Ode to The Crested Butte Townie

A version of this piece is published in the Summer 2013 issue of Crested Butte Magazine. It's an honor to be a part of that wonderful publication again.

Stoked to visit Crested Butte on Friday, July 5th for a book reading from Climbing Out of Bed at Rumor's Tea and Coffeehouse/Townie Books. The book is also available for sale there now!

Once they are awakened from winter hibernation, the townies rule Crested Butte. In no other place on God’s green earth are they respected more than here. Watch how they command traffic: a seasoned CB driver will slow down from their already crawling pace to let one cross the street, waving the townie on to its destination. Its as if the normal rules of our industrial society were flipped upside down. Human powered transportation is given priority. Nearly everyone has one, some use their townies more often than their cars. Certainly within town limits CB is better experienced at the slow pace of the townie.

Some are a bit flashy; others are equal art and mode of transportation. The best will stop someone dead in their tracks, to just admire its uniqueness and beauty. Some townies barely function for more than the few blocks they are needed. Rarely locked, even in front of a bar, which increases the chances it might be stolen, and they are occasionally stolen, followed by a plea in the newspaper to be returned. And, they are even often returned, found discarded by the drunk in someone’s yard, who may know the owner, or read the plea in the paper and recognize it. This is a connected community, and the townie is one connection we all share.

Like many who are a part of this community, I don’t actually live in Crested Butte. I used to, but even when I did CB was basecamp to bigger adventures, to the backyard, the rocks and the trails. A couple years ago, my last summer living in CB, I saw the townie in a different light, that of the night.

With some friends we’d signed up for the 24 hour Bridges of the Butte endurance townie extravaganza. This was an extreme idea; see how many laps around Crested Butte you could do in the hours of a single day. Our warm up was the Chainless Race that took place earlier in the week, an equally insane event involving a couple hundred costumed freaks, descending seven miles into town without a single stroke of a pedal. Physically it might have turned out to be much of a warm up, but metaphysically it was.

 Our team was the Chihuahua Chasers, named after a harrowing incident where we chased a tiny dog around the town of Gunnison for several hours as it cheated death by running across the highway and nearly every major intersection of town. We draped ourselves in costumes, and assembled several townies that we hoped could last for several laps around town.

The daytime laps were fun, being cheered on by bystanders, fueling our stoke for this ridiculous test of stamina. The nighttime laps were unforgettable, bikes lit up like spaceships, not recalling what lap we were on, and not caring because what mattered was our presence on the townies, and the stars looking on in approval.

Our team traded townies, and my personal favorite was a lowrider, borrowed from a friend of a friend, mine for the moment, smooth flowing, sitting comfortably in the saddle, I felt like a kid lost in play, enjoying the simple pleasure of riding a bike for what it is, one of man’s finest inventions.

On the east side of the course, where there were no houses, and the town turns into dirt roads heading to the mountain, another crew had stopped. Decked in a hundred lights with townies of all variations they had obviously spent some time preparing for this moment. A small stereo played tunes that softly serenaded us more into the moment. It was a classic moment, very out of this world, but very Crested Butte. No words needed to be exchanged; we just soaked it in, and then pedaled some more. 

The full Crested Butte Magazine can be read for free online, or in the printed version found everywhere in Crested Butte. 

Freedom Mobile Story in the Winter Crested Butte Magazine: Roll on Freedom

Below is a story I wrote about my car, The Freedom Mobile, which was published in the most recent issue of Crested Butte Magazine. Below is the draft I submitted, surely just a bit different than the finished product. Hope ya'll enjoy, and be sure to pick up a copy of the CB Mag. when you're in the Gunnison Valley. A link to the online version can be found below.

Our vehicles make statements about our lifestyles, and here in Crested Butte we have quite the diversity in modes of transportation. From the high class Hummer SUVs to the old Subaru station wagon that checks in well over 200,000 miles, the car we drive can be a dead giveaway to the activities we pursue. I often wonder what strangers think of my car, an old 1988 Mazda that is spray painted red, white and blue, most commonly known as the Freedom Mobile.

Ever since I saw the classic 1969 American road movie Easy Rider with Peter Fonda and Jack Nicholson, I’ve wanted to paint a vehicle in the colors of our country. I’ve always sensed that us mountain folk are living out our own version of the American Dream up here in the Gunnison Valley, and my car is representative of our unique culture. Adding to the mystique, I also wanted to feature the OM symbol, to show that the east and west can come together, and to show that although I am a proud American, who has been heavily influenced by the ancient, Indian-based art of yoga.

Reactions to the Freedom Mobile have been mostly positive since I graffiti-ed it up with my friend and artist, Nathan Kubes, three years ago. I can count on children smiling and pointing at it, supportive nods from people on townies crossing Elk Ave., and my fellow climbers saying, “I love your car” at various locales across the west. The most predictable response, however, is from hitchhikers; as I slow down to pull over. Their response, with a glimmer of hope in their eyes, is something to the effect of, “I knew you were going to pick me up.”

I’m proud to drive a vehicle that elicits such a response. It took some time to get to this level of pride though. The very next day after we first painted the car, I was pulled over by the police, saying something about my headlights not working properly. I thought they were, and wondered if I’d just set myself up for getting pulled over all the time. It took some time getting used to driving a car that attracted such attention.

A couple months later I had a first date, at the Almont bar of all places. (The woman was living in Crested Butte, and I was living in Gunny; a good mid-way meeting point I thought.) I had the usual butterflies of a first date, and as I walked out to get in my car for the drive I wished to the heavens that I hadn’t painted my car in such an outlandish manner, so I could just present myself in somewhat of a normal way. She ended up loving The Freedom Mobile though, and I learned an important lesson that our inner freak is usually a beautiful thing, and we should not hide it; if someone is a kindred spirit they’ll love what is inside you.

Something I did in the Freedom Mobile, that I never dreamed would happen, was taking it on a major rock climbing road trip, across the Western United States. It all went down like this. I’d just lost my full time with benefits job in Gunnison, with the downturn in the economy, and recently broken up with the first woman I’d ever been in love with. I needed to get out of the valley, and I’d made plans to move down south, to Durango for a fresh start. In the interim my friend Dave and I would make a month long road trip. It would be one of those coming of age trips to do something exciting, and forget about the trials and tribulations of the past.

At the last minute Dave’s truck broke down, and now the trip relied on the Freedom Mobile. With nothing to lose I decided to take Freedom on the trip. We drove to Red Rocks in Las Vegas, Nevada down to Joshua Tree, California, up to Yosemite, to Vegas again, and finally down to Durango. There were many moments of pure bliss, and the country’s reception of the Freedom Mobile was incredible. At one moment, driving in southern Utah a woman sitting shotgun in an old truck, with oxygen hooked up to her nose, pulled up next to us, and gave the biggest grin I’d ever seen, and two thumbs up. Later that same day, pulling into a gas station in the Middle of Nowhere, Utah, some good ol’ boy mechanics were staring us down. We were slightly defensive until they started talking, “Nice car, it looks like something Evil Knievel would drive.”

Durango ended up embracing the Freedom Mobile, and there are more spray painted cars there per capita than any other place in Colorado I’ve been. Work ended up being scarce in Durango, as it is many places in our country these days, and when the spring ended, I found myself returning to this sacred valley for the summer.

The Freedom Mobile made its first appearance in Crested Butte’s Fourth of July parade, and somehow I managed 16 of my closest friends to spell out The Freedom Mobile in body paint across their stomachs and chests. The wildest incident though came later, in the fall, as the deadline for this piece was approaching.

I’d teamed up my friend, Braden Gunem, to do a photo shoot for this article. He rigged up a camera on the front of my car, with all sorts of lighting inside; including a small rag in a bottle he wanted to light on fire to add a wild touch to the photos. While we were keeping our eyes peeled for the police to make sure they didn’t see our shenanigans, I looked up to the last rays of daylight to see a major townie takeover headed our way. I couldn’t believe my eyes. It was the Brick Oven Pizzeria’s softball team, dressed complete with their signature red, yellow and green tank tops, and hairnets on their townies; thirty of them, followed by a police officer.

As we watched it all go down, wondering what was going to happen, the police officer ended up escorting the Rasta Hairnet townie takeover down Elk Ave. Only in Crested Butte! With the police busy escorting the wild Brick Oven crew, we commenced with our unorthodox photo shoot.

I never know what’s around the corner for the Freedom Mobile, and I like it like that. It’s headed back down to Durango for the winter, so it won’t be rolling the streets of Crested Butte when the snow falls. The spirit of Crested Butte lives in the Freedom Mobile, wherever it may go though. Let freedom ring!

Crested Butte Magazine online