Bicycle Repair Man

This is pretty funny:
http://youtube.com/watch?v=rxfzm9dfqBw

A photo from a week ago today - the typical pullout view west to the divide, but with a person in it! I just "found" this picture on my camera of the 1st ride into work with another human (timmay!) of the year. It's been a seriously warm week, 60 degrees in Boulder yesterday?! All the snow around the house is melting quickly, good and bad. It feels too early to lose winter. I hope some March snows come as Feb was pretty lame for the Front Range. The rest of Colorado has had record snowfall so far, and the biggest snow month hasn't even started! My end-of-March Yurt trip with some Pilots to the Never Summer Wilderness should be spectacular.

My girl has left for Vegas for a few for days her Mom's 70th Birthday. What a crazy place to have a birthday! Not my thing, but sounds like it might be kinda fun with some shows and people watching. So i'm home alone with the 6 dogs. We'll miss you!

Dawn patrol: crisis narrowly averted

Moon over VeryMale. I nearly got turned around at the lake today on my first real dawn patrol of the season (for turns at least). The foot of snow we got sunday night got blown onto the road up to the perpetual clearcuts (ski resort) and two dumbasses were already stuck in the drifts. "My SUV can make it!" Not. So I parked where i was and checked out the quickest turns I've ever gotten on a trail we name VeryMale. Most the area was wind affected (SLAB) but there were some gems in there of soft snow that, with the morning light, made for an awesome morning. The Karhu Guides and Burnt Mtn LiteDogs are a perfect setup for me...really they're my ideal setup for this kind of back, slack, and all around ski-country.

I am really not sure why humans like the FLOATING feeling so much. But it seems universal. Is it the feeling of weightlessness - no gravity? Is it flying-envy? Is it the feeling of (what we hope is) the afterlife? So many sports have the goal of weightlessness and the fastest and best athletes make it look easy - they float over the dirt, tarmac, snow, track, whatever the medium may be...it all feels similar when you're in that zone.

Even though I could only link 5 or 10 turns in a row, it made the day. That feeling of float, of taking charge of gravity and the other physical laws and telling them to "hold on a minute!"

If you look closely you can see my runs and waxtrax...and this is what you would see from the road up to the resort. SHH!

Guiding light

There are a few reasons I'm not a guide. I play one with friends, but i'd get fired if I made people pay me to drag them around on a tour for some turns. Today was one of those days that there was good reason i had the only tracks heading up to this remote lake seen above. It's a relatively long and flat approach into the lake and THEN you get to get some turns in on short-ish shallow hills. But that's what I'm all about - no crowds, just me and the....well...i didn't see any movement up there at all today. All in all, almost an 8 hour day in the pins. Down low, I think it may have rained (!!??) and the snow was crusty icy crapola, but above 10.000ft it was pretty good powder, if heavy. Weird weather for this area. A big Pacific storm has moved in and they're calling for up to a foot in the high country! But today, we had barely freezing temps but it was dumping - it felt like the Sierra snow I grew up with.

These pictures are pretty unspectacular, I was trying to eek out a few OK ones to show the area and turns.

The sun broke through, just barely, for a few minutes.


Then a un-forecasted solar eclipse suddenly blackened the sky and inverted the colors...it was insane!

Tressel view of Rollins Pass. The hill in the foreground must be skied another day, but with buddies, as it was a tad too steep to ski alone (and in leather boots).

Killed by Death

It always cracks me up when I ride by the elk and they all run farther away and look back at me like I'm on a suspensful TV show. Cars zoom by, not seeing them, and the elk don't seem bothered by it...but a cyclist they run from..!? As soon as the cars slow and stop, and their windows open, then the elk realize there's a person inside and trot away.

Then lower down on the ride in I spotted this young buck. He also stood as still as possible, hoping I wasn't seeing him. I usually don't stop and take pictures of wildlife since it's kind of disturbing them for my personal enjoyment, but I was far enough away I didn't think I was stressing them out.

Later, in Boulder, i saw a confused red fox on campus, seeming like it woke up too late and got stuck on the east side of Broadway. It was obviously trying to go to the west side - the mountain side - but couldn't get across Broadway with all the traffic. He stepped back and paralleled the road for awhile as I watched. He knew the area well so headed straight for the bike path underpass that led to the other side of the road, trotted through it safely, and disappeared into the neighborhood. Smart fox.

After a day full of meetings, I was happy to leave. Riding to the bus I noticed the mePod was somehow switched to my KBD playlist (Killed by Death records)...I did not knowingly do this but I went with it anyway. This playlist is all old 7" EP songs from mostly punk bands that no one, including myself, has ever heard of. For some reason I took the left up the canyon instead of continuing onto the bus. Why? I blame the music. It was bound to happen sometime...but it just hasn't happened this early in many years. A mini heart attack at mile marker 3 slowed me down a bit near the top. (Yes, I am out of shape.) Luckily for me a car slowed as it passed, it was Nimby, so I hopped in for a ride home. Popped open a couple Avery IPAs for the quick recovery drink. Maybe next time I'll make it all the way home on my own. But for now, I learned that I won't be killed by Killed by Death reords.

When I can't think of things to write, or have too much to BLAH about...i'll just let others do it for me. Here's a good article in the NY TIMES a friend sent me.

A thoughtful week to say the least. I chose to stop eating red meat in 1991 (and all meat a couple years later) because of many of the reasons outlined in the above article. I'm sad to see it's only getting worse. After having seen Zeitgeist a couple nights ago, well...even though I'm not "sold" on many of the "facts" presented in that movie (it's impossible to check all their sources)...it's still disturbing the amount of power certain people have and how their focus is on one thing alone: MONEY, and the power that is gleaned from that money no matter what the cost.

Sheldon Brown

I know this is "old" news, but I just came across Grant's (Rivendell) writeup on Sheldon and thought i'd make sure you saw it:
http://www.rivbike.com/blogs/news_post/36