I want to tell

After another prolonged absence from my blog I have the urge to share again. We'll see if that continues or not.
I'm sitting here in my kitchen in Durango, CO looking out at intimidatingly gray weather. I've been working on the railroad and I have two precious days off before the two week push of working every day until Christmas until 11 pm.
How did I get here?
It seems like so long ago that Annie offered to help me get out to Colorado. I joined her and Lisa on their cross country drive, but jumped out in Fairfield Iowa, a strange town where Gold tipped domes and trailer parks live in harmony. I stayed in the trailerpark with John and joined him on a trip to the Iowa State fair with his posse of Chinese exchange students. It turns out fried butter is every bit as delicious as it sounds. To those poor souls who have not been exposed to fried butter, let me explain: Take half a stick of well chilled butter and impale it on a stick (wood, not butter). Now plunge the sticked butter into a thick, sweet, cinnamony batter and deep fry it. The result is a falice of batter that has been penetrated with butter and frying oil. When bitten into, salty butter oozes out of the middle. Get the picture?
From Des Moines I caught a bus to Denver where I was greated by my bike crazed family. It turns out I had timed my arrival in Colorado perfectly with the USA Pro Cycling Challenge, a 7 stage road bike race around central Colorado. My uncles, who are already cycling enthusiasts couldn't stop talking about the race. Before it started I kept hearing, "this is going to be so cool", and then, at the race, "this is so cool." The enthusiasm was contagious and I was hooked. I ended up following half the stages in a Tigger costume, bouncing and yelling as the racers came through.
Suddenly the race was over and I was faced with the decision I had been putting off: where am I going to live now? I had been leaning towards Durango for a while, with no alternatives really getting me as excited, so I borrowed my cousin Conor's car and loaded up my belongings to check out Durango. Now here I am and it has started snowing gently. Somehow the snow is more welcoming than the gray blanket leading up to precipitation.
So I moved to Durango and started looking for work and climbing a little, which progressed to climbing a lot and looking for work a little. I volunteered with some farmers and at a raw kitchen called the Turtle Lake Refuge. I managed to snag a week of work on a strawbale house, but that ended as quickly as it came about. Finally, I managed to find work at the Durango and Silverton Narrow Gauge Rail Road (D&SNGRR). The event of the season is The Polar Express, based on the book and the more recent movie (if you love the book, don't watch the movie). When the first train pulled in I stood on platform and watched all the kids in PJs stare wide eyed as the hissing and steaming engine came to a halt before them. The conductor stepped out and yelled all aboard and a tear came to my eye. It really was just like the book that my parents read to me every year on Christmas eve, a dream come true for little kids and a huge revenue enhancer for the D&SNGRR. I hoped that feeling wouldn't go away for me, that I wouldn't stop believing in the magic of The Polar Express. Unfortunately, when I was told that the new hire for our department failed the drug test and that I would have to work every day from the 14th until the 28th, excluding only Christmas day itself, the magic failed me. I am beginning to hate Christmas carols and hope that all the kids can get off the train quickly at the end of the night so I can blow out the lanterns, unplug the Christmas lights, clean the depot and go home.
I will write soon about the joy of building a pizza oven and baking in it.