As much as I enjoy Colorado in mid-summer I can't help teasing about some of its quirks, such as the locals' mispronunciation of Spanish place names. They pronounce Bwehnah-Veesta as Byoonuh Vista, or just Byoonie.
It is becoming an obsession to design or select a practical travel trailer that is light enough to pull with a four-cylinder pickup truck. The Casitas and Scamps of the world immediately broke my heart when I walked into their alleged 6'3" interior height and found it to be two or three inches less than that. If you don't think that matters, try buying your next pair of shoes a quarter inch too short.
Although the experience was disappointing, it had its comical aspects. Most RVers--and all part-timers and newbees-- haven't the foggiest idea of how their rig is built, what the maintenance items will be, or how grossly over-sized and over-loaded it is. All they care about are the trivial superficialities inside the rig, how pretty-poo the window treatments are, how they have a microwave oven just like home, and...
I've often wondered how other RVers deal with the sophomore jinx. Let's say you visit a town for the first time and are swept off your feet with its off-beat charm. The next year you come back, almost fearfully, hoping that nothing has changed. But alas, some "progress" has happened.
As just one example of "progress," this year I walked around, trying to find an old wreck that I fell in love with last year.
When I found it I could barely recognize it. It had been renovated and was completely boring.
How do you deal with this sort of thing? Oh sure, you can try to tune it out since you can't do anything about it anyway. But that doesn't really solve the problem that my world as a traveler is becoming smaller, every year.
There was some of that in Leadville. Perhaps that's the real reason why I want the Climax molybdenum mine to re-open. The sort of retiree or metropolitan escapee who would be attracted to a "quaint, charming old Victorian" mining town will be turned off if something real gets done here. That's so unchic and declasse', you know. Instead, they'll select some place like Telluride or Crested Butte, where one more McMansion won't make any difference.
