Today is my last day in Denver. About 9 hours from now I’ll be leaving work and heading to the airport for my flight home. The whole trip I’ve been looking at tourist magazines for the area showing all the wonderful things you can do in the snow here. One problem: no snow.
I just got out of bed and was greeted with this:
Hooray! It will probably will stop snowing soon, and it may all melt. But that’s not the point. Winter has arrived, just in time!
The cake is a lie anyways, right? 🙂
I was at Walmart for my weekly grocery trip… and the birthday cakes didn’t look all that tempting (or they were 2′ x 3′ in size, and I am but one man)… but the pumpkin pie looked tempting… especially paired with some whip cream!
I celebrated my 33rd year on this earth with pumpkin pie, some Comedy Central, a little StarCraft, and a can of “whipped topping” (it didn’t actually list milk as an ingredient, I checked). I think I’ll make this a tradition for every birthday divisible by 11! 🙂 Next week I’ll be back in Toronto and out of the hotel room…
When I was in Phoenix for awhile I kept myself amused with motorcycle rentals. When I learned I’d be in the Denver area for 5 weeks I was going to do the same thing: but it’s a bit late in the season. Instead I looked around for other activities, and found the Rocky Mountain Quad Squad.
Yesterday I managed to get in on one of their 2-hour quad tours with two other people. They’re in Idaho Springs… a little town that was part of the gold rush a long time ago. It wasn’t too far from Denver: I left at noon for the tour at 1pm and arrived in plenty of time: first a bit of a drive out of the flats of Denver up towards the mountains:
The tour starts at a related business: Rocky Mountain Trout Hunters…
…where we met our guide Tyler Hawks (one of the owners of the Quad Squad) and signed all the paperwork. From then it only took about 20 minutes to load our gear into the truck, drive out of town, and unload the quads at the beginning of the trail. All safety gear like gloves and helmets was provided:
Compared to riding in Ontario there was a lot more rocks. And obviously much bigger hills to climb 🙂 The were very few places where you could speed up at all (unlike in Oregon where you bombed around in the sand): most of the time you were weaving around the trail at slow speeds trying to dodge the worst of the boulders… but that was mostle for a smooth ride… nothing you couldn’t have just rode over anyways. We stopped for several breaks to drink some water and ask questions: here’s one of the first:
I took too many pictures along the way: here are some from one of the highest points we reached… looking back down into the valley towards Highway 70 (the road I drove in on to get to Idaho Springs)
Here’s another shot pitstop where we had a good view crossing the side of a hill:
…and at a hub between many of the trails…
On our way back down we stopped at an old mine entrance (well secured). There were a couple old buildings: one still sturdy enough to get into and one in shambles on the side of the hill. There was also a really old (as in it had metal wheels) air pump that used to be used to force fresh air down into the mine.
From the mine it was an easy path back down the mountain looping back down the trail we came up, then we loaded up the quads and headed back to Idaho Springs.
I had a fantastic time. I first thought of trying to take one of the longer tours… but 2 hours was perfect! I’d really like to thank Randy Simpson at the Rocky Mountain Quad Squad (part owner) for getting back to me weeks after I first inquired about the tour, to make sure I could go… and special thanks to the other owner Tyler Hawks for being a great guide (and all around funny guy)!
If I get back to Denver I’d definitely go again!
A couple years ago now I decided to stop hosting any sort of public web service (like this web site) on my home computers. Residential broadband connections were still a bit flakey, upload speeds were low, and as cool as it may be to have total control over things… I didn’t want to deal with mundane day-to-day maintenance.
So I bought a few years of dirt-cheap hosting at GoDaddy and installed WordPress. This made it easy to post new info (since the browser is also the text editor in WordPress), and the GoDaddy people take care of keeping everything online.
Then I started to get comment spam. So I installed the Akismet plugin… and although I’ve continued to receive over 8000 spam comments… none have been posted.
Then as I started to post more info and pics to the page… I got worried about unrecoverable failures. So I installed the BackupWordPress plugin, which performs a backup and emails a compressed copy to my Gmail account daily.
Then I installed the WP Super Cache plugin: just because I like the idea of caching and compressing content to make the most of the precious commodity (bandwidth) while burning off the resource that’s effectively free (CPU time).
Finally, about 30 minutes ago, I found a WordPress plugin that became my new best friend. I hadn’t upgraded WP in almost 2 years… just because I thought it would be too much of a hassle… even though I knew I was running a version with bugs and known vulnerabilities (perhaps one reason I had so much comment spam). WordPress Automatic Upgrade did all the heavy lifting for me: now I’m running the latest version and all my posts and pics have remained intact!
All this software is 100% free to use, and has a vibrant community surrounding it. Although I haven’t tried any of the competitors of WP, I think WordPress is a great tool for making your own little home on the web!
Last week I was sent to Denver to spend just over a month helping a customer with a new project. I’ve been to Denver before… but never for more than a few days at a time… and this is my first “real weekend” in the area.
I drove around a bit on Saturday, and picked up some tourist info, but didn’t really do anything interesting. This morning I decided to go for a walk and get some fresh air. Just down the road from the hotel is a small undeveloped park area with a couple walking paths, so I decided to explore. The trail looked a bit boring…along the side of a hill covered in short grass… so I wandered down the hill to a little ravine where I could see a creek and many more trees:
I was following a small trail on a hill beside the edge of the creek, when I looked up and saw this guy. Not scared of at me at all, and walking on the same trail I was on. I think he was just waiting for me to get out of his way:
That first picture wasn’t zoomed at all… he was standing about 20 feet away, just sort of looking around… probably out finding something for breakfast. I walked up the hill and around him… giving him lots of space…. both of us occasionally eyeing the other up 🙂 I don’t remember if I’ve ever seen a Coyote before…
I didn’t see anything else with legs for the rest of my walk… except for what I think was a rabbit… but was moving way too fast to get a pic. Trees, water, and strange weeds and cacti:
Next weekend I’m going to see if I can go on a half-day quad ride up the mountains. Can’t wait!
Two weekends ago I was invited out for another Ganaraska ride with 4 other guys. The weather was perfect… and because there wasn’t so much rain I didn’t crash once! :). Other than a short problem with gas pouring out the side of the bike… and new gearing that was a bit too high… it was a perfect day: here’s some pictures:
Then last weekend I attended a TrailTours Dual-Sport training day – it was a special price for ODSC members: for $50 I couldn’t say no! I learned I needed a lot more practice at low-speed cornering (slow as you can go, lock-to-lock). I was expecting a lot of larger DS bikes… but almost all were 450cc or lower dirt-oriented models.
I drove out to Ganaraska an back both days and had no problems on the road with the WR. The only issue was the batttery died (brand new one-week-old model) at TrailTours, so I had to kick-start it whenever I stalled… which was a lot with road gearing installed. I’m not 100% sure if it was a battery failure… or if maybe something else was screwed up (i.e. a problem with the charging system). I’ll look into that this weekend.
Since the new bike was 99% ready to go I made a post to the ODSC forum saying hi to everyone. I got some positive messages: the most interesting being from “Joe” offering to let me come out with his regular group of guys on a beginners ride. How could I say no?
I took Friday afternoon off work to drive to Royal Distributing in Barrie to get some pieces I was missing: I also picked up a new helmet, filter oil, and knee pads. Then spent Friday evening fixing things up. Saturday morning at 8:00am I was off to Joes to get a ride to Ganaraska!
Here’s a pic unloading the bikes (Derek in the black truck just backing in), another with Joe ready to go and Derek putting on his gear on the tailgate, and finally all 3 bikes parked during a rest+gas break:
The forecast called for the rain to end at 7am last I checked… but instead it rained until at least noon. I hadn’t been on dirt trails since last fall: so I was very rusty… and between the constant blur of rain on my goggles and my glasses fogging up I could see very little. More than once I had to stop just to wipe everything down so I could see enough to continue. But it was incredibly fun!
It got a bit less fun when I botched riding through a rut and laid the bike down sideways off a very small corner… widening the trail by a few feet where the bike mowed down the saplings. I wasn’t hurt: but had trouble starting the bike again. I kicked and kicked and kicked (and swore to fix the battery since I’m supposed to have electric start) and kicked and kicked… to no avail. Eventually Joe came back looking for me and started the bike in about 2 kicks (and a cloud of black smoke coming out of the exhaust). It had flooded when it fell over: teaching me the lesson that if you fall off and are unhurt… pick up the bike ASAP!
We looped back to the starting area for a break and to top off the tanks: then headed out again. I was tired, and soon made another mistake: went on the outside of a corner and tapped a tree with my handlebars, and fell over. Got back up and was fine until we were _almost_ done for the day: somehow came out of a rut heading at 45% angle towards the bush… on a trail wide enough to drive a car on… and laid down the front and slid into the bush… fast enough that when the front end hit a tree and stopped dead… I got a mini-toss over the bike and went rolling into the brush.
I wasn’t hurt at all in any of those spills: I was armored head-to-toe… but you’re a bit scared after… breathing heavy… then you have to pick up the bike fast so it doesn’t flood (bikes aren’t light)… then kick the snot out of it to start it (again, no electic start for me: curse the dead battery)… then fight the urge to drive fast to catch up to others… because you know you’re even more tired now and you’ll just end up in the weeds again 🙂
That being said, I had a blast! I would do it all again in a heartbeat!
Back where we started I threw all my extra gear into my packsack, lashed it to the rack, bolted on the GPS, and headed back to Toronto. Here I am topping off the tank:
And 2 hours later, after a short stop at Walmart to buy some earplugs… I was safe at home… bike covered in mud… so tired I was ready to fall over as soon as I set foot in the door. This picture is for Nicoli Garner, who thought my other Facebook pic of the bike was too clean 🙂 …
Can’t wait to go again!
Yesterday it took me 5 hours to change 2 tires: 1.5 hours for the front and 3.5 for the back. That rear tire just didn’t want to come off the rim… nor did the new one want to go back on. I guess it was a learning experience: I definitely found more than one wrong way of doing things. But now I know the toolkit I carry has everything I need for the job, and I have a better idea of what to do if I get a flat in the middle of nowhere.
But now that I’ve done it once myself: from now on I’m paying for a shop to swap them 🙂
Went for a short ride to scrub them up a little and took a pic of the final package: ready to go for some dualsport rides!
Tonight I finally had a chance to bolt on something I bought almost a year ago: a Pro Moto Billet Rack for my WR450F. And since I had to remove the old turn signals for clearance anyways, I also installed the LED signals I had on the shelf, and the electronic flasher to drive them.
Sexy, no?
I’ve been avoiding the final difficult job… replacing the tires… but I have to do it eventually. Sure I could take it to a shop and have it done… but I need to learn how to unmount/remount the tires anyways in case I ever get stuck with a flat out in the bush somewhere. Better to have done it once in the relative comfort of the underground parking garage that to have my first time be when I’m outside, cold, wet, and exhausted…
Early this week I had to take a really short trip to San Francisco with my friend+coworker Kulwant… to attend a 2-hour meeting… that’s business for you 🙂 . It was worth it! Not only to visit the customer… but for the small sliver of time we had to roam around San Francisco and take some pictures. Here’s just a few I took yesterday…
Part of the team: from left-to-right: Aman, Poonam, Mike and Kulwant
After the meeting we hopped in the rental (Sebring convertible)…
…and made our way up highway 101 into San Francisco! Here’s the Bay Bridge, one of the old-style trollies, the small yellow buggies you can rent to tour the town, and some of the nicer government buildings we passed while driving around:
We couldn’t call ourselves tourists without visiting the Golden Gate bridge, so as soon as we saw it in the distance we had to head on over. Here’s Kulwant taking us across: we were lucky that it was a nice day so we could have the top down…
We took a lot of pictures from the lookout on the North end of the bridge…
…then found gaps in the throng of other tourists…
…to also gets pics with the skyline of San Francisco in the background…
It was getting late and a bit chilly… so we put the roof back up on the car and sped back to the airport to catch our return flight to Toronto. Oh, with a quick stop at Taco Bell for some food since you don’t get anything on the plane anymore. (ask Kulwant about the Burrito he took as carry-on luggage 🙂 )