Glacier National Park

Troisieme etape: Many Glacier Valley

Another day in the car. It's amazing where it can lead you. Little-traveled two-lane highways through national forests, through reservations and open range, glimpses of the peaks of your destination on the horizon for hours, it seems, teasing you to dare to get closer. The effort is ultimately rewarded with, literally, 12 miles of bad road, a glacial valley, and our first-ever view of, not one, but two grizzlies foraging on the slope above the road.

Lakeside room with a balcony. The interminable howling August wind stirs me to imagine it in mid-winter, in a blizzard. It must be quite frightening. Of course, it must be frightening anyway, even without so much as a gentle breeze, since this lodge is reputed to have been the inspiration for The Shining. Kinda creepy, n'est-ce pas?

Dawn arrived with one of the most amazing displays of sunrise color I have ever seen, viewed directly from the room's balcony. The opposing mountain faces were set on fire by the first rays of sun. This event marked one of the rare occasions where I was thankful to have awakened with the day. 6.10am, 40 degrees. (A noter: This holiday has already set me on a streak for the most consecutive days for me to function before 6.30am. Oddly enough, this behavior cannot be replicated during the work week when I still and always struggle to get up before 7am, quite laughable since I have to leave for work by 7.10 or 7.15am. On holiday, however, every second is precious and must be savored!).

At the boat dock, we're placed on the wait list for the 8.30am ranger-led "Glacier Express" boat ride to the Grinnell Glacier trail. No luck; everyone shows. We get tickets for the next day. I quickly make another day hike plan -- to the lower Grinnell Lake, a fairly flat, mostly lakeside trail past Swiftcurrent and Josephine lakes. As we near the trailhead, Ricky approaches a couple walking away to invite them to hike with us. They too had been on the Glacier Express wait list. Dan and Sara joined us in all of our bear safety silliness. Ricky with the spray; we walked along, clapping and singing and chatting a little louder than usual. We spied fairly fresh bear markings on a trailside tree. We caught the ranger-led, Grinnell Lake nature hike. We were amazed by the beauty of the lakes and creeks and falls and trees and flowers and valley.


It was all amazing and then even more so when we spotted a moose in Lake Josephine, grazing on aquatic plants, immersing her entire head and neck in the water. We named her Josephine, but Sara noted that those who know her best call her simply "Josie." Following a delightful late lunch with Dan and Sara, we retreat to our room for a much-needed siesta.

Buffalo, WY

Deuxieme etape: Buffalo, WY

With our departure from Colorado, and hours of Wyoming sage ahead of us, we soon lost count of (and, eventually, interest in) pronghorns, singing bad 80s songs and marvelling at the substantial snow fences towering alongside the highway.

Our two nights in Buffalo went something like this: Gorgeous scenery, fabulous hospitality, killer gin & tonics, loads of laughs, and a very sweet dog.



Marked also by lovely excursions to Crazy Woman Canyon -- Ricky quickly numbed his lower legs in the creek, while Tate and Patri seemed to have found it refreshing! -- and Tie Hack Reservoir



and a creek-side BBQ chez la tante in Story, with a little fly-fishing time thrown in for Ricky and Tate.

It's all so alien to me and Ricky, these snow fences, highway tire-chaining areas, being snowed in for days, steep grades, etc. A winter warrior must one be.

New Belgium At Last!

'Tis the season; alors, another road trip. thousands of miles, and hours - no, days - in the making.

So much, too much, to say, so this will require a bit of time and several postings.


Premiere etape: New Belgium At Last!

Such tasty samples, such a cool brewery.

Who wouldn't be ready to move to Fort Collins and work for New Belgium???

Of course, that's such an effortless utterance when it's sunny and 80, and everything's green. Perhaps planning a return in January would be in order before packing up the U-Haul. Perhaps it would be wise to feel what being buried in several feet of snow entails before calling it home!

Sadly came the time to depart with our freshly-filled jug of Trippel chilling in the ice chest. Our journey had just begun, and this stop had sufficiently whetted our appetites for more adventures (and brews!). Honestly, there couldn't have been a better way to launch our Rocky Mountain Road Trip 2008!

Cookie Monster

I can't stop it; I can't help it, and quite frankly, I don't care. I'm totally addicted to all varieties of MI-DEL cookies. A different bag every week. As if that's not enough, on the weekends, I now typically require half a vegan cashew butter cookie and half a vegan chocolate chip cookie from Wheatsville Food Co-op. Ricky eats the other halves.

Whereas I've recently been transforming into some sort of cookie monster, Ricky has acquired an addiction to Upper Crust Bakery's insanely tasty cinnamon rolls. This happened quite by accident early one Saturday morning as Ricky stumbled his way down to Epoch to get us some coffee. At that exact moment, a tray of still warm cinnaomon rolls from Upper Crust was being delivered:

I needn't say more.

So, I'm sort of a bike commuter

Somehow, it occurred to me, many months ago, that I could fairly easily ride my bike to work. Even with that realization, I, for some reason, required several more days of mental preparation before actually attempting to implement my bike commute plan. Here I am, months later, pedaling to-and-fro a few times a week on my beloved monster.

Observations thus far:
1. Bike commuting does accord a peculiar sense of liberation (additional pensees on this later).
2. It takes the same amount of time to pedal to work as it does for me to drive, park, and walk to my office.
3. Seeing other cyclists and their bikes imparts a certain notion of camaraderie, although not always, as when one cyclist ran a stop sign to pull out right in front of me and proceeded to pedal at half the speed I was going...of course, I had to dust her!

FAQs
1. How far is it?
Well, I've read the stories of commuting warriors who pedal 10-15 miles each way, climbing hills and traversing highways and such, and...
I'm not one of them.
My commute consists of approximately 6 miles there and back. I consider myself pretty fortunate to live just a few miles from work, and even more fortunate to have a lower-traffic route to get there and back.

2. Is it hard?
Well, that depends: on the weather, on my fatigue, on my hunger, on my legs.
Mornings tend to be rather enjoyable. It's not quite hot; there's usually a breeze; few people out and about; the sun's just rising...fairly peaceful pedaling.
(Summer) afternoons entail triple digit temps (it was 102 yesterday), more people, and a generally uphill pedal all the way home (albeit in a false flat kind of way; I can still feel that incline though, even if it's not especially obvious on much of the route!). The worst afternoon stretches are that "hill" around 30th St. and the shadeless broil that is the Guadalupe Street bike lane alongside the Intramural Fields.

3. Do you have paniers?
No. Just me and my backpack, the contents of which typically include my so-called "professional attire", my lunch, my keys, and my cell phone.

4. Do you get all hot and sweaty?
Not so much, but a little on the ride home in the heat of the afternoon.

A mid-summer's pause

A glimpse at July...

sassitude

simple pleasures
cycling thrills
random games

general silliness

Urban Assault Ride 2008

Beer, Bikes and Big Wheels. What more do you need to get you up and out on a Sunday morning?

NLBG loves partaking in silliness, after all, and the Urban Assault Ride provides ample opportunities among the 8 obstacle checkpoints (plus the FOUR mystery checkpoints this year!!)!

Pre-ride
Racking bikes, nibbling Clif bar samples, doing PT exercises...

 

Check out our intimidating uniforms! Watch out,  NLBG means business (well, almost)!

And then we were off, riding up Lavaca to the first mystery checkpoint on 43rd, before scooping up bottle caps with oven mitts at Ozone. Three more mystery checkpoints to catch and many more obstacle checkpoints to complete! 

Here's a look at the Pease Park obstacles:

                      

For me, this keg walk was tricky -- my feet kept getting stuck below the rim making me want to stumble. 

Other silliness: bike jousting at REI (we had to trade places on this one -- loaded down with Ricky, I just couldn't pedal well enough to get us really moving!), towing a keg in Lady Bird Lake at the Rowing Dock, newspaper toss at Bicycle Sport Shop (we went 3 for 3!), bike limbo at Jack and Adam's, human bumper cars at Rogue Running (even though I was double-teamed and laughing hysterically, I grabbed all four wiffle balls from the bucket at the same time -- think my laughter distracted my opponents!), mini-bike pedal at Jo's Coffee, and the grand finale, our all-time fave, the big wheel course and giant, inflatable water slide at the finish at Run-Tex . Getting wet felt good and refreshing, but there was another reward waiting for us:

 

Loads of fun once again!