Earlier today at work I was looking at some things on Google Earth with a co-worker. If my boss is reading this, it was all work related. More or less. I promise. Kinda. When we were done with our work-ish project, he showed me the imagery of the lake he grew up on in Minnesota. After he showed me the islands he would swim to and the woods he played in, he said he wanted to see Black Mountain Ranch on Google Earth. If you haven't spent much time on Google Earth. It is simply amazing. All you have to do is type in an address or GPS coordinates, and you can get the satellite view of anyplace on earth. So we pulled up the images and zoomed in. I showed him the new cabins, my house, the riding arena, the shooting range, some of the trails... All of it. I also showed him the actual town of McCoy and he quoted Gertrude Stein about it. There is no there, there, he said. I showed him how you follow Routt County Road 4 all the way to the end where you arrive at the front gate to Black Mountain Ranch. You could even see the actual front gate. But when he said "Wow. You really are at the end of the road", the obviousness of that hit me. We really are at the end of the road. Its a pretty cool life out there at the end of the road, but it does have its plusses and minuses. To put it mildly, my friends never just swing by to say hi. Going to the movies requires serious advance planning. The UPS guy knows where we are, but the cable guy gives up and goes home before finding us. Pizza delivery? I wont even bother laughing at that idea... But the far side of the moon feeling that we sometimes get at the ranch does certainly have its upsides. For starters, its quiet at night. Real quiet. No neighbors having a party, no neighborhood kid with a loud truck, no police sirens. Nothing. You never knew how loud your neighborhood was until you experience ours. Ride a couple miles up a trail, and you will probably be the only person around for at least... A couple miles. But what I like best about my life at the end of the road and there being no there, there, is just that. Since there is no there, there, when you are there, you are THERE. You start to focus on the things that matter that are right in front of you. Instead of thinking about if you should buy the organic toaster pastries or just the regular ones, you have a conversation about nothing in particular with the person next to you. Instead of jealously staring at the nice new car your neighbor just picked up, sometimes you just stare at the sky. Because it's blue. And there's clouds. And that's cool. We may work hard and ride hard at Black Mountain Ranch, but the lack of distractions makes life much calmer for me. A little more... Real. I didn't mean to make my buddy jealous, really. But I certainly won the "Google Earth My House" competition. He said so.