People Met = 2
A lot happened for only meeting 2 people on a rest day. We spent the night at a house owned by John Nicholas. John left his heating and air conditioning business near the front range in order to care for his elderly and ailing Uncle Louie. Though he grew up himself near Denver, John’s family has deep roots in Leadville. Now that Uncle Louie passed away John was the caretaker of a piece of property of several buildings, including several outhouses, with the distinct look of an earlier era.
The house we stayed in had all sorts of antiques that probably could have brought John a pretty chunk of change if he was concerned about that. I’m going to attempt a facebook photo album of this but I’m lately having trouble downloading my pictures. Instead, John was concerned about his temporary job working for the Climax molybdenum mine and hoping he could find more permanent employment soon.
John is one of the most genuinely nice guys you would ever want to know. He tried to give us money when we first went by his house. When we wouldn’t take it he later drove up to us as we were walking towards the fire station and claimed we dropped something at his place. Before we could protest he placed $21 in my hands. Unfortunately he got up at 4:00 a.m. in order to start work at the mine and was in bed before we were done with our tasks in Leadville.
Those tasks began with an interview by a radio station in North Dakota. They asked all the right questions about our cause. You can listen for yourself.
Interview on KBMW-AM 1450 (9/12/11)
Later in the day Brett Miller, head of Student Activities of Colorado Mountain College, scheduled us in for a presentation on very short notice. Because of the short notice there was a very small crowd, but a very engaged one. Of particular note Michael Collins, the son of my high school classmate Steve Collins, was in attendance and love the message. We have book, CDs and T-shirts for sale to recoup some of the costs of the trip (unfortunately, none of us are very good business people and we give much more stuff away than we sell). I expected college students would go for the CDs, but Michael wanted a “Believe in Humanity” T-shirt. I take that as a good sign.
I also got an email today from Mark Reaman, the Crested Butte reporter. He sent us the link to the article he wrote. Nice job, Mark!
“Hiking Humanitarians stop in Crested Butte on way across America,” by Mark Reaman, The Crested Butte News (9/7/11)
