AtomJohnson Blog

With the two Johnson brothers and the Smith boy all within two hours of one another, it only made sense to do some gettin’ together.  When our Aunt Joyce heard about this prospect, she kindly offered to sponsor the get together.  Well Joyce, your pledge ensured that 3 brother/cousin boys and 1 girlfriend-of-one-of-the-brothers girls had an amazing time at the Colorado Rapids vs. the Houston Dynamo.  We were certainly not the only ones having a few drinks that night either.  Apparently the stadium operations team were doing shots in the control room because the sprinklers came on just after halftime and all but one of the stadium lights went out about 10 minutes after that…way to go boys!

We arrived in Telluride this morning about 10:30am.  Even this early hour is too late to secure a parking spot in the parking garage.  So, we claimed a bit of the roadside, loaded our gear onto our backs and decided to bike down the road and into town rather than line up for the Gondola.  The ride down was exhilarating (read…shorts-soiling scary).  The ride into town was beautiful, but challenging (read…constant vomit burps, cramping and occasional pockets of oxygen).

Somehow we found enough room for our butts and gear in just about the same spot as yesterday.  The crowd was already twice as thick as yesterday.  There were alot of very rough looking people also trying to recover from the prior dayda.  The sun seemed to have moved a bit closer to festival grounds for a better vantage point, which did not expedite the recovery time at all.

After about an hour, I decided to head into town to catch the Croatia vs. Turkey match.  Once again, there was a hard-core contingent of soccer fans willing to trade in the scorching sun for some manufactured shade and European Championship football.  Two of the guys at the bar were from Norway and had made the cover of the Telluride newspaper that day.  They are from a town of 7 people in Norway and are doing a bit of research to help them facilitate the bluegrass festival that they’ll be putting on in their hometown (population 7) later this summer.  They expressed their surprise to find any soccer fans at all in America.  They somehow missed the irony that they are Norwegian bluegrass fans.

The musical highlight of they day was Paulo Nutini.  He is a 21 year old Scottish musician that has enjoyed some success on popular American radio stations this past year.  While his radio releases are good songs, they only scratch the surface of what this kid is capable of.  He did the best version of “Worried Man” I have ever heard.  If you like Scotland, or even music, check out some Neutini.  Unfortunately, they cut his set 20 minutes short in order to give a surprise presentation to honor the 20th year that Craig Fergusen and Steve Szymanski have been running Planet Bluegrass.  While it was a good presentation, I believe that Paulo Neutini’s command of the microphone had more of a beat you could dance to.

Scott and I closed out our last day at the festival with Ricky Skaggs and Bruce Hornsby.  It is one of those weird combinations like peanut butter and pickles that you don’t think would work, but somehow strike an amazing harmony.  The bluegrass version of “That’s Just The Way It Is” seems to be the way it was meant to be played this entire time…better late than never I guess.  To take in this music along with a Colorado sunset against the surrounding peaks was almost too much to take, yet we’d gladly take it again.

I can’t say enough good things about our experience at the Telluride Bluegrass Festival. Thank you so much to Nikki, Jeff, Sandy, Darren, Billy and Marybeth for letting us share the lawn space that they worked so hard to secure.  You all made us feel more welcome than you could possibly know.  I wish we could have hung out for another couple days.  Thank you too to The Bergers for your generosity and amazing hospitality.  Every time I come down to Ouray, you make it feel like home.  Thank you to Scott for making the trek out from Atlanta to share my first bluegrass festival with me.  Hopefully we just started a long and growing tradition.

“Peace, Love and Get the F’ Out of My Way!”  Those are the words that Nikki, our tarp mate, used to describe the hippy sprint each morning at the opening of the bluegrass festival.  This group of fellow-man-loving people line up hours before the 10am opening of the gates with enormous tarps whose sole purpose is to lay claim to this conquered plot of festival lawn.  As the gates open, one would swear they were witnessing the running of the bulls.  In a matter of seconds, this lush green lawn transforms into a patchwork of brown and blue plastic tarps with proud, but exhausted hippies heaving for every bit of oxygen they can find at 9,000 feet above sea level.

Scott and I had every intention of arriving early enough to make this sprint, but ended up getting to the festival grounds about half an hour later.  Since it was only two of us, I found a small area at the rear of the front lawn that crept slightly onto another tarp.  Fortunately the tarp owners were very generous and were more than willing to share the back of their property with us.

The festival itself would seem to be a fairy tale if someone simply described it to you.  The approach to the festival grounds is a winding trail that passes over a raging river, through a grove of quaking aspens, beside a children’s fishing pond, and finally opens onto an enormous field surrounded by 11,000 foot snowy mountain peaks and nearly vertical, tree lined hills with about every shade of green represented.

The group that was kind enough to share their tarp with us grabbed their first beer at 10:30am.  As we joked with them about the early hour, they reminded us that you can’t drink all day unless you start early.  With that, we went and grabbed our first beer.

The rest of day was spent watching one world-class musician after another take the stage.  It is rare to be in setting where the musician facing out is in more awe of their view than the thousands of fans taking in the music.  The only break we took from the music was a bike ride into town to watch the Germany vs. Portugal quarterfinal match of the Euro 2008 tournament.  We were not the only die-hard soccer fans willing to sacrifice some of the value of their ticket in order to watch the match.

The people watching at the festival is top notch.  Folks from every walk of life have put their lives on hold, checked their egos at the door, liberally applied sunscreen and congrated on these festival grounds to further validate the stereotype that white people can’t dance.  Somewhere in the mid-afternoon, I alerted Scott to check the guy in the Black Sabbath t-shirt, skinny jeans, high tops, ratty red bed head and Buddy Holly spectacle frames.  With a slight snicker, we forgot completely about this guy…until we later saw him singing into the microphone during the Ryan Adams set to close out the first night of the show.

After a surprsingly smooth day of festivities, we found that the most painful part of a day at the Telluride Bluegrass Festival is trying to get back to your vehicle.  Funneling an entire festival of folks at the same time through a single Gondola leads to a bottlenecked line of immense proportions.  “Exhausted” doesn’t do proper justice to how we were feeling on the drive back to Ouray.  The king-sized bed at The Bergerhoff is exactly what I needed to recharge the batteries for Day 2 of the festival.

Scott and I got away this morning about 9:30am for our trip down to the Telluride Bluegrass Festival.  He was nice enough to drive so that I could do some work on the way.  The drive down was gorgeous.  Mountains, valleys, streams, and the most incredible gift shop you’ve ever seen sitting right at the continental divide.

We arrived at the Bergerhoff about 5pm, just in time to join them for dinner and Guiness at Ouray’s new Irish Pub.  The trip up the Berger’s driveway was actually the biggest test for the Civic of the entire trip.  It took us three attempts to get all the way up.  The engine was compared to that of a sewing machine.  Does anyone need anything hemmed?  I might have just the vehicle to do it…

After some Fish n’ Chips, Guiness, dark chocolate and coffee, we retreated back to the Bergerhoff for some Port Wine and conversation on the deck.  The one guarantee when you come to the Bergerhoff is that you’ll always feel completely at home.  Who knew that the most gracious Southern Hospitality would be found here in Colorado?  After hearing amazing stories of the Berger’s recent trip through Europe, the altitude, alcohol and frigid mountain air eventually chased us all to bed.

After reading a bit about the festival online, it looks like we’ll need the rest.  One guy’s blog describes the lottery-driven sprint to secure spots on the lawn for your tarp.  If we get into a foot race tomorrow, I’m just hoping that my competition is coming from sea level and has had a beer or two already…in that case, the lawn will be mine for the taking.

My brother arrived today for what should prove to be an amazing week at the Telluride Bluegrass Festival.  He has never been to Colorado, so what better way to introduce him then to take him straight to the most beautiful part of the state and fill him full of beer, good food, world class music, and the most gorgeous box canyon you could possibly imagine?

After sitting around this afternoon watching France vs. Italy in the European Cup, I decided I should probably suck it up with my ankle injury and try to play in my game tonight.  So, Scott and Jess fixed up a large batch of cocktails, grabbed the lawn chairs, and secured a spot on the sideline to cheer me on.  I must say it was great having them there.  I love playing soccer whether someone is on the sideline or not, but it is always nice to have some there rooting for you.  Our 4 - 0 victory made it all that much sweeter.

My cousin Ryan came in town this past weekend.  After spending several years in Ft. Hood, Texas and various locations throughout Iraq, the earned karma has placed him in Colorado Springs.  Due to his various deployments and assignments, we had missed him at every family function for the past several years.  Honestly, we couldn’t figure out the last time we had seen each other, but somewhere in that time, he had grown to 6′1″ tall and then shrunk down to 5′11″.  I should have waited a few more years and I probably could have dunked on him.

We learned alot about each other this weekend.  Most importantly, I now have a family member nearby who shares every bit as much passion as I do about the sport of soccer and the beverage of beer.  We spent an (un)healthy portion of the weekend either watching soccer or playing it on the Xbox.  The rest of the time was spent eating sushi, drinking sake, playing boggle, tasting Porter, hiking in the snow, downing coffee, consuming Italian sandwiches, and of course, playing Settlers of Catan (travel edition). Ryan, if you know what is good for you, you’ll bring yourself back up to Boulder soon…you’re welcome anytime.

Tonight Jess and I had “date night”.  Since I’ve been so busy with work lately, it was important for us to get out and spend some quality time together.  So, I surprised her tonight by taking us to Buffalo Exchange thrift store and giving us each a $40 budget for new clothes.  Jess came away with some low prices on high fashion. I’m came away looking like an ass clown.

No matter how many times I got hiking in the mountains, I still refuse to admit that its would be any colder “up there”.  If Jess and I were to adopt trail names this past weekend, we would have had to fight over the name “Ill Prepared”.  Wearing shorts, wind breakers, and fashionable tennis shoes, we hopped into the Civic and headed West.  Upon exiting the car, it was immediately obvious that we were going to be cold.  After a few miles on the trail, we were beginning to wonder if John Krakauer might be writing his next story about us.

The plan was to get in a medium distance hike.  After a decent bit of hiking we came to the trail to Crater Lakes.  According to my map, it was only .7 more miles to the lakes, so we decided to keep going.  A couple hours later, we still hadn’t reached the lakes and were completely exhausted.  To make matters worse, cold water was sloshing through our tennis shoes as every couple steps would result in us being knee deep in snow.  It turns out that the trailhead to Crater Lakes was snowed over, so we were on the very long and steep trail to Heart Lake.  In situation like this, I always like to blame the map.  Once I get my iPhone with GPS next month, I’ll have nobody to blame buy myself (and perhaps Steve Jobs).

I wasn’t sure that a Red Rocks concert was in the cards for me this summer, but last Friday I got an email from a neighbor offering me her tickets to see John Prine and Emmylou Harris.  Well, since John Prine is one of my all time favorite artists, the most reasonably option was “yes”.

Having already seen him about five times, I figured I would like the show, but maybe not love it.  Wrong.  I LOVED it!  He is so good.  He’s already survived throat cancer and he’s still out there touring.

In addition to writing some of the best (and funniest) songs around, John Prine also gives the best intro to the songs.  The photo above is of he and Emmylou Harris doing a duet to one of my favorite songs called “In Spite of Ourselves”.  I can’t think of a better wedding song than this one.  Below is a video of he and Iris Dement doing a version of it on Sessions at West 54th.  I had the great priviledge of getting to hear them perform this live several times in the summer of 2000.

A four year old’s birthday party is completely different when attended as an adult.  As a kid, it means you get cupcakes, a goody bag, sidewalk chalk, and the chance to play with all the toys that the birthday boy/girl just received.  Fast forward 30 or so years and it means that you hate the sun because all bright light just reminds you of how many mojitos you had the night before.  At least that was the case the morning after game night when we attended the “across-the-sidwalk” neighbor’s birthday party.  Despite the heavy head, it really is great to be in a real neighborhood around people that treat you like family.