Friday Donuts

Friends, In a world rank with spin and “truth-shaping”, the unvarnished truth can be a breath of fresh air. This notion seems to have inspired the folks naming things in and around Aspen. Next time you’re there check out the (1) Difficult Campground. After all, if you want it easy, camping may not be your thing. During your stay, you may be tempted to explore the (2) Lost Man trail. His mishap reminds us all that hiking is not devoid of risk. If you’re looking for something original to do while in town, why not take a walk down (3) Original Street, just be careful not to wander down to (4) Glory Hole Park –I hate to imagine what you’ll find there! Instead, mosey on down to Mill and Hyman where you’ll find (5) Sweet Coloradough donuts. Just be sure to go early, lest they run out of their famous Cronuts –and decide for yourself whether they’re truly worth $7 a pop. Happy Friday!

  Friends, They say you can’t judge a bakery by it’s billboard, yet, its natural to try. External traits feel like reasonable proxies for deeper truths. Eloquent passes for rational, articulate for competent and charismatic for good. We tend to trust proxies for their decent probability of holding true, forgetting that symptoms may have alternate causes. Madmen can be expressive, frauds persuasive and devils charming. So, one might be forgiven for assuming Habit Doughnut Dispensary sells torus-shaped edible THC, despite the fact such an assumption would be wrong. They’re just your run of the mill pricey bakery. That said they do have some very dope donuts (to be clear, “dope” not in the literal sense, but rather, as slang for “great”). Their blazed donut calls to mind a delicious flambe dessert and their strawberry glaze tastes like fresh picked, well, strawberries. You should try it some time. Happy Friday!

  Friends, Unseasonably warm days create a short window of opportunity when daylight and strenuous outdoor activities mix. Accordingly, I’ve shifted my running habit to the early morning hours. The sheets will inevitably try to dissuade me of my purpose by overselling the benefits five more minutes of sleep might provide. Fortunately, getting out there is more rewarding than the alternative. The crisp morning air, sharp angle lighting and a residual good feeling that carries-on for hours outweigh the temptation to hit the snooze button and sleep-in. If that wasn’t enough, the possibility of chance wildlife encounters sweetens the pot. This week, the coyote who often stares from a distance crossed the path a little closer than usual. Then there was the completely unexpected common snapping turtle, digging right off the running trail —there was nothing common about that sight. ​​ The other benefit of an early run is the donut stop before the day gets too crazy. I guess that's why

Friends, There’s a certain gratification that comes from imposing order on chaos. Whether it’s crafting a story, assembling a puzzle or building a project, every completed stage is delightful, even though there may never be a “finished product”. One of my guilty pleasures, genealogy, has mutated beyond a one-dimensional search for ancestors into a quest to tackle the social fabric that connects me to the world. My genealogical web (family tree seems an inadequate metaphor) has metastasized into a large and eclectic collection of interweaving connections between folks with varying degrees of affiliation. Think of it as seven degrees of JP González. The only rule for getting added is holding some relation with someone who is already on the tree. As you might imagine, this means a good chunk of folks on the tree hold little or no blood relation to yours truly. Still, it’s satisfying to connect the dots and, particularly rewarding when I get to merge individuals. A son is also a husband