Visit America at 10,120 feet above sea level and you will find the stubborn attitude necessary to make it through the winter, past the roller coaster of molybdenum pricing, past the hystrionix of molybrown, and out onto the flat expanses of the ancient fish hatcheries at the base of Mount Massive. Leadville, CO is one of the last great places in the United States, part silver mine holding pond, part Golden Burro grease, part genuine made in the USA, part six shooter, part PBR, and a little latté for good measure. It’s the crossroads where boom and bust times and the grit such a ride requires of families, collides with weekend visitors from Boulder and Aspen. It’s the town up the road from the ski resorts and down the hill from God.
At this altitude, the charm of the Victorian era is dancing with drunks at the Manhattan Bar, standing in line for coffee at Proving Grounds, trying to discern the meaning of Kum and Go in Leadville and the Loaf ‘n Jug in Frisco (wtf?).
It’s the trickiest of needles to thread in America. How to be authentic. How to make Bed and Breakfasts and Country Inns the genuine article in Leadville without being kitch on one hand, or becoming banal and silly like the condos in Breckenridge on the other. How to have a good cup of coffee along Harrison Street without becoming a snotty Main Street which will become a place more for visiting interlopers than residents in February.
I think I discovered something of that balance a year ago at the Leadville 100, where visitors and residents are together. It’s not perfect. Plenty of visitors arrive too good for Leadville, and then depart without having tasted the cherry pie. But it works. The grit that enables Leadville to persevere welcomes outsiders with a skeptical warmth that makes a kind of sense. The coffee is really good. And the future might be very warm.
Originally posted on August 20, 2007
[...] starts at the top. At the prerace meeting the night before the LT 100, race founder and organizer Ken Chlouber tells a packed gym of 1,400 anxious riders: “This race isn’t about Lance Armstrong. This race [...]