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QaR
November 2009 
How did you get to where you are now?
Posted on Nov 9th, 2009
by 
Geo
Geo
This is in Response to the Questions and Reflections for November 09, 2009:
The easy answer is that I ended up here after I answered an ad in Velo News. An Aspen bike shop was looking for a mechanic, I happened to be a mechanic. However, I was also out of work from my paying job as a construction worker.
I had been out of work for some months, picking up odd jobs here and there, but nothing that lasted more than a week or too. I had dreamed of living in Aspen for some time, having visited to rock climb or bicycle race in the Rocky Mountains over the years. As if on cue, my bluff was called and here was not only a chance to live and work in Aspen, but it was working in a field that I loved and felt that I was good at, too.
I answered the ad.
A week or so later, I received a phone call from the bike shop's owner and he said he wanted to meet with me to discuss the position. Sounded good.
In the meantime, a son of the shop's owner won an Olympic gold medal in the bicycle road race, so a job at this particular shop had just jumped a bit in stature, or at least in my mind it did.
However, the owner and I did not get along at all and I couldn't wait for the summer to end to be free of that hated place. I looked at moving back to the Midwest, Boulder, anywhere but here. My dream of racing, climbing and hiking in the mountains had been ruined, I thought, by a person who held power over me, only because I gave that power to him.
And that started a long, troubled, strife filled life that burned through two marriages, one home, two different jobs, friends and a chunk of my family. Culminating with a six week stay outside of Wickenburg, Arizona trying to figure out just what in the world happened to me, who was I and where was I.
I didn't so much find out who I was as much as I found out who I was not.
I learned that I should start learning.
Realizing that I didn't know much, much less knowing it all, was and is humbling.
I found, late in life, that I could finally share what I see and feel when I am in the heart of my wilderness, my mountains.
Embracing that an apartment that is a tad under 500 square feet can be a castle, especially when the snow is blowing sideways outside.
Life can be a slow release from ignorance, but should still be delved into with all my efforts anyway.
So, that's how I ended up here today. I will be in a different place tomorrow, with new memories and stories, and hopefully, I will have learned new things, too.
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