We just finished the "Ride the Rockies" event here in Breckenridge. This is an extremely challenging bicycle run starting at a different point each year. This year the event started down in southwest Colorado, continued for six days, and finished here in Breckenridge. This is not a race. This is roughly two thousand people from all over joining together to ride over four hundred miles, each leg of the event being at least forty miles. One of the things I love about living out here is that people don't come here to retire and play shuffleboard. They don't come here to reminisce about the good old days. They come here to ski, to play spectacular golf courses, to ride bicycles for miles through the valleys, and to be surrounded by life nurturing scenery.

Granted, Breckenridge is a ski resort and, like most ski resorts, caters to young people. But young is a very relative term here and no one assumes that the older folks here are any less athletic or enthusiastic about life than they are. Unlike places that are just ski resorts, however, Breckenridge was a town first, a ski resort much later. Like a lot of old mining towns, Breckenridge survived the demise of gold mining and today combines the old west along with fine dining and wonderful hospitality. People who come here once come twice. I did. Then I chose to live here. I'm glad I did.

Chef Mercedes Baynes has still another treat in store for those who fancy Caribbean cooking. In her popular website, BrimstoneRecipes.com, Mercedes guides you through the kitchen once more, this time for a "Tamarind Drink." For what Mercedes calls a "refreshing drink," you simply take four cups of shelled tamarinds, add in eight cups of water, two cups of brown sugar, four pieces of thinly sliced ginger root, and a few fresh mint leaves.

Combine the tamarinds and water in a large pitcher and soak them overnight. Remove the tamarind pulp. Strain the mixture through a sieve, add ginger slices and add sugar to your own taste. After chilling the concoction for a couple of hours, you're ready to enjoy this refreshing libation.

Here it is, at long last, spring in the Rockies. Well, maybe. This has been a little different year than usual for Breckenridge. We had record snowfall this past winter and now, despite rampant rumors of global warming, it's still pretty cool here in the evenings. But that's what makes Breckenridge so special. If you don't like the weather, as they say,wait twenty minutes. That's not just a saying here, it's what happens. But the flowers are poking out, the Blue River is picking up steam,the bike paths are open, and people here are doing what theycame here to do, exercise and play.

I'm not biased about this unless you could call fleeing from Florida as fast as possible after twenty five years of constant heat. Add overcrowding and neon and you have a first class recipe for bad living conditions. There's probably more Harleys in Colorado per capita than any other state. I'm not nearly as cavalier as I once was about sharing the highway with eighteen-wheelers, but riding up through the mountains is worth trailering your bike all the way from, well, Florida if necessary. I've lived here for about five years and I never tire of being in, not just somewhere near, the Rockies. I'm not knocking the ocean. I spent a lot of years on it. But there's something special about the mountains that you can't appreciate until you experience it.

A recent post in Igopolitics.com seems to accuse the American public of being "brainwashed" into socialism by the Democratic Party. and in particular, by Barack Obama. While professing to champion American values, the editorial questions whether Obama shouldn't be "judged by the company (he) keep(s)" The author seems to believe that Obama would be the first president to take office without extensive experience. One of these examples is that Obama has never spent time in the military. Well, neither did Bush. And two former field generals, Grant and Eisenhower served their country in the military but had no experience in the political field. And history records them as barely average as presidents.
Obama's stance on banning semi-automatic weapons is viewed as a harbinger of his real intent, to ban all firearms. And his expressed willingness to spend money on foreign nations is viewed as communistic. It's true that Obama is young and somewhat untested in those traits of character and resolve we'd like to see in our presidents. But if he'll need on the job training, it certainly won't be the first time America has seen this happen. Hopefully, he's a quick study.