Telluride - Food, Views and a Tesla Coil

Managed to miss the rock slides on I-70 last weekend and headed southwest to Telluride for the Culinary Arts Festival. Mark runs the video for these shows. I got to push buttons.

We stayed in town this year at a cute little B&B/ski lodge, the Manitou Lodge. The weather was perfect and the setting gorgeous. The festival was about 1,000 feet up from town in Mountain Village. So to get back and forth we had to take the gonjula (gondola). A gorgeous view but sweaty palms for me.

Telluride reminds me of Roslyn, Washington -- another old mining town. Stone buildings, tin ceilings. Property cost is a little different though. A cute little condo next to the B&B was cheap at $2.5mil. Sigh.

Telluride is a doggy town. There are dogs everywhere. You can find "puppy parking" places along the main drag and lots of water bowls.

That same weekend is the Telluride Tech Festival. The Tech Fest is based on the historical fact that in 1891, Nikola Tesla, George Westinghouse and Telluride's own L.L. Nunn built the world's first commercial grade AC power plant in Telluride. In honor of that, the tech fest has its own Tesla Coil - hard to capture on camera but I tried. This year, Dr. Mega Volt was present -- an interesting guy who created a mesh wire suit that allowed him to play with the bolts of energy generated by the tesla coil. Something you really got to see.

Hey that reminds me of an Northern Exposure episode (and what part of life does not remind me an epsiode of Northern Exposure). Chris, the DJ, decides to get inside electricity by building a bathtub device with a giant magnet. Dr. Mega Volt and Chris-in-the-Morning are on the same wavelength -- so to speak.

I'm wondering how common the name Nunn is... that's my birth last name. I wonder if there's any relation.

SPAM and the Lees

On my way home from running errands, I saw a sign by the side of the road. It was one of those "we buy ugly houses" or "free mortgage" handwritten signs that someone had stuck into the ground. Someone else had come by with a giant magic marker and wrote "SPAM" over the top of it. Has the computer age taken over real life? So "Work at home" flyers pasted to the traffic light poles are now SPAM? Is the junk mail I get in the metal mail box out front of my house considered SPAM? All those commercials on TV SPAM? How about bumper stickers on the car in front of me? SPAM everywhere - ack!

On a completely different note, I'm looking forward to that new Jason Lee show in the Fall "My Name is Earl." It's not his most attractive look but he's in line as a backup husband (behind Viggo).

I accidentally caught a bit of Tommy Lee Goes to College. I think he's kind of cute. I think I am really a headbanging, big-haired, heavy metal groupie at heart.