life, papers, and a cozy little apartment

so i mentioned in my love letter to our jeep that we now had full ownership our little patriot.

this was no accident. charlie and i made a few executive decisions about money, houses, and our little car.

side note: charlie's always hated that jeep. you see he traded in his wrangler for it because of things like "practicality", "responsibility", and "maturity". charlie loved the wrangler. me, not so much. i'm not really a "let's put the top up and down several times a week for fun" kinda girl. but ever since we paid the patriot off he's been saying things like "jeep we love you. please last forever". so sweet.

anyway, charlie and i are renters. and previously we were thinking that sometime around next year-ish we'd start looking for a house. i really, really love our little apartment and if it had a 2 car garage, a yard, and i could paint the walls i'd stay forever. but it doesn't and i can't. (oh, wait i did.)

however, the thing about us buying a house is that it's sort of permanent.

charlie works from home, the lucky duck, but i don't. and since i graduate in may, we decided it probably would be best not to ground ourselves and limit our options before seeing what the next year or two are going to look like.

also, the other thing about buying a house is that it is a lot of debt. and since we already had debt from the jeep and student loans, we decided it probably would be best to get out of the debt we were in before adding to it.

such a boring decision. but it had to be done.

the deal was, that if we were going to stay in our little apartment. there was a few things i wanted to do to make our lives here a little more comfortable.

1. i wanted organize the garage.

exciting stuff. but between bikes, canoes, skis, storage, charlie's work stuff, and a car. it was getting tight.

2. i wanted to move the tv off the mantle.

i hate our tv where it is. a. it's too high and b. the wires hanging all over drive me insane.

3. charlie wanted the office rearranged.

he's all "it sucks in here". and he was kinda right.

4. curtains.

we hung curtains in our bedroom and office and i hate them. so i have to do something cheap about it.

all of these are works in progress. i'll let you know how they turn out. and if you have any suggestions feel free to throw them my way. the problem is i go from a "loving bright colors" phase to a "loving neutrals" phase.

for now i'm off to write 3 20 page papers, which i probably should have started back in september. but the good news is there's only 5 weeks of school left and then 1 more semester. crazy.

good thing i have lots of help.

dear jeep,

it's time that we had a talk.

i realize i've bashed on you a bit in the past and while some of our problems weren't always your fault (like how we drove you up a mountain too big for you) others were (like how you hated 5th gear). but here's the thing, i feel like we've come to an understanding. we promise to take you only on bumpy and snowy roads and in return you promise to not kill us on the highway. i think your new transmission and clutch might have something to do with this. either way, over the past year, i've started to love you again. you've taken us to telluride, gear and all, numerous hiking trips packed with 5 people and 2 dogs, and no matter how dirty you get you always clean up pretty good.

but jeep, charlie and i now own you, all of you. so i'm going to need you to last at least 10 more years. i know that sounds like a lot, but just remember all of your cousins that had 250,000+ miles before they kicked the bucket.

just think of all the adventures you'll have. i can promise you some good times my friend.

all i'm saying is, please last forever. and please be cheap about it.

love, your fam.

For sale:

2008 Jeep Patriot.

Comes out of gear on occasion. Not recommended for highway driving. Freshly burned clutch smell intensified when using heating or a.c.. Driving with windows open is advised.

Membership to "It's a Jeep thing" club complimentary upon purchase. However, waving to wrangler drivers is not advised.

Oh, Jeep ...

Now I know what you're thinking, "that is not a Jeep", and you're right, it's not. WHY is it not a Jeep? Well, that's a good question. That's not a Jeep because Jeep sucks. That's not a Jeep because they make shitty cars that refused to ever be fixed. That's not a Jeep because our Jeep is a piece of crap that would rather spend its time in the mountains then with us. That's not a Jeep because even though labor prices are twice as high in the mountains they still can't fix a vehicle. That's not a Jeep because the gods are enjoying messing with us as much as possible. Take your pick.

So I mentioned before that Charlie's Jeep sort of got stuck in the mountains. And then that they couldn't fix it because the part was on backorder. Anyway, they finally were able to fix it, and on Friday we drove out to get it. We pick it up and on the way back I notice that the Jeep is spewing smoke like it's on fire. So I call Charlie. No answer. I call again. No answer. I honk. Nothing. Finally I cut him off and pull over on the side of the interstate. People must have thought I was some crazed lunatic. Honking, swerving, yelling and waving my phone. I was lucky there were no cops around. Anyway, we pull over and notice that not only is it smoking it's leaking fluid. A lot of it. Lovely. So we call the Jeep dealer and they're like "bring it back". Ok, I officially hate you.

We got back to the dealer and it was like pulling into a garage at the Indy 500. About 5 people come running up, pop the hood, start looking under the car ... all to say, yeah, it's definitely leaking fluid. Hmmm ... do you think the trail leading into the garage might have given that one away?

So now we're waiting and waiting and waiting for them to fix it. Finally, they figure out that they can't fix it because they have no idea where the leak is coming from. Awesome. So they gave us that fancy car as a loaner for a while. I finally feel like a Coloradan. I figure about 99.76% of the population drive Subarus.

Now the fancy loaner Forester is a stick shift, which my ever supportive, husband told me, "you can't drive this. You don't really know how to drive a manual. You do it wrong." What? I do it wrong? Do I get from point A to B without stalling, grinding gears, or causing traffic pile ups? Seriously, he should really know me better at this point. I am like a 3 year old. Tell me not to touch something; I'm going to touch it. Tell me I can't drive the car; you can bet I'm going to drive it. So of course I did. And of course I could. I mean, there's really only one way to drive a stick shift. Unless you're driving a race car or unless I'm missing something. I'm hoping that we can just keep this and leave the Jeep at the dealer. I doubt it. I can't imagine anyone wanting to keep that Jeep.

How to get a car stuck on a mountain

So I figured I should explain the last post a bit. Our plan for last weekend was to hike Gray's & Torrey's Peak on Saturday and camp that night and then drive back to Denver on Saturday. We actually woke up at freaking 5 am on Saturday to get there and when we got there at 7:30 it was like Disneyland. Seriously, cars, people, dogs, kids, everywhere. The road up to the trailhead is about 2.5 miles and is a disaster. It's dirt, steep, and filled with huge ditches and bumps. It takes a 4wd vehicle and some serious menuvering to make it up there. On Saturday the road was so crowded that we ditched the car and hiked up the road. However, the weather was so bad that we had to turn back after about 5 miles.

Hiking up the road to the trailhead. That's Gray's Peak between the trees.

We decided not to camp that night since we were already soaking wet and instead to drive back up really early Sunday morning to do the hike. I realize that sounds crazy, but I really wanted to hike a 14er this year and August is pretty much the last good month to do that before the weather makes it nearly impossible.

So Sunday we woke up at 4 am. Yes, 4 am. When we got to the nasty road there weren't a lot of people there. Charlie has a manual Jeep Patriot. It's not trail rated but it does have 4wd. As we started up the road there were some pretty tricky spots, we were going so slow that even in 1st gear he had to use the clutch. Basically, we got to the top (barely) & Charlie's clutch smelled awful.

Gray's on the left and Torrey's on the right.

Then came the good part. We had great weather on Sunday. We hiked up to the summit of Gray's in about 3 hours. I will say that after about 12,500 feet I definitely noticed the lack of oxygen. Once we got to the summit, I ate a granola bar and about 5 minutes later lost all feeling in my hands. My fingers were completely white and I couldn't feel anything. A friend mentioned the fact that it was probably just that I ate something. Basically, my body took the blood from my hands and sent it to my stomach. Stupid granola bar. Anyway, that scared the crap out of me and we decided to hike back down instead of doing Torrey's. I got feeling back in my hands at about 12,000 feet.

Switchbacks on the way up. They went on FOREVER. Dunkin was waiting for me. :)

Henry at the summit. He's standing on the tallest mountain on the Western Continental Divide, 14,270 ft.

Us. I love how Henry's ears are blowing in the wind.

View from the other side.

Henry loves anything he can chase. These squirrel/chipmunk dudes were taunting him. Really, they would sit at a safe distance and scream at him. It drove him nuts.

You can see our car in this picture. Only at this point we had no idea it wasn't planning on starting.

We got back to the car and ..... it wouldn't start in gear. Basically we burnt out the clutch. We were 2.5 miles from anywhere with a cell signal, and had our car stuck on a road that I couldn't imagine a tow truck making it up. We hitched rides down to the bottom & started calling tow truck companies. Basically, we have Geico & we have roadside towing with our plan. However, they refused to pay for the tow down the mountain. We'll see about that. I was not happy with them & I'm definitely going to fight that. I was also annoyed because I was trying to have them get us a rental car and they told me they couldn't help me since it was Sunday. I hung up on them.

Waiting for a tow for 6.5 hours. We all got a little bored.

We finally found a towing company that said the could get the car off the mountain. They showed up 6.5 hours after we had finished hiking with a tow truck and an off-road Trailblazer that they said somehow they were going to push/pull our car down the road. Something I didn't want to watch. One of our friends came and picked us all up and drove us home. I think Charlie's planning on repaying him with a few rounds of golf.