some times I wonder about things

  On this trip this summer to Colo I have run into some people I met last year. One of them is roger, don't know his last name or much about him. He is a drunk, plain and simple. Most people don't give him a second look, He has a dog named Sasha that he loves more than anything in the world that he might have, except for his alcohol maybe. 
 He's not a mental case that I can tell, he has at least some kind of a income because he has his drink and Sasha doesn't want for anything. He's not well physically, the drinking and chain smoking, poor diet has taken its toll on him. 
  It makes me wonder what could have happened to him to have caused this behavior from him. Maybe something terrible or maybe nothing at all, maybe its just the way he is.  He just acts like a man that has the weight of the world on his shoulders and its crushed him. The only time I see him smile is when he's talking to his dog Sasha and you can see that Sasha is worried about him. When he has one of his coughing fits Sasha runs to his side and waits there until its over. Sometimes she goes back to what she was doing, other times she stays by his side.  I don't think roger is long in this world,  as the street people say about the dieing, his eleven is up...   In case you don't know, that means that the tendons on the back of his neck is standing out dramatically, like too ropes stretched tight.  You've seen them before, on the very sick or the very old that has wasted away to just very little substance. 
  I wonder and worry about Sasha, roger made his choices for his life to be this way, what will happen to her when he passes?  will someone take her in? Will someone love her and take care of her like roger does?  Will she let someone other than roger care for her?

  I hope so.

update..

  Finally got the whole story out of roger about how his life turned out this way.  It's a voluntary thing.   A few years ago his wife had a aneurysm in her brain, roger said she held on for 22 days before she passed.  Through tears he told me this, His wife and him were a popular couple back east some where.  They used to play alot of music and sang alot in diff places,  They used to have alot of  music parties at their place and he said that his wife was the center of it all and his life.  He said that after his wife passed he couldn't bear living in the house or going to all the places they knew and frequented. It seemed that everyone knew them so everything was a constant reminder of her.  So one day he walked out the door of their house, got in his car and drove over to their kids places and told them that he loved them and drove west.  He has been living in BV for the last 2.5 3 yrs. 
  He even admitted that he's drinking his self to death, He said that he's too much of a coward to take his own life in a "harsh" way.   It's actually sad to think that this guy who is a very talented guitar player and singer has chosen to do this.  I don't think a single person in bv thinks bad of roger, everyone looks out for him and helps him when they can. He has friends that are concerned for him but the let him do his thing.
  He said that he has a good friend that will take Sasha when the time comes. That is his one big worry in life, Sometimes when I would watch roger and Sasha I believe that she is the only reason he's still alive....

  When I left bv the other day roger kept asking me if I was coming back to bv, I told him I wasn't sure if I would make it back that way or not.  He grabbed my hand and shook it with both of his and told me to take care and that he would mi ss me.  He turned around and walked to his vehicle, got in and drove away to the Green parrot bar......
 

old gold mine above alma colo

Stamp mill for processing gold ore.  was really cool to walk around and explore the insides of it. 

you see them on the side of the mountain?  look close :O)

there they are,  there was some cable laying between the building up there and the main building down below. looked like they bucket the ore down from there to the stamp mill. not sure though, best guess.

this is a cam gear for the stamp mill

And these round looking things on the huge rods are the stamps, they where raised up and dropped onto the flat pieces you see below them to crush the gold ore into practically dust so they could add the chemicals to separate the gold..    They claim that you could hear the stamp mills for miles hammering away.   They bigger the mill the loader it was.

Just a electric motor that was in pieces, wanted to show just how big it was.  wonder how much we could get at the salvage yard clayt? 

People Pics

Peggy checking something out, nope.   Wasn't gold....

Peggy Gary and don't know his name so we will call him "George"  Checking out the water table,  pretty cool machine, it really does a good job of getting the gold out of the screened materials but it is time consuming.  Need good eyes and allot of Patience.

Gary and Peggy classifying material to run through the sluice box they had set up in the stream.  Peggy found the biggest piece of gold sluicing.  Yea Peggy!!!!     ^#(^%^#%(#  !!!   :O)

Hi :O)    Just me sitting in the dredge hole, in water that was 61 degrees.  Yes.  It was cold....  Usually dredged until I started shivering, about 1.5 hours and I was done for a while.  The rocks to the left of me are just some of them that I had to move out of the way.  Gary was a weeny, he wouldn't get in the water lol  but he did down at point bar... 

Self Portrait,  was bored lol

                                     



                                        Gary panning for gold, he found a few specks.  :O)

                                       

Old Floating Gold Dredge, Alma Colorado

This thing is huge!

Some of the sluicing riffles inside the dredge, hundreds of them are scattered around.

this is where the riffles go, there are about 20 or so per side.  they are about 20  or 25 ft long.

This is looking up inside the trommel, about 8 ft around and 30 or 35 ft long.  guessing. the pipe on the top is the spray bar for washing the rock and dirt off the rocks while the trommel (big pipe) turns around and its built with a incline so the material rolls down to the end where it gets dumped onto a conveyor belt and discharged out the end of the dredge.  The material that gets washed off  drops down through holes in the trommel and into the sluice boxes which trap the gold behind the riffles on the riffles to be later scooped up after the water is shut off and run through other screening and sorting table to extract the gold.

That's Gary standing in front of the dredge for a idea on just how huge this thing really is.  This is the back side of the dredge where the materials come out after being screened washed and sorted.

Just a random picture I took on Weston pass. On the non maintained side of the pass lol

I sat my back pack up there so you all could get a idea how big the trommel is, this is the back end of it, not too sure why the huge holes are in there because the other holes where the gold bearing materials fall through are about 3/4 of a inch big. 

Standing on the ground looking up at this thing lol  makes a person feel kinda small.

hi

  Lets see,  its been a while since I have been here.    Where to start?   Peggy and Gary got here 3 weeks ago and we prospected, ate good food :O)  thank you Peggy for not letting me starve :O) She is sucha  good cook.  Wasn't much weight lost those 3 weeks lol  We saw some animals finally, elk, some kinda mountain goat or sheep, deer, mule deer, ground squirls by the hundreds,  we had to go to 11000 ft to see most of them.  Went over Weston pass,  lol  dont imagine Peggy will want to do that again.  Met a truck coming down while we were going up,  on a goat path :O)  needless to say, Peggy grabbed the seat belt with one hand  and covered her eyes with the other one lol  it was a tight squeeze and she was on the cliff side soooo.  :O)
  We went to Alma and seen the old floating gold dredge, that thing is huge!!!   we had been staying at ball town but we moved to point bar to do some prospecting where we could breath for a change,  got more oxygen but it was freakn hot down there!!   the mid day temp usually was in the low to mid 90's  I know it dont sound that hot but when you go from mid 70's to that, its hot!!  I found alittle gold but not much. 
  Tony and Tracy with the kids (Donavon and Megan,amber and Jacob,Jayce(sp?) ,Oda and Markus  got there for a couple of days too.  was alot of fun having them all there.  The girls scared oda with bear stories lol  It was a good time.
  Everyone left yesterday, I went back north to cooler weather lol  I'm here in buena vista for a few days then going over to Alma. When Gary Peggy and I were over at the dredge, I took a sample of dirt out of the dredge and panned it out back at camp. Low and behold, there was gold in it!!  so yes, I am going back there to clean the sluices up and any other dirt I can find inside that thing and see what all I find :O)  
   Be safe all   :O)