What an awesome weekend! It's been a long while since I've had a 4 day weekend, and this was the FIRST time I've ever been paid for taking 2 days off!! Thursday, Thanksgiving, some friends and I attended the 4th-Annual Thanksgiving bouldering day at The Millenium Boulder We warmed up on a couple V2-V4 problems. The V4 was a pretty good route that had a pretty tough first move and a very committed top out. Then we worked Ghost Dance (V6), one of our friends finished it (it's a pretty intimidating route purely due to how high it is, approx 20ft). And then we pretended like we knew what we were doing on Purity Control (V10).
Thanksgiving dinner was incredible! Turkey, taters, green beans, stuffing, Greek salad (made by my wife's Greek grandfather!), and lots and lots of pie! We ate at 1, and needless to say, I wasn't hungry for dinner.
My dad and I fished the South Fork of the South Platte on Friday, it was stinkin' FREEZIN. Due to the fishing regulations on this particular stretch of stream (all catch and release), there were fish all over the place! But since they've all been caught numerous times, they've all got PhD's. I ended up catching a couple fish, one brown and one rainbow, both only about 10". Not what I'd call a world class tail water, but I think that the cold was limiting a lot of the bug activity so the fish were effectively hibernating. Oh well, it was a beautiful day, and the river is very picturesque...but I forgot my camera...
All last week a friend and I were trying to organize a winter accent of Mt. Bierstadt (14er), but due to time constraints and gear limitations (on my part)w e were only able to climb Bear Peak. Bear Peak is one of my favorite local climbs. It's very close to Boulder, it's only 3-4 hours round trip depending on the route you take, and the views from the top are spectacular. You can see a great deal of the continental divide and all of the front range and out to Kansas (at least it LOOKED like Kansas). Once again...I forgot my camera...
I have climbed Bear Peak several times from both Eldorado Canyon and NCAR, but I didn't know that there were actually two routes out of NCAR. The one I'd taken a few times before goes more-or-less straight up the East face, the one we ended up taking this time, since I missed the turn off, goes far to the West past the peak. It then branches to Green Mountain and the West Ridge Trail which leads to Bear Peak. We ended up covering a lot more distance than we would have on the other trail, but I think that it took roughly the same amount of time because we were able to move much more quickly over the less steep trail. In any event, we reached the top and enjoyed the view for a few moments before rushing back down to our car.
My world-traveling sister and brother in-law are in town for a couple of weeks and we've
been having a ball. Saturday we saw "Casino Royal"-The new James Bond. Not the best...maybe the worst. I'd give it a C+ at best, and that's only because the action scenes were REALLY intense! The story line was mediocre, the new Bond character is a little unbelievable, and there were some obvious inconsistencies in the movie that made me scoff.
We went to a park yesterday and threw a boomerang that they brought me from Australia! It was really cool, and very funny to watch the ladies try to throw it :)
Last night, Nathan and Amber came over and we watched a stupid movie ("Girl with the Pearl Earring"). Not going on my top 5 list
anytime soon... The ambiance was lovely though, we lit most of the candles in our house and turned off all of the lights. When Nathan and Amber were leaving, Nathan and I walked around the house blowing out the candles by waving our hands over them rapidly. I may have gotten a little TOO excited about doing this, and I knocked a candle over...a red candle...that was hanging on the wall. As you can imagine, we then had a very nice streak of red wax on the wall from about 5 feet high all the way to the floor.
A quick visit to the all knowing internet, and we soon had the solution for removing the wax! (This if FYI that I think everyone should know...everyone that does stupid things like blowing out candles with their hands that is...) Just hold a steam iron close to the wall and steam, steam, steam. Them wipe the wax away with a cloth. INCREDIBLE! The wax was all gone in about 15 minutes!
Thanksgiving dinner was incredible! Turkey, taters, green beans, stuffing, Greek salad (made by my wife's Greek grandfather!), and lots and lots of pie! We ate at 1, and needless to say, I wasn't hungry for dinner.
My dad and I fished the South Fork of the South Platte on Friday, it was stinkin' FREEZIN. Due to the fishing regulations on this particular stretch of stream (all catch and release), there were fish all over the place! But since they've all been caught numerous times, they've all got PhD's. I ended up catching a couple fish, one brown and one rainbow, both only about 10". Not what I'd call a world class tail water, but I think that the cold was limiting a lot of the bug activity so the fish were effectively hibernating. Oh well, it was a beautiful day, and the river is very picturesque...but I forgot my camera...
All last week a friend and I were trying to organize a winter accent of Mt. Bierstadt (14er), but due to time constraints and gear limitations (on my part)w e were only able to climb Bear Peak. Bear Peak is one of my favorite local climbs. It's very close to Boulder, it's only 3-4 hours round trip depending on the route you take, and the views from the top are spectacular. You can see a great deal of the continental divide and all of the front range and out to Kansas (at least it LOOKED like Kansas). Once again...I forgot my camera...
I have climbed Bear Peak several times from both Eldorado Canyon and NCAR, but I didn't know that there were actually two routes out of NCAR. The one I'd taken a few times before goes more-or-less straight up the East face, the one we ended up taking this time, since I missed the turn off, goes far to the West past the peak. It then branches to Green Mountain and the West Ridge Trail which leads to Bear Peak. We ended up covering a lot more distance than we would have on the other trail, but I think that it took roughly the same amount of time because we were able to move much more quickly over the less steep trail. In any event, we reached the top and enjoyed the view for a few moments before rushing back down to our car.
My world-traveling sister and brother in-law are in town for a couple of weeks and we've
been having a ball. Saturday we saw "Casino Royal"-The new James Bond. Not the best...maybe the worst. I'd give it a C+ at best, and that's only because the action scenes were REALLY intense! The story line was mediocre, the new Bond character is a little unbelievable, and there were some obvious inconsistencies in the movie that made me scoff.We went to a park yesterday and threw a boomerang that they brought me from Australia! It was really cool, and very funny to watch the ladies try to throw it :)Last night, Nathan and Amber came over and we watched a stupid movie ("Girl with the Pearl Earring"). Not going on my top 5 list
anytime soon... The ambiance was lovely though, we lit most of the candles in our house and turned off all of the lights. When Nathan and Amber were leaving, Nathan and I walked around the house blowing out the candles by waving our hands over them rapidly. I may have gotten a little TOO excited about doing this, and I knocked a candle over...a red candle...that was hanging on the wall. As you can imagine, we then had a very nice streak of red wax on the wall from about 5 feet high all the way to the floor.A quick visit to the all knowing internet, and we soon had the solution for removing the wax! (This if FYI that I think everyone should know...everyone that does stupid things like blowing out candles with their hands that is...) Just hold a steam iron close to the wall and steam, steam, steam. Them wipe the wax away with a cloth. INCREDIBLE! The wax was all gone in about 15 minutes!
