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.

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…

The ride took about 2 hours. It was quite windy, and heading south/west was a lot of work, north/east directions were quite nice though.

I’m definitely not ready for a full ride up rist, but I did pretty well considering this was my first attempt this season. My legs started cramping towards the place where I turned around. I felt like I was out of energy (only my legs though, my lungs were great) and didn’t want to push myself past what I was comfortable with, so I decided to turn around. The descent was cold, but the temperature differential between start and end was enormous, and I warmed up quick. My legs were cramping on and off the whole way home.

Overall though, I’m pleased with how I did. I think I will finally hit the top after a few more attempts.

• ~2 mile run
• 500 crunches/sit-ups of various types
• 25 push-ups

Tuesday and Thursday I’m going to either ride my trainer or hit the roads (I’m guessing the latter as it’s going to be so nice).

Enjoy the week!

• ~2 mile run
• 500 crunches/sit-ups of various types
• 20 push-ups

Since I started last week, I can already tell I’ve gotten stronger. The 2 mile run doesn’t kill me anymore and I can do the crunches/push-ups without terrible pain/agony. Exciting!

Here is a taste of some of the recipies we’ve based our meals/snacks on lately:

• Southwestern pasta salad
• Sweet potato crisps
• Chicken burritos
• Mexican Manicotti
• Cilantro lime salsa
• Chicken veggie southwestern wraps
• Fruit smoothies

We’ve also got some great ideas for the coming days/weeks.

I hope to develop a recipe database soon.  This will allow each of the above listed items to be described in detail, including name, ingredients, preparation details, comments for making it next time, etc.  All this will be easily searchable for easy recall later.  I can then link to the recipe the night it gets made and comment on it in a blog post.  Now I just need to find the time to write the code for such an application…