Making of a Villian...

 

I was invited by the 12 Hours of Mesa Verde charities to decorate the start of the race "trail" in the theme for this year- "Super Heroes"...

You can't have Super Heroes without having a villain, so I got the idea of making OverEnder Man...

 

overender:  when a mountain bike suddenly stops ( by a rock or rut) and the rider flies over the handlebars and flips through the air.

 

Thinking through everything, I knew he had to be big... big enough to be seen from the highway...

 

and wouldn't it be cool if he evilly held an unlucky racer's bike over his head in triumph?

"No Problem" is Not what Jon said when I told him what I wanted to do- but we, mostly he, figured out how to get it done!

We cut out two silhouettes of Endover Man...

And then screwed them together, with spacers in between...

So there was a ledge to wedge the deflated bike tires into, a two by two stuck up from his head also that was braced between the frame and the pedal...

 

That part worked-but then we just had to figure out how to make it stand up...all by its self and not fall over on a biker...

 

You can see the 2x8s bolted to his boots- and inside the "gap" between the two sides of the villain are fence post that Jon hammered into the ground a couple of feet...

Oh- and the poor victim is a second skin, stuffed and dressed in bike gear, added a nice touch though the poor guy didn't get much attention when everyone watched the racers go by... 

 

                           

 

We got  every out to the fairgrounds....

 

 

 

And set up a few more Super Heroes....

 

 

Jon about had it when I didn't like the first place we put Superman, but after some grumbling, he did move him to the other side of the tunnel...

 

And as the kiddos of the racers "tried out"  the trail the night before...

We finally went to get a beer, well some really good Mexican Food and I had a margarita, cause the kids were away and we would have to be back to the fairground in 12 hours- starting a 6:00 in the morning to trail marshal and man the time tables...

A Bike Stampede...

The Twelve Hours of Mesa Verde mountain bike race was last weekend. Something like 900 racers descended down on the Montezuma County Fairgrounds on Saturday...

 

 

 

 

The theme of the race this year was "Super Heros"

And many went all out...

 

 

The bikers have to run to their bikes from quite a distance, called a La Man start. The bikes corralled in the rodeo arena....

 

 

Then they had to go right past me, through a cattle shoot, it was kinda a stampede

I was behind a locked gate. I'm not that crazy! ...

...

 

 

 then a stand still....

 

 

 

And there they go...

 

 

 

How you win the race is to complete the most laps on the assigned  trail- across the highway at "Phil's World" a labyrinth of single track- well known in the Four Corners- that's 8 laps- or continuous riding for teams or single competitors, yeah, they're crazy!

 

I landed in Ladybug...

Just received my advance copies for the May/June edition of Ladybug Magazine!

How cool is that!

I was thrilled to work with Suzanne Beck, a wonderful art director, again. I had illustrated a poem a few years ago in Babybug ( see here) with her.

Yes, I did knit the sweater on the little boy- on like 00 double pointed knitting needles.

 I probably love the sandpipers the most, they were a late addition, thought it needed something more when I was almost done...

I love watching them in the morning and in the evening when we rent a beach house, running around the sand looking for bugs and keeping ahead of the surf...

 

The May/June edition was not out at the magazine shop in Durango yesterday when we went over there, even though I get some copies from the publisher it is always fun to go in a store and buy one, trying to refrain from opening it and telling the cashier, " I made that!!", I'll try again in a week or so.

The Ladybug Website has some fun "kite" painting activities, my husband discovered and  was painting a little while ago...

 

Getting into Ladybug comes at just the right time, the school year is almost done, getting ready for the SCBWI conference in LA in August, I'm refreshing my portfolio, both my book and my online website, my postcards and business cards.  I kind of need a "I'm not crazy to be doing this" reminder!!

 

 

Happy Earth Day...

 

Today was Earth Day and I just could not decide what to do in Art Class. Looked online, on Pinterest and was amazed on how many art projects actually used paper plate...yuh? and new materials....yuh?
Finally decided on the old traditional toilet paper roll, peanut butter and seed birdfeeders, yeah, got peanut butter in my hair,still....

 

We also watched some fun Earth Day cartoon by Animal Planet...

Back to Colorado: Wtih an Elk

 

This is an Elk, a Roosevelt Elk I should say, since there are many species in the world that we use the name "elk" for...

these are Audubon's depictions of Eastern Elk, another subspecies here in the US.

 

Jon hunts big game very successfully here in Colorado, Elk and Deer, but since nothing ruins the taste of meat more then a bunch of "testosterone", I always encourage him to go for the cows(female elk) and does( female deer) instead of the males. Way better eating!

But my brother on the other hand, being a wild and footloose bachelor, is more for the trophy animals, a moose head resides over his coach, you would have to scoot over to get up, and a Kodak grizzly bear hide, is folded up like an afghan on the other side.

So up in Wyoming I went "fishing" to see if he had any elk racks "laying around" he didn't want and matter of fact he said he did,  "tired of "a 6point bull elk rack taking up the floor of a bedroom."

Slight problem.... we had to get it home.

 

This is the skull and rack  in the back of our truck.

 

 

Yes, we tied and locked the elk rack to the bike rack and drove through the rest of Wyoming into South Dakota, with passerbyers giving us strange looks, were we "liberal Obama loving mountain bikers" or "conservative gun loving right-winged patriotic Americans", actually we are a little of both.

The hotels were fun, I leaning towards carrying "Elkie" through the lobby and well, giving him one of the beds, but Jon won out and we locked the elk rack up with the mountains bikes , with cables, it was a debate which was more valuable- a top end mountain bike or a European mount 6 point bull elk.

 

I have to say, everyone thought I was silly, back in Wyoming when I declared we should coil a bike cable around the rack and lock it up, but guess what, that is what we did! The horrible, still slightly bloody tarp my brother gave us, probably from wrapping some game to pack out of the mountains on his mules also discouraged "looky lous"...

That is the actual rack, being packed out, shot in "them there mountains", the Absorka Mountains, where Yellowstone if on the backside...

Sorry if you haven't had your lunch yet, I might not be eating read meat today, either, afte this post!

 

All secure we drove east into South Dakota, south into Nebraska...

 

Back into Wymoning, down to the Eastern Slope of Colorado, over the Continental Divide...

 

 

And where back home the elk was unpacked and hung up in a place of honor between our  east cathedral windows...

 

The second Jon came down off the ladder and had not only drilled the hole for the mounting but several more to anchor the rack with wire for extra security, I realized we had "hung 'em too high", it took a day of pleading to get the whole thing lowered...

 

 

 

 

IF: Train

Nebraska...

 

Over the Mississippi River......

 

And the wonderful farms in Iowa...

From our train trek last Springbreak- from Grand Junction Colorado to Chicago.

Into Nebraska: In Search of a Pretty Spot

 

Jon's grandfather goes on in his remembrance (see previous post) of the route his family would have taken from Deadwood South Dakota,  the summer of 1890 his father worked, grading the path for the railroad tracks with a team of horse.

 

The letter goes on to talk of the trek up and back from and to Nebraska...

"We made the trip in a covered wagon,almost the full length east to west of Nebraska

from Saunders County to Black Hills.camping along the way, living in the wagon and a small tent; continuingthat manner living all of that summer and fall. The trip across Nebraska

had to be at a slow pace, as the Sand Hill Trails, called roads of that time,

were hard for the horses. During the summer of 1890 the men and horses

had worked preparing a level grade for the new railroad, but by early

fall my parents knew that we were returning to Nebraska to resume farming in 1891."

 

 So, leaving Deadwood, we headed south...

in search of the route Frank Kelly would have taken, the letter providing more clues...

 

"I must return to my story of the Black Hills and the early fall of 1890, when we were making our return trip to Nebraska; this time along the Niobrara River. The Niobrara is the Northern most of the three principal rivers that start in the mountain state and flow east to where they empty into the "Wide Missouri". The Niobrara has a special meaning to me because Mother ofton spoke of its valley as so beautiful and peaceful. 'The most peaceful place in the world,' she said."

The modern Highway 27 goes right over the Niobrara River...

 and all though we can no be certain it was the trail Frank Kelly took, it fits the description in his son's letter. I am not surprised that such a place, after a summer in a muddy, dirty, man infested railroad camp would not have been very appealing to his mother. Where the line of trees on the horizon would almost always signal a river, an oasis in the spans of sand the horses were dragging their wagon through...

 

The river is very pretty, very similar to the rivers we have here in Colorado...

and there are many rutted trails coming down to the water, cattle probably, but perhaps remnants of wagon, still etched in the protected hillsides were the wind can not blow...

 Mari Sandov, was an author who wrote about her beloved Nebraska, in the 1930s, in honest and true stories...

She had a hard life, an abusive father who made her stay out in a snow storm to work the livestock and so she suffered with snow blindness the rest of her life, though she eventually returned home and wrote his biography, love of a father is a funny thing.

 

She is honored with a historical marker near the town of Gordon Nebraska ...

 

We started our journey home, now finally turning back West- through more of the flat land of Nebraska and the farming communities, where my love of grain elevators gained some more inspiration...

                        

 

 



But to get back to Colorado, we would have to enter into Wyoming again...