Day 8- Salt of the Earth

"Let's drink to the hard working people
Let's drink of the lowly of birth
Raise your glass to the good and the evil
Let's drink to the salt of the earth

Say a prayer for the common foot soldier
Spare a thought for his back breaking work
Spare a part for his wife and his children
Who burn the fires and who still till the earth

And when I look into the this faceless crowd
A swirling mass of gray blue
Black and white
They don't look real to me
In fact, we all look so strange

Raise your glass to the hard working people
Let's drink to the uncounted heads
Let's think of the wavering millions
Who need leading but get gamblers instead

Spare a thought for the stay-at-home voter
His empty eyes gaze at strange beauty shows
And a parade of the gray suited grafters
A choice of cancer or polio

And when I look into this faceless crowd
A swirling mass of grays and
Black and white
They don't look real to you
Or do we look too strange

Let's drink to the hard working people
Let's think of the lowly of birth
Spare a thought for the rag taggy people
Let's drink to the salt of the earth

Let's drink to the hard working people
Let's drink to the salt of the earth
Let's drink to the three thousand million
Let's think of the humble of birth."

-Rolling Stones

I sent some of the pictures I had taken when soaring in the hot air balloon and a thank you card to the family that runs the business.  Today, I received the sweetest email from the wife of the captain (who is expecting their 2nd child).  She will be using some of my pictures on their website (wicked cool!).

Today was a lighter travel day- only 2 1/2 hours.  I drove from Ouray, Colorado to Crested Butte, Colorado.

Blue Mesa Reservoir.  Baby blue waters washing against the brown mesas.

More San Juan mountains.

My first glimpse of the Rockies!  

Cows!  Baby cows!  Do you think I could squeeze one into the overhead compartment on the ride back?  I think the chickens and the baby cows would get along famously.  

More mountains...

The view from my hotel room.  This town is definitely where rich, white people come to frolic.  It's a little too bourgeois for my taste.  I'm not a card-carrying member of the upper middle class (thank goodness).  Give me dive bars and bikers and cheap beer anytime over fancy boutiques and wine bars.  I'll do my best to play the part while I'm here though!  It is an absolutely beautiful town.  When I checked into the hotel, the front desk manager informed that there would be a complimentary wine tasting in the lounge at 4:30pm.  Apparently, when you stay at bourgie hotels, the desk manager memorizes your name, makes it his sole goal to introduce you to the others staying at the hotel, books your reservations for dinner, and give you a glass of wine every time you walk through the lobby.  I had drinks with the State Treasurer of Colorado and a couple who owns their own golf course resort thing.  Topic of conversation: politics in Colorado.  Apparently, Boulder is full of "crazy hippie liberals" and that the western half of the state is full of sane, conservative folk.  Me being a social worker from Mass (who works with the unruly scum of the earth), and a woman traveling alone (gasp!  women need to be escorted by men for protection!), was very entertaining for them.  I tried to keep the conversation as real as I could.  During this part of the trip, I have been thinking about classism excessively.  I did not see a person of color in Crested Butte, nor anyone that was lower in class status than upper middle class.  I am always conscious about how my White skin offers me a somewhat "free pass" to have drinks with the social elite of Colorado.  And I'm constantly assessing how I am able to "pass" and/or "not pass" in the Owning Class world.  I'm proud of my blue collar, working class roots and being in thrust into the middle of Owning Class land throws me off kilter and puts me on my guard.  I try to approach these situations as a social anthropologist would and use this environment as a case study.

Ok.  I'll get off my soap box now :)

A really lovely coffee shop in Crested Butte with friendly folk.

The other crazy concept of this trip is that I am walking on earth that is 8,900 feet in the air.  Hadley, MA is only 129 feet above sea level.  That means I'm walking 1.68 miles in the sky!  How awesome is that!?!?