The Phillips Family

A little update from Colorado… Annie is finished with school and feeling much better physically. She is getting a bit more round, little by little. No noticeable movement from the baby yet, but the heartbeat is good and the checkups are normal. By the end of the month we will know if the baby is a boy or a girl, just in time for our 5 year anniversary. She has started going back to the farm once a week and spends the rest of the time enjoying her break from school. Work for me continues on the new Supreme Courthouse downtown, and I’ve been enjoying the warmer weather with lots of biking and some running. I try to bike to work at least a few days a week and have been spending more time mountain biking with friends.

Summer is finally here after a rather stubborn winter/spring. Today was 90+ and tomorrow is supposed to be near 100. Hopefully that kind of heat won’t last long or we will be heading for the mountains. Instead of camping several days in the rain like we did last Memorial Day weekend, this year we decided to work around the house for a few days. On Monday we did go out of town for a surprise for Annie. She is always bugging me to tour a mine (there are quite a few here) but most of them look so decrepit and tourist-trappy that I can’t bring myself to do it. So I did a little research and picked one of the better ones, the Mollie Kathleen Gold Mine in Cripple Creek. This one was especially attractive because they send you down the hoistway 1,000 ft into the mine.

The hoistway was not for the claustrophobic. They crammed six of us into a space so small that I couldn’t bring my hand to my face to scratch my nose. But once we were in the mine it was well lit and more spacious. Our tour guide was a 3rd generation miner and demonstrated all of the machinery. Interestingly, 1) he had super smooth skin to the point that he looked like one of the mannequins (see below) 2) he talked 90 mph 3) and he coughed every 15 seconds or so.

After the mine we drove into Manitou Springs and I went on a run while Annie looked around town. I have disappointingly been unable to run for about a year because of some feet pain, but lately they have felt much better. I’m trying to take advantage of the window of opportunity by doing the trail running I’ve always wanted to do. One of the most well known trails in Colorado is the Barr Trail up the east face of Pikes Peak. The entire trail gains over 7,000 ft in the 12 miles to the top and is home to the Pikes Peak Ascent and Pikes Peak Marathon. I would love to run the Ascent one of these days, but for now I had a great run making it about 1/3 of the way up and turning around. Any way about it, it was a great run simply because I was able to run.