It’s a good place and getting better

Let’s all admit it. It’s a good thing to live in a mountain town.
Or a bike town…
Or a resort community…
A ski town…
Call it what you will.
You get the small town aura… a great place to raise kids; keys still in the car; neighbors chatting in the street; stars in the sky; people who tolerate your eccentricities…
And you get some big city benefits… top flight music at the arts centers, the bars, the music festival, the Alpenglows; quality lectures through things like the Public Policy Forum; a wide choice of coffee shops and restaurants; theatre, WiFi, an airport; people who tolerate your eccentricities…
And it is just beautiful here. It is a good place, my friends. We are lucky.
It is now starting to feel like a bike town, a resort community. Elk Avenue and Mountaineer Square are both filling with people. People coming to the valley bring energy. A good energy.
A lot of positive things were heard about the first big event weekend of the summer. The start of Fat Tire biking in the valley in the form of the Wildflower Rush has received nothing but accolades. The racers came and loved the new trails. The outlying trails like Snodgrass, Hartman’s, Strand, Doctor’s and beyond are in super shape.
The talk on the street was that CBMR was doing something good and concrete to draw people here. What a concept. Kudos to the resort.
The new trails on the mountain are supposed to be great. They are now well marked and fun. They have always been good but with the help of members of the local mountain biking community, the newest trails are apparently fantastic. Trails designed by mountain bikers for mountain biking. What a concept. More kudos.
The new downhill course brought smiles. Comments like “It’s a five out of ten on the fear factor but a 9.5 out of ten on the fun factor. We’ll be back,” were overheard more than once.
Wait, wait, wait. “We’ll be back” is something not always heard here but it is a necessity for the long-term success of this harder-to-get-to-than-normal resort community.
In “interesting” times, a simple formula can be good. We are living in “interesting” times.
Enticing place plus fair price equals a good time that people remember. People remember a great experience and will come back with their friends and families. Ahhh, success.
We should be honored to live in a place where people come to recreate.
Start with a Crested Butte maxim of “If we like it, they’ll like it,” and then they’ll come here, which… let me state the obvious… allows us to live here.
Polishing the equation further, CBMR did the right thing with the addition of sweet, new mountain bike trails. Nice.
In the same arena, to see the county take an active role in working with a longtime ranching family and the Forest Service and move to preserve a beloved mountain biking trail is a good thing.
To see the Chamber of Commerce and local biking community really put out the effort for a new racing event and an invigorated bike festival is another good thing.
It is great to see CBMR taking some steps forward in the summer resort business with community involvement.
Hopefully, this weekend’s Fat Tire festival can build on that momentum.
Again—we live in a mountain town, a bike town, a ski town… and that in itself is a good thing. We are lucky. But it is especially good when you see something interesting actually work.