Today we say adios to Taos but not before hitting up
Michael’s Kitchen for such local breakfast deliciousness as blue-corn piñon pancakes, huevos rancheros, and green
chile cheese hashbrowns.
There will be plenty of wind to push us north after that
meal.
As noted, it is long run to DIA, and as is also noted, there
is nothing doing at our airport hotel, so we have a vigorous discussion about
what stops to make on the way to fill our day.
Bill is in favor of driving half an hour off the trail, to Great Sand
Dunes National Monument, which would be awesome, but it is winter (and still
pretty freaking cold today) and I think that is a place better visited in
warmer weather. Others of us favor his
other suggestion: the US Olympic
Training Center (USOTC) in Colorado Springs.
Guess which one won.
The USOTC in Colorado Springs is one of two official Olympic
training centers in the US, the other being in Lake Placid, New York. And while in theory, most summer regular and
para-athletes come here to train, the truth is that there are a lot of other
quasi-official camps around the country, such as the Karolyi ranch in Texas,
where the women gymnasts train because they are too young to be in residence
here, and rowing camps in the Northeast, and pools and tracks all over the
place where athletes train privately, coming to Colorado Springs sometimes just
for a few final weeks or so before the competitions. Still, athletic greatness has certainly
walked here, so we Laskins do too.
The large campus includes all kinds of fancy athletic
facilities, dormitories, and a visitors’ center with a store (natch) filled
with Team USA merch and Japanese tourists.
The visitors’ center also includes the requisite photo montages and
films, all set to the kind of quietly majestic, building-to-thundering-chords
kind of music that is the de rigueur accompaniment to scenes of stupendous
American athletic accomplishment.[1] Before our tour, we watch a montage of clips
featuring everyone from Jesse Owens to Michael Phelps, with skaters and
gymnasts and others in between, and no matter how many of these you watch
during your time here, pretty much always the next-to-last clip will be from
the 1980 Miracle game in Lake Placid. No
matter that none of those players ever came here, and that hockey doesn’t train
here and never has, and that the women’s ice hockey team (that won the first
gold medal ever in that sport) isn’t mentioned AT ALL GODDAMNIT, this is one
that accompanies the thundering part of the music. Of course it is worthy, and kind of cute now
with that old-school equipment. And who
doesn’t love an underdog, esp. a ‘Murican one?
On the tour, everyone ogles the beautiful facilities, filled
with equipment emblazoned with USA and walls covered in inspirational quotes (“I am building a fire, and every day I train, I
add more fuel. At just the right moment, I light the match.” “If you fail to prepare, you’ve prepared to
fail.” You know this stuff.) and some
snarky ones (“If at first you don’t succeed, try doing what your coach said to
do.”)
There are weights galore, and
special grass tracks for practicing starting and stopping and turning around,
and ramps and ranges and pulleys that will pull you through the pool at Michael
Phelp’s world record time. You are
already at 6500 feet here in Colorado Springs, but you can enter the
atmospheric chamber and set it to 24,000 feet if you really want to push
yourself. (We are told that athletes
sometimes sleep there at very high altitude to help their red blood cells
absorb extra oxygen so that they’ll be able to train harder the next day.) Or perhaps you’d prefer 300 feet below sea
level and massive humidity, if you are training for the Atlantis Games, maybe. There is a whole kitchen where athletes are
taught how to cook healthy meals. And if
you get injured, of course there are crack staff and state-of-the-art machines
to monitor and aid your recovery, like an anti-gravity treadmill that allows
you to run with a broken bone in your leg!
We don’t see many athletes training, as it is Saturday
afternoon and they mostly take that day off.
The shooting range has some action, however, and we stare in grossed-out
fascination at the pistoliste who has hyper-extended elbows so that whenever
she takes aim her arm bends at an unnatural angle. Even so, it is totally awesome to watch. The target size for the air-weaponry is about
the size of a pea, and they are standing really far away. Sometimes they shoot between their own
heartbeats, because even that slight movement could cause a miss. (Our guide was a former shooting team member
so we get a lot here.) The shooting
building also features a number of riflery trophies from around the US and the
world, all on loan from the NRA. I sure
wish they’d stick to sports and stay out of politics.
Speaking of politics, unlike many countries, US national
teams are generally overseen and funded by their respective national governing
boards (USA Swimming, Skiing, Shooting, and so on) and private donations,
without government involvement. So all
of this is basically privately funded.
But the bigger your sport (read:
the more advertising revenue it will generate) the more money it has to
spend on you. So, gymnasts are basically
rolling in it, and get massive financial awards when they medal, while, say, a
para-skier is doing it because she loves it, not because it’s making her
rich. Message from our guide: if you want to support the para-athletes,
watch the Paralympics on TV because that will translate to ad revenue for their
sports, and greater rewards for the athletes.
Bill says he’s going to set Izzy’s bedroom to 18,000 feet on
the night before her hockey games, so she will really fly. He and I spend a certain amount of this tour
nudging Izzy and sending her meaningful looks, all of which are met by eye
rolls, and physical distancing between herself and us. Too bad we didn’t see the fencing cell, or we
could have done the same for Peter. We
do hear (in video) from a modern pentathlete, and contemplate finding some
riding lessons for Peter so he can take that up, until we are told, No. Just stop.
But wait, there was more today, a surprising amount of fun
for a day that included a five-hour drive.
Earlier in the day, shortly after crossing the state line to Colorado,
and before climbing up and down through the La Veta Pass (elev. 9413 ft) in the
Sangre de Christo mountains, we passed through wondrous San Luis. This small town is home to a pretty
spectacular graffiti-covered arts center, the Stations of the Cross Shrine up
on the mesa overlooking the town (was it a chateau, or a mosque, we wondered as
we approached because you can see it from really far away), AND Colorado’s
oldest continuously operated irrigation ditch, the San Luis People’s Ditch, which
is a big deal in a state with water issues.
And AFTER the USOTC, we toodled around the Broadmoor a bit,
thinking to go to the Seven Falls site, but put off by having to pay and take a
shuttle to see a waterfall. While
wending our way through the surrounding affluent neighborhood, we happened upon
a house surrounded by wondrous iron kinetic sculptures, some 20+ feet high,
dipping and spinning and turning in the breeze.
Some are shaped like tall birds, others look like they have sprung from
the pages of a Jules Verne novel. After
wondering and photographing for a while, we dash back to the car and start
googling. Come to find out, we have
stumbled upon the late Star Kempf’s kinetic sculptures, displayed at his home
over the objection of his neighbors. The
city tried to take them down, after crowds started showing up following Kempf’s
death in 1995, but his daughter objected, and so a number remain.
It is not so surprising that the presence of these
fantastical objects might give the neighbors pause. They are huge, and packed into a too-small
site, so they rather overwhelm. One has
toppled over, and you wonder if it will ever be righted, or just stay on its
side, weeds growing through it as it slowly settles into the earth. There is a kind of whimsically benign Mad Max
aura to it all, and it really is just a quiet residential neighborhood, not
really suited to crowds of gogglers. But
it is just us today, and we are glad that we got lost up here.
[1] It will surprise no one that Bob Costas narrates the
film that precedes the tour: “The
Beginning.”
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