Almost everyone has at least one crazy story to tell about their childhood, high school life, or adulthood. Yes, even teachers at Aspen High School have experienced or done something exciting in their lifetime. Adam O’Bryan, Shannon Duffy, and Gretchen Calhoun were willing to share their stories.

Adam O’Bryan, a literature and composition teacher at AHS, of course, has gone on some tremendous endeavors.

“When I was in middle school, I played the trumpet, and my friends and I, we started a ska band. Then in high school, I got into punk” O’Bryan said.

(Side note: ska is a type of music that combines rock and reggae)

And that’s not all, last spring, he ran FORTY-NINE MILES between the Grand Canyon, rim to rim to rim to rim!

A fun fact about O’Bryan is that his two brothers are six years apart, yet they have the same birthday.

Shannon Duffy, a health teacher at AHS, also has some incredible stories to tell.

“I biked from BC [British Columbia] down to San Francisco. It was kind of a thrown together trip, I did it on a mountain bike, and I did it in a month. It was 1400 miles. I camped the whole way, and it was a super cool experience, and it’s super cool to kind of have your life on a bike. It was fun,” Duffy said.

Gretchen Calhoun teaches World Geography and Civics to a wide age range at AHS. When she was in high school, she spent about two years living in Ireland on a farm, and here are some of the stories she shared.  

“When I was 15 and 16 years old, I spent two summers working on a farm in Ireland, and one thing I definitely remember is that it never got dark until 1 o’clock or 2 o’clock in the morning. [The Irish] definitely believe in leprechauns and ghosts. One afternoon, we were in a pasture, and someone said “run” and there was a stampede of horses coming towards us and we got to a house and turned around, and there was nothing.”

If you think encountering ghosts is crazy, read this story of a pig she “adopted.”

“They were taking a litter of pigs to the market to get turned into bacon, and there was a little runt who they said was too small, and I asked if I could keep it, and they said yes. So I kept behind the pig, and a year later when I came back to the farm, it was probably a 1200 pound sow. I left the gate open to the mother’s prized rose garden, and the pig went in there and ate all her flowers, and so they killed it. I sat around the table with the family and ate some of its liver.”