Rock Climbing and Corn Mazes

Saturday morning, Sarah and I were looking for something exciting to do so I convinced her to go to the Boulder Rock Club with me to rock climb for the day.  Since I already owned equipment, we would only have to buy day passes and rent stuff for her.  When we got there I expressed interest in joining the Club so they let Sarah in for free and didn't charge us for equipment.  We climbed for a few hours and had a blast.  I'm really excited to keep climbing there more and more over the next few months.  After just a few routes, my forearms hurt like hell and I was tired.  Luckily it's just down the road from my new job in Boulder to, so it'll be easy to climb after work.

Saturday night we had Greg, Christina, and Lance over for dinner, and then we all headed out to the Haunted Field of Screams and the Dead Man's Corn Maze.  It was $25 to do both attractions and you could spend another $12 to be a VIP and skip the line.  After hearing that the line was a few hours long, we anted up the money and skipped ahead of all the highschoolers and middleschoolers who couldn't afford the extra dough (it's good to be employed...)  We finished off the evening with some wine and then everyone headed home around midnight.

Sunday was more relaxing as Sarah and went downtown to a British Pub at 10am to watch Arsenal play, then walked around downtown all afternoon.

Painting the Marathon

Last weekend, Sarah's parent, Bill and Michelle flew out to stay with us for a few days. Like any good new homeowner we decided to give them the royal Denver treatment and have them paint our house. Luckily Bill has painted his house top to bottom at least once or twice, so we had a skilled hand to guide us.

At the beginning of the weekend, I actually thought that we were only going to paint three accent walls, but it turns out that when Sarah and her mother get together, an amazing thing happens. My perfect relaxing weekend of quickly painting two or three walls turns into a hurricane or painting half the house. So much for relaxing.

The four of us pretty much painted for two days straight, and when I say "four", I actually mean Bill and I while the girls boss us around and run errands.

Sarah and I are both pretty happy with the results so far, but we have a lot of detail work left to do in all three rooms.

On Sunday morning, the whole family headed downtown Denver so that Sarah could run in the Denver Half-Marathon at 7am. About 40 minutes before the start, there we about 10,000 people trying to use a few port-a potties, so Sarah did the classy thing and just pee'd in an alley.

Sarah ended up doing pretty good, especially considering she didn't train at all. I on the other hand was winded just trying to run from point to point, trying to taking pictures.

Defenders Cup 2009

This year I headed back down to Lackland AFB for the Defenders Cup Tournament.  This year they expanded it to a 20 base tournament, up from 16 bases last time around.  I drove down to Denver last Wednesday, met up with the guys, and jumped in the 15-passenger vans Thursday morning to start our 12-hour drive.

We didn't have very high expectations this year, even though we were fielding the best start 11 we've ever brought.  On reason for our pessimism was that we ONLY had 11 people, which meant no substitutes.

Jesus has family in San Antonio, so we picked up two locals for our first game, which we lost 2-1.  Unfortunately one broke his foot, so we were back down to one sub.

Our second game we won 3-1 and luckily had picked up a new local to play with us.  Our third game should have bean an easy one for us, but we couldn't put it together and ended up losing.  We were ranked 12th out of 20 teams and actually got a bye out of the first round, but that put us up against the 5th seed team on Sunday afternoon.

By the time the game rolled around, we had two people with pulled hamstrings, one with horrible blisters on both feet, one with a broken foot, and then we got two sprained ankles during the game.  Needless to say we got our butts handed to us.  The upside was we stayed for the next game and saw them lose in a shoot-out, so all was well.

For the week we were there we stayed in a Red Roof in about two blocks from the San Antonio River walk, which is a great place to go out for a "few" drinks.

Overall I had a blast as always and it's a real bummer to head back to work.

Rock Climbing

So this weekend didn't end up being quite as exciting as we had hoped, but it was good none the less. Originally we were suppose to camp with the Blocksma's on Friday night, do some rock climbing on Saturday, then summit Long's Peak on Sunday.

Well Friday night, we decided not to go camping because Sarah was pretty tired and we didn't get home from work until late, but I still wanted to go climbing with Doug and Liz, so I got up early on Saturday morning (Sarah wasn't really doing the early thing) and headed up to the Iron Clads.

I met Doug and Liz at the top of a rocky, rough road that Bonny almost didn't make it up. We ended up parking around 10am and started our hike up to the rocks.

After putting on some borrowed equipment, Doug led us up Seething Bitch, which is a 5.8. For those of you that don't understand the climbing rating system, a 5.8 is harder than a 5.7, but easier than a 5.9. Beyond that I have no idea what it means...

My first time was pretty good, I felt comfortable enough and only hung a time or two before I got the hang of it. Next we headed over to Short Sighted (5.7), then Rip Off Ranger (5.9), followed by Five Finger Discount (5.9), then over to Mt. Boner for the big climb of the day.

Liz wanted to lead a route before we headed home for the day, so she was the first one up Shaking the Pope's Hand. It was at least twice as tall as our other climbs, and Liz executed it perfectly. I went next and cleaned up the equipment, then Doug finished off the day and rappelled down.

Needless to say, I'm hooked. I've got my own equipment now (I was going to hold off until next year, but I just took the plunge anyways) and can't wait to get out again.

Saturday night, we checked the weather and it looked kind of dodgy over Long's Peak, so we called off the hike. Instead, I put up our custom blinds that finally came it and did random yard work. Not very exciting, but necessary.  Now that our windows are finally full covered, I can walk around in my birthday suit without having to run from cover to cover...

Hiking near Estes Park

So this weekend was another beautiful one here in Colorado.  On Saturday, Sarah and I met up with the Blocksma's at a small campsite off the side of the road North East of Estes Park, CO.  Doug and Liz were going to rock climb in that area the next day, and Sarah and I had found a nice hiking spot just outside of Rocky Mountain National Park that we wanted to hike.  So we got up Saturday morning, made some chip dip, and headed to Doug and Liz's place to watch the Spartan football game, since we don't have TV at our house.

After the game we jumped in our two cars and headed out to find this campsite that Doug's friend had told us about.  After winding up this mountain for 15 minutes, we came to our pull off, parked the cars, and hiked in a little bit to find the campsite.  What a find.  The site was on the southern slope of the mountain.  Off to the east we could see Denver, and to the west was a perfect view of Longs Peak (the hiking goal of this weekend by the way).

After setting up camp, we made our campfire, settled in and made some hot dogs for dinner.  While were we setting up though, one of the neighbors apparently talked to Doug and asked if we wanted fish if they caught some.  Never one to turn down free food, Doug said yes.  Around 9pm they guy came waltzing over with a basked of 4 large rainbow trout, and about 10 crayfish.

Doug game me a knife and I gutted the fish and threw them on ice, and the crayfish were rinsed off, put in a pile, wrapped in tin foil and thrown in the fire.  Good eats if I say so myself.

Sunday morning we woke up just before sunrise, had some coffee with the Blocksmas, then headed down the road to our trail head.  After I got us lost once because I don't know the difference between Route 34 and Route 43, we made it and started hiking.  Of course the first thing I realize is that I forgot to pack the camera (but is anyone really surprised?).  The next thing we discovered is the mountain that I picked for us to hike isn't 15 miles round trip, it's 15 miles one way.  Needless to say, we were disappointed, and by disappointed, I mean that Sarah was pissed at me.

The hike was nice none the less and we made it back home by mid afternoon.