The Crested Butte News Serving the Gunnison Valley since 1999
Flauschink wants the credit
By Marc Feeman
Local non-profits are lauding the recent decision by the Adaptive Sports Center to cut back the 24-Hour Bridges of the Butte tour to 12 hours and are lining up to copy the new event template.
“Genius,” extolled Chamber of Commerce director Ashley UpLurch, who announced that the 2019 Chainless Race would this year start at the top of the old Kebler Pass road above Elk Avenue. It will end at the party place in the First and Elk town parking lot.
“At least that’s what I think it’s called and it still fits the brand. It just takes what has been a whole day event and compresses it into about five minutes. Now that we’ve gotten rid of the booze, the weed and the chains, I think we should reconsider the costume thing, too. Why dress up for five minutes?”
“Well that’s pretty smart,” agreed Crested Butte Avalanche Center president and Al Johnson uphill/downhill organizer Than Asluff. “We were thinking of handing it off to someone else next year but if we can do what Adaptive did, we’ll keep it. It will just start at the North Face Lift like it always does but people only have to uphill to, let’s say to tower 2, and then hit the downhill back to the start. Should take about five minutes and everyone can see the whole race and witness Pat O’Neall get beat by a former student, from the same spot. Now that we’ve gotten rid of the booze, the weed and the free heels (skimo is great—just kidding) I think we should reconsider the costume thing, too. Why dress up for five minutes?”
“Hey, that’s a good idea,” said Tyler Lucas of KBUT, who is suggesting Soul Train would be more successful with less train and faster soul. “One of the beauties is that except for Jim Michael who knows every Motown song ever recorded, most people know about three Michael Jackson or Diana Ross songs and they all last only about three minutes. So we’ll start the event at 8, spin ABC, Touch Me in the Morning and maybe throw in a quick Stevie Wonder bonus song and call it good. We’re talking five or 10 minutes or so of high-energy fun. Now that we’ve gotten rid of the booze, the weed (sure) and the fake afros I think we should reconsider the costume thing, too. Why dress up for five minutes?”
“Hmmm,” added UpLurch. “That Fourth of July parade thing people have been complaining about could be streamlined. There wasn’t much pushback when we stopped doing the parade up and back or when we moved the water fight or stopped the sawing contest. I can see starting it at the Paragon by Second and Elk and maybe just turning at Pitas and calling it good. Condense the decreasing crowd, get everyone in and out, and call it a day. Now that we’ve gotten rid of the booze, the weed and the political floats (just kidding) I think we should reconsider the costume thing, too. Why dress up for five minutes?”
“You know, I don’t know why Adaptive gets all the credit on this,” said Flauschink organizer Shaerry Wanderwoooooort. “Our parade has lasted about five minutes for years. Now that we’ve gotten rid of the booze (just kidding), the weed (yeah, right) and the old-timers (wait a minute), I think we should reconsider the costume thing, too. Why dress up for five minutes?”
Vinotok organizer Mollie Pufuree smiled and agreed that those were all good ideas, as she smelled another Best of the Butte award.
“It’s all about the quick blurbs,” adds Travel Crested Butte brainchild Jeff Buttermaker. “Now that I got all of this money from Mt. Crested Butte and the TA, I can make 100 short videos as opposed to 25 long videos. With 220,000 views of 100 videos, that translates to 22 million people ‘traveling’ to Crested Butte.”
