This last weekend was one of the slowest of the summer. Kristen's sister Katie was in town a bit, and we went on an 11 mile run Saturday morning. The rest of the weekend was basically a chance to recover. Not much to report, just lots of napping and sleeping in.

We've had a non-running week. After the brutal run last weekend, we haven't felt much like running. It was supposed to be a "recovery week", and if by recovery they meant "eat a lot, and don't exercise much", then we nailed it.

The garden has been producing more and more food. We have more cucumbers and tomatoes than we can eat. I'm hoping to hand a bunch off to co-workers, but haven't done that yet. We're getting sick of salads, so we're trying to find other ways to consume the produce.

Friday we went on a bike ride in the mountains with a bunch of co-workers. The trail was a bit more technical than Kristen was ready for, she took a pretty good tumble down a slope, with the bike smacking her in the head a few times on the way down. She survived, although she was a bit scraped up.

Saturday we attended a Wagner reunion. Lot's of people that Kristen barely recognized. I seemed to be a magnet for conversation for anyone over the age of 60. We heard some great stories about farm life in Colorado in the 40's.

Kristen and I kept fairly busy this weekend. Saturday morning was our big 12 mile run. We did four laps of three miles, with a four minute rest in between. Kristen made three of the four laps, I managed to make all four. We're both still a bit sore from the experience. Something strange is going on with one of my feet, I'm hoping it'll clear up in the next couple of days.

We ate a big lunch, and took a long nap. Then we headed down to Denver to catch up with Kristen's sister Katie and her boyfriend Jordan. We thought we'd rented a room at the same hotel they did, it turned out we were at a different Hyatt, 3 blocks away. We were right next to the 16th street mall, so the location was good.

We walked down to Coors Field to watch a Rockies game. The game was relatively close, we lost by two points, but we still had a lot of fun.



Later on, we met up with my friend Morrissey, who happened to be in a wedding that was at the same hotel we were at. So we stayed up until the early hours being social and drinking. Kristen broke out some of here amazing "Footloose" dance moves I didn't know she had.

Sunday we took as a recovery day. Not only from the late night, but from the run the day before. It was a scorcher, so it was good to stay inside, laying around the house.

Another relaxing weekend has passed. Saturday we had a big 9 mile run. Both Kristen and I had been dreading it all week, but it turned out to be a lot more enjoyable than we expected. It was in south east Boulder, on a beautiful bike path I didn't know existed. I had a few moments of feeling like a true Boulderite, exercising hard early in the morning on a weekend, beautiful weather, and a beautiful view of the Flatirons.

Afterwards we headed to Moe's bagels for breakfast, and picked up an order of some REI gear, to continue a very Boulder day. We took it fairly easy for the rest of the day, since we didn't know how our bodies would react to that much exercise. A nap was involved.

Today we headed to Lyons to check out their "Sculpture Hike". The "sculptures" varied in quality, some were pretty bad, but we still had fun. Here's a picture of me imitating Jason's blank stare talent.

At one point the guide book told us to walk past the "Blue Snake". We assume they meant this, which looks a lot like a blue bicycle rack.

Our garden is really starting to produce produce (heh). Our salads tonight had lettuce, cukes, carrots, chives, cilantro, broccoli, peas, cherry tomatoes, and radishes all from the garden. For a while the salads were simpler, and we had to wait for the garden to catch up between meals. Now we can't keep up.

It took me until Wednesday or so before I felt completely normal again after the camping trip. I could tell we didn't eat much the entire trip, I seemed to be constantly hungry for a few days afterwards.

It was a fairly typical work week. Myself and two other engineers have been sequestered in the conference room, trying to get a new big version of our application done. It's nice being in there due to less interuptions, but people have started commenting on a "funk" in the air when they enter the room. I'm not sure what that's all about.

I started biking into work last week. It's made more fun by the gps/heartrate monitor. Here's a satellite picture of the route, along with my course. It's fun stuff to play with!

We had a 4 mile time trial run on Saturday. We got a relatively late start, temperatures eventually got into the 100s. That pretty much knocked us out for the rest of the day, a few hours in that kind of heat wears you down.

One of the friends I made through the bot hobby was in town for the weekend, Tony Fowlie, so I met up with him and Ted for a huge Indian feast Saturday night. We then sat around Tony's hotel room for a few hours reminiscing about various competitions.

It supposed to be hot today, so we'll probably lay low, doing stuff inside. Maybe we'll venture out to the pool, we haven't been out there yet this year.

I've managed to survive another camping trip. I met up with four of my college buddies for the annual four day trip in the Shirley Mountains near Medicine Bow. The normal drinking games, horseshoes, and story telling activities kept us busy. Before we knew it the trip was over. Nobody got hurt and it was a lot of fun catching up with friends I've known for so long.





The weather was good on Thursday and Friday, but it clouded up for most of Saturday, and rained like mad all Saturday night and Sunday. It only got up into the 40's on Sunday. The road bed was apparently made out of bentonite, so the drive out was very exciting.





I'm always amazed how good a shower and a clean bed feels after a trip like that.

On other news, the Mustang finally passed emissions last Wednesday. Two more years before I need to worry about that again.

Happy 4th of July!

Kristen and I went bowling this weekend with both her sisters and their significant others. I bowled a 129 my second game, which is better than average for me. Katie and Jordan spent the night at our place, since Katie's Kia was acting up.

We all had breakfast the next morning at Le Peeps, and then Kristen and I did some shopping. Saturday was pretty laid back.

On Sunday, I ran into work to grab my car. It gave me an excuse to play with my new heart-rate monitor/GPS unit. I can now graph my route on the computer, see my heart rate at any point, my pace, elevation, etc. Pretty cool stuff!

I then headed to Ted's house to help him level an area in his back yard. We then moved a steel shed from one end of the yard to the newly leveled area. Lot's of sweating was involved, but it was fun.

Meanwhile, the old mustang refused to pass emissions on Friday, so I've been spending time trying to figure out what's wrong. $200 later, hopefully the problem is solved. I'll find out Wednesday.

I'm taking off on Thursday to go on the annual camping trip with the college buds. A lot of drinking will be involved, along with an unhealthy amount of horseshoe playing.