Here in Ouray, Colorado it appears March will be going out as a hybrid of Lion and Lamb. After a few weeks of mild spring weather with high temperatures sometimes near 70, Mother Nature turned back the clock and decided to let winter stick around for a bit longer. About a week ago the temperatures started falling, or should I say springing, back towards winter climes. With the lower temperatures came some spring snow. It has been snowing on and off for the last week – sometimes a little, sometimes a lot! Within the last 24 hours it has snowed about 12 inches. Over the last week it has probably snowed about 24 or more inches here in town at 7800 feet. Who knows how much has accumulated at the higher levels. This final day of March started out sunny with plenty of blue sky, but by noon had turned to grey sky and the scent of snow in the air. March can be as changeable as the tides.
The good thing about spring snow is that the ground is no longer frozen and it tends to melt fairly quickly on the streets and sidewalks while covering up the brown spots from previous melting. By melting quickly, that means less shoveling. However, what shoveling there is to do is with wet snow and can be like moving around wet concrete.
The other thing about this time of year is the locals can get complacent about their driving and think the road conditions are better than they actually are. Just yesterday I was shoveling the sidewalk in front of our stores when the local emergency siren located above City Hall went off. The emergency siren is a throwback to the mining days when the siren would sound three times to indicate that there had been an accident at one of the local mines and all local emergency personnel were needed. That still holds true today. The Ouray Volunteer Fire Department and Ouray County Emergency Services still use the siren to call out the volunteers to respond to an emergency. So, the siren went off about 11am and the sirens on the emergency vehicles started wailing and heading northbound. I found out later one of the long-time locals had tried to negotiate one of the well-known curves that was still icy and ended up in the Uncompahgre River. Luckily she was ok as was rescued before hypothermia had taken its toll.
The other thing about this time of year is the results of our buying trip to Denver at the end of February. The merchandise has started to arrive and most of it is T-shirts. That means checking it in and then folding those shirts that don’t get hung up in the showroom, and we are talking numbers of shirts in the thousands!! Folding, folding, folding, keep them shirts a movin’. It is like in the autumn we get the autumn foliage and in the spring we get spring foldiage.
That’s it for this March Madness. I plan to submit more in April and not be such a fool.
One last thing: If warm weather in the fall is called Indian Summer, is cold weather in the spring called April Fools? I take that back. Whatever it is called, here in Ouray we just get Ute to it.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chief_Ouray
Tuesday, March 31, 2009
Monday, March 16, 2009
St. Patrick's Day Eve
March 16, 2009
It’s St. Patrick’s Day eve. I’m already practicing. Some of us seasoned drinkers refer to such “drinking days” like Cinco de Mayo, New Year’s Eve, and St. Patrick’s Day as Amateur Night. That’s when the amateur drinkers come out to play and embarrass themselves. Leave the serious drinking to us pros. :-)
It’s a slow keyboard day here in Ouray, but I plan to submit more in the coming days, after I get over my St. Patrick’s Daze.
Speaking of drinking daze, we are noticing the spring break crowd coming into Ouray. Unlike Florida, Padre Island in Texas, and Baja Mexico, the spring breakers coming into Ouray are more interested in the ice in the Ouray Ice Park than the blended ice in margaritas and Long Island Iced Teas.
One last thing: What do you call a frigid flirt in New York – a Long Island Iced Tease.
It’s St. Patrick’s Day eve. I’m already practicing. Some of us seasoned drinkers refer to such “drinking days” like Cinco de Mayo, New Year’s Eve, and St. Patrick’s Day as Amateur Night. That’s when the amateur drinkers come out to play and embarrass themselves. Leave the serious drinking to us pros. :-)
It’s a slow keyboard day here in Ouray, but I plan to submit more in the coming days, after I get over my St. Patrick’s Daze.
Speaking of drinking daze, we are noticing the spring break crowd coming into Ouray. Unlike Florida, Padre Island in Texas, and Baja Mexico, the spring breakers coming into Ouray are more interested in the ice in the Ouray Ice Park than the blended ice in margaritas and Long Island Iced Teas.
One last thing: What do you call a frigid flirt in New York – a Long Island Iced Tease.
Saturday, March 7, 2009
Back in Ouray
Well, did March come in like lamb or a lion. It would depend where you are, no?
Tamara and I made it through the Denver Gift Show and did a lot of buying for our stores. The fortunate thing is that most of it won’t be delivered until May and it doesn’t have to be paid for it until July or August. We heard a lot of positive stuff from vendors about their sales being up and hearing from their customers that attendance at the national parks, resorts, and destination locations (of which Ouray is one) is projected to be up for 2009. The reservations for lodging in Ouray for the summer season are up for this same time last year. People just want to get away.
The exit from Denver was another adventure. We were going to drive back the same way we had come in from Ouray (minus the flatbed tow truck), but as we were heading in that direction to get on the main highway over Monarch Pass and through Gunnison and Montrose, I missed the turnoff for highway 285. We figured out how to get back to it by a detour. As we got close, I turned one street too soon (nowhere I’ve been has as good as road signage as California) and had to make a U-turn and finally got back on another highway that would take us to our desired 285. On the approach to 285 there was some road construction, and with no warning signs they had the exit we needed to take blocked off. It was either continue to the next exit, turn around, and get the exit from the other side, or take a couple more miles and get to Interstate 70 – the route we normally take. Screw it! I-70 it is!
Then the worry was about the weather over Vail Pass, which gets snow at the drop of any barometric pressure. Having not yet had breakfast, we stopped in Frisco (that would be Frisco, Colorado not San Francisco, California, which hates being called “Frisco.”) at a familiar diner from the past and had our repast. The weather looked good ahead and we forged on to the west. The only memorable thing about the trip was seeing big-horned sheep along side the highway as we got close to Glenwood Springs, but then, we see those along the highway just north of Ouray.
We stopped in Montrose to pick up some crystal products for one of our stores, get the cat out of kitty jail, pick up info from our accountant, get supplies at Office Depot, beer and wine from the liquor store, food from the grocery store, gas for the Expedition, wash the Expedition, and head the last 35 miles to Ouray. Can you tell we don’t like going to Montrose and do as much there in one trip as possible?
Driving into Ouray we could see that no snow had fallen during our absence and the ground was looking barren and brown. With March and April being the wettest months, it is just a matter of whether the wetness will be in the form of rain or snow. Snow would be preferred at this point.
So things are back to abnormal and we have customers coming into the store. There are 25 ice climbers from Spain in town this week who have been coming in the store for clothes and souvenirs to take back to those left at home. We call that type of buying “guilt gifts.” Even though I lived in Southern California for 35 years, I was not much assistance when the Spaniards were asking me questions about their potential purchases. One guy bought a child’s t-shirt and I finally figured out he was asking if the shirt would shrink. Then he was asking if the child’s shirt he had selected came in a larger version for women. Of course not. I was pretty worn out by the time they left. Maybe someday I’ll finish those Spanish tapes I purchased years ago. The trick will be finding a tape player on which to listen to them.
Today it has been snowing on and off between times when the sun comes in and out.
One last thing: If rain creates rainbows, can snow create snowbows?
Tamara and I made it through the Denver Gift Show and did a lot of buying for our stores. The fortunate thing is that most of it won’t be delivered until May and it doesn’t have to be paid for it until July or August. We heard a lot of positive stuff from vendors about their sales being up and hearing from their customers that attendance at the national parks, resorts, and destination locations (of which Ouray is one) is projected to be up for 2009. The reservations for lodging in Ouray for the summer season are up for this same time last year. People just want to get away.
The exit from Denver was another adventure. We were going to drive back the same way we had come in from Ouray (minus the flatbed tow truck), but as we were heading in that direction to get on the main highway over Monarch Pass and through Gunnison and Montrose, I missed the turnoff for highway 285. We figured out how to get back to it by a detour. As we got close, I turned one street too soon (nowhere I’ve been has as good as road signage as California) and had to make a U-turn and finally got back on another highway that would take us to our desired 285. On the approach to 285 there was some road construction, and with no warning signs they had the exit we needed to take blocked off. It was either continue to the next exit, turn around, and get the exit from the other side, or take a couple more miles and get to Interstate 70 – the route we normally take. Screw it! I-70 it is!
Then the worry was about the weather over Vail Pass, which gets snow at the drop of any barometric pressure. Having not yet had breakfast, we stopped in Frisco (that would be Frisco, Colorado not San Francisco, California, which hates being called “Frisco.”) at a familiar diner from the past and had our repast. The weather looked good ahead and we forged on to the west. The only memorable thing about the trip was seeing big-horned sheep along side the highway as we got close to Glenwood Springs, but then, we see those along the highway just north of Ouray.
We stopped in Montrose to pick up some crystal products for one of our stores, get the cat out of kitty jail, pick up info from our accountant, get supplies at Office Depot, beer and wine from the liquor store, food from the grocery store, gas for the Expedition, wash the Expedition, and head the last 35 miles to Ouray. Can you tell we don’t like going to Montrose and do as much there in one trip as possible?
Driving into Ouray we could see that no snow had fallen during our absence and the ground was looking barren and brown. With March and April being the wettest months, it is just a matter of whether the wetness will be in the form of rain or snow. Snow would be preferred at this point.
So things are back to abnormal and we have customers coming into the store. There are 25 ice climbers from Spain in town this week who have been coming in the store for clothes and souvenirs to take back to those left at home. We call that type of buying “guilt gifts.” Even though I lived in Southern California for 35 years, I was not much assistance when the Spaniards were asking me questions about their potential purchases. One guy bought a child’s t-shirt and I finally figured out he was asking if the shirt would shrink. Then he was asking if the child’s shirt he had selected came in a larger version for women. Of course not. I was pretty worn out by the time they left. Maybe someday I’ll finish those Spanish tapes I purchased years ago. The trick will be finding a tape player on which to listen to them.
Today it has been snowing on and off between times when the sun comes in and out.
One last thing: If rain creates rainbows, can snow create snowbows?
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