The stretch of vitality

Today I went up to Estes Park and took the Colorado Mountain School’s into to outdoor rock climbing course. It’s an all day course and there were just two students registered, so it was basically like an all day private lesson with a professional guide. I learned lots of good stuff, including how to repel, which I have been wanting to learn for a while. We did quite a good number of fun short climbing routes as well. The weather was mostly good with the exception of a brief rain and thunder storm in the afternoon.

Photos are here. I’ve got lots of good stuff coming up this week as well.

So in a rare event Andy is watching some TV to watch the Denver/LA basketball play off. The Bud Light commercial where they throw some dweeb out of a third floor corporate office building comes on, and Andy quips “Bud Light: The beer drunk by idiotic Corporations at their stupid-ass meetings”! Love it.

Well, we have had a rainy Memorial Day weekend here in Boulder, but still a lot of fun. This weekend was the Boulder Creek Festival and the Bolder Boulder 10k race, both of which I bypassed. Sunday I had a really fun mountain bike ride on the Wapiti trail with some folks from CHAOS. The trail was a lot rockier than I remembered from hiking it. Luckily Josh was nice enough to lend me a decent mountain bike to use which proved to be absolutely critical. The riding was really really enjoyable. Just hard enough and rocky enough to keep me nervous and concentrating and in “flow”, but still doable.

Sunday I hiked the Wapiti Trail up in Heil Valley just north of town with a group of eight from my hiking club. It was a really nice hike and a very friendly group. Very easy hiking but great mountain views. Next weekend I’m going to go back and bike it, which should be fun.

In the middle of the night, I headed out to Golden Gate Canyon with a bunch of folks from my hiking club to hike Tremont Mountain and see the sunrise from the summit. We assembled in Boulder at 3:30am and drove about an hour up steep, windy roads, with several stops for car sickness, to the trail head. The weather was not good. It was raining on and off in Boulder, very cloudy with dense fog, and pretty cold. However, we made a go of it and when we got to the trail head the rain was done and the ground was more or less dry. We hiked off trail, bushwacked, and scrambled up for about an hour or so to tag the summit. We were running a bit behind so we were too late to be on the summit for sunrise, but it was moot due to the clouds and fog. Normally you would be able to see all of Golden Gate Canyon and the Continental Divide, but our visibility was about 100 feet.

We scrambled back down and had some yummy breakfast at the trail head of eggs, potatoes, peppers, and salsa along with tea, OJ, etc. It was about 37 degrees there and there was still patches of snow here and there on the mountain.

More photos here.

So overall starting with the Brazilian Batteria on Thursday and concluding today with dinner at Uncle Bill’s, this has been a very enjoyable and full weekend. Today I hiked 7.5 miles along the Walker Ranch Loop in about 3 hours. It was a cool day with lots of fog and mist in the air plus just a few occasional raindrops. So the trail was not in heavy use. It is a very interesting hiking taking you from recently burned forest down along the rushing rapids of the South Boulder Creek, through some meadows and back up some steep single track rocky trails.

More photos here.

I’ve been having lots of fun in the past few days. On Thursday the local Brazilian percussion Batteria performed on Pearl St. It was fun to watch and hear. Friday Andrew and I went to hear the great Ari Hoenig play drums at Dazzle in Denver. He’s got a very unique sound and you can instantly see why he is a bandleader on the drum set.

Today I went and climbed bihedral up in Boulder Canyon with a crew of about seven climbers. It was only my second time climbing outside and it was quite powerful. I can understand how surfers become mesmerized by the power of the ocean. Climbing in the gym is lots of fun and you think about technique and so forth, but climbing outside on a real massive, immovable, unforgiving mountain is just immensely humbling. I was definitely very nervous for the first climb or two and then settled into it a bit. But we did some really fun routes and when you’re way up above the ground clinging to the side of a giant rock, you definitely feel put in your (small, temporary) place. We did have some near misses with falling rock and a few minor scrapes and cuts, but otherwise things went OK. Definitely glad I have a helmet now so I don’t get knocked out by a falling rock while belaying someone who is sixty feet off the ground.

More Spring 2009 photos are here.

You might find this hard to believe, but I also managed to have two more house purchases fall through in failure. Sigh. It’s basically back to the drawing board. I certainly learned a bit more about the whole negotiation process.

So last night Bill Maher performed at Colorado University’s Macky Auditorium. For reasons I can’t possibly fathom, a university event, which have thus far been pleasantly shielded from the antagonistic over-commercialization of live performance, decided to sell tickets through the evil incarnate LiveNation corporation. Maybe the deals are arranged such that you can’t get Bill Maher unless you book and sell tickets through LiveNation? Not sure. Anyway, I harbor a deep resentment for these greedy evil bastards who charge unbelievably large “convenience fees” for services that any other online retail considers just a normal part of doing business on line. I’ve started boycotting LiveNation events, but I was in luck this time since I now live just a few blocks from the Macky box office. However, in a seeming effort to discourage the audience and basically spit on their patrons, the Macky box office didn’t staff anyone on the phone the day of the show. Instead they played a recorded message saying there might be some tickets left and that the box office would open at 6:30pm. So I went there at 6:30pm and stood in line with about 40-50 other people for 20 minutes in the cold and drizzling rain outside waiting for Macky to open up their box office. Did they open on time? No. Did they let the line into the lobby out of the rain? No. Did anyone come out to apologize and say when they would be opening? No. Did I get disgusted and leave after twenty minutes of this? Yes.

CU, WTF is with LiveNation? Just sell us tickets either online or in person with no offensive “fees”. You have an army of cheap labor at your fingertips ready to answer phones, build and maintain online ticket sales systems, and staff your events. Why do you need to outsource this to a company that is basically bringing airline customer service to live performance?

Last week was the most busy, eventful, and stressful I’ve had in a few years I think. First the great news is my sister had her baby! So now I am a proud Uncle Pete. With the new baby, my family now has three instances of inter-generation first name duplication. Hurray for nicknames.

Lots of activity on the house including inspection (sigh) and dealing with the fallout from that. Things are moving along but at this moment the sellers are dragging their feet responding to the inspection repair list, so I’m a bit concerned about that.

Work was also very busy since we entered code freeze (basically done as far as engineering is concerned) this week for a major release that I have been working on for over two years. Lots of last minute bug fixing and more than daily manager status emails and requests.

Also, we moved! We are in a great temporary apartment right in downtown Boulder close to everything. I’ve been walking and biking around for the past few days and really liking it. Friday we hit the Boulder Cafe followed by the B-Side Lounge for a bit of dancing. Saturday morning I had a yummy breakfast at a great Creole breakfast/lunch restaurant in Boulder called Lucile’s Creole Cafe. Last night it was Chinese food and bowling in Broomfield (Andrew rolled an admirable 147. I was terrible) then we hit Johnny’s Cigar Bar to hear a nice band playing Brazilian jazz music. Today it’s brunch with weiskind and later more rock climbing.