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...

Odds and Ends

Thursday at work, Sara spotted this moth outside of our building, so I took a picture of it.


As far as I can tell, it is some sort of hawk moth, part of the Sphingidae family (meaning Sphinx).

I spent most of my weekend at home doing various things (including watching the end of the Tour de France). The stage that determined the winner of the yellow jersey took place in Grenoble, so I went back and looked through pictures I took last August when I was there. The finish line was to the right of the bend in the river:


Julie's place is somewhere in the distance, close to the route leading to the finish.

Today, while walking back home from the grocery store, I stopped by our local pupuserie for some pupusas.


Pupusas are an El Salvadorian food made with thick corn tortillas, which taste really good. These had cheese and zucchini inside.

Mount Bierstadt

Sunday, I climbed my second 14er (a 14,000 foot mountain), Mount Bierstadt, with Rich and Wally. Rich and I left Louisville a little after 5 am, and got to the trailhead by around 6:30. Mt. Bierstadt is the rounded peak to the right:


We left early enough to see the moon before it set, here shown next to Square Top Mountain:


Once we were high enough, we could see the first 14er I did, Grays and Torreys (although two peaks, they technically only counted as one 14er because the descent from one and the re-ascent to the other aren't large enough). From left to right: Square Top Mtn., Argentine Peak, Grays and Torreys (the two tallest peaks):


On the way up, we heard some pikas, so I took a picture of one. See if you can find it!


Here it is!


From the top, a picture of Frozen Lake in the foreground and Pikes Peak faint along the horizon:


I zoomed in on where we started:


While I was up top, I learned a new peak, the Mount of the Holy Cross. See if you can find it!


Here it is!


Back down at the bottom, I snapped one more picture of where we had just been.


All in all, it was a great hike. The weather was nearly perfect, and it was relatively short and quick (7 miles round trip).

Trivia and Thunderstorms

Last night, we teamed up with two new people. We finished 7th, which wasn't bad, considering we had probably our worst last round ever. Left to right are Sarah, me, Tara, Cora, Anne, and Jonathan.


Last night, on the way home from trivia, there were several thunderstorms providing nice displays of lightning. The same thing happened tonight, so this time I stopped to take pictures.

Boulder and the faintest remains of twilight:


I couldn't quite capture the lightning from the storm to the north. The orange glow from the lightning was more impressive in person.


The storm to the south was a lot closer. I took this picture walking back to my car:


None of my pictures turned out as well as some that I took back when I lived in New Mexico:


With my old camera, I could do time lapse photography, which definitely helped!