The morning started with a drive up to one of the few places I’ve actually been bouldering, just north of the first Horsetooth Reservoir dam.  There are lots of problems here, but most are too difficult for me right now.  I’m mostly trying to build up arm strength and get my fingers a bit roughed up and used to the rock.

We ran into a local who climbs there often.  He ended up giving me some tips and let me use his crash pad for a bit while I tried to complete a move he said I should work on.  He also told me a bit about the history of bouldering in the area, including about John Gill, apparently one of the pioneers of the sport in the 60′s.  He marked problems all along Centennial Drive (the road along the east side of the reservoir) with white paint so others would be curious and attempt the climbs too.  He was a professor at CSU and ex-gymnast.

My arms get tired pretty quickly so most days I’m only climbing for 25-35 minutes, an hour total after breaks and such.   After stopping I wandered around the area with Rachael and found a little lizard friend:

Lizard Friend!

After the little lizard ran away, I headed down towards where we were told John Gill had marked one of his problems.  I found it after a bit of a walk:

White paint marking a problem by John Gill

The problem (1)

The problem (2)

Also, I found a post on the Inside Fort Collins blog on Bouldering around Horsetooth that has some interesting information.  Also, they link to Inner Strength Rock Gym which I’ve been meaning to check out–their prices don’t look too bad.

Finally, here’s an article that talks about John Gill and climbing in Fort Collins from 2001.

Also, check out the gallery here for all of the pictures from that day.

Late Update (2009-11-28 12:27):  Here’s a picture of the items I ended up picking up:

Gear from REI Garage Sale (October 2009)

I was hoping for some clothes and found some, but not exactly what I was looking for.  I picked up a new pair of Keen’s as my previous pair was falling apart.  I also found a great pair of waterproof boots that were marked down quite a bit.  Finally, there’s a pair of pants that were really cheap.

Kate and I arrived at REI around 7:30am, an hour and a half before the sale started at 9am. I believe this was the optimal time to get there. We were very near the front of the line and didn’t need to get up too early. There was a group of people who had apparently camped the night there, not something I was willing to do.

Just before they let us in I snapped a picture on my phone of the line.  This was just the start, it continued far to the left around the building:

Line at REI Garage Sale

Once the doors opened, we headed in and the madness started.  The sale items were located behind the store, in the unloading truck bay areas.  There were multiple racks of clothing and tables and tables of bins full of cheap gear.  Packs and shoes lined the sides of the truck bay.  My main reason for going was a pack, so that’s what I hit first.  I found a nice one pretty quickly.  After that I browsed the bins and then hit clothes.

I ended up with more than I expected, but the table below shows that I really did save a ridiculous amount of money, so it will probably be worth it in the long run.  All of my new gear:

My new gear

Table of the gear I bought, along with full price, sale price, savings totals and maximum sale percentage:

Item	Original Cost	Sale Cost	Savings	Percent Off
Therma Rest	74.95	37.83	37.12	0.5
Osprey Pack	149	84.83	64.17	0.43
REI Jacket	199	42.83	156.17	0.78
North Face Pants	65	27.83	37.17	0.57
Kuhl Pants	58	29.83	28.17	0.49
Silva Ranger Compass	55	24.83	30.17	0.55
REI Shirt	10.83	4.83	6	0.55
Under Armor Shirt	50	27.83	22.17	0.44
REI Fleece Hoodie	45	24.83	20.17	0.45
Mountain Hard Wear Shirt	38	17.83	20.17	0.53
REI Shirt	24	7.83	16.17	0.67
Petzl Head Lamp	64.95	24.83	40.12	0.62
180s Ear Warmers	30	11.83	18.17	0.61
Perl Izumi Cycling Shorts	100	22.83	77.17	0.77
Patagonia Long Sleeve Shirt	29.99	17.83	12.16	0.41
Water Filter Kit	79.95	24.83	55.12	0.69
Sigma Cycling Computer	56	29.83	26.17	0.47
Totals	1129.67	463.11	666.56	0.78

I started the weekend helping out Adam move his truck from his old apartment to the new one he had just moved in to.  The truck is a Bronco 2, and after moving it, we determined it weighs somewhere around 1.5-2 tons after all of the extra gear in the cabin.  The transmission is broken, hence the manual moving.

Now, when I say help him move, I’m referring to the fact that we pushed the 1.5 ton truck about 5 blocks up and down various small inclines and descents to his new place.  We considered just hooking up a tow strap to one of our cars, but after we started pushing it we just wanted it done and didn’t look back.

After much sweating and groaning, the truck made it into his new driveway:

Adam's Bronco 2 in his driveway after pushing it across town

As part reward for our efforts, part new-apartment-warming party, and part Cool Runnings party, Adam hosted us at his new place.  We drank home brewed brown ale (brewed by Adam himself), had brats, elk burgers, and enjoyed the based-on-a-true-story of the worlds first Jamaican bobsled team.

Later we decided the Bronco needed to be moved up a bit further into the driveway, so we enlisted Adam’s roomate’s (Jackie) brother’s help.  He pushed with his truck and the truck was in it’s final resting place for the day:

Adam's Bronco 2 in its final resting place

Sunday started out lazy, with Rachael and I sleeping in a bit.  As we were sitting around, we decided a small trip was in order, to enjoy the extended weekend.  We found a sweet 50% off deal at a fancy hotel in Avon, Colorado, which is 10 minutes up the road from Vail.  After booking a room online and stopping at King Soopers for snacks and sandwich supplies, we headed out!

Unfortunately (or fortunately?) most of Sunday and Monday were quite rainy.  Our radio listening was interrupted while we were heading down I-25 by an announcement of a Tornado warning just north of Denver.  It didn’t look too bad where we were (and the warning was expiring very soon), so we continued south.  After turning west onto I-70, our view of the mountains was dominated by deathly dark looking clouds.  Within and the below the clouds as a nearly continuous stream of lightning, very pretty.  Unfortunately, no pictures of the storm.

As we began the ascent up out of the suburbs and into the mountains, the rain hit is like a hammer–huge rain drops, sometimes small hail, and at times very heavy snow.  This lasted for 20-30 minutes down 70.  Eventually the heavy rain let up and the lighter rain was on and off.

We made it into Avon around 4:30.  After checking in, being greeted by a almost overly friendly concierge, and parking below the hotel, we entered the room and what a fancy room it was.  It was clear this is a hotel aimed at weekend skiers as it had a full fridge (empty), sink, microwave, etc.  Very expensive looking and comfortable.  Here is Rachael reading on the leather couch (I hate leather couches!):

Rachael reading in our Room in Avon

The view of the ski slopes in Beaver Creek from our room:

View of the mountains from our room in Avon

We found a local pizza place and grabbed a (very tasty) supreme for dinner.  As the weather wasn’t exactly inviting, the rest of the evening was spent playing board games and reading in our room.

The next day we left Avon and drove around the town a bit.  I was craving some breakfast.  More specifically, I wanted a bagel and a cappuccino!  However, it is surprising how difficult it was to find a small local coffee shop with bagels.  We didn’t find one!

Our hunt for a bagel led us to Vail.  I had only driven through Vail, never into the town itself.  It reminds me of European towns with all the twisty roads and one way streets.  Very pretty buildings and shopping areas.  Unfortunately it was rainy, we found no small coffee shops, so we moved on.

Nest we stopped in Frisco where the clouds had broken and the rain had stopped.  We (finally!) ate breakfast at a local diner.  After breakfast we wandered around main street looking at the shops, real estate listings, and photography studios, including Todd Powell’s studio with some very amazing shots.  Check out his site or the studio if you are in the area, it’s quite nice.

While wandering we found a great sign, apparently signifying that dogs cannot do their business in the area:

No pooping for dogs in Frisco

After wandering we headed home and that was that.  I’d like to mention that this whole time, despite a ’3 bar’ signal strength, I was never able to get a sufficient data connection to send out tweets on twitter or us Google Maps on my phone.  Also, the ‘free’ WiFi in the hotel refused to cooperate with my notebook.  Therefore, this whole trip was spend without a data connection (gasp!).  I spent the evening at home catching up on email and sending out pictures on twitter (those seen above!).  It was another fun few days and yet another reason (as if I need a reason) for me to enjoy the opportunities Colorado has to offer.  I love living here.

Saturday Kate and I made a trip down to Boulder to check out potential apartments and visit the NCAR Mesa campus.  What we learned was that this summer is going to be sweet!  Once we got to boulder, we headed up the mesa that the campus is located on.  We noticed a few things:

1. The building’s architecture is quite unique, and looks really cool.
2. The campus is essentially on the top of a hill in the middle of a natural area.
3. The views from the top (and from within the building) are really great.

It turns out that the NCAR Mesa lab is at the top of a mesa (who would have thought!), is the trailhead for some really nice trails, and is utilized quite heavily on the weekend by hikers.

After looking around quickly, we headed back down the hill to start apartment hunting.  We had done some looking around on Craig’s list and found a few potential places, but one was clearly the best fit for us.  Unfortunately at this point we hadn’t heard from the girl that was sub-leasing the place, so we were somewhat stuck.  To pass some time waiting for contact from her, we looked around for potential places using the more analog drive-your-car-around-neighborhoods-and-see-what-you-can-find method.  This was much more difficult than we’d thought.  Not much came from this.  We did, however, find the location of our potential apartment and realized we had to have it.

Across from the place we were hoping for we discovered a treasure-trove of stores and shopping options.  This includes a Chase bank, Papa Murphys take and bake pizza, King Soopers (for all of our shopping needs), a backpacking store and many more.  Best of all, the Mountain Sun brewery is also in this shopping center.  We ate lunch at Mountain Sun, made contact with the Liz (the girl sub-leasing the apartment we wanted), then looked for some more stores to shop at while we waited to meet with her.  We found a shoe store that was moving and had most of their remaining inventory at 50% off.  I found a nice pair of Asics running shoes for $50 rather than $100.  Good find!

After shoe shopping it was time to meet with Liz and checkout the apartment.  We really only need a small place, which is good because the place Liz has is only a one bedroom, but it’s a decent price, in a perfect location (across from the afore mentioned shopping-plaza-of-amazingness), and the dates fit our schedule.  We basically said we’d take it and that was that.

With apartment hunting all but taken care of, we headed back up the hill to do a little hiking.  There is a ‘weather trail’ that starts right outside of the office that leads to some other really nice trails further down.  Kate and I decided to head out and see what we could find.  We discovered some really nice views and got even more excited that we’d be working here for 10 weeks this summer.    The hike produced a few nice pictures, taken from my phone:

NCAR Mesa Lab from behind, notice the robot faces (4 of them!):

NCAR Architecture from the back looking East

My favorite, looking up a sun speckled trail:

Up the canyon trail

Finally, Sunday arrived.  We headed down to Denver and the Buell Theatre to see the final showing of Spamalot!, the monty python broadway production.  It was quite nice, full of laughs and monty-python-ish plot lines.  My only complaint was that they forced too many of the well known jokes from Holy Grail.  I found myself laughing more at the new material rather than the expected suff.  Nevertheless, it was a good show and we were both quite glad we made it.  After the show we stopped by Ling and Louie’s for dinner and had Wango Mango Chicken and jewled beef:

Wango Mango Chicken and Jewled Beef at Ling and Louie's

Overall, it was a great few days.  A good call before the work-intense week of this week.  Only 1.5 weeks left before SiParCS starts and I still have lots to do on IEGen and the journal paper…