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Fantasy Football Roundtable

Posted on 01. Sep, 2009 by Derrick.

I do my fantasy football every year with several guys and mostly from the online group orangemane.com, This year, several friends and family teamed up to do a live draft and have a local league.This was going to be a beginner league with  girls and first timers.

Ever since watching the “whozyamoma” fantasy football commercial, I’ve wanted to do a live draft. It was everything I thought it would be. We had good food, yelling, and laughing.

Check out our league “The Gridiron Glory Hole” if you have a chance. Most of the people who read this blog are already part of it.

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Mom visit number 3

Posted on 30. Aug, 2009 by Derrick.

The tour of moms concluded with Mary coming to visit. Summers Mom made her way out in June, my Mother in July, and my Mom^2 in August.

Just like all our other visits, we did the Colorado thing and went to ball games and went hiking.

The trip wasn’t all fun and games as Mary was here on some official business. My father passed away from complications of prostate cancer in March and she was coming back to Colorado to drop off some of his ashes. We spent some time on Sunday spreading some ashes around. It was kind of an emotional day, so Mary Summer and I did a little drinking that lead me to having a nasty hang over the next day.

I truly love Mary. It wasn’t easy for her to have come here. Just loosing her husband and to have come here and put on her game face for the benefit of my sister and I. I thank her for that.

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Highlands Ranch BBq

Posted on 12. Aug, 2009 by Derrick.

Old Friends, old books, and old wine improve with age.

It’s good to catch up with old friends, and Dawn goes way back to my purple hair days. We decided to swing by her and her husbands place for a wine tasting (ended up being beer tasting) and some food grilled up on the barby.

Grilled veggies, swordfish with pico, and some spicy chicken.

We had a great time. Nick let me taste his home made beer, and we watched Dawn do her Billy Mays impersonation with the Oxy Clean.

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Week in review.

Posted on 19. Jul, 2009 by Derrick.

This past week has been action packed. So much so, that I didn’t have time to post any of this weeks events. So I’ll just do a day by day break down.

Saturday July 11th. Summer, Hyon, Theresa, and I had a road ride planned. The girls bailed, so the boys decided to do some mountainbiking. Not that I don’t love riding with Summer, but when its just the boys we have a tendency to go lickety split. Hyon took me to a place called Apex.

The trail in its self was difficult and challenging with multiple bike-n-hike areas. It was about 8 miles total with roughly 2200 feet in elevation gain.

At this point we were about 3/4ths of the way up (Hyon kept saying that at least)

On our way down we hit the Enchanted forest. An amazing decline, lots of roots and little hazards that made the ride just a tad more fun!

Saturday, July 12th. Summer and I rode 26  miles down the Platt river and back. We spent a good portion of that time chilling at a splash pool in littleton watch kids play.

Monday, July 13th. I took my mom out to the Westminster Open space. Guinness’ favorite place of all time. Mom was laughing at Guin and his antics in the water. Later that week we found out that they closed the Open space due to the plague.

Environmental Health Services submitted flea specimens to the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment for testing on Tuesday, July 14, 2009 and received results back this morning. The area is being closed to the public and posted with plague warnings signs today.

Dr. Jim Dale, DVM, MPH, Director of Environmental Health Services said, “There have been no reported human cases of plague in the area and if precautions are taken the disease is not considered to be a threat to humans.”

Apparently all the little prairie dogs are extremely susceptible to plague. It was odd because Summer and I were lamenting before the press release that we hadn’t seen any little faces around open space. We thought it was simply due to the grass being to high in areas. Its a good thing that our dog has given up on trying to catch those little guys.

Tuesdays, July 14th. Mom and I swung by my little gym and I swam 2000 meters. It was a good session, and the Total Immersion training is paying off. I can easily swim the 750 meters required for my triathlon. We then headed downtown so we can buy her a new rain jacket at REI. Then sat and shot the shit for a couple of hours while she was amazed at how many people used the bike paths in downtown Denver.

Wednesday, July 15th. Since my mother is visiting form Germany, I loaned her my car. I normally commute on my bike anyways. So I hit the road and had a uneventful commute into work. Most of my co-workers seemed concerned about it being in the mid 80′s, but I have been used to riding in the 110 degree heat of Phoenix.

I got a call from Hyon at about 7:40pm asking if I wanted to go do lookout mountain. I knew that I was going to have to ride again on Thursday and Friday, but I could never turn down an evening ride.

So decked out in my commuter gear (ie T-shirt and running shorts) We hit the bottom of the ride at about 9:30pm. It was a nice cool 70 degrees, and the darkness hid the hill climb. My legs were still a little sore from our ride just a couple of days ago, but I put my head down and we made it up in about 40 minutes. Respectible time but we decided to push it to the tippy top and ride another mile.

Bombing down the mountain with just some bike lights was fun. My heavy ass steel touring bike with 28mm wheels tends to handle the descent better then a normal road bike. So I had to slow down a bit for Hyon.

Thursday, July 16. Commuting only! Just good ol fashioned bike commuting.

Friday, July 17. I thought that since I had not swam since Tuesday, I would hit the gym after work. So I packed my panniers with my swim gear and headed off to work. After work I rode over to the gym and figured I would get another 2000 meters in. This time I wanted to see how fast I could get my first 750 meters done. 22 minutes! When we started this Tri-training, I was well over 30 minutes. My goal is to be in the 18 minute range before the tri.

So in review, the past week I;

• Swam 4000 meters
• Hiked 5 miles
• 67 miles of road riding.
• 10 miles of mountain biking.
• Rode just under a mile of elevation (5000 feet)

I think somewhere in there I worked. I’ll have to say though. With all that I did, my legs feel great. I’m looking forward to running 4 miles on Monday

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Quatro De Julio

Posted on 04. Jul, 2009 by Derrick.

The tour of mothers continues this week with my mother from Germany in town. She flew in on Friday and has spent a lot of time with us kids.

We started of our 4th of July festivities with cruising on over to the Franz’s house for their annual Quatro De Julio party. These parties tend to have a lot of drinking, good food, good company and the occasional cougar on the prowl. Last year it was in the 90′s and people were scrambling for cover from the sun. This year were were scrambling for cover from the rain. It pored on us during the party from about 3:30-4:30.

As always they have loads of booze, but who can resist jello shots

As always Summer when she has a bit to drink she breaks out the lazy eye….

The rain never fazed my mom. She hung tough!

Since we had planed on going back to Kit and Annika’s place for additional food cooking and consumption. We bailed early and headed back to thier house to prepare the feast. Annika and I were on kabob duty while the rest of the gang made due with playing wii bowling. My mom was a bit new to the concept and needed a few bowling lessons.

Annika and I make great sous chef’s, but only if they let us drink beer while preparing food.

Then Soren, Summer, and Annika played some Frisbee while Mom, Kit and I manned the grill (Mom and I were just moral support for Kit)

Summer decided to try and start a ruckus with me. I don’t know why she does that when I’m twice her size.

After grubbing for about an hour and stuffing our faces with all the amazing food. We made our way out to our fireworks watching destination. To pass the time we played a little more Frisbee but this time we turned on the LED’s on it and watched it glow.

We finished the eventful day with celebrating the 4th with FIREWORKS!

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Do we get wetsuits?

Posted on 28. Jun, 2009 by Derrick.

A couple of weeks ago my little sister called me and asked simply “do you want to go white water rafting down clear creek”. She should have just stopped at “do you” cause I’m always down for anything. Summer on the other hand took a couple of days of convincing to get her to agree to go.

We woke up and fittle farted around this morning. Finally getting in gear at about 9:15. We needed to be out of the house at 9:30 and up to our destination by 10:30. Hustling along and right before we head out the front door, my underwater housing for my camera broke. I was furious because the sumbitch cost $250. Going out the front door I glanced at my watch and it was 9:40. No biggie, Mile Hi Rafting’s web site said it would only take 30 minutes to cruse up the mountain. I should know better, I’ve made this same drive up 1-70 hundreds of times. As we were about to hit the highway, I swung into McD’s for some breakfast. It took 10 minutes in the drive thru. Summer said as we were heading out of the drive thru “Can we stop at the gas station to get energy drinks” I thought, no prob. I took a wrong turn and found myself in old town Arvada (which by the way is super cool), 15 minutes of taking one way streets to find my way back to Wadsworth and get to the gas station. I pulled in to the gas station and Summer made her way in, 5 minutes later. Apparently some chick was making a ruckus in the conoco. At this time it was 10:20 and we hadn’t even started driving up the mountain!

We eventually got there after my best impression of Mario Andreti in my 4 banger Honda. 10:55 am! whoooo. Then we waited till  12 to get started! After about another 30 minute tutorial the guide Keith ask who wants to sit in the two “splash” spots. Or other words sit in the front. Back in the day, my mother used to have to regulate Annika and I on who sat in the front of the car. This time both of us got to sit in the front.

Summer forgot that she wasn’t supposed to take her hand of the “T” on her paddle, but at least during the trip we all kinda forgot to do one thing or another. At one point our guide asked us if we would rather do it on our own since we weren’t listening to him. Ooops.

Our first Class IV on Nomad. By this time Annika and I were suffeciently splashed.

Our next class IV was called Phoenix…. Notice my dedication to paddling, 40 degree water or not!

SPLASH!

Our Final class IV rapids was called Outer Limits. I’ve compiled a photo sequence that is really fun to look at. click on the picture and view it in the full size and watch all of our faces.

But my two favorite are these, Notice the dunking, then the face afterwards.

We had a good day. I can say that the “Splash spot” isn’t all that its cracked up to be. And if you ever go rafting with Annika, you have to remind her to not have so much fun. Her laughing so loud makes it so you can’t hear your guide. Todays also happened to be the boys day, in that only the boys went into the drink. I made it about halfway in (head only). Kit went full monty and decided that a quick swim would do. His face turned white when his nether regions hit melted snow water. I couldn’t let another man suffer, so I promptly pulled him out.

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