aspen: couch in common room of ranger lodge

left to right: katie (isaacs neighbor), isaac, some dude, some dude, ME, kim, mike (dude that said it was ok to crash)

on our way from boulder to arches isaacs mom told us that his neighbor katie was working in aspen. we called katie and she told us about a little get together of forest rangers. the forest ranger kids were very chill. they didnt seem to know much about nature but were very enthusiatic. even though jeremy blew up their urinal, they still let us sleep on the couches in their living room. the couch in the picture above was shared by jeremy and i. it is another one of those couches which the two ends of the couch become lazy boys. in the middle of the night i seized the middle cushion. i contorted my body so that my head and torso lay on that middle cushion and my legs hung off the leg rest of the lazy boy. on the right of the couch you can see a little tear in the seat. thats where i slept. a torn seat cushion is a good sign that the chair has been nicely broken in. it is also an indicator of possible bed bugs.

the couches were in the common room of the ranger lodge where about 20-30 rangers stayed. there were about 9 fridges in the common room too. this couch was about 30 years old and i was the first non-white person to ever grace its presence. seriously. the sagginess was almost too much though. the armrest on my side was coming off, if you look carefully in the photo you can see it kind of leaning at a 15 degree angle away from perpendicular. i really think the anasazi style patterns on the couch were really endearing. those crunchy forest ranger kids love stuff like that. i also forgot how good that forest green goes with dark purple.

one thing that freaked me out is that the main door to the lodge had two signs that both said, "DANGER: BEARS. Please keep door locked at all times." But none of the rangers locked the door. i know bears can't turn door knobs, but this door didn't close all the way, so it could have been pushed open. and we were in the room with the 9 fridges. i kept waking up in the night and thought, "oh no! bears!" but it was just isaac snoring.

-R