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Photographing cold wind

Posted on 14. Dec, 2009 by Derrick.

I invited Hyon out for some back country snowshoe photo shooting.  We combined for around 500 photos and went through some of the nastiest blowing snow I’ve had to go endure. But even after all that, I ended up with some decent shots. Hyon has some excellent ones over on his site turbopotato.com

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Never to early to go snowshoeing.

Posted on 26. Nov, 2009 by Derrick.

With the amazing winterey season shaping up to being one of the best in years, instead of heading up for yet another day on the slopes. I took Guinness up for what I can only describe as his favorite thing of all time. Or in dog talk “wag wag wag wag, SQUIRREL, wag wag wag”. For a dog who was born in July in the melting heat of the Phoenix sun, he is a child of the snow.

Without being anthropomorphic about my dog, I can imagine that running through the snow is a little like when I get a fresh track on some recently laid pow day, or when I stick a sweet line through a technical downhill on my mountain bike. Esctacy. I have so much fun just watching him run from huge snow drift to huge snow drift. Shoving his face into drifts, looking for hidden pine-cones, elk poop, and tree branches.

Our destination was one of my favorites, Indian Peaks Wilderness Area. Specifically, the Hessie trailhead.Right when you get into the hike, these little cabins tag the mountainside. Perfect for photos.

As you get further towards Devils thumb trail head, you will run across several small streams. I love photographing when its just warm enough to show the running water under the ice.

Guinness finds everything under the snow. Right when this picture was taken, he was eating a pine-cone.

I loved all the aspens in the area. I’d love it more if I could have gotten some decent lighting. All I can say is sometimes photography makes me go grrrrrr.

Great day for snow….

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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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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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Gregory Canyon Trail

Posted on 27. Jun, 2009 by Derrick.

A while ago, Annika and I tried Gregory Canyon Trail. At the time I had just move to Colorado and was out of shape from the horrendous Arizona summer. In our brilliance we ate lunch right before we started to hike, and we both almost threw up.

Not letting the mountain get me down. I decided to tackle the trail again. Summer and I found a easy way to get over there without paying for their parking. We simply parked at Chautauqua and walked about a mile up baseline trail.

It was a warm day and luckily found a couple spots to get the dog wet at.

Once we got to the top we broke out the hammock and chilled for a couple of hours. Though Summer was making it difficult to read my book. She likes to talk (annoy) to me.

I finally got summer and Guinness to occupy themselves

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Stinky butt.

Posted on 22. Apr, 2009 by Derrick.

I’m not entirely sure why my ass turned into napalm this morning, maybe it was the beers I was drinking last night. Who knows, but not only did I have soft serve poops this morning, I was gassy as hell on our hike. I even thought that I may have trusted a fart to much and eked. This was an awkward moment as I had to check my shorts for “leakage”. Thankfully it was just some nutterbutter.

We did try and bring the Nikon D70 with us but someone left it on and the battery was dead when we got there, so we only have one photo from my phone.

Since we paid a small fortune recently for our dog’s tags, we decided to go to open space right above boulder. Here is our track on the GPS.

Guinness had a blast today. With all the snow melt off, he was running in every single puddle he could find.

- Derrick

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