USA Pro Cycling Challenge

Watching the Tour de France this year inspired me to volunteer for the first USA Pro Cycling Challenge, a week long bike race in Colorado. The final stage was today, and it went from Golden to Denver. I volunteered as a course marshal in Golden. I was positioned two blocks from the start. Before the race began, there were festivities in the park across the street, and several people were riding old-time bicycles.


Once the race started, I decided not to take any pictures. I circled myself in this photograph I found on the internet.


Here's the full-sized photograph.


I'm wearing a yellow shirt to the left of the full-time course marshal standing in the middle of the road. As you can see, I had to "contain" quite a few people!

The riders made a loop north of Golden, then came back to the same intersection. This time around, I was deputized by the real course marshal to stand on a median in the middle of the road with my yellow vest. I had a great view that only a few photographers and a TV cameraman had.

Once the race was past, I meandered past the park


and past the start



to catch a bit more of the race before the riders left Golden and headed for Denver.

This video shows the festive atmosphere of the race:


While filming this, I was caught in a Denver Post photograph!



On my walk back to my car, I took this picture of Washington Street going through downtown Golden.


When I got home and watched the race on TV, they edited the coverage and showed only the Denver part of the race (that's why I went online to find two of these photographs).

It was a fun time. Maybe Boulder will get a stage in the race next year!

Jackson

I got the sad news yesterday that Terri's dog, Jackson, died after being hit by a car. He ran away from my sister's apartment the previous day when some maintenance personnel accidentally let him escape while my sister was at work.

I saw Jackson mostly on Skype the last few years, but his ears would always perk up every time my sister would mention "Uncle Jeff". Here are some of my favorite Jackson pictures from the times I spent with him.

This one I blogged about before, when my family was visiting me. Some of the dogs were washed at a do-it-yourself place in Longmont.





Here I am playing with Jackson around Christmas 2008:





Terri took this really nice picture of him:



Your Uncle Jeff is going to miss you!

Trivia and Bees

Tuesday's trivia team (R to L, Tara, Cora, Anne's arm, Anne, and me) did OK, but we still haven't placed in awhile.


I saw some nice sunset leftovers leaving work on Wednesday.


Friday night, I saw the movie Queen of the Sun with some coworkers, which inspired me to take pictures of bees on my way downtown Saturday morning. The bees seemed to move a lot faster in real life than in the movie, so I wasn't able to get any really good pictures of bees front and center. This was probably the best:

The Past Two Weeks

Two weeks ago was somewhat cursed. Our (shorthanded) trivia team finished far out of first place,


and after riding my new bike for the first time (to downtown Louisville), I got a flat tire!


This past week was better. Our trivia team came in fourth place,


but it was still a little cursed, because we either misheard a question, or it was misread, and it ended up costing us third (maybe even second) place.

Friday night, I caught Choosing June playing behind the Bittersweet Coffee Shop.


Saturday morning, I met up with (at various times in the day) Andy, Rich, Sara, Josh, and Harald. I fed some birds


and Rich pointed out that the plant that was growing on the outside of the building is still growing on the inside!


I still haven't fixed my flat...