Top of the World

I had to go up to Winter Park for work today and stopped at the top of Berthoud Pass on my way home to snap some pix of a storm blowing in.

I had brought my mountain bike in the hope of getting a ride in but by the time I was done with my site visit the sky was turning ugly so instead I treated myself to a mocha and some lunch at my favorite coffee shop and watched the storm blow in over the Continental Divide. Also, I'd spent nearly an hour in the hot sun climbing up and down dirty, greasy metal forms for concrete walls and I was pretty tired. Some of those walls were 15' tall which doesn't sound like much but when you're clinging on to about 2"' of metal with your hands and feet like freakin' Spiderman and consider that losing your balance/grip would result in a fall equivalent to falling out a 3rd story window it makes you reconsider your career choice. Didn't I go through way too much upper level education specifically so I don't have to do stuff like this? The construction workers climb all over that stuff like it's nothing, walking on top of the narrow wall forms like mountain goats without batting an eye. I thought one of them was going to require a defibrillator while watching me scale those walls. Don't know if it was because I'm a woman or because I conveyed the image of someone less than coordinated or maybe both but he followed me around with a terrified smile on his face and I think his blood pressure dropped at least 100 points when I finally left.

I have 3 more identical buildings to inspect this summer/fall then they start digging the next phase next spring. Construction will go on for the next 3 years so I'm going to be beating a path to Winter Park for a while. Unfortunately the drive is nearly 2 hours with most of it in the mountains. The road over Berthoud Pass is particularly treacherous in the winter as it's in an avalanche chute and the road is sometimes closed because of avalanches/poor conditions. On the plus side I can put in some extra hours at work in the summer then take a half day off to go biking. In winter maybe I can plan the trips to land on a Friday so I can spend the night and go skiing the next day. I suppose there are far worse places I could be risking life and limb in.