"Sometimes the wild stallion will buck, but no one is there to catch it"

I don't think that any other Nonav Wurstnog quote could describe my current feelings better than the one above. I received a surprising letter in the mail today: The Penwood Review, a quarterly magazine, has decided to publish a poem that I submitted a few months ago. It will appear in their Spring 2005 issue. I sent them three poems, and they actually want to publish my least favorite. Oh well, I won't complain. I had actually given up on them a long time ago, so I was quite shocked. I guess Dr. Guinn was right . . . it does take a long time to hear back from publishers.

Perhaps Another Day . . .

On Sunday Joe, my Dad, and I woke up at 4:30 AM, finished some last minute packing, and set off for Gray's and Torrey's Peaks. I've wanted to climb them for awhile now, because they are apparently some of the easier fourteeners (not to say that they would be easy . . .). I thought it would be a good warm-up for Mount of the Holy Cross at the end of this month. We had to drive through Denver to Golden, which took us longer than we expected because we weren't exactly sure how to connect with I-70 once we were in Denver. We eventually arrived at the correct exit, but we had to drive for two miles on a dirt road. The road wasn't too bad; it was wide in most places and well-maintained (I'm using Guatemalan dirt roads for comparison, so I may be way off), but our minivan isn't suited to anything other than city streets. I really, really need to buy a truck soon. We received multiple smirks from people passing us in SUVs. We had to park about a mile or two from the Steven’s Gulch trailhead. To shorten this story, we basically hiked about an eighth of a mile when Joe couldn't go any further. He's still on medication that raises his blood pressure and increases his pulse. We decided that we needed to turn back; if he was already that exhausted, he wouldn't even make it halfway to one of the summits. I was disappointed that we had to leave (understatement). After all, we had gotten up at 4:30 and just driven for over an hour and a half. At least now we know that Joe won't make it with us up Holy Cross.