socialy retarded

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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Crashing down Green Mountain

Posted on 13. Nov, 2009 by Derrick.

On Saturday, The guys and I decided to ride Green Mountain. It was a beautiful day and what a better way to celebrate Colorado then to go enjoy the outdoors, on a bike, with friends.

Because non of us have been on a bike for any good rides in the last months, we decided to do an easy ride. When we got to the base of the trail head, about half of Denver decided to do the same.

On the way up Justin got a flat, thankfully giving us a nice rest and gave Hyon and I a chance to do some photo shooting. (All the pics taken are courtesy of Hyon and are Copyright © Hyon Sim, to check out all the pics, click here)

Gave me a chance to play with my iPhones panorama feature. I love that phone!

After some figuring and laughing at Justin’s expense we made it to the top.

And leaving the best for last…. The crashing part. Start to pay attention at about minute 1:45. In my mind this was an epic fall. The reality? I just biffed it, mildly. Its still funny though.

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Apex one more time.

Posted on 29. Aug, 2009 by Derrick.

Hyon and I tackled the trail one more time with our MTNBK’s. Hyon looked liked he was going to fall a sleep. I was having my own mechanical issues. Watch the video for more details.

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Wednesday night mayhem.

Posted on 13. Aug, 2009 by Derrick.

In what has become our weekly ritual, Hyon, Floyd and I rode to the top of lookout mountain and as usual we timed ourselves.

The more I do this ride the more fun I have doing it.

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Head wind go away.

Posted on 06. Aug, 2009 by Derrick.

I called Hyon on Saturday and the conversation went kinda like this “Lets go ride tomorrow” Hyon responded with “O.K. what did you have in mind?” I couldn’t think of anything good so I said “I don’t care, lets do something that is going to make me work, and regret that I went on a ride”  without pause he answered with “Lets ride from Idaho Springs to the top of Loveland pass”. I hung up quickly after saying yes for fear I would chicken out. Summer started giggling and said to me “well, you did ask him to go on a ride that you will regret”

60 Miles, 4300 feet in elevation, and a boatload of pain.

When we got up to Idaho springs, it was a beautiful day. Not a cloud in the sky. However, after about the first 5 miles we realized that the 15-25 mile an hour headwind wasn’t going anywhere any time soon. Having a 30 mile assent without a head wind is difficult in its own. Adding in a head wind was just plain mean.

As you can see with the Stars and Stripes standing at attention, we had some serious windage.

Even the Georgetown lake had white caps

So after 6 hours of riding I decided that I was going to lay down at the bottom of loveland pass for a couple of minutes before we made our descent. I knew that we had another hour to two hours on our bikes, and at this point everything hurt.

Then we started downhill….. Whoooooooosh. Our average speed according to my GPS was 32mph with a top speed of 48mph. What made it fun was all the sunday trafic that we happened to be blasting past.

If you had asked me if I was having a good time at the top, I would have socked you in the nose. The speed of the descent and able to enjoy the scenery made it all worth it.

2 lara bars, 2 clif bars, 1 Gatorade, 2 liters of water, and 7 hours of riding later. We were finaly back at the car. EVERYTHING hurt. I have no idea how those professional cyclist do this every single day.

On the way home Hyon candidly said to me “We should do this once a month” I’m not sure if I’m ready for that but, hell, I’m not going to say No!

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Lap Swimming Etiquette 101

Posted on 23. Jul, 2009 by Derrick.

I got to the pool early yesterday to hit a short hard 750m swim. When I got there, all the lanes were full. I looked at the lane markings and absolutely NO ONE was following the “slow lap” “medium lap” and “fast lap” signs. To further my frustration, no one was circle lap swimming either, which was also clearly posted.

I don’t know if it was because it was predominantly older folks, and they simply didn’t give a shit, or all of theme were illiterate. I do know that it was a cluster fuck of people swimming everything from doggy paddle to brest stroke. So I picked what looked like the safest lane with the two most experienced looking swimmers.

I hopped in the lane and talked to the first guy and he said that he had no problem with me joining their lane. I asked him if it would be OK if we swam with a circle lap, and he said that would be fine, but the other guy in that lane had been sticking to one side. I then waited for the other gentleman to join us at the end of the pool. When I asked him if we could “circle lap swim” he looked at me with an odd look. I then drew a circle with my finger in the water indicating a clockwise lap and he simply stated “yeah, I’m not stupid, i know what a circle is”. I thought to myself, well you may know your shapes but your a fuckin idiot because you cant read for shit. He then jumped out and said “I’m done anyways”. Well then, why the hell did you take the time to be an asshole?

I wish he had stayed in the pool, I would liked to have peed right in front of him just for him to swim through it. I did see him later mackin on some grandma bun, and I wanted to walk up to her and say “This guy has a tiny dick” and walk off. Old fuckers like that annoy me.

So later that day I decided to take Floyd and Hyon up lookout mountain for some hill climbing on our bikes. I love that ride late at night. Perfect temperature, and its fun as shit to bomb down the mountain roads with just a bike light. We all timed ourselves on the way up. Hyon made it up in 33 minutes, I made it up in 37, and Floyd took 43 minutes.

Good fun, tonight is running night with Guinness and Summer.

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