The Chronicles of Aspen: The Bike, The Bus, and The Superhero

Tuesday in Aspen was action-packed with blog-worthy incidents. I've decided to list them below in order of increasing impressiveness.

• I started off the day with a road trip up a mountain on a bus with a bunch of different people. We got to the top of the mountain, took some pictures, and biked back down. The guide for the "tour" was a middle-aged woman who was extremely bubbly and knowledgeable about outdoor activities in Aspen. She made the trip a lot of fun. The concerning thing about the trip was not so much the bike ride down the mountain, but the inability of others to understand the fundamentals of biking. I realize that not everyone bikes on a regular basis, and that "new" multi-speed bikes of today may be confusing to someone who isn't used to a mountain-class bike, but seriously people... after 3 miles of biking, how can you not figure it out??? We had to crawl down the path because others in the group (all but about 4-6 of us) had no idea how to properly brake and/or shift a bike. Maybe I'm off my rocker on this one, but if one is going to sign up to go biking in the mountains, braking and shifting are probably two skills that one should invest in learning prior to the outing. Just an suggestion from someone who knows nothing.
  
  
• After the biking trip, I decided to catch a bus back to the hotel. Now, I don't claim to be a guru when it comes to deciphering the intricate coding schemes and labeling conventions that is Aspen's public transport documentation, but I felt fairly comfortable that the shown bus route would get me to my preferred destination with little chance of error. To help you to better understand, I started my journey at the bottom-right of the square on Main St., and I needed to stop at my hotel somewhere between the Castle Ridge turn-off and the Aspen Highlands Ski area. The entire route is only a few miles long, so I figured if I missed my stop or was on the wrong route, I could simply ride back to where I started and try again. ..... Fast forward two hours .... I've been sitting in the same seat on the same bus for two hours now. I don't exactly know where I am in the wonderful state of Colorado, but I feel closer to Denver than to Aspen. Apparently I mis-read the map (obviously a result of my lackey map-reading skills). I missed the part where the bus doesn't stop and the Aspen Highlands Ski Area and instead continues on for another 3 hours in a direction that can only be described as "directly away from Aspen." So... I got a 4 hour tour of Colorado aboard a hot and bumpy city bus. At least I know where to find a mall and a Wal-Mart in Colorado now.
  
  Given this incident, there are a few things I would like to make known to RFTA, the public transit organization that services Aspen and areas "directly away from Aspen":
• Maps are only useful if followed correctly. Seems obvious to me... not so much to the RFTA.
• The big displays on the front of the buses aren't a whole lot of good if they consist of acronyms that are a maximum of three letters in length. Example: "X CMT/RP/AVH/Mrn." I've since learned that the "X" at the beginning means "express route" and is a completely different (yet mysteriously undocumented) route.
  
• Not everyone is trying to screw RFTA out of $0.50 by lying about their ages. The time the bus driver spends arguing about a rider's age costs way more money than it's worth. Get over it.
• If a bus should happen to be changing its route while there are riders on the bus, it would seem customary for the riders of the bus to be notified of said event. Lack of doing so may cause riders to become mildly concerned and non-complacent (non-complacent: a state of mind between the states of 'contemplating how to kill a bus driver' and 'if I jump out of the door now, am I more likely to be killed by oncoming traffic or by rolling off of a cliff'.)
  
  
• And finally, the most impressive thing of the day for me occurred when waiting for the bus the spawned the previous topic. An entire group of 4-6 year old children was crossing the street, accompanied by a few adults. I assume it was a summer school/camp sort of organization. All of the kids had on standard Aspen attire: designer jeans, name-brand sun glasses, Rolex watches, diamond jewelry, etc., etc.. That is, all of the except for one. I like to think of him as the chosen one. It was obvious great things were to come of his life. He'd possibly become a brilliant CEO, a Nobel prize winner, or one of the most honorable humanitarians this planet has ever known. This was made clear by his desire to stand out, his need to differentiate himself, from the other children. Did he do this by wearing more expensive clothes? Not likely. Did he dress himself in full business attire? Certainly not. Could he even see where he was going? Doubtful. Was his outfit one that would define him as an individual? Absolutely. It takes a true leader, a "chosen one", to dress himself in a full-blown Spider Man costume, for a short park outing on a 85-degree day in Aspen. It is obvious this individual is going somewhere, even if it requires a supervisory hand to lead him, due to lack of proper vision through a poorly designed costume head-piece.
  
  Seriously... it made my day.
  

The Clowns Have Landed - Twice

There is only one thing better than flying into Aspen on a Sunday evening... and that is flying into Aspen twice on a Sunday evening. Apparently a tiny ran shower and a pilot who forgets to check the gas gauge before leaving Denver will cause this. I think we were about two minutes from touching down when the pilots pulled up the landing gear, pegged the throttle, and b-lined back to Denver. Fun shit, especially for the passenger by my side, who already had her face buried in a barf bag. Oddly enough, one needs to put both the mouth _and_ nose in the bag to achieve maximum efficiency.

I was witness to the standard pains of flying yet again today, but I was able to add to my list of annoyances.

• Anyone involved, associated, or any way affiliated with PartyLite candles should not be allowed to fly unless they sign a contract disallowing them from talking about how difficult it is to sell candles, how good they are at said selling, and/or any other facet of the candle industry. Seriously people, get a freaking life... and a real job. I'm sure that yesterday's PartyLite convention was mind blowing and an all-out hoot, but seriously... get a fucking life. Unless one of your candles has found itself jammed into my temple through a freak candle-lighting accident, I couldn't care less. Two hours of my life on a plane that I will never get back. Well, not quite two hours. I spent a good 15-17 minutes contemplating whether I could stick a left jab between the two seats in front of me, and about 30 seconds deciding if it was morally correct and/or warranted. At least my priorities were straight.
  
• If you're a flight attendant... freaking do something. I don't care what it is. Gather trash, offer some water, clean the damn bathroom. Just don't sit in the empty first class seat reading the latest smut magazine to hit the shelves. At a bare minimum, fix your makeup. Just because you're flying into new destinations all of the time doesn't mean the circus has to come to town with you.
• What part of the "fasten seat belt" sign is so hard to understand? Seriously!? When the little light comes on and the clown-faced lazy-assed attendant announces that everyone must be seated and buckled up, what happens in some people's minds that makes them think that any of the following things are appropriate:
• Getting up and going to the bathroom
• Letting your kids run wild in the cabin
• Standing up and walking around to stretch your legs
• Digging through one of your 15 bags to find a useless piece of clothing that you suddenly and desperately found the need to wear
• And finally, when placing the standard-sized roller-bag in the overhead bin, how freaking hard is it to understand that you put it in wheels first, as far to the left or right as you can? People really don't understand this. Maybe it was all the Tetris I played as kid, but come one people, we aren't solving the freaking DaVinci code.
  

Anyway, I'm in Aspen now. I'm sure I'll have more rants once tomorrow begins.