The scenic part of our trip began as we topped Raton Pass and looked west toward the serrated peaks of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains eclipsing a gloaming sky.

We travelled north to Trinidad, home of Bat Masterson, Cissy King (from the Lawrence Welk Show, for you WCTS listeners) and Stanley Biber who helped make Trinidad the sex change capital of the world. I hesitate to mention this in the present company because so many emergent types are committed to changing everything: I fear that with our wide readership the McLaren Kool-Aid Clan might be encouraged to "take a trip to Trinidad".

This is not my intention; I record it for historical purposes only.

We visited Rino's where I enjoyed a plate of spaghetti and offering my reasons for thinking the waitress was a woman. The next morning we headed north by the Collegiate Mountains and on for the beautiful drive from Leadville to Minturn to Eagle.

I spent the next few days releasing the pinchbugs, harassing somewhat innocent children, throwing them up in the air, playing checkers, making cranberry relish, looking for elk, discussing Emergence, Mormonism, Young Fundamentalism and imperious mission agency executives with the adults. From there it was back to Buena Vista where we stayed up until the unrighteous hours and consumed large doses of C₁₁H₁₂N₂O₂ .

There were several Christmas jigsaw puzzles set out for the casual participation of sane people as they walked by, and the obsessive commitment of my wife who loses all sense of proportion about these things.

I met a truly disturbed woman who reminded me that Emergence is not funny, not pretty, and not healthy.

We shot some guns. We watched some football. We played some Bingo. We solved crossword puzzles, sudoku puzzles, disentanglement puzzles and sliding puzzles.

Then we thanked the proprietors for allowing us to loiter and we headed out.

The road home involved the expected tedium we associate with return trips until we backed out of a dark parking lot to hear a very unmusical sound from the rear end of the Suburban. It sounded like we were dragging a fire hydrant under the axle. The manly travelers got out at a Shell station, took off the tire, saw some loose and seriously misshapen bits fall to the ground, put them in the console cup-holder and we went merrily on our way as if we knew what we'd done. The women were not as impressed as I'd hoped they would be.

But a relaxing time was had by all.