Denver Cruisers

This is a group that gets together every Sunday afternoon and Wednesday evening to bike around Denver! Josh and I love the Sunday afternoon rides (lovingly called the "Sunday Funday Ride") try never to miss one! Generally, about 50-100 people show up and meet at a local brewing co. called the Great Divide at 2pm on Sunday. At about 4pm we all jump on our bikes for a cruise around Denver. Usually we ride down the popular 16th street mall (which only allows bikes on Sunday) and other popular places around Denver, sometimes riding through the fountains at one of the local parks (see pic below). Always waving and at pedestrians and shouting "Happy Sunday!!!" which more often than not gets a huge smile and wave in response. Also always included in the ride is an impromptu "circle of death". One of my favorite things about the ride is that one of the organizers of the group has built a huge stereo system that he carts behind his bike (see pic below) so we get great tunes the whole ride! The circle of death is when everyone starts riding around a parking garage, culdesac, or any circular shaped pavement and inevitably someone will start going the opposite way of the riders causing some interesting and sometimes dangerous situation, ie the circle of death. Finally, the Sunday Funday ride ends up in Denver's City Park for the city-hosted event "Jazz in the Park". The rides are only held from mid-May to mid-September so only a limited time to enjoy!

Wednesday evening rides are much more popular and crazy! The ride begins at 7pm at a local bar and 700-1000 riders show up!! There is a costume theme to each Wednesday night such as "Zombies and Vampires" or "Clowns" which makes for some very interesting people watching. The riders take off around 9pm causing quite a spectacle to innocent bystanders. There is another stop at a bar and a huge circle of death usually at the civic center. Josh and I live close to the civic center so we will sometimes walk down to watch the festivities or do a time lapse video.

Below are pictures I took while on a Sunday Funday ride and at the bottom of the page is a time lapse video taken at the civic center on a Wednesday night ride and some videos I took with my iPhone.

This is a picture of Steve's Snappin' Dogs restaurant. Josh and I like to split off from the group and grab a hot dog before we meet back up with everyone at Jazz in the Park. Steve's also has some rockin chocolate covered frozen bananas!!

Videos:

Zombie Jumping Down Stairs:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7vQ9YlohZOA&feature=autoshare

Running through the Circle Death- Zombie and Vampire Ride:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F4-3fYQqC8A

Circle of Death Filling Up with Zombies and Vampires:

http://www.youtube.com/user/kshudson123#p/a/u/1/awPdPzWmMTo

Time Lapse of Zombie and Vampire Ride:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bNp_h7TSOpU&feature=autoshare

Green Mountain Whipped up on Charlie

We went over to Green Mountain today to do some mountain biking. The temperature was in the high 70's so Josh and I thought it would be a good day to take Charlie (my three year old boxer-mix), little did we know this would turn out to be more of an adventure than we anticipated. After about 3 miles into the bike ride Charlie had slowed down significantly. I thought he was just being a bum so suggested we keep riding but Josh thought we should turn around. We did end up turning around and it is a good thing we did because after another .5 miles Charlie was barely walking and was over-heated. We found a place where the trail came close to the main road and we got charlie over the fence and I took him up to wait by the road while Josh went and got the car. By the time we got home Charlie could barley walk and actually refused to walk for the majority of time. He had a cut in his upper pad on his left paw but other than that there were no visible signs of injury on his paws, I was terrified he had severely hurt something internally. We later realized that he had developed blisters on his paws and after they busted and healed (about 24 hours) he was as good as new but it.
Here are some pictures of the adventure....

Charlie's pitiful walk....and a stretch =)

Buffalo Creek MTB

Josh and I went up to Buffalo Creek, CO Today to ride the Buffalo Creek trail.

This was the first time Josh or I had been to this trail and luckily we met another biker at the trail head who gave us a map and pointed out a series of trails that, in theory, should take about 2.5 hours. Well it took us a bit longer...5 hours later we were back at the car. =)

The trails around Denver are pretty different from the ones I road on the east coast. There is a ton of climbing on the way up the mountain with very little time to catch your breath and then lots of speed on the way down, which for me means lots of brakes. =) The first half of this particular trail was a strenuous climbing on the way up and I had to stop pretty often to catch my breath but the view at the top was amazing and so worth the climb! There were several flat rocks to bike up and over throughout the trail which kind of freaked me out at the beginning but not too bad after I did a couple of them. Other than that I feel pretty comfortable with the technical aspect of the trails I've ridden so far.

This area was hit with a severe forest fire a few years ago which acutally made for some really nice views but you can see the damage in some of the pictures.

Here are some pics....

Enter on 543, dirt road entrance, at intersection of 126 & 96 (39.394418,-105.269494)

R Baldy 727

R Gashouse 726

L Skipper 790

R Charlie's Cutoff 729

R Homestead 728

Sandywash 730 back to dirt road

My Google Maps

Puerto Rico

For two weeks in January 2010 Mom and I participated on a work team together in Lares, PR. It was so much fun and my first time to Puerto Rico!

Chicago

In April 2010, while I was still living in North Carolina, Josh and I decided to meet in Chicago, IL to see one of our mutual favorite singers, Thome York. Thome was playing in his new band, Atoms for Peace. We made a weekend of it and toured around Chicago and I have put some highlights of the trip on the map.

Colorado Visit

This is a map of the highlights of a weekend when I visited Josh in Denver in May 2010. <3

NCSU

A map I put together for a future wolfpack student. It has highlights (mostly academic) of my time in Raleigh at NCSU.

Summer Of...

It all began in the Summer of 2007 with "The Summer of Awesome". A great group of friends of mine had a blast in Raleigh, NC playing soccer, eating out, dancing and other fun forms of mischief. A few years down the road it was time to relive our awesome times so we decided to hold "The Summer of Surf" of 2009 where we crashed at a beach and all learned to surf for the first time. This was followed by "The Summer of Sushi" which is pretty self explantory and we are all holding our breaths in anticipation for the summer of 2011 "The Summer of....."

Colorado Living

I will try to continually update this map with highlights of mountain biking, hiking, snowboarding, good shows etc.

The Velvet Underground

The Story of My Ten Year Love Affair with This Album:
I stumbled across this album when I was shopping at Carolina Thrift in High Point, NC at the age of 16. I bought it for $1 and my taste in music and idea of style was forever changed. Nico's dark raspy voice and avant-garde image clearly shouted to a 16-year old that sexy is not defined by current trends and Lou Reed's dark yet vulnerable lyrics opened my mind to another way of living. A decade later that same cd I bought at Carolina Thrift still plays in my car on a regular basis.

Thank you to the person who dropped this CD at the thrift store, I hope you burned it first.

"And, everyone who ever had a heart, oh,
They wouldn't turn around and break it."
Sweet Jane

"If I could make the world as pure and strange as what I see,
I'd put you in the mirror, I put in front of me."
Pale Blue Eyes

Chai Tea

Star Anise- whole

3 Cinnamon Bark (or stick)

1/2 Nutmeg- ground

1/2 Black pepper corns

1 Green cardamom (remove pod, grind with mortar and pestle)

1/2 Clobves- whole

3 Coriander- whole

Grind in blender in the ratios shown. Use 1 tea bag/cup or add a loose black tea

Peel and smash thumb size piece of fresh ginger

Put with 3 cups of water

Boil 10 minutes

Add 2 tblspoon of spice mix

Gentle boil with cover- 10 min

Add 2 cups milk til steaming

Take off heat and cover 5 min

Strain

Sweeten to Taste

Pictures on the way...