very progressive with their green movement and I believe they are heading in the right direction… but maybe the biggest problem is the unique nature of the town and the personal values that come with it. It’s not often you come across a city where you have such profound tourism located in a small mountain city that’s a celebrity getaway but also with a mix of regular working class people. It also means there is a lot of leeway since almost no matter what kind of new regulations you implement in Aspen, people will still come to visit and live here since it’s such a desirable place to be whether there is a blizzard outside or it’s 80 degrees and sunny. People will bend but not break. I understand why people think planners are communist or socialists or whatever; because it seems that we are trying to interfere in people’s everyday lives as we stuff our agenda “down people’s throats” and make them conform to our values/codes/standards. That’s the more extreme end of things but as planners know, there is always an opposition, no matter how small, to any plan and it becomes a witch hunt due to the loudest person being the person with the most attention paid to in the media. But I digress. Work is good, and right I’m putting together a list of communities, whether they are big cities or ski towns in other countries, to contact for information on their green initiatives. So I’ll surely update my progress as things move along.
Now on to the more fun stuff. This weekend I went on another hike, this time to the Frying Pan (that’s what it’s called) which is just a specific part of the Rocky Mountain range. The drive in was spectacular. We weaved through a national forest filled with pine trees, towering mountains, and a rapid river. There was even a smattering of rock formations more reminiscent of Utah or Arizona… but Colorado has them to. We also passed this huge reservoir in the middle of the valley which I’ll talk about in a bit. The original plan was to hike this specific trail up to a mountain lake, but as things have seemingly been going with the weather, we came across a stream in the beginning of the hike that turned into a river due to the enormous amounts of snowmelt that has been taking place. Pretty much, the fast flowing river was a sign that things would be much worse nearer the top, so we abandoned our efforts there and switched our efforts to an easier trail in a different part of the range. The subsequent hike we took was an easy hike and led through the forest to a different lily pond mountain lake. It was a nice and quiet lake but neither the weather nor the fish were cooperating.
Since this hike didn’t take as long as the other one would, we had some extra time to do some different activities. We decided to head back to the aforementioned reservoir (Reudi Reservoir). I’ll let the pictures do it justice but it was almost like an American version of a fjord. Everyone was out on the banks of reservoir relaxing, barbequing, sailing, water skiing, and swimming. It’s times like those that I wish I owned a kayak. So even though the initial hike didn’t work out, it turned out to be a great time.
Plain and simple… July 4th was amazing! So here are some details haha. In the late morning, I headed down to Aspen with my cousin to catch the 4th of July parade. Half the county must have been there because it was packed and the parade was no joke either. It went for well over an hour and that’s with my cousin and I walking against the parade. As the legend Mitch Hedberg would say, “If you walk the opposite way through the parade, it’s like watching the parade in fast forward!” It was actually quite an impressive parade with a wide array of things to see and of course it had a lot of patriotism. “IF YOU DON’T LIKE AMERICA THEN YOU CAN GEEEEET OUT!” After the parade we met up with some of my cousin’s friends for some free food, beer, and music at the Aspen Art Museum’s annual 4th of July BBQ. After getting our fill, we all headed out to Stillwater which is a bridge that goes over this river/creek. It’s one of the local hotspots, mainly because you can jump off the bridge into the water below. Bathing suits you say? Who needs bathing suits? Yup, we jumped right in. It was a solid 10-15 foot drop into some icy cold water. Totally worth the rush from jumping down though. After a bit of air drying we headed back into town to check out some of the activities going on. After getting some dinner (and I must admit I had chicken wings outside of Buffalo and feel somewhat ashamed of it even though the wings were pretty decent) we killed some time around town going into random shops, including one place to get myself some new shorts due to a mishap with the pair of shorts I was wearing that had an excessive amount of skin showing haha.
So in Aspen, it pays to know people with money in the bank. Thanks to some solid friend making by my cousin the year prior, we had some friends who invited us up to their timeshare in Aspen. Those not from the Aspen area won’t recognize the name The Residences at Little Nell, but all the locals know that it’s where people with money and celebrities stay at this hotel. Anyways my cousin’s two friends (from Louisiana) let us into the hotel and up to the rooftop to watch the fireworks. It was straight pimp on top of this place. Huge comfy chairs, open fire pits with s’mores ingredients (and other assortments of food and drinks), heated towels and robes, and rooftop hot tubs and pools populated the rooftop. Let’s just say I will probably never have enough money to afford a timeshare at this place. Luckily these friend’s parents did and by the sound of their own charter flight to take them to and from Aspen and Louisiana, I’d say they were doing just fine. I got to meet some cool little kids from Australia too and it made me want to have my own Australian kid. They definitely have some of the coolest accents. Jimmie Johnson from NASCAR was up there too. Anyways, I thoroughly enjoyed watching the fireworks from a hot tub on top of roof that had a front row seat view to the mountain on which the fireworks were being launched from. PIMP!
After the fireworks we went back into town to check out some more of the activities… mainly live music and other street activities. Aspen definitely has cool scene and I’m even starting to enjoy some folk and bluegrass type music. After that, we went back to Little Nell to check out the room our friends were staying in. Well, room is the correct term… suite better suits it. It was definitely the biggest hotel room I had ever been in, with a huge kitchen with top of line equipment, a fully decked out living room, and some really nice bedrooms and bathrooms. And one of their family friends bought a ton of top shelf liquor that was up for grabs, so I helped myself to some Crown Royal Reserve. It was delicious! Even more delicious enjoying it up at the rooftop hot tub and pool later that night. So yeah, it was a pretty solid night haha, and I believe you have to enjoy Aspen as a high roller to really appreciate what the city has to offer… if you have money that is. Well, there is actually a lot to do even if you don’t have millions of dollars but it’s definitely nice living the high life every now and again.
On a parting note, Christopher Titus just had his new special, Neverlution, aired on Comedy Central. Definitely check it out if you have the opportunity. He is one of the best comedians out there. Also speaking of television, some of the shows I’m watching this summer are the new episodes of Futurama (Comedy Central), Louie (FX – Louis C.K. is another one of the best comedians out there), and Wilfred (FX – Starring Elijah Wood as a man who sees a dog as an actual man in a dog suit).
Peace out!
While I’m in Aspen mainly for work, it also part vacation. I wouldn’t be doing my stay here justice if I wasn’t taking time out to have fun. But work has been going really well and so far I haven’t had any second thoughts on not continuing in the planning profession. I guess the thing with planning and is that while there may be time when you are not liking what you are doing or are fed up with the plans you work on never coming into the light, planning is so interdisciplinary that you are always finding something interesting to work on or learn about. The past two weeks at work I have had to look into Aspen’s green building portfolio and put together a document and description of all the green programs that Aspen has in place… which is quite a substantial and sometimes dizzying list. I feel that they need to consolidate their efforts into a more streamlined approach that everyone can easily get information on and participate in. Aspen is very progressive with their green movement and I believe they are heading in the right direction… but maybe the biggest problem is the unique nature of the town and the personal values that come with it. It’s not often you come across a city where you have such profound tourism located in a small mountain city that’s a celebrity getaway but also with a mix of regular working class people. It also means there is a lot of leeway since almost no matter what kind of new regulations you implement in Aspen, people will still come to visit and live here since it’s such a desirable place to be whether there is a blizzard outside or it’s 80 degrees and sunny. People will bend but not break. I understand why people think planners are communist or socialists or whatever; because it seems that we are trying to interfere in people’s everyday lives as we stuff our agenda “down people’s throats” and make them conform to our values/codes/standards. That’s the more extreme end of things but as planners know, there is always an opposition, no matter how small, to any plan and it becomes a witch hunt due to the loudest person being the person with the most attention paid to in the media. But I digress. Work is good, and right I’m putting together a list of communities, whether they are big cities or ski towns in other countries, to contact for information on their green initiatives. So I’ll surely update my progress as things move along.
Now on to the more fun stuff. This weekend I went on another hike, this time to the Frying Pan (that’s what it’s called) which is just a specific part of the Rocky Mountain range. The drive in was spectacular. We weaved through a national forest filled with pine trees, towering mountains, and a rapid river. There was even a smattering of rock formations more reminiscent of Utah or Arizona… but Colorado has them to. We also passed this huge reservoir in the middle of the valley which I’ll talk about in a bit. The original plan was to hike this specific trail up to a mountain lake, but as things have seemingly been going with the weather, we came across a stream in the beginning of the hike that turned into a river due to the enormous amounts of snowmelt that has been taking place. Pretty much, the fast flowing river was a sign that things would be much worse nearer the top, so we abandoned our efforts there and switched our efforts to an easier trail in a different part of the range. The subsequent hike we took was an easy hike and led through the forest to a different lily pond mountain lake. It was a nice and quiet lake but neither the weather nor the fish were cooperating.
Since this hike didn’t take as long as the other one would, we had some extra time to do some different activities. We decided to head back to the aforementioned reservoir (Reudi Reservoir). I’ll let the pictures do it justice but it was almost like an American version of a fjord. Everyone was out on the banks of reservoir relaxing, barbequing, sailing, water skiing, and swimming. It’s times like those that I wish I owned a kayak. So even though the initial hike didn’t work out, it turned out to be a great time.
Plain and simple… July 4th was amazing! So here are some details haha. In the late morning, I headed down to Aspen with my cousin to catch the 4th of July parade. Half the county must have been there because it was packed and the parade was no joke either. It went for well over an hour and that’s with my cousin and I walking against the parade. As the legend Mitch Hedberg would say, “If you walk the opposite way through the parade, it’s like watching the parade in fast forward!” It was actually quite an impressive parade with a wide array of things to see and of course it had a lot of patriotism. “IF YOU DON’T LIKE AMERICA THEN YOU CAN GEEEEET OUT!” After the parade we met up with some of my cousin’s friends for some free food, beer, and music at the Aspen Art Museum’s annual 4th of July BBQ. After getting our fill, we all headed out to Stillwater which is a bridge that goes over this river/creek. It’s one of the local hotspots, mainly because you can jump off the bridge into the water below. Bathing suits you say? Who needs bathing suits? Yup, we jumped right in. It was a solid 10-15 foot drop into some icy cold water. Totally worth the rush from jumping down though. After a bit of air drying we headed back into town to check out some of the activities going on. After getting some dinner (and I must admit I had chicken wings outside of Buffalo and feel somewhat ashamed of it even though the wings were pretty decent) we killed some time around town going into random shops, including one place to get myself some new shorts due to a mishap with the pair of shorts I was wearing that had an excessive amount of skin showing haha.
So in Aspen, it pays to know people with money in the bank. Thanks to some solid friend making by my cousin the year prior, we had some friends who invited us up to their timeshare in Aspen. Those not from the Aspen area won’t recognize the name The Residences at Little Nell, but all the locals know that it’s where people with money and celebrities stay at this hotel. Anyways my cousin’s two friends (from Louisiana) let us into the hotel and up to the rooftop to watch the fireworks. It was straight pimp on top of this place. Huge comfy chairs, open fire pits with s’mores ingredients (and other assortments of food and drinks), heated towels and robes, and rooftop hot tubs and pools populated the rooftop. Let’s just say I will probably never have enough money to afford a timeshare at this place. Luckily these friend’s parents did and by the sound of their own charter flight to take them to and from Aspen and Louisiana, I’d say they were doing just fine. I got to meet some cool little kids from Australia too and it made me want to have my own Australian kid. They definitely have some of the coolest accents. Jimmie Johnson from NASCAR was up there too. Anyways, I thoroughly enjoyed watching the fireworks from a hot tub on top of roof that had a front row seat view to the mountain on which the fireworks were being launched from. PIMP!
After the fireworks we went back into town to check out some more of the activities… mainly live music and other street activities. Aspen definitely has cool scene and I’m even starting to enjoy some folk and bluegrass type music. After that, we went back to Little Nell to check out the room our friends were staying in. Well, room is the correct term… suite better suits it. It was definitely the biggest hotel room I had ever been in, with a huge kitchen with top of line equipment, a fully decked out living room, and some really nice bedrooms and bathrooms. And one of their family friends bought a ton of top shelf liquor that was up for grabs, so I helped myself to some Crown Royal Reserve. It was delicious! Even more delicious enjoying it up at the rooftop hot tub and pool later that night. So yeah, it was a pretty solid night haha, and I believe you have to enjoy Aspen as a high roller to really appreciate what the city has to offer… if you have money that is. Well, there is actually a lot to do even if you don’t have millions of dollars but it’s definitely nice living the high life every now and again.
On a parting note, Christopher Titus just had his new special, Neverlution, aired on Comedy Central. Definitely check it out if you have the opportunity. He is one of the best comedians out there. Also speaking of television, some of the shows I’m watching this summer are the new episodes of Futurama (Comedy Central), Louie (FX – Louis C.K. is another one of the best comedians out there), and Wilfred (FX – Starring Elijah Wood as a man who sees a dog as an actual man in a dog suit).
Peace out!
Tuesday, June 28, 2011
Up and Down the Valley
Well it has definitely been a bit of a whirlwind ride, ever since arriving in Colorado after a week long road trip that took me cross-country through all sorts of cities and towns, mountains and back roads. I have finally had the chance to settle down a bit after taking the past week to acclimate to the climate and assimilate into the new culture that I find myself in. While I can’t say that things have completely slowed down, they definitely have eased up considerably. This week I have spent time getting used to my new surroundings and figuring out where everything is all the while making my new home feel more “homey” to me. I have also been getting myself back into the rhythm of work and professionalism with my summer job out here (which I will explain below). Even with all the new changes, I have definitely made sure to take time to take the new landscape in and enjoy the new set of activities that have opened up for me here. Being away from the craziness and fast pace of the east coast has been very welcoming and I’m definitely enjoying the more laid back aspect of the area and people out here. Sure, you might have to drive considerably farther to get to the nearest grocery store or shopping center, but convenience is replaced by scenery that is just hard to find anything quite as remarkable on the east coast. It would be easy to think that this is somewhere I’d love to live someday, but I feel that overdoing my stay here would take away from the beauty of all of it and would diminish its sentimental value. That’s why I think it is more fun to come here in smaller spurts with long layoffs in between. I remember being here as young teenager and I only remember very few things vividly (things that really stuck out) and sometimes that’s a better way to enjoy a place… for its best aspects. It makes you want to come back more and re-experience all it has to offer without it becoming dull. This mindset might also come from just growing up on the east coast and being used to how things are there, and even though sometimes it’s a struggle, it’s what you know best… and it feels like home.
Besides all that, I definitely have been doing my fair share of “living it up” and not taking my time here for granted. But before I get into some of the recreational and leisurely aspects of my stay here so far, I should get in to some details about Aspen and my job out here. So as mentioned before, I am staying in Snowmass which is about 20 miles down valley from Aspen. Far enough to avoid heaves of tourists but close enough to be a quick ride away from being in the center of it all. Snowmass is a quiet little village off the beaten tracks of the valley and practically in the shadows of some the more major mountains out here. It’s quite quiet and serene, so much so that Kurt Russell and Goldie Hawn live less than a mile from my Uncle’s. I definitely will compliment him on his role as Snake Pilsken and his role in Stargate, and also hit on their daughter, Kate Hudson, if I run across either of them… but I digress. Aspen is a very unique town. While it is a mountain town at heart, it is a very wealthy town, as I’m sure you know. It is pretty built out and tourists flock to Aspen every year for the great winter sports and the summer festivals and outdoors activities. It is a very walkable town (at least in the summer) and there are swaths of restaurants, boutique shops, clothing stores (especially outdoor clothing specialty stores), and big homes (mansions/estates rather) on the outliers. The people all seem really nice, but I’m assuming there is some contempt by residents about the tourists sometimes… but it sustains their economy and thus it is a cycle that won’t be broken.
This is the part of the blog where I inform the planners to take an interest in what I’m about to say, as the following relates to my job and some of the other “plannerly” aspects to living here. I take the bus every day to work (thanks to free bus passes afforded to me by the City) which is about a half hour ride each way, and is quite convenient. And like I said before, it’s not like I’m stuck on the thruway in New Jersey, no, this is a sweet ride through the valley of mountains and canyons and rivers. So, I don’t mind the commute at all. If you want to check out the system here, it is called RFTA (pronounced “rafta” and stands for the Roaring Forks Transportation Authority). Long story short, since light rail was shut down by the local residents, the City went forth with their plans for a BRT which is currently under the works and is scheduled to open sometime in 2012. It is being called the VelociRFTA! I had quite an awesome laugh over that… very clever! Almost everyone else drives into the city for work, but street parking is very expensive and unless you have a reserved spot, it is almost not worth it. There are reasons for the strict parking rules that relate to my job here.
But yes, my job. So officially I work for Alan Richman Planning Services as a sub-consultant for the City of Aspen, working on some green building. More specifically, I have been tasked to research three study areas where Aspen would like to improve upon their efforts to “green” their community. Aspen is already a very progressive community in terms of their efforts to go green and already have a considerable infrastructure of programs in place, and I have to work in the “margins” to find what else they can do that will improve their green programming as it relates to land use and land use regulations/codes. Pretty much, they want to be able to take my research and put those ideas into their building codes and land use regulations so that and development that takes place will have to adhere to stricter codes of green building in their designs and their uses. My uncle will be handling those aspects since he is very versed in code writing, so I need to stretch my resources and knowledge as far as possible and produce some sort of draft proposal of my research and strategies for Aspen and have my uncle produce new land use regulations from it. The three areas I am tasked to focus on are solid waste (management, collection, recycling, landfill diversion, etc.), energy efficiency (building operations, renewables, other technologies, etc.), and air quality as it relates to development (this category has two sub-categories: air quality and transportation, focusing on particulates and reducing vehicle trips, respectively). It is still more in depth than this, but I will refrain from going into all the details, at least for now haha.
The first week I have spent wrapping my head around the project, meeting all my colleagues in City Hall, and pushing forward with the project’s execution. It’s been pretty rewarding so far, and I’m generally enjoying the work that I’m doing. It is also cool being a sub-consultant as my official title. I now have a pay rate haha! Everyone I’ve had meetings with have been great and the people here are really nice and are easy to work with. It’s definitely fun working in such a progressive community (no it is not communist!) and it seems as though Aspen is doing more in terms of its green portfolio than most communities (makes my job difficult!). I’ll obviously update my progress on this project as I deem it necessary.
In terms of fun, besides the constant view of his amazing landscape, I had the opportunity to get outdoors this past weekend. First, my cousin took me out with some of his friends and we drove up to the base of Mount Sopris in the middle of the night to set up a campfire and make s’mores. It was pretty fun and slightly terrifying driving my Jeep up the winding dirt roads knowing that one wrong turn and you fall off a steep cliff, with only my headlights to tell where I was. After climbing a good deal in elevation, we reached a high clearing in the valley near Sopris (barely visible in pitch black) and set up a fire. If it wasn’t for the outline of the mountains in the background, I would almost describe the scenery as being a desert. Also, I can’t remember seeing as many stars as I did that night since I was in Aruba several years ago. There was literally no lights for miles and it made for one striking view of the nighttime sky, with thousands more stars than I’d normally see on the east coast, and even views of the Milky Way Galaxy itself. I definitely enjoyed that aspect of the little excursion more than anything. After getting settled in with the s’mores making, we were suddenly startled by a noise that could be described only as a zombie cow with mad cow disease making a pissed off mooing noise. We all jumped except for my cousin (apparently we had to be wary of bears and mountain lions), who was the only rational one and said it was just a cow. I grabbed my flashlight and pointed it in the direction of the noise and saw a black cow (must have been a chocolate milk cow!) who continued to make a pissed off mooing noise before slowly retreating back into the woods (while still mooing).
At the end of the weekend, my uncle took myself and my other cousin on a hike up Mount Sopris. I’m not sure how much elevation we actually walked up, but I know our final destination was at 10,000 feet. It turned into a solid two hour hike up and a two hour hike down. We started high up in the valley and weaved our way through the initial rocky hills of the mountain. We eventually made it to a meadow clearing which offered spectacular views of the valley below. We then entered an aspen tree forest that led to another clearing where fast flowing streams intersected our pathway up. My uncle noted that the streams were flowing faster than he’s ever seen (long story short: he mentioned a lot of effects of global warming on the climate in the Rockies), but after making semi-quick work of them, we treaded up some more rocky landscape until finally reaching the mountain lake at the base of Sopris. It was very tranquil up there and it was relaxing to just sit on the rocks by the picturesque lake and take it all in. Climbing to the top of the mountain would have been another 3,000 feet but it would have been considerable work, and I was more than happy to hang out by the lake, soaking up the sun and watching my uncle fly fish. Being up on the mountain and at the lake just really slowed everything down and made me appreciate that much more because it is tough to experience that on the east coast, at least in that type of fashion. More hikes are in the works and I already have a few adventures planned for the near future. So we’ll see what kind of interesting things I experience in the coming weeks.
I just realized that this post could have easily been split into two posts, but I got on a roll and figured it was an interesting enough read to not lose all of your attention. I hope that gave you all a good idea of life in general out here. I’ve also been loving being able to practice Kung Fu with the mountains as my backdrop. Practicing in the thin air can only make me stronger I presume.
Well that about wraps up my first full week here. 6 more weeks to go (until Thailand that is)!
Besides all that, I definitely have been doing my fair share of “living it up” and not taking my time here for granted. But before I get into some of the recreational and leisurely aspects of my stay here so far, I should get in to some details about Aspen and my job out here. So as mentioned before, I am staying in Snowmass which is about 20 miles down valley from Aspen. Far enough to avoid heaves of tourists but close enough to be a quick ride away from being in the center of it all. Snowmass is a quiet little village off the beaten tracks of the valley and practically in the shadows of some the more major mountains out here. It’s quite quiet and serene, so much so that Kurt Russell and Goldie Hawn live less than a mile from my Uncle’s. I definitely will compliment him on his role as Snake Pilsken and his role in Stargate, and also hit on their daughter, Kate Hudson, if I run across either of them… but I digress. Aspen is a very unique town. While it is a mountain town at heart, it is a very wealthy town, as I’m sure you know. It is pretty built out and tourists flock to Aspen every year for the great winter sports and the summer festivals and outdoors activities. It is a very walkable town (at least in the summer) and there are swaths of restaurants, boutique shops, clothing stores (especially outdoor clothing specialty stores), and big homes (mansions/estates rather) on the outliers. The people all seem really nice, but I’m assuming there is some contempt by residents about the tourists sometimes… but it sustains their economy and thus it is a cycle that won’t be broken.
This is the part of the blog where I inform the planners to take an interest in what I’m about to say, as the following relates to my job and some of the other “plannerly” aspects to living here. I take the bus every day to work (thanks to free bus passes afforded to me by the City) which is about a half hour ride each way, and is quite convenient. And like I said before, it’s not like I’m stuck on the thruway in New Jersey, no, this is a sweet ride through the valley of mountains and canyons and rivers. So, I don’t mind the commute at all. If you want to check out the system here, it is called RFTA (pronounced “rafta” and stands for the Roaring Forks Transportation Authority). Long story short, since light rail was shut down by the local residents, the City went forth with their plans for a BRT which is currently under the works and is scheduled to open sometime in 2012. It is being called the VelociRFTA! I had quite an awesome laugh over that… very clever! Almost everyone else drives into the city for work, but street parking is very expensive and unless you have a reserved spot, it is almost not worth it. There are reasons for the strict parking rules that relate to my job here.
But yes, my job. So officially I work for Alan Richman Planning Services as a sub-consultant for the City of Aspen, working on some green building. More specifically, I have been tasked to research three study areas where Aspen would like to improve upon their efforts to “green” their community. Aspen is already a very progressive community in terms of their efforts to go green and already have a considerable infrastructure of programs in place, and I have to work in the “margins” to find what else they can do that will improve their green programming as it relates to land use and land use regulations/codes. Pretty much, they want to be able to take my research and put those ideas into their building codes and land use regulations so that and development that takes place will have to adhere to stricter codes of green building in their designs and their uses. My uncle will be handling those aspects since he is very versed in code writing, so I need to stretch my resources and knowledge as far as possible and produce some sort of draft proposal of my research and strategies for Aspen and have my uncle produce new land use regulations from it. The three areas I am tasked to focus on are solid waste (management, collection, recycling, landfill diversion, etc.), energy efficiency (building operations, renewables, other technologies, etc.), and air quality as it relates to development (this category has two sub-categories: air quality and transportation, focusing on particulates and reducing vehicle trips, respectively). It is still more in depth than this, but I will refrain from going into all the details, at least for now haha.
The first week I have spent wrapping my head around the project, meeting all my colleagues in City Hall, and pushing forward with the project’s execution. It’s been pretty rewarding so far, and I’m generally enjoying the work that I’m doing. It is also cool being a sub-consultant as my official title. I now have a pay rate haha! Everyone I’ve had meetings with have been great and the people here are really nice and are easy to work with. It’s definitely fun working in such a progressive community (no it is not communist!) and it seems as though Aspen is doing more in terms of its green portfolio than most communities (makes my job difficult!). I’ll obviously update my progress on this project as I deem it necessary.
In terms of fun, besides the constant view of his amazing landscape, I had the opportunity to get outdoors this past weekend. First, my cousin took me out with some of his friends and we drove up to the base of Mount Sopris in the middle of the night to set up a campfire and make s’mores. It was pretty fun and slightly terrifying driving my Jeep up the winding dirt roads knowing that one wrong turn and you fall off a steep cliff, with only my headlights to tell where I was. After climbing a good deal in elevation, we reached a high clearing in the valley near Sopris (barely visible in pitch black) and set up a fire. If it wasn’t for the outline of the mountains in the background, I would almost describe the scenery as being a desert. Also, I can’t remember seeing as many stars as I did that night since I was in Aruba several years ago. There was literally no lights for miles and it made for one striking view of the nighttime sky, with thousands more stars than I’d normally see on the east coast, and even views of the Milky Way Galaxy itself. I definitely enjoyed that aspect of the little excursion more than anything. After getting settled in with the s’mores making, we were suddenly startled by a noise that could be described only as a zombie cow with mad cow disease making a pissed off mooing noise. We all jumped except for my cousin (apparently we had to be wary of bears and mountain lions), who was the only rational one and said it was just a cow. I grabbed my flashlight and pointed it in the direction of the noise and saw a black cow (must have been a chocolate milk cow!) who continued to make a pissed off mooing noise before slowly retreating back into the woods (while still mooing).
At the end of the weekend, my uncle took myself and my other cousin on a hike up Mount Sopris. I’m not sure how much elevation we actually walked up, but I know our final destination was at 10,000 feet. It turned into a solid two hour hike up and a two hour hike down. We started high up in the valley and weaved our way through the initial rocky hills of the mountain. We eventually made it to a meadow clearing which offered spectacular views of the valley below. We then entered an aspen tree forest that led to another clearing where fast flowing streams intersected our pathway up. My uncle noted that the streams were flowing faster than he’s ever seen (long story short: he mentioned a lot of effects of global warming on the climate in the Rockies), but after making semi-quick work of them, we treaded up some more rocky landscape until finally reaching the mountain lake at the base of Sopris. It was very tranquil up there and it was relaxing to just sit on the rocks by the picturesque lake and take it all in. Climbing to the top of the mountain would have been another 3,000 feet but it would have been considerable work, and I was more than happy to hang out by the lake, soaking up the sun and watching my uncle fly fish. Being up on the mountain and at the lake just really slowed everything down and made me appreciate that much more because it is tough to experience that on the east coast, at least in that type of fashion. More hikes are in the works and I already have a few adventures planned for the near future. So we’ll see what kind of interesting things I experience in the coming weeks.
I just realized that this post could have easily been split into two posts, but I got on a roll and figured it was an interesting enough read to not lose all of your attention. I hope that gave you all a good idea of life in general out here. I’ve also been loving being able to practice Kung Fu with the mountains as my backdrop. Practicing in the thin air can only make me stronger I presume.
Well that about wraps up my first full week here. 6 more weeks to go (until Thailand that is)!
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