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)!
Your pictures are awesome!! :D
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