June 9, 2002

Much, much, much has happened!

In March Ken and I traveled to Moab for the Easter Jeep Event. Ken has converted a 1988 Suzuki to an off road vehicle. Thousands of people with jeeps and other 4 wheel drive cars converge on the little town of Moab to crawl over incredibly steep rocks, rocky trails, dirt trails, etc. I rode with Ken the first day in a caravan of about 35 to 40 vehicles. You line up go over the incredible section jump out of your vehicle and wait until all the other vehicles do the same thing. We had a Liechtenstein contingent of at least 4 jeeps behind us flying the Liechtenstein flag. I spoke to one of the fellows and he said they do this every year. Well, riding passenger is not that exciting except when you cannot see what is coming up next and you are pointed straight down into the abyss. Fortunately the vehicle stayed up on all 4 wheels, some roll over.

One day was an experience for me and the next day I went into Arches National Park to hike a bit and draw and paint. Took lots of pictures, painted and was approached by interested parties wanting to see my painting. I must first advise that when starting a pastel picture, it looks God awful, nothing like the finished work. Comments were very interesting and ranged from mom, this doesn’t look so good (and mother being mortified) to would you like my opinion; you need more red.

We were in Moab for about 3 or 4 nights and then returned home. Ken didn’t have enough of off road crawling and went back to Moab the next weekend for a Longmont Club event in Moab, and also for mountain biking, or I should say slick rock cycling. On his return home, he traveled a little-used back road that he had never taken before. A policeman blocked the road. There several helicopters parked nearby. Ahead in the road was a sports car with the license plate SHAGUAR and a movie crew filming it. The driver was a double for Austin Powers complete with lacey shirt and all. They were filming driving scenes for an Austin Powers movie and the double was doing burnouts in the Jaguar.

New subject, our Newcomers club held a fundraiser auction. It was more successful than anyone could have dreamed of. With the proceeds we decided to provide all the necessary food for our annual picnic. If the club does well, we share the results. We are a social club, try to keep our expenses down, but when we have a windfall, we share with our members.

Well, we have gone through two plus years of Sarah digging ponds and breaking our piping that brought water into the pond. Boulder City Open Space bought her land, we resolved the drain issue and thought, we would resolve our water issue. However, Colorado is in the worst drought ever recorded in history and there is no water for irrigation to the West of our property and thus, there is no water coming into the pond. We cannot rent any water, as there is none to rent. The pond is down about 6 ft. Today, I saw one of our large fish with its head out of water gasping for air. The fish are all going to go belly up.

I have paintings in several venues now: the hospital artwalk, the Daily Times Call, Twin Peaks Mall, and in July at the Human Resources Building in Louisville. July 13 is Rhythm on the River in Longmont and I will be displaying art along with several other artists on that date. The other day as I was picking up our mail at the street, one of our neighbors did a turn around in her car, jumped out and asked if I were Diane Wood. She had seen some of my work in the Daily Times Call and wanted to know if I had other work on display. I told her where and also that I had much more in my studio. That was exciting to have someone express interest in my work. Will I sell anything? If I do, you will probably hear a big “YAHOO!”

Our trip in May to Vernal, Utah was for a national rockcrawling competition. One of the competitors was Walker Evans, a long-time desert racer (I know some of you will know this name). Ken did the viewing of the Rockcrawling event and I went to Dinosaur National Monument and the quarry. What a neat place. You can view dinosaur bones embedded in rock that dates back 150 million years. You can also touch these bones. That was quite thrilling to be able to touch Jurassic period dinosaurs. If they resurrected, I was ready to hop into my truck and race away.

Wait a minute; you said truck!! Yes we bought a Chevrolet Silverado truck. (Now we really are Coloradoans. And it is kind of fun driving a truck.

Well, after Vernal, Utah, we traveled to Zion National Park in Utah. What a fantastic place! The first day there we hiked into the Narrows. You begin by hiking into the Virgin River for about 2 miles before you come to the canyon walls called the Narrows. You must check the weather report before going into the Canyon. If there is a chance of rain, don’t go, the river changes to a torrential flood and you can be swept away. This is not fast hiking as it is slow going not being able to see the bottom and walking on a bed of rocks. Things went along pretty well until I fell in, got cold and said, I think I’ve had enough, let’s hike back. Altogether we were hiking in the river for about 5 hours.

The next day we hiked up Angel’s Landing. An incredibly steep 1600 ft straight up. Not just hiking, it is scrambling up rock and encountering exposure with narrow trails (the narrowest portion of the rail is 3 ½ ft wide and sheer ¼ mile drop-off on either side). There is chain embedded into the rock in a few places to hold onto. We saw people just about crawling down, frightened out of their mind. The view at the top is spectacular and windy. It feels like you are on top of the world. Just don’t get too close to the edge.

The next day was going to be an easy day for me. Ken was going to do a more strenuous hike at a much faster pace. What we did the last two days was not enough for him. Our waiter told me that a nice place to paint would be Menu Falls. So that was where I headed. The bus service in the Park is excellent with buses leaving every 10 minutes. The bus stop closest to Menu Falls was Sinawava Temple. I asked the bus driver to point out Menu Falls to me. Before departing the bus he told me it was 0.6 of a mile back down the road to the Falls. So I headed down the road with all my supplies and before turning a particular corner heard a sound which I had never heard before in my life together with crashing rock, tree, or branch limbs breaking and someone yelling out you F---ing Idiot. At first I wondered what kind of animal would make such a noise. As I turned the bend in the road I looked up to see a climber repelling on the cliff and thought, my God a climber has fallen. I yelled up to the fellow on the cliff a couple of times before he heard me “Do you need an ambulance”? He replied, “Yes, call an ambulance but my friend is going to die before they get here”. I waited where I was on the road knowing a bus would could along in a few minutes. Before the scheduled buses arrived, an open-air vehicle with tourists came up the road and I flagged them to stop. Asked if they had a radio that we needed to call and ambulance as a climber had just fallen. The driver didn’t have a radio, but said he would have the bus driver at Sinawava Temple call. I didn’t want to leave my position, because I wanted to direct people to the site of the fall. Soon two buses came down the road and three men hopped out and climbed the steep embankment. It was then that I thought my space blanket and minor emergency kit with a tourniquet might be helpful to the fallen climber, so I started up the bank and as two of the men came down asked if they could use this material. One said, well, he is still alive. When I reached the scene, the fellow still up at the site said he would not be able to use this now, he’s gone.

Well, shaking and unnerved by these event, I said to myself, you came here to paint, you must go to the falls and paint. By the way when I climbed down the bank, the ambulance had arrived. I thought their response was very quick.

I started painting with blacks, purples, and a park ranged came up the flight of stairs to where I was and asked if I would give a statement. He probably thought I was one of those crazy wild painters doing some kind of abstract. He also was amazed that I had hand wipes to take the pastel paint off of me. I told him if you plan on doing this you have to be prepared to clean up after. I did go down to his vehicle and wrote up a statement. He checked my home address and telephone number saying that they may have to contact me, as this was a fatality.

When I told Ken what had happened, he said from the fellow on the cliff shouting what he did, it was evident that the fall was the result of stupid error. The climber fell quite a distance from the cliff, so he had to be catapulted into the air. He was not attached to his rope.

The next day the paper had an article about the incident. The two fellows repelling together were from England and had been in the U.S. for a month of climbing.

Later in May we were having a late lunch at home and I looked out the window and saw what looked like a fellow with a gun on the open space land abutting our property. He lifted it up to shoot and then I really knew it was a gun. Ken went out to check out the situation and found three teenage boys with rifles after prairie dogs I believe. Well, they saw him coming and one of them lifted his rifle and shot in Ken’s direction. The bullet bounced off the ground, but it was not a comfortable situation. Ken followed them and knocked at one of the homes on 65^th street. He talked to a lady who told him a teenage boy lived next door, the parents worked during the day. He asked if you could gain easy access to the open space property from their land and she told him where you could. Sure enough he followed directions and found three rifles thrown in one of the ditches, fully loaded and ready to go. He did not report this. Ken said he probably scared them enough and didn’t want three teenagers harassing us. However, if I see them with rifles again, I won’t hesitate to call the sheriff. They are not on their own property and Boulder County would not want any hunting done on their land. Hunting is allowed in this area, and I believe in being able to bear arms, but you must be responsible. These kids were not responsible.

Today after my painting session with some local artists, I pulled into the dirt drive and went to the mailbox. A neighbor (1 mile across the street) turned around and came back to talk to me. She asked if I had paintings in the Daily Times Call and I said yes. She asked where else I had them displayed. She had seen my name and said, I know her, and she’s my neighbor. She is interested in perhaps purchasing one. This is exciting. Selling paintings is not an easy thing. You must exhibit, people must see your name a few times and finally think, she must be pretty good, and I’ve seen here things and her name. What a game of recognition.

Ken has climbed Long’s Peak, one of the toughest 14ers, a couple of times. Now I’ve climbed to 14,000 ft too. This past Friday we climbed together up 14,147 ft Mt. Democrat. I did it! There was lots of scree (loose rock on a steep slope) to hike up and down on and jumbled rock fields to scramble over. The altitude did not bother me, although it made me a bit light headed, and you had to breath in deeply and try to exhale all the old oxygen in your lungs. My knees need a rest today.

After this six-hour adventure, we traveled home on I-70 through the Eisenhower Tunnel. Right after exiting the tunnel, the truck in front of us lost his right rear wheel. I have never seen a vehicle lose a complete wheel while traveling at 60 or more miles per hour. There was a shower of orange sparks as the driver brought the truck under control. The wheel accelerated down the mountain towards Denver. Ken got on the brakes, tapping them to alert other drivers behind us as the runaway wheel speedily traveled down the mountain on I-70. The problem with this is you don’t know how the wheel will react; it can hit the guardrail and bounce back into traffic. While it was gaining speed near the guardrail, Ken accelerated to 80 miles an hour and passed it. Looking behind us we saw the tire bounce against the guardrail and into the traffic we had just been part off. I hope everyone avoided this danger.

To let you know, we are not in danger from the forest fires you have been hearing and reading about. We are all praying for rain, snow, any form of precipitation. Today, it is another beautiful day in Colorado with the temperature in the 70’s and the sun brightly shining.

Well, this was along one, but I haven’t written in a long time.

Love, Diane and Ken