The Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

The very last one

2009-07-28T15:52:00.000-07:00

Well, this is it.
It's somehow a bit sad to finish this blog, but the trip has come to an end, I'm back to Zurich and Colorado as well as Seattle and Chicago and Madison and Grand Rapids are faraway again.
I hope that you enjoyed travelling with me, it was fun to share my impressions with you, friends.
Take care and..
please share too! :)
A warm hug to each of you,
Maria.

Last week in Colorado

2009-07-28T15:05:00.000-07:00

A sad thing happened in the last week I was in Colorado - my camera got fed up of harsh life in the field and refused to continue working. The consequence is that these last pictures were not taken by me and I also do appear on them, confirming that all this trip was real.

Thank you Maruxa and Carrie! :)

Where can you imagine me wearing this kind of hat? - Of course! At the rodeo!

People from Gunnison say it's one of the oldest ones, still running in the US.
P.S. (thanks, Bobbi for loaning the pink cowgirl outfit! :)

If you're not sure, what's happening in this picture, I'll help you - the brave cowbow is flying off the horse!

Next ones are some pictures of one of the most beautiful hikes I've ever done - mountain Boulder.

Snow-sliding in July - a great feeling and lots of childish fun (of course I ended on my bum)

This is to confirm that there was at least some work being done in the Rockies.

..however crazy the outfits and the team spirit were :)
Note the head lamps
(drift samplings at night!)

....and the very last one: a mayfly that just emerged out of it's "old skin" (still in the water in the background)

A mixture of last pictures from Gothic - one more week before the plane takes off

2009-07-15T17:20:00.001-07:00

Marmot babies born in Gothic :)

A hike to the Blue Lake

Raining in Gothic

An abandoned mine

The fox in Crested Butte and some evening pictures

2009-07-06T06:20:00.000-07:00

The 4th of July in Crested Butte - a full immersion into US :)

2009-07-04T21:22:00.001-07:00

The National Day in Crested Butte started with a 1/3 marathon

(a yearly fund raising event for Rocky Mountain Biological Lab)

Here the tanned winner :)

lots of spectators

and all kinds of runners

(walking and crawling were a separate category) :)

And then the parade started

Protesting against the plans to open a new mine in the region
(defenders of the Red Lady Mountain)

a sexy mum

Very much in the sense of US and its contrasts:
crazy off-roaders..

...followed by the greens promoting carbon offset and recycling

The peak of the procession: RMBL!

Wild(life) scientists from the Rocky Mountain Biological Lab. :)

Wildflowers of Colorado

2009-06-27T16:32:00.000-07:00

Prairie smoke (Geum triflorum, Rosacaea)

Silvery lupine (Lupinus argenteus, Fabaceae)

Blue Columbine (Aquilegia coerulea, Ranunculacea)

Crimson Paintbrush (Castillea angustifolia, Scrophulariaceae)

Fendlers Waterleaf (Hydrophyllum fendleri, Boraginaceae)

Crimson Paintbrush (Castillea angustifolia, Scrophulariaceae)

Red Columbine (Aquilegia elegantula, Ranunculaceae)

Dwarf Larkspur (Delphinium nuttallianum, Ranunculaceae)

Serviceberry (Amelanchier alnifolia, Rosaceae)

Saffron Senecio (Senecio crocatus, Asteraceae)

Peavine (Lathyrus leucanthus, Fabaceae)

Blue Columbine (Aquilegia coerulea, Ranunculaceae)

Meadow Rye (Thalictrum fendleri, Ranunculaceae)

Rosy Pussytoes (Antennaria rosea, Asteraceae)

Mountain Parsley (Cymopterus lemmonii, Apiaceae)

A different pace

2009-06-22T21:46:00.000-07:00

The biggest events and most important experiences here, in Crested Butte, are definitely very different from those in Seattle or those in Chicago..

You wake up and you look at the sky out of your cabins window. You explore the colours of the mountains and notice they are different each single day.

You enjoy the freshness of the aspens with their early leaves so tenderly green and their bark so silky and light.

You experience all these incredible meetings.

Chipmunks playing right outside your window in the grass. Or collecting dandelion flowers and seeds and eating them on some warm stone under the sun just in front of your nose.

Or deers walking between the houses in the evening.

Or an old marmot spending hours at your neighbours porch seeming to watch you while you watch him.

Or a porcupine scratching on your porch at night. So you take your pocket lamp and go out to see him. He has a really lovely face.

And then you go back into the small wooden cabin. Read for some more minutes listening to the fire in the stove, smelling the burning wood and watching the reflections of the flames on the floor.

And before falling asleep you look again at the skies and greet silently all the unknown stars that only live in the mountains.

It's a different day.

To help you with some names:

chipmunk = burunduk, Streifenhörnchen
marmot = surok, Murmeltier, marmotta
deer = olen', Reh, capriolo
porcypine = dikobraz, Stachelschwein, porcospino
aspen = osina, Zitterpappel, Espe, tremulo

Some first impressions from Crested Butte

2009-06-17T17:52:00.001-07:00

The cabin in the middle, to the left from the red one, is the one where I am living in now.. Imagine getting there after Chicago! Another way of finding paradise.

Crested Butte, Colorado - zooming into the map

2009-06-17T17:11:00.001-07:00

This group of small houses is the Rocky Mountain Biological Lab where I will spent the next 5 weeks... pretending I'm working. ;)

Chicago lights

2009-06-15T20:52:00.001-07:00

Chi-ca-go-chi-ca-go- that toddling town

2009-06-13T20:45:00.000-07:00

Frank Sinatra's song is on my mind these days. :)
I decided to spend a couple of days in Chicago before flying out to Colorado and this has been a very good choice to make! Chicago is an Experience!!
And it's not about the skyscrapers, even though this time (even after Seattle) they do overwhelm me a little bit.
It's about the parks, the blues, the cafes, the lake which feels like sea, it's about how alive and friendly and multicultural the Windy City is. That toddling crazy town.

Famous skyscrapers viewed from the entrance to the Lincoln Park Conservatory - a sort of small botanical garden at the lake. Here some shots of from its beautiful indoor pavillions.

A street in the Golden Coast, one of the wealthiest areas in the centre of the city.

Millenium Park and it's Cloud Gate Sculpture or The Bubble. :) A fun spot to make greatest pictures of Chicago's skyscraping downtown.

Frank Gehry-designed Jay Pritzker Pavilion, a "futuristic" outdoor venue for concerts, one of the wonders of the Millenium Park.
Discussing with one of chicagoans...

Blues in one of the downtown bars. There's no Chicago without it. A beautiful experience.

And of course ART.
Marc Chagalls mosaic in the centre of the city (the Loop). Chase Tower Plaza

Chagall's Chicago

The Art Institute. You can spend hours exploring the impressionst collection, it's one of the best in the world. Rodin, Renoir, Van Gogh, Manet... whatever you wish. And not just this, you'd find wonderful El Greco, and Kranach, and Goya, and Matisse, and Kirchner, and a lot of modern art. It's a journey on it's own.

The big conclusion: CAN'T BELIEVE I'M HERE!

Madison - corrected

2009-06-13T19:34:00.000-07:00

I felt a bit bad about Madison - or to be precise, about my comments on Madison.
It's not as boring as it may have seemed from my description and it actually does have some really nice features apart from lakes:

plenty of people (including policemen!!) on bikes

gorgeous Wisconsin cheese curds (it's small fried "balls" of cheese)

(the picture was "borrowed from http://www.thenibble.com/reviews/main/cheese/cheese2/cheese-curds.asp)

a beautiful university campus with a huge terrace directly at one of the lakes
a very nice small zoo with free entrance for everybody

several great bookstores with a huge choice of really good second hand books

and of course

some wonderful people that I was really glad to get to know!

Main conclusion about Madison - it's definitely not Seattle!

2009-06-10T15:22:00.000-07:00

This is the main thing about Madison - it's inbetween the lakes and it's very green.
Otherwise there's sincerely not so much about Madison but..

The Capitol and the Capitol Square.

There seems to be not so much going on in Madison, but what's for sure a big thing - it's the Saturday farmers market at the Capitol Square. Crowds of people getting or selling all kinds of fresh vegetables, bred and cheese and flowers and whatsoever or just exploring and joking and making music. It's fun.

Swiss will like it ;) - the cow cookies :)

Raging grannies singing.

A demonstration?
Mmm.. Obama has lots to do.. Even quiet Madison is in move!

A personal satisfaction in the Wisconsin University Bookstore. :)

Viva Estonia!

My US trip - a map

2009-06-10T11:50:00.000-07:00

I thought it would be useful to have an overview map of my travelling. So here is the route:
Zurich - Grand Rapids (Michigan) - Seattle (Washington) - Madison (Wisconsin) - Crested Butte (Colorado) - Zurich.

Olympic National Park - rainforest

2009-06-04T21:01:00.000-07:00

Olympic National Park - meeting the Pacific

2009-06-01T21:43:00.000-07:00

Located on a peninsula just 3 h away from Seattle it's a beautiful national park with ocean beaches, mountains, an old rainforest (!) and lot's of things to see.

My first meeting with the Pacific started in a thick-thick fog.
One of most impressive things - huge logs on the beach. It seemed to be bones of the dead, a kind of an abandoned battlefield..
Note the pine tree in the background, which lost all of the sand around its roots and is still fighting and holding. Crazy wish to survive.

This seems to be a sculpture of crying faces, doesn't it?

These stones and the ponds between them are a very special habitat in the low tide periods. Every single stone and pond is full of living creatures - sea stars, mussels, sea anemones.

Sea anemones

Note the crowd of the sea stars attached to the stone close to the water on the left!

Some more pictures from Seattle

2009-06-01T21:06:00.001-07:00

This is one of the fun things you can do to get to know Seattle in a short time. Take a Duck.
A Duck is an amphibian bus that will drive you around the streets and also on one of the lakes. :) Definitely an experience.

Here's the Duck driver. As you can imagine, the whole thing becomes a kind of a show. Italians would call it an "americanata" and at the start of the tour I was afraid, that this kind of fun show will become a bit exaggerated and tiring. But fortunately this was not the case. In fact we were overwhelmed by jokes and songs the driver was singing, but it was somehow not too much and really enjoyable. A truly american experience.

At some point the duck driver becomes the duck captain and the bus slides into water.

Plenty of people in Seattle seem to have houses literally on water.

Some more pictures from walking around the town after the Duck trip.

New type of T-shirts in US.

This is a picture from one of the nicest old bookstores I've ever seen (located at Pioneer Square). Small notes under books give a short overview of what those are about. A really nice idea. :) In general, the number of bookstores and choice of books is incredible! I would spend hours there!

No Seattle without skyscrapers :)

That's another great thing in Seattle - the bike holders in front of the trolleybuses. :) Never seen this before.And there he is! The Sheriff. Andi, I knew, you were around!

Seattle

2009-05-27T22:18:00.000-07:00

Oh, this is exactly the place to start understanding, why people may enjoy living in some parts of the US so much. Alive, modern and very multi-culti, with sweetest residential areas you can imagine, trams, bikes, trolleybuses (!), small markets with local stuff, coffeeshops, incredible seafood, beautiful surroundings (lakes, bays, mountains - whatever you wish!). Seattle has it easy to make you love it. With my sceptic european approach to US, I must admit, that there's plenty of great things in Seattle to enjoy.
They are even green! Recycling works here! :)

Pike place market. This is supposed to be one of the best seafood markets in US. And not just seafood - lot's of locally produced fresh fruits and vegetables, lots of nice souvenirs (none of them "made in China"! a good contrast to triste european cities overwhelmed with this "brand"). If you happen to be there - don't miss the tea shop. :) One of the best ones I've ever been to. And believe me, I've been looking for them in every place I went to.

This is at Pike Square market too. A restaurant that got famous for the film "Sleepless in Seattle". The great thing about it is, that even though every person in US knows the movie, the place remained the way it was - really simple and oldish - and kept its charm. And the seafood.. is amazing. Mmm..

A fun fountain in the middle of the town. It's around there that Northwest Folklife festival takes place in May. A fun thing to experience - lots of music, lot's of people of all kinds, lot's of handmade things.

A street musician. With a peculiar set of drums. :)

Hmm.. Seems, that I've met him before. Sometime in my childhood. Now you have no chance to meet him in my country.
Homeless in many post-soviet countries, stone Lenins seem to find shelter in the US. Note the size of the girl staring at the great leader of the russian revolution.
Just a fun building. :)
One of the beaches around Seattle. The tide was unusually low today so we could discover plenty of stranded inhabitants of the sea and those hunting them.
This is a sea anemone. I've never seen those things before - the beach was full of them, emitting small fountains of water here and there.

This heron got a nice fish for lunch. Incredible how close it would let me approach it.

Some music from Michigan :)

2009-05-25T07:46:00.000-07:00

http://www.steppininit.com/

Lake Michigan

2009-05-24T15:14:00.000-07:00

That's a funny one. A turtle in the information centre for kids in the state park, where we got to see lake Michigan.

It could be the Baltic. Incredible how much more similar my sea is to a lake. It's a beautiful peace though.

Kayaking in Michigan

2009-05-24T14:58:00.000-07:00

It's like sliding on a mirror being surrounded by trees. A surreal feeling.

This is how you can kayak in a wetland. A beautiful experience. Never forget your childhood dreams. On this trip I realized, how much I've been missing. Such an easy and beautiful thing I never found time for.

Some unexpected artistic patterns.

This is Grand Rapids, Michigan. Just to give you an idea. Small and not so special. That's where NABS, my conference took place this May.

The start

2009-05-24T14:51:00.000-07:00

Well. I guess the day has come to start a blog. Plenty of things are going on. Plenty of things I'd like not to forget, plenty of things I'd like to share. So here we are.
I guess, you'll wonder about the strange name of the blog. Those who haven't read "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance" will wonder, others not. It's a book on a trip, a long motorcycle trip, which is also a trip of thoughts and discovering oneself. And that's exactly what this blog will be about - a never ending trip of mine.