Colorado Springs is gorgeous. The town is beautiful and the setting is magnificant. It makes a terrific first impression. I don’t know what it would be like to live here during a brutal winter, but on a nice day in early June, it really doesn’t get any better.

Adam spent the morning trying to get the Ford dealership to offer decent customer service on our window and was ultimately unsuccessful. They were so unhelpful Adam finally gave up and left. He found another local mechanic and got the window fixed.

(Adam:)  I get to the Ford dealership service center right at 7:00am, when they open.  I explain to the service tech the problem and give him several routes to solving the problem.  I let him know that a) If they have the replacement window motor in stock, I’ll buy it and pay them to replace the bad motor; or b) if they don’t have the motor, I want them just to pull the existing motor, push up the actuator and replace the motor into position.  I let him know that we were just passing through and needed a quick solution.

He told me that he didn’t know if they could even get to my car today. I asked him “when will you know whether you can see my car?” He said: “I don’t quite know the answer to that.”
I asked: “Do you have the motor in stock?”
He: “I won’t know the answer to that until we enter your ticket into the computer.”
Adam: “When can you enter my ticket into the computer?”
He: “I’m not quite sure yet.  I don’t know when we can enter your ticket, and we won’t know if we can see your car until after we enter the ticket and see when a technician can be made available.”
Adam: “So, I really just need to leave, don’t I?”

I see this far too frequently these days.  Computers cease becoming tools and begin to become masters.  This (potentially) capable technician couldn’t look at my car because a computer wouldn’t let him.  He couldn’t tell me when he could even tell me if he could look at the car.  I drove off in disgust.  This is a Ford dealership.  Not good, Ford.

I drove around town a bit and ran into an independent shop that sold and claimed to service trucks.  They opened at 7:30 and I arrived just in time for them to open up and let me explain my plight.  

The technician there thought about it a moment and then said “Well, I’m afraid that we wouldn’t be able to take a look at your window until…… 8:00 at the earliest.” I thought he was going to say “Thursday.”

I left him the keys and walked up to a Starbucks several blocks down the road, got a coffee and read some blogs about how UT will dominate all of football in the upcoming year (for certain, this time…)

I was out of there by 9:00 with the window “fixed.”  That is, the tech got it running again, but told me that the motor would need to be replaced and strongly recommended that we not touch it until we got to Grangeville or Corvallis and had the time to fix it properly.

(Brenda again …) Shortly after leaving the mechanic, Adam discovered that now his window won’t open.  It seems we have a glitch in our electrical system.  The bottom line, at least for now, is that we don’t dare open the windows at any cost.

We thought this would be easy, but immediately ran into problems. Our first destination this morning was Pikes Peak.

For years, Adam has been trying to talk me into going to Machu Picchu (Peru) and I’ve dragged my feet every time he brings it up. The reason is the altitude. I’ve heard too many stories about people getting sick and stranded, where suddenly something that was supposed to be fun turns into a dangerous nightmare. They recommend that if you decide to try visiting, go spend several days acclimating in Cusco. The reason for this is that evacuation from Cusco is easy if you find yourself in trouble. Once you set out for Machu Picchu, if you get into trouble you’re screwed. That sounds too dangerous and risky to me.

Back to this morning: we drove up to the ranger station to buy tickets and the first thing the guy said was, “You’re in luck! The summit was closed until just a few minutes ago because the winds were over 50 mph and we can’t let people up there when it’s that’s dangerous. It seems to have calmed down now, though. You should be OK.”

The second thing he said was, “Turn off your air conditioner and make sure you have at least half a tank of gas. Only drive in low gear. That’s really important. You’ll overheat your engine and destroy your brakes if you don’t.”

Then he said this: “Oh yeah, you’ll also need to open your windows. If you don’t, the air pressure change will blow your windows out. It happened to someone yesterday. I don’t mean to scare you, but you do need to be really careful. Exploding windows are really dangerous.”  Engine failure, brake failure, exploding windows?  This is more than I’d bargained for.

The summit of Pikes Peak is 14,110 feet. I suddenly started thinking about altitude sickness and asked Adam, “What’s the elevation of Machu Picchu?” I knew that could be dangerous, but this would be OK … right? Certainly Pikes Peak is lower than Cusco. It just has to be.

I grabbed the iPad and looked it up: Machu Picchu, the place I’ve steadfastly refused to go to because of it’s unacceptable level of risk, is a mere 7,972 feet. Cusco, which is a little higher, is 11,800 feet. And now here I am, staring at 14,115. I started to feel a panic attack coming on. I’ve had enough danger on this trip already.

We gingerly cracked open my window and Holden’s, the only ones not giving trouble so far. We opened them the tiniest bit; just enough to equalize air pressure, but not too much in case they got stuck that way.

We began the 19-mile ascent with Adam giving me looks out of the corner of his eye. He was convinced I was going to freak out for no good reason and ruin his chance to reach the top of Pikes Peak. He was sitting over there in the driver’s seat getting ready to dig in his heels on this one, and saying things designed to disarm my anxiety. “We’ll be fine. This is a famous tourist destination, thousands of people come here every year. Stop being such a nervous Nelly.”

Then, right around mile marker 1, Holden started farting. He released noxious gas every 3 minutes up the 19-mile drive to the summit. With each 500 feet gained in elevation, one more toxic fart. We couldn’t open the windows, and the air was getting thinner and harder to breathe by the moment. With ears popping and eyes watering, we couldn’t tell if we were getting nauseated from the altitude or from breathing the trapped foul stench in our car. The only one not bothered by any of this was Holden.

We didn’t even dare stop to open the doors and air out. The park ranger gave us a leaflet titled, “Safety on the Mountain” chock-full of scary sounding stuff. It explicitly stated, “We recommend that you drive up to the summit and save picture stops and points of interest for the drive down. This will be easier on your vehicle.” And, “The Pikes Peak Highway Rangers conduct a brake check at Glen Cove. They will check the temperature of your brakes for excessive brake heat. Your safety is our concern.” If you stop on the way up, the grade is so steep some cars have a hard time getting going again. On the way down, stopping periodically can give your brakes time to cool off. We wanted desperately to stop on the way up, but didn’t dare.

We finally reached the summit, which took about an hour. At the top, they have a little restaurant and gift shop.

It was windy and cold.

(Adam: It is 88 degrees today in Colorado Springs.  It got down to 38 degrees at the summit of Pikes peak.)

We hadn’t been enjoying the view more than about 30 seconds when Holden announced he needed a bathroom. I took him into the restaurant and spent 20 minutes standing in front of the men’s room door while Holden took the world’s longest poo.

Panoramic shot from the roof of the world.

I missed my chance to explore the views, but didn’t mind too much because the restaurant was warm. There were a lot of people in there and none seemed to be suffering ill-effects, so I started to relax a little. This was as high as it got, and all these people seemed just fine. (Later, Adam told me that outside they had at least three EMT vehicles stationed to respond to emergencies. I’m glad I didn’t know about that until after we were already back down the mountain.)

Cold and windy. We all felt a bit dizzy and fatigued at these heights. On the summit, there is only 60% of the oxygen compared to that at sea level.

Adam:  Walking around began to get a bit labored and everyone was soon wanting to get back in the car and head down. We bought some shirts and corkscrew and a warm bag of doughnuts and started down.

Halfway down the mountain, all cars must stop for a mandatory break check. A park ranger shoots a digital temperature laser at every car’s break system and reads the temps. Anything over 300 deg requires the car to pull over and wait 15 minutes (getting a lecture on technique) before proceeding. Our car’s breaks measured 75 degrees and the ranger told me that it was the lowest of the day. He even walked back to his “ranger shack” and returned with a candy prize for me as a reward. The prize quickly got eaten by the three guttersnipes in the back seats.

Brenda:  Confident that Holden’s digestive issues were behind him after his marathon bathroom session, we began the slow descent. Minutes later, the car once again filled with stench. “Oh my God, Holden!” we hollered, “Stop doing that!” He said, “It wasn’t me that time! I swear!”

And Isabella casually said, “Oh yeah. That was me.”

(Adam:)  We raced back down the mountain to remove at least one worry from Brenda’s prodigious list.  We stopped in fashionable (and holy cow expensive Colorado City) for an outdoor cafe lunch.

After lunch, we headed over to The Garden of the Gods.  It’s a National Park with some really neat geographical formations.  It’s a great place for hiking, and, if you know what you are doing and have the proper permits, some pretty spectacular rock climbing.  The kids had a really good time scrambling around on the rocks.  Thankfully we didn’t run into any rattlesnakes.

The kids standing in front of Pikes Peak – snow covered in the distance.

Final shot – overheated kids.  Colorado Springs is at around 6300′ and HOT.  The sun beats down through the thin atmosphere and burns quickly.  Everyone was sunscreened to the hilt.

Tomorrow:  Estes Park, Colorado to stay in The Stanley — most famous as the hotel from “The Shining.”  I’m a huge Stephen King fan, so this is really exciting!