Telluride, briefly

There's one flight in and out of Telluride and it's on a god damn puddle jumper built in the Eisenhauer era with a picture of Willie Nelson the the wing. I had to look up Telluride on the internet a few months ago when Jill asked me to fly out for a wedding Studio Choo was working on. It's in Colorado, so you know.



Anyway, the median age of pilots flying the Great Lakes fleet (with service to Cheyanne, Clovis, Kearney, Pueblo and Show Low) hovers right around 22 years old, and what are a robust bunch! Prone to jokes about exit hatches "I'm not only your flight attendant, I'm also your pilot!" and "Ma'am you have to pull this lever and kick out the door but remember first to strap your seat cushion on because it's your floatation device should we land over water..Unlikely!"





Fortunately for me, flying exhausted and dehydrated and seated in the suicide row behind the cockpit, my pilot was a god damn stud with biceps that proved distracting enough. God bless the Midwest and their corn-fed sons.

Currently I'm sitting in Denver awaiting connection home, although unbeknownst to me, I am at the wrong gate. I'll find this out in about 45 minutes when we start boarding - and the woman taking tickets says to me "Did you bother to look at your boarding pass?"
"But the window said New York City...?"



I have digressed...Nicolette and I arrived in Colorado on Wednesday breathless a bit from the high altitude. Clippers, this time thoughtfully stashed in checked baggage rather than carry on, just a couple of freeloading-freelancers come to assist Jill with a wedding at Dunton Hot Springs, an old ghost town 31 miles from Telluride in the San Juan Mountains. Jill did real good and secured us lodging at fish creek a 5000 square foot cabin in the middle of nowhere complete with a hot tub, outdoor fireplace, pool table and miss Packman arcade machine. Rocky mountain high!



I have never been to this kind of place before. Anything I might say to describe the scenery will fall rather flat of the truth. The golden aspens (are they related to birch?) were on fire; possibly the foliage peak week. Mountain rivers, big sky. We met a gaggle of cattle dogs and a hog. Snakes, walks, hikes, 10+hours logged in the hot tub watching shooting stars. .

The flowers arrived, rather miraculously and we got to work. The wedding was beautiful, a small golden gem of a weekend for the couple and 60 of their guests.



I would show you pictures of the flowers but I told Tec after a couple of glasses of wine that I can shoot flowers better than him, and I'm afraid to get showed up. They were real real pretty, and you'll see them eventually. His photographs of this wedding are going to blow your socks off, trust.



Thank you so much Jill and Alethea and Annabelle for the infinitely grand opportunity, to see such an incredible place, and to work and learn from you. I can't wait for our next project together..