Midway through the day we decided we’d like to try Bear peak.  We ducked out of work a bit early and after grabbing our gear and waiting a bit for Ben, we headed out around 4:30.  As we knew, this is definitely too late to head out for a hike as early/late afternoon storms have made themselves a part of Colorado life for the past few months.  Despite this, we were hopeful and tried to make a decent pace up the trail.

The first mile or so along the mesa trail isn’t so bad.  We held a pretty good pace for this section on the Mesa trail.  Apparently there are two ways to reach the top of Bear Peak: Along the Bear Canyon trail (longer and less steep) or along the Fern Canyon trail (much shorter but much steeper).  We chose the latter option.

Most of the way up the Fern Canyon trail was full of rock steps and switchbacks due to the decently steep incline we were ascending.  After multiple breaks, we made it to a decent lookout over the west side of the climb and could see some very pretty snow covered peaks and another peak to our north:

Peak north of the Bear Peak trail

Up to this point we had heard a few rumbles of thunder.  As we could see west, the building storm clouds were visible.  The combination of the continuing thunder, slight sprinkles, and occasional lightning were enough to convince us to turn back.  I’m not one who likes to mess with lightning in elevated terrain.  As we turned around to descend, a nice view of the plains just south of boulder presented itself:

View of the plains from the Bear Peak trail

Also, a picture of us descending (from right to left) Nick (fixing his shoe), Ben, Kuo, Dan, and Evan:

Descending Bear Peak

After a knee/shin jarring descent and a quick hike back down the Mesa trail towards NCAR, I snapped a quick few images of Boulder from the trail just west of the office:

Start/End of the Mesa trail just north of NCAR

By this time it was quite close to raining pretty good, so some of us hurried back to the building.  Just as Ben and I made it to the back entrance (across the bridge) it started raining.  Perfect timing!

After hiking Evan, Kate, and I headed to Southern Sun for dinner and a few beers.  Also, Evan and I decided we were sick of the weather denying us a full hike, so we are planning on leaving around 6:30 tomorrow morning to try again.  It is 11pm now, we’ll see if we actually make it.  I’m sure I’ll at least post photos if we do.

Side note: I found a Linux GUI/CLI tool called Hugin that does photo stitching very easily.  The third and fourth images of this post were made using Hugin and turned out pretty well.  I plan to make more in the future as they are much more impressive than a single image.

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.

After we finished up signing all of the apartment paperwork we had about 30 mins to kill.  We stopped by Caffe Sole for a coffee and snack.  This may be the place I hang out if/when I’m not at the lab working.

We met with John around 11.  We chatted for a bit, got a brief tour of the building, found our future (though hopefully too needed) cubes, saw some big (though in the grand scheme of things not that big) machines that they use to run some simulations on, and had a (free!) lunch.  I really like the atmosphere (no pun intended!) there, it is very open, everyone is friendly and seems very approachable, and I immediately felt included and a part of the lab.  After lunch we chatted with most of the CS researchers there.  Every time I meet a new person or group of people that work in my field (or something close) I always seem to get along instantly with them.  I suppose it is the thinking alike thing that causes this…  Regardless, everyone seemed really nice, smart, and will be great to work with.

After another hour drive back, I met briefly with Michelle about the status of IEGen and her progress with the related full space tiling work.  Things are going well and I may actually be able to run some experiments soon!

Finally, we ended the day at Jim’s Wings on Elizabeth St, very close to Adam’s (soon to be) old apartment.  Hot wings go great with a few pints of beer.  We also discovered a small local ice cream shop where we enjoyed some tasty treats before I headed home on my bike.

I’m tired, it’s time for bed.