Sweet Surprise

This spring and summer my yard has given me several sweet surprises.

It started with Daffodils in March...

then came Tulips and Irises in April...

Roses in May...

and, saving the best for last, Peonies in June.

I wish I could take credit for these lovely creations, but it was nice to receive the reward without having to put in the work.

Drew's fun fact: The sixth sick sheik's sixth sheep's sick is the toughest tongue twister in the English language.

Hooked on crack

Drew and I just got back from a weekend of camping and climbing in Estes Park. And since my bruised, scraped, exhausted body has fallen onto the sofa and can't get up, I figured I'd go ahead and blog about it.

Friday night we met up with some people from Drew's work at a campground just outside of Estes. It was great to finally meet some of the people Drew works with. One girl I met told me that when she moved to Colorado from Michigan she sold all of her designer high heels and purses on E-bay to buy a mountain bike. My kind of girl.

Saturday we went climbing at a spot called Lily Lake. The area had amazing views of Long's Peak and was full of great sport routes. A group of people showed up and set up a slack line above the top of the routes we were climbing. When it got windy the slack line started vibrating and sounded like a helicopter was landing. Needless to say, it was an amazing thing to witness these guys traverse the high-altitude slack-line.

One of the coolest routes of the day was called "Edge of Time." It's a classic climb for this area (a picture of it is on the cover of the climbing guidebook for Estes Park Valley). Here's a picture of Drew on it with Long's Peak in the background:

After a full day of climbing we went back to camp for an evening of frisbee, hacky sak, Apples to Apples, campfire singalong, and smores. Today we woke up early, broke down camp, and headed back to Estes to a spot called Lumpy Ridge. This area mostly has longer multi-pitch climbs but our friends took us to do a couple of shorter crack routes. I had never climbed real cracks before and had no idea what I was getting myself into. With crack routes, instead of grabbing/stepping onto holds on the face of a rockwall, you jam your feet and hands inside of the crack and then try to go up. I wasn't very good at it. Drew did much better than me, which I attribute to the fact that his hands make bigger fists and he has a much higher threshold for pain. Regardless, we had a great time trying a new type of climbing. Now I see why crack can be so addictive.

We headed back home this afternoon, gorging ourselves on Twizzlers and Pringles, thankful for a weekend of amazing weather, cool people, and incredible new climbing spots.

Drew's fun fact: In the year 2000, Pope John Paul II was named an "Honorary Harlem Globetrotter."

Weekend Update

Not much blogging lately because there hasn't been a whole lot to write about. In May it rained for almost three weeks in a row. And if you can't say anything nice don't say anything at all... I decided not to blog in May.

But now it's June and for the past four days the weather has been beautiful. It's strange how weather can dictate so much of your life. We've been itching to start hiking 14ers again but the mountains are still covered in feet upon feet of snow; looks like it will be another month before enough snow melts to be able to hike up to 14,000 ft without having to post-hole to the summit.

We've still been spending most of our weekends climbing. Drew recently started dabbling in trad climbing where you place gear into the rock as you climb to catch you if you fall (rather than relying on bolts that have been permanently placed in the rock). He also did his first multi-pitch on the 1st Flatiron- 8 'legs' of climbing up about 1,000 vertical feet. Yes, he has a life insurance policy.

Both of our parents are planning trips to Colorado this summer, and we are going to Alaska the last week in July. And at the end of this month we celebrate our 3rd wedding anniversary. Lots to look forward to this summer. Now if only that snow would melt...

Drew's fun fact: March 2011 snow surveys show the snowpack in the Colorado River basin is still above average, at 128 percent of average and 164 percent of last year's figures.

Date Night

Since the weather turned warm (relatively) Drew and I have had a standing weekly date night to go climbing in St. Vrain Canyon. As soon as I get home from work Drew hands me a granola bar, shoves me in the car, and drives me 20 minutes west to the canyon. We're able to climb for about 2 1/2 hours before the sun sets, which is just enough time for us each to try a route that's too hard and fail, and then try another that's too easy and succeed.

Even though it's not your standard dating activity, climbing is actually a great way to spend time together. We get to be outside, which we both love. We get to try things that are new and scary, and encourage each other along the way. But most of all we get to be together and not talk about work or money or plans or the future or anything important.

The couple that belays together stays together.

Drew's fun fact: The only continent with no desert is Europe.

Season Schizophrenia

Growing up in Florida I always felt like I was missing out not having a real Fall season. The idea of cool weather and leaves changing seemed so exciting. I was always disappointed it didn't happen much in Florida. Little did I know I was really missing out not having a true Spring. I had no idea how exciting it is to watch green return to the world after months of brown.

This month I learned Spring is kind of weird too, almost schizophrenic. It will be sunny and warm one day and icy and cold the next. This weekend we had perfect weather on Saturday- 70's with blue bird skies. That morning I was surprised by Daffodil blooms in my yard. The next day was cold and miserable. It froze overnight and we got an inch of snow. Today my Daffodils looked limp and pathetic. I tried to blame Bogey for tromping on them but Drew wisely pointed out that it froze last night and that's probably why they looked so sad. He said the Daffodils just bloomed too early. Why can't the weather make up it's mind? At least now I can properly blame the right thing for my ruined Daffodils (most importantly I am not the one to blame).

We had a great weekend enjoying all that spring-time has to offer. Saturday Drew and I spent the day climbing in St. Vrain Canyon. Drew wanted to lead climb again so we picked an easier slab route called 'Community Service.'

That night we took the bus from Longmont to Denver to go the Rockies game for our friend's birthday. The highlight of our night (and quite possibly Drew's entire life) was when Drew started the wave. Getting 50,000 people to stand up and say "woooo!" is quite an accomplishment. Between the weather, my Daffodils, climbing, and the Rockies game it was a perfect Saturday.

The next morning we woke up early (which was a miracle in itself considering we stayed up too late and had a little too much fun the night before) to meet our friend Andy to snowboard at Keystone. When we left the house it was sunny and warm again. I fell asleep in the car and when I woke up an hour later we were in a complete white-out blizzard. It was so strange to fall asleep in spring and wake up back in winter.

Then for some reason Drew thought it would be a good idea to drive over Loveland pass (rather than taking the safe, non-scary Eisenhower tunnel) to get to the ski resort. It was so snowy we couldn't see more than a foot in front of the car, which is never good when you're driving on winding, steep mountain roads that have no guard rails. I had to close my eyes because it was so scary I couldn't watch.

We finally made it to Keystone safely. Once we got on the mountain we realized that the white-out snow storm was actually a good thing because the mountain was covered in fresh powder. I had always heard that Spring skiing is the best. Now I can say from experience, Spring skiing is the best! Amazing snow, no crowds, and a little bit of sunshine. The only catch was that the blizzard that blessed us with amazing snow apparently caused several car accidents on I-70. They ended up closing the interstate for about 4 hours, which means that we couldn't drive home. We ended up having to wait about 3 hours for them to clear the road before they were able to open it back up. Luckily our friends Sarah and Jeff were able to break into our house to let Bogey out and we eventually made it home at a decent time, in one piece.

Here's a video of Drew shredding the freshies:

Drew's fun fact: In 2002, Tamás Vicsek of the Eötvös Loránd University, Hungary along with his colleagues analyzed videos of 14 waves at large Mexican football stadiums, developing a standard model of wave behavior (published in the September 12 issue of Nature). He found that it takes only the actions of a few dozen fans to trigger a wave. Once started, it usually rolls in aclockwise direction at a rate of about 12 m/s (40 ft/s), or about 22 seats per second. At any given time the wave is about 15 seats wide. These observations appear to be applicable across different cultures and sports, though details vary in individual cases

Spring Slab

Today is the first day of Spring which means I officially survived my first real winter! I enjoyed every minute of it, especially since I never had to shovel my car out of the snow to leave the driveway. I didn't slip and fall on the ice and I didn't get any frostbite (though it felt like I came close a couple of times). Honestly I don't know what all the fuss is about, winter is fun.

However I have to admit that the Florida girl in me has secretly been craving some warmth. Luckily, Spring weather came early this year- it's been sunny with high's in the 70's for the past couple weeks. We took advantage by going climbing with Sean and Hunter at Red Rock open space. Drew got to lead his first sport route and I got to break in my new climbing shoes (yay for REI dividends!). We did some fun slab routes which is a type of friction climbing with minimum holds. My fingertips still hurt from clinging on for dear life so I'm going to keep the typing to a minimum.... here are the pics.

Drew's fun fact: The first known contraceptive was crocodile dung, used by Egyptians in 2000 B.C.

MLE in CO

This weekend my best friend Emily came to visit. She's a much better friend than me because she's lived in California for the past 5 years and I've never been to visit her, but within 6 months of moving to Colorado she booked a plane ticket to come see me. She flew in Thursday night so we picked her up from the airport after work and took her to the brew-pub down the street from our house. Friday we hiked Mt. Sanitas in Boulder which is fun because at the top you can see for miles east across the plains. As we were hiking we happened to notice some black smoke coming from the foothills north of us. Fortunately the smoke was downwind from us and the wind was roaring at 50 mph so we kept hiking (although I kept thinking about how the newspaper article would describe our death as another idiotic group of hikers who didn't turn around when they should have...).

After we escaped not-so-near death we took Emily to Pearl Street to shop and people watch. Little did I realize that Drew is actually in the group of people that are watched rather than watching. We had Bogey with us for the hike and you can't take dogs on the outside mall of Pearl Street so Drew hung back in a grassy area to soak in the sunshine and listen to one of the street performers. After Emily and I did a little shopping we went back to meet up with Drew. He then told us that while we were gone some college kid on a bike came up to him and asked if he wanted his lunch leftovers. Drew laughed and said "no thanks, I'm alright." The guy then said "what about the dog? It's a turkey sandwich." Drew turned it down again, but then later regretted it because he was pretty hungry from our hike.

Later that night Sean and Hunter drove up from Colorado Springs to hang out for the weekend. We made tacos and had our usual guitar/mandolin/awful singing jam session (think 20 minute long versions of The Weight and Wagon Wheel). The next morning Emily's college friend Crystal drove up from Denver to join us for snowshoeing in Rocky Mountain National Park. She had been up there last weekend to ice climb so she knew of a great snowshoeing trail along a string of lakes. The hike was only 4 miles round trip but we had a blast playing in the snow and being in the mountains.

Sunday was a little more low-key. We had lunch at Oskar Blues during their usual Sunday bluegrass jam session. Afterwards we spent the afternoon playing Bocce, slack-lining, and enjoying the spring weather.

That night Emily made us Shrimp Scampi and Tequila-Thyme Lemonade (which Drew called the Mojito's gay cousin). As Sean pointed it's awesome having such a talented cook for a best friend.

Today I went back to work while Drew took Emily to Denver to have lunch with friends and then to the airport. All in all it was a fabulous weekend, but I am exhausted and need a vacation from Emily's vacation.

Drew's fun fact: Kangaroos can't hop backwards.*

*Courtesy of Daniel Tosh