Art less

I've simply not spent the time to pour good art.

I was getting close a few months ago but when you have the type of attention span that I do shiny things on the horizon sometimes cause distractions. :(

Nevertheless, I got a sudden urge to a few days ago to revisit small milk lattes and gave it a go.

Poured a swan. Hahahahaha!

Red Rocks

Here a a quick look at one trip up from the stage to the top row at Red Rocks.

You will notice that I start out quick but slow down to a creep....

You will notice I am sucking wind....

You might think it looks easier than all that.

Come get some is all I can say.

This is a baseline pass and as the year goes on and my cardio improves I'll post up with better times but my gps was telling me RR is around 6K elevation and yeah, if you think you know but have not tried it....come and get it.

Random items of randomness

A few days ago....maybe it was a week, I broke out the matcha and took some time to reflect.

I can't say enough good things about waking up, having a coffee with a matcha back and reflecting for a bit.

And a smooth transition from matcha is obviously base layers. I've been wanting some good base layers for a while now and when we went to the big ski sale "snigrab" I didn't really see much by the way of deals. A few days ago one of the email alerts brought a deal too good to pass up and Angie and I grabbed a set of poly base layers that get good reviews. I tried them on and aside from looking like an overweight ninja or perhaps a pervy jewelry thief after the Pink Panther I'm looking forward to getting some in the field testing done on these bad boys...

Now the overly obvious segway is the ad lib smoothie I just made. I normally have a big bunch of kale and do green smoothies but akin to finding clothes to wear on laundry day when you realize all your normal cloths need to be washed I found myself ill prepared for one of my go to smoothie options/concoctions. I had to go with whey, pumpkin, yogurt, a few dark cherries and nothing more. I think I'll call it the pumpkin uppercut.

And this brings us to the tale of $2 beers.....

Out at the movies with friends last night and almost beyond belief they have a list of almost micros for $2 on tap. A quick glance shows they have Great Divide Titan IPA on tap....I'm not sure what else was on the list cuz I stopped right there.

With only 10 min before showtime and an obnoxious rule that said we could not bring alcohol down stairs...

A decision had to be made on how to proceed from here.

The clock was ticking and the pressure was on..............

Luke crafted a plan, relayed the info to our waitress, and pulled the trigger on the only reasonable solution at the time. ;)

I could go on with this random outburst but I'll stop for now.

To be continued I'm sure.......

And......break.

Seconds into re energizing my training and nutrition program it's the holidays.


Something that has been a staple of our Christmas program for years is a slice of Goode Company pecan pie. As far as I'm concerned this is the best pecan pie in our galaxy and living a short drive away from it for decades is something I guess I took for granted.

Living in Colorado you can't just pop in your car, get in line with 100 other Texans and grab a few pies.

Lucky for us there is fast reliable shipping in this country and people that feel how sad it must be for anybody who knows what they are missing if they can't score a Goode Co pie.

I pledge to work extra hard next week to make up for it but there aint no way in hell I'd pass on eating some of the best pecan pie you could ever get your hands on

Long lost update

I've been off the update train for a while now...

The fickle finger of fate that is life has been flipping me the bird lately and I've been busy trying to grab that finger and bite it.

I'll start off with what has been a bother for a few months and that is revisiting Bierdstadt. In my trip report I mention how lousy I was feeling during that climb and how tough it was for me to gain the summit. Well....a few days later I was in the Dr's office and it turns out I was really sick. I wound up on a round of heavy antibiotics and let's just say if I'd have been exposed to Anthrax that week I'd have been good to go. :o

After getting better I was left with a haunting feeling of that climb. I realized that my lack of training might have very well killed me that day. I sort of downplayed how bad I was feeling and long story short I pressed on further than I should have because I wasn't in top shape. Had I been in good shape I'd have known something was wrong and I should stop, get better, and climb another day. But what happened is that I was doubting myself out there. I was thinking wussing out was not acceptable and wound up pushing myself to potentially bad places. I learned the hard lesson of what a disservice it is to show up less than 100% prepared.

I had time to really think about that because it was the last 14er of our season and ahead was a hiatus....a hiatus from hell because I've learned the second hard lesson of the year. A hiatus that lasts too long is damaging to the cause. Knowing that I was going to have to approach my 2011 season in a lot better shape than 2010 because of what I learned and the goal of twice as many 14ers this year I understood the work ahead of me and I let the time available to put me in postpone mode... aka denial.

A ton of other issues came up but the above is enough to illustrate where I've been until the breaking point came during the last UFC event. Thank you Thiago Alves. thank you. Thiago showed up in peak conditioning and performed flawlessly in the event. He was inspiring and the stand out of the entire event IMO. In post fight interviews he gave credit to his improvements to "lifestyle changes". I started looking into what he was talking about and in doing so the urgency to get training for 2011 came to life for me and I felt inspired to get to it.

Getting sick did deal me some setbacks but it also gave me some great perspectives I think. I've put myself in a little bit of a hole currently but have no doubt I can dig out and using what I've learned I intend to hit the first 14er trail head of 2011 the most prepared I've ever been.

Less serious posts to follow but I had to clear that up.....

Girl Power!

We made it out to the Roller Derby yesterday...

It was a lot of fun and something I've wanted to do for a long time. When you are there you really get a sense of the "girl power" aspect of the sport. The place was packed with tons of young girls that would break out dancing when the music would come on over the PA. We could see a couple of girls around 7-8 years old across the arena that were going absolutely bonkers at times and it was a kick watching the vibe in the room. I was expecting a much different atmosphere than the odd ball collection of things that it actually is. But seeing it first hand I have to say I get it now and think it's a good thing.

The look of "kill" is all over the face of Angela Death in this pic as she gets ready to knock into the much bigger girl.. :)  I think she was the fastest skater out there of all the teams we saw.

There were some fans of specific teams out there as well as some serious fans that were talking details as well as us rookies. It took me a while to figure out how to watch the action because there is a lot of it spread out over an area too big for you to observe all at once. You pretty much have to follow the Jammers until one of them brakes out of the pack and follow her from there. You can glance back at the other Jammer too keep an eye on what's up but after the initial jam up you need to watch the girls with the stars on their helmets and the action will fall into those views.  

I thought Roller Derby was fun as well as a positive/empowering vibe for girls, and it had enough violence for guys to enjoy as a sport.

I will go back to another event for sure next time the opportunity comes up.

http://www.denverrollerdolls.org/

Denver biscuit

Ohhhhh yeahhhhhhh....

Let's talk for a second about Denver Biscuit Co.

Angie got word from a trusted food tipster that Denver Biscuit was a place worth checking out....so naturally we were psyched to check it out.

The first thing you should know about Denver Biscuit is that it isn't easy to find if you don't know what to look for. We passed it twice before I decided that no matter if I had to hold up traffic and drive 2mph I was going to find what was being touted here....

Real Southern, Real Good

Proudly serving gourmet biscuit sandwiches on fresh-baked buttermilk biscuits with all the house-made fixin’s you could want for. From the sausage down to the apple-butter, it’s all made in-house, everyday, from scratch. No kiddin’.

http://www.denbisco.com/


After deciding it was a do or die mission we located the target on the third pass. For those who might venture in this direction the thing to realize is that you are looking for one of the identities located inside a 3 sibling location. The Atomic Cowboy and Fat Sullys Pizza are also in this same room and the signage might confuse you if you don't know that....I didn't and it did.

No matter the difficulty involved in finding it I was immediately pleased at what I saw as we approached the front door. I magnificent sight indeed of a sign saying Novo Coffee hanging in the window.....nice! Novo is by far my favorite coffee find in Denver at this point and the thought of a decent cup of coffee was a very welcomed start to this adventure.

As a quick note I think I should say Atomic Cowboy is a bar. Recently I recommend another place that has a  50/50 bar and restaurant vibe to it and unfortunately one of the members of the party did not like the bar feel of the experience. Well.....this would probably be much worse if a bar feel puts you off because here is the view from our table.

But like Snooze D.B. closes at 2:30 PM and I imagine the longer in the day you get the shift from Fat Sullys Pizza eventually gives way to The Atomic Cowboy and it become a full bar at o' dark 30. For breakfast / brunch the bar should be fairly quiet and even the few people I saw there were not drinking.....yet.

I was intrigued by  Fat Sulley's but we were locked in on the idea of southern buttermilk biscuits and truth be told I've tried several times to get decent cream gravy here in Denver and I've been steadily loosing hope that I would find the flavor I was looking for and missing. I've had a lot of what I'd call 95% flour flavored gravy here and there is no sugar coating it....it's weak.:(

I'm happy to say the search is over because Angie got the biscuits and gravy.....super fantastic!

And I got the chicken biscuit sandwich topped with the in house made sausage cream gravy.

 
 Good flavorful cream gravy with honest to goodness fresh buttermilk biscuits and a decent cup (3 cups for me) of Novo coffee.... well, add it to the list of go to breakfast spots in Denver.

I'm starting to get a real appreciation for the food culture in this town. It's taken a little time to start uncovering things, and we did have some early stumbles but there are some great spots to be found if you look. One thing for sure is that really really good breakfast and brunch places are not hard to find here. Excellent Mexican food is harder to get but breakfast is said to be the most important meal of the day.....and Denver has your back on whats important!  ;)

Another place I'll give a highly recommend status.