TG

As if sitting at home with a broken leg (see my last entry under this goal) isn’t frustrating enough, I’m finally getting to where I can spend some time sitting at the computer- but this damn old home computer is so slow that I sometimes can’t even check my email! And I’m getting farther and farther behind with people’s entries on here, to say nothing of my own entries :P

I really don’t feel up to writing a long, detailed entry about this right now, but I wanted to put something down for those of you who have been wondering where I am- I know it’s practically unheard of for me to be missing from here for six days unless I’m on vacation!

A couple weeks ago I took my daughter out for our first ski trip this season. We went to Loveland Ski Area, one of the few that were still open. We had a great time and the snow was fantastic for so late in the season. Conditions were so good that I decided to go back up there last Saturday, the 27th. This would be my first time skiing without my daughter in four years and it would give me the opportunity to not only ski some harder runs (she’s strictly a beginner still), but also to get more skiing in since she’s still kind of slow.

As you can see from the attached photo, the conditions were wonderful again! The snow wasn’t as soft as the week before but the coverage was still great and the weather was even better than it had been the previous week. I took this pic on my last run before lunch. The view is looking south from the north side of the ski area and it includes peaks in the background that reach up above 14,000’ (4270 meters) on the Continental Divide.

Clear Creek to the construction closure east of Lowell Blvd, return on Ralston Creek.

The forecast was for a storm to be coming in (I didn’t know it at the time, but this was to be the first of three consecutive Monday snowstorms in April!) so I decided to get out for a ride before the snow hit. This definitely wasn’t the most enjoyable ride I’ve ever done, though. The temperature, which had been 63F/ 17C on my way home from work, had dropped to 45F / 7C by the time I finished my ride around 7 PM. And the wind was awful! According to the National Weather Service the cold north wind was blowing at 30MPH/ 48 km per hour with gusts up to 51MPH/ 82 km per hour! Thankfully most of my ride is east-west but a wind that strong is tough to ride in even as a crosswind, and at times on my return trip I was heading northwest so there was a vector that I was riding into. I wasn’t sorry to get this ride over with :P

My time was 1:02, which is an 11.8 MPH pace- significantly slower than my recent rides due to the strong wind. It also turned out to be my last ride for five days, since we got about 10” of snow and some very cold temperatures out of the storm.

Another one that isn’t a postcard, but close enough :)

Simon sent me this card when he sent me a couple T-shirts last fall. The photo on the card is one that he took himself.

Looks like a gorgeous place, Simon- thanks!

I’ve been very slowly replacing my videotaped movies with DVD’s. I’ve been watching for this one for a long time, but every time I saw it for a reasonable price, it was fullscreen rather than widescreen and I hate fullscreen movies. I finally found a widescreen copy a few months ago so I gave this tape to my ex.

I received this shirt in early September last year (along with another, to be posted later) as a gift from long-time 43er Simon- a shirt created for this goal of his.

The reference is to the disturbing but memorable book/movie Deliverance, of course.

Thanks, Simon! Several people have already commented on this shirt :)

You can see from the photo how threadbare these old dishtowels were! That’s not surprising, since they belonged to my first ex (she was into strawberries)- meaning that they were close to 30 years old. I finally got tired of trying to use them and spent a few dollars on a couple new ones. These were probably a cotton/polyester blend, but in case they were pure cotton I buried them at the edge of the brushpile in my backyard (where the soil stays moister and they would decompose faster).

I’m happy to be able to make a small donation to Segsy for her 7th consecutive “Take Steps for Crohn’s and Colitis” walk. Please take a look at her donation page for more info and to make a contribution if you can. As she’s mentioned, if money’s tight it also helps to add the goal and spread the word! And words of support and encouragement are always appreciated.

Like usual, I won’t mark this goal as complete until after the walk on June 9th in the hopes of raising awareness and for showing my support for her efforts. Go Segsy!

Clear Creek west to the end of the path in Golden & return.

There was a pretty good west wind that I didn’t feel like riding into on the return, so even though the path is more difficult in this direction I decided to head west first. This was the first time I’ve ever ridden all the way to the west end of the path, although I’ve walked to it many times (from a much closer starting point). Although it’s less than two miles past my normal turnaround spot at Ford St., the main reason I don’t usually do the extra section is that to head farther west you have to drop down a pretty good hill (which, of course, you have to ride right back up on the return). But doing this last section on a beautiful, sunny spring day reminded me of another good reason not to ride it- this is a very heavily-travelled section. I had two run-ins with walkers in the short time it took to ride the extra distance. The first one was a woman walking side-by-side with her husband, so she was in the middle of the trail. As I came up on them I said “On your left” as I always do unless I’m sure that someone has seen or heard me. She didn’t respond, but people often don’t. So I squeezed by her on the left and continued on. Behind me I heard her sarcastic comment- “On the left would be nice.” I have to admit, that really pissed me off. I’ve had hundreds of encounters with bicyclists on the paths, both as a fellow cyclist and as a pedestrian, and I know that most don’t bother to warn you in any way when they’re passing. But I make it a point to always give a warning. My snarky response was something like “I did say it, dumbass!” Maybe if she’s hard of hearing she shouldn’t be walking in the middle of the path. And if she’s not, she should be paying attention when she’s in the center of the path! So I was still kind of pissed off when I came upon a woman just a short distance later who was walking with two dogs. One dog was on a leash (which is required on this path), the other was not. The one who wasn’t on a leash was on the side of the trail, facing the west so he couldn’t see me approaching. The woman told me, “He’s hard of hearing so it may take some fancy riding to get around him.” WTF? I shot back, “Or a leash!” I mean, she had one dog on a leash, but not the deaf one?!

Sigh…

So, although this is a beautiful section of trail to ride, I think that I’ll avoid it in the future unless the weather is lousy enough to keep most people off it.

My time for the ride was 1:42, which is 12.8 MPH- a pretty good pace considering the tougher route and the wind. And I passed the 8% completed mark for the goal on this ride :)

I don’t like onions, so I tend to use chives pretty sparingly. And during the warmer months I have fresh chives in my back yard. So a jar of dried chives lasts me a long time ;) I’m not sure when I got these- it’s not a really ancient McCormick’s label, but it was probably still several years old.

This was kind of an interesting little magnet in the shape of a Tupperware lid (I still have a couple pieces of this Tupperware that are many years old!), but the magnet on the back was pretty crappy and I couldn’t use it to hold anything to the fridge. I decided I could live without it :o and donated it to the thrift store.

Clear Creek to the South Platte River (extended due to a detour), return on Ralston Creek.

A relatively long ride for after work, but it was a Friday :)

This was the same ride that I did on March 31st, and at almost the same pace- my time was 1:48, just one minute slower than Sunday’s ride. That’s a 13.0 MPH pace.

The one thing that sticks in my mind about this ride was that I got a very close look at a male Belted Kingfisher- he was perched in a tree just about 20 feet away as I rode by. I see and hear kingfishers often along Clear Creek, but I don’t remember ever passing that close to one before. They usually prefer that you admire them from a distance ;)

From the back of the card:

Great British Breakfast

Well, parts of it look great to me! (I don’t like eggs or tomatoes).

A cool card from the emu. I photographed it on a tv tray so it really does look like breakfast being served up :)

Thanks for the card, красивейшая Богиня!

And thanks to whoever invented cut and paste- digging up those Cyrillic characters would have been a pain ;)

Clear Creek to the construction closure east of Lowell Blvd, return on Ralston Creek.

A quick after-work ride. I had been turning around at Lowell for my “middle distance” rides recently, but I decided that I may as well extend it to the closure (an extra 1.2 miles roundtrip) so I can keep an eye on how the work is going. Again, it looks like they are a long way from finished. I did see a new sign up saying that the closure is in effect until May 1st- I could have sworn that they originally were saying April 1st. At least that explains why it looks so far from completion ;)

My time for this ride was 56:01, which is a fast (for me) 13.1 MPH pace. I passed the 300-mile mark just after starting the day’s ride. I also exceeded the 7% completed mark for the goal :)

Clear Creek to the South Platte River (extended due to a detour), return on Ralston Creek.

Another relatively long ride, and my first time riding three days in a row in I don’t know how long. I covered just under 60 miles in the three rides, which is great for me.

My time for this one was 1:47, so my pace was 13.1 MPH- kicking ass! ;)

BTW, my total mileage for March was just under 100 miles- not as good as February, but I was gone on vacation for two of the five weekends in the month.

It’s been beautiful spring weather for the last few days- high of 64F/ 18C on Saturday, and just below that (63F) yesterday and today.

The forecast for tomorrow?

High of 20F/ -7C, with a low tomorrow night of 9F/ -13C!

And, in case the cold isn’t fun enough- 6 to 14 inches (15 to 36 cm) of snow tonight and tomorrow!

My daughter’s school has already announced that they will be closed tomorrow, but I hope that it isn’t as bad as they’re forecasting- if I can’t make it to work, I have to either use a vacation day or take it unpaid :(

that we can send a man to the moon (well, we used to be able to- I’m not certain we could anymore :P) but we can’t design a cooking oil bottle that doesn’t drip down the side every time you use it?!

Walking path + Clear Creek/Ralston Creek loop.

Ever since I got a cyclometer for my bike last year I’ve been wanting to measure off my usual walking route, since I was only estimating my distance on that based on time. It was a nice day and I didn’t want to do a long ride (since I had done one the day before and was planning on doing another the next day) so I finally got aound to doing that. I was estimating 3 miles and I was pretty close- I measure it as 2.9 miles roundtrip. From now on there’s a short segment I can add that should bring it up to 3 miles, but I’ll have to change a couple of entries for this goal slightly.

Since that was a very short ride and I was already on my bike, I added my regular Clear Creek/Ralston Creek loop afterwards. Total time for the ride was 57:40, which is 12.0 MPH.

As you may be able to tell from this photo, my old aluminum colander needed to be retired years ago- it was dented up, both handles were missing, and the feet were bent and broken. The problem was that I couldn’t find another that I liked- everything recent seems to have holes that are too big or doesn’t have enough holes to drain well. When Mom died a couple years ago the only thing that I asked for from her kitchen was her old colander, which is similar to this one but better-made.

I donated this one to the scrap metal yard for recycling.

Clear Creek to the South Platte River (extended due to a detour), return on Ralston Creek.

My first ride after getting my bike back from the shop. It cost me almost $200- ouch! That’s probably over half of what the bike was originally worth! But they did a tune-up (which I hadn’t had done in several years), trued the rear wheel that had a little wobble in it, tightened the loose bottom bracket, replaced a couple frayed cables, replaced the worn brake pads, put on a new chain (mine was extremely worn) and freewheel, and replaced the broken left shifter. The cost also included a new tire I bought to replace the front one that was cracking badly. So I don’t think that price was bad. I used to do a lot of that repair and maintenance work myself but I don’t know where my tools are right now, and I’ve kind of gotten to the point where I’d rather pay someone who really knows what they’re doing if I can afford it ;)

This ride was my usual “long” route, except for the detour east of Lowell. Besides the extra distance for the detour I also rode in to check out how the construction was coming. I thought that the original sign they had up (since removed) said that the path was supposed to open again on April 1st, but I could see that they weren’t even close to finished with the work they’re doing.

This ride was on Good Friday, which my employer started giving us as a work holiday last year. So I had the time to do a long ride. The weather was nice and for the most part the bike felt great after the repairs. I’m still having a little trouble with rough shifts- I think that the rear derailleur is getting worn (it’s never been replaced in the time I’ve had the bike- probably at least 10 years) so that may be in the cards for later this year if it gets worse. But other than that it felt like I was on a new bike :)

My time for the ride was 1:58, which is 12.6 MPH- very fast for me on this bike, especially considering the length of the ride. Most likely that’s partly because I hadn’t been riding much lately (but wasn’t really out of riding shape yet). The new front tire probably helped a little, too- it’s more of a pavement tire so it has less rolling resistance than the old tire, which was designed for unpaved trails.

I passed the 6% completed mark for the goal near the end of this ride :)