Dana's Amazing Adventure Log

Truck picks

2011-09-02T20:13:00.000-06:00

Attempt on the Cristo Couloir- Mt Quandary

2011-06-17T21:02:00.032-06:00

Brian and I left for our next adventure the goal for this trip: THE CRISTO COULOIR!

We got as close to the blue lakes trail head as we could. There was a chain blocking the road about .6 miles from the dam. We arrived late, about 8PM. We started hiking about 8:30 pm, our goal to get the the basin below the west ridge route at 12,300 feet.

Due to our late start, we were hiking with head lamps. I mounted my cycling light to my climbing helmet, giving me tons of light to see my way through the talus and snow fields. We finally got close to our objective around 10:15 pm. We were about 200 meters elevation from the top of the plateau. We decided we couldn't hike any more.
We did our best to find a flat spot on the tundra to camp. Our goal for this climb was to be on the summit for sunrise. We figured it would take us about 4 hours to ascend the 1 mile and 2600 feet elevation gain.

Since we weren't planning to sleep all night, I made the executive decision to forgo setting up my tent and sleep only in our water resistant sleeping bags. Brian and I got the stove out and got the water going for a delicious dehydrated fettucini alfredo w/ chicken. Next I packed all my stuff back into my pack to keep my stuff dry, including my boots. I was sleeping great... until cold wet snow decided to blanket us...without a TENT.

My sleeping bag in the morning after the snow melted. (See all the water on the bag)

Self pic inside sleeping bag

Brian's sleeping bag pics

We woke up multiple times, waiting for the weather to clear and give us the opportunity for our summit attempt up the coulior. As you can see below, the weather never cleared.

Finished packing camp, ready to head back. Taking time to enjoy the beautiful basin, with large ridges on both sides.

Us looking hard core on the snow!

The fun part, the glissade!

The WILD LIFE shots

<-----------

Mountain Goats

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Fox

The After party!

Even though we didn't achieve either of our goals (sunrise, summit; Cristo Couloir), we had a great trip. Definitely a first camping above 12,000 feet without a tent, in a snow storm. Our Mountain Hardwear bags performed above expectation.

Until next trip...

Thanks for reading,

Dana.

My First snow climb - The Angel of Shavano

2011-06-07T16:59:00.006-06:00

Greetings to all my imaginary blog readers. After reading many mountaineering books, whose authors are always writing in climbing journals, I have decided to dust off the old blog!

Just to get started a few pics of recent purchases to get ready...

Now with the necessary equipment its time to find a snow field.

Brian and I decided on the Angel of Shavano route, an easy snow climb with the snow steepness not exceeding 30 degrees. Here we are at the trail head off of the Colorado trail. We left denver on June 3, 2011.

We decided to backpack into a camp site along the trail with hopes of gaining the summit via the snow route in the morning. I spent hours fiddling with the computer at home prior to the trip, trying to get my GPS to work with my computer. After all sorts of nerdy stuff (partitioning, software updating) I was finally able to get trail way points from 14ers.com to upload onto my GPS! And to think I have only had the GPS for 5 years... We finally got our camp site at waypoint 68, about 1.8 miles from the trail head, 11,200 feet. Camp was great, small streams on both sides of our perfectly flat tent platform.

After pitching the tent, we had our usual fabulous dinner consisting of couscous, snow peas and sausage, with cashews.

We got to into the tent finishing dinner and the usual post meal beverage of hot chocolate at an unusually early time for us of 10 pm. I set the alarm for 4:15, to get an early start up the snow field, to ensure good hard snow. I awoke at 2am and had to get up and relieve myself from all my pre-summit hydration prep. I went outside in the dark, without the following; clothes (only boxers), headlamp, shoes. My third step outside the tent, I got blown off balance and stepped on one of the aluminum tent stakes with my bare feet. Once I got back inside my tent, I found the head lamp and confirmed that I cut the bottom of my foot pretty good. Content that the cut was not bleeding too badly, I went back to sleep. I finally got out of bed about 5:15-5:30 am, deciding that getting up prior to sunrise was not an option since brian forgot his warm coat. After much deliberation on my part with mending my foot, I decided that I would continue the climb regardless of my sore foot. After morning coffee, we were off towards the snow about 7 AM.

We arrived here near the base of the snow climb in about an hour. You can make out our route just to the left of the trees, in the middle of the photo.

Brian pondering the snow line just ahead of us

To the left, self pic right before putting on my crampons

To the right, looking up the snow field where I put on the crampons for their first use!

Brian climbing behind me in my foot steps. It was right about here that the slope of the climb started to increase. Prior to this spot, brian had no difficulty with his footing(without crampons). I had no difficulty with crampons just walking up slope. Right after this picture was taken. Brian asked with urgency in his voice, for me to kick my steps flatter into the slope. This helped keep brain from sliding back down with each step.

My self portrait on the summit. Weather was good, pics are hazy from the forest fire in Arizona. I took the opportunity to recalibrate my GPS on the summit.

Looking back at the slope we climbed up and glissaded down. If you look closely, you can see the track left by the butts of climbers on the way down, going right down the middle of the field. We glissaded the angel's head and body. The glissade was great fun, except for brian getting his foot stuck in the snow in the middle of the route for 20 minutes or so, requiring us both to dig his foot out.

Overall, we had a great climb. total millage about 8 miles, 4500 feet elevation. Total climbing time on summit day was 9 hours, including taking camp apart after the summit. This experience has made me crave more snow climbs in the future.

Stay tuned for the next adventure installment...

Thanks for reading.

Dana

Living in a land that never get dark

2008-07-05T15:38:00.005-06:00

Hello again,
I knew the sun would be up for a long time while I was here, since we are pretty far north, but I had no idea what it would be like. I want someone to guess what time this picture below was taken

I'm sorry for the lack of captions once again, but it is aproaching midnight once again, and I didn't pay 1400 dollars to sleep in and sightsee the back of my eyelids, so its up early again tomorrow, although not as bad as today. Today was the one day that we had to go to the dog show, and we were up at 5 am. Taz the greyhound got 4th place out of 50 something, so mother was happy. We are off to take a steamship ride through the archipelago tomorrow morining, and the forcast calls for rain. it will be interesting. More captions and pics to come tomorrow. I hope everyone had some fourth of July fun for me, because I didn't see a single firework or stars and stripes. Good night from the land where the sun never sleeps, it only naps for an hour or two.

Trying to figure out Stockholm

2008-07-03T15:25:00.015-06:00

This is the building where our apartment is, but alas we don't have a balcony. We are on the fourth floor on the other side of this building. Any guesses at to what time this picture was taken? 22:30, or 10:30 pm for you who don't jive with military time. The apartment is a one room flat, probably 10 x 15 feet, with quite possibly the smallest kitchen I have ever seen, along with a bathroom to follow suit. It has been nice not staying a hotel though.

The whole of "old town" was paved with cobbles, and since I know the majority of my readers are cyclists, you can understand why I took these pictures

For the few readers who may not enjoy the self inflicted torment of that cycling has to offer, there are races in europe that are conducted almost excluesively on the flat and even surface that these wonderful stones have to offer

This is a square in old town with lots of neat looking buildings. After I took this picture, I saw lots of postcards with this exact image on them. I knew I had an eye for the photograhic genious.

Notice the tiny streets with lots of people miling around eating ice cream and sifting through loads of tourist crap.

This is inside the royal palace, what the locals call "the castle". Through the arched door is the state hall, which is still used for royal functions. Inside they had placed paintings of all of the monarchs that have rulled over the years. (aparently this is not their usual home, but due to construction had been placed here temporarily. At the far end of the hall was a solid silver throne made for one of the queens in the early 1700's, I tried on more than on occasion to sneak a picture of the throne, but just when I would think the coast was clear to steal a photo, an employee would surface and give me the evil eye. They didn't allow photos anywhere in the palace, those bastards!

This was the palace cathedrial which sat just oppostie the picture above, with just an impressive an archway to its entrance. This was the one place that people didn't seem to mind people taking pictures. Pretty impressive alter

This is looking back towards the entrance to the church, and that has to be one of the most impressive organs I have ever seen!

Paintings on the ceiling and the tops of the walls, sweet sauce

Notice the ornate work above the windows

God forbid (pun intended) I leave without the required self portrit

This was taken deep underneath the palace, in the armory, where they had a meeker selection of armor and weapons, and lots of clothing from the 16 and 17 century. The carriges were truely impressive. Pictures weren't allowed here either, but there were not employees around down here, leaving me free to steal as many photos as I could muster, without the flash of course.

This photo is of the central train station connecting Sweden to the rest of Europe, it is only a few hundred meters from our apartment.

This trip has been interesting so far, the people are very nice and speak english very well. Getting around has not been that difficult, although figuring out the metro system was strangly difficult. The weather has been great, mid 70's during the day and 60's at night. Good bye for now.

I'm off to Sweden!

2008-07-01T13:53:00.004-06:00

Hello all,
I'm off again on another international dog show adventure. The destination this time is Stockholm Sweden, duration 9 days of getting lost in another country who language could not sound more foreign than our native english.

Since my last post forever ago, Lots in my life has changed. I'm not even sure where to start. For those of you I haven't talked to in awhile, I'm officially done with UNC and out of greeley and with a degree to boot. Below is a picture of my Nursing school graduation with my parents.

My flight is boarding so I will post from Sweden, I hope all is well with every one.

Vegas for my birthday...Yes Please!!

2008-02-07T20:23:00.001-07:00

Since I was forced to put off my Vegas plans this summer, due to my inability to swim secondary to my crippledness, My girlfriend, Lova and I decided to go to Las Vegas for my birthday last weekend.

We flew out of the Fort Collins - Loveland Airport aboard the plane above.

Our plan was delayed for almost 6 hours due to president Bush's little stop over in Vegas the day before. Apparently he shut all of the air space down over all of Las Vegas, creating a big back log of air traffic. I am holding Brian personally responsible for delay his boss caused and the consequential missing of my birthday dinner reservations, Brian - you bastard! Because of this delay we got to sit in the spacious terminal at the FNL airport, seen above.

We tried to make the best out of the wait, the presence of good company helped to pass the time. That and the constant mocking of others

The first of many required self portraits, patiently awaiting take off, notice its dark-long delay, damn you brian.

The prodigal city layith upon the horizon.

The Mandalay Bay
Here is the hotel where we stayed, it is located right next to the Luxor and Excabilar. It had 9 or 10 restaurants to choose from, a lavish outside pool area which was closed, huge casino, shark aquarium. Our hotel room was very nice, we were able to fanagle a strip view room with a plush bathroom complete with lcd T.V in the bathroom and big screen in the bedroom.

This was one of the restaurant was at the Mandalay, as you can see it was one of WolfGang Puck's. It was Italian food and it was fabulous. We split two different dishes; one was prime tenderloin and arugula salad, and the other, a hand made ravoili with artichoke hearts and goat cheese, and to round out the meal a Nappa Vally merlot from 2002.

This was the view from our room on the 16th floor at night looking up the strip

I love gambling

Unbenounced to us there was an UFC fight at the Mandalay on Saturday Night. This brought some interesting folk to our hotel leading up to the fight.

Other Hotels

Here is the egyptian sphynx from the Luxor. This was the entrance to the Luxor from the mono-rail that went between the Luxor-Excaliber-Mandalay Bay.

Here is the monorail pulling in to take us to the Luxor from the Mandalay

Self portrait in front of Excalibar, I got caught by another tourist taking this pic, mildly embarrissing

View of Las Vegas from one of many pedestrian bridges over the Strip, it is my understanding that pedestrian and car altercations are fairly common here in Sin City

As you can see here is the MGM grand, if you are an animal lover, steer clear. They have real lions in the hotel that seem to be on as many downers as elvis was before the end. People were crowded around the glass like they had never seen captive lions before, as if zoo's didn't exist.

This is the Trump Tower, all condos. This was taken from the taxi stand at the Wynn. Trump tried to build a casino and the govt said yeah..no!

Here is the Luxor, taken from inside the monorail.

The Wynn...So nice!

Inside courtyard at the Wynn

High scale shopping for the high rollers

This is the best looking suit i have ever seen, from Alexander McQueen

Here is the show that Lova and I had the opportunity to see on Saturday night. It is playing at the Wynn and it was hilarious.

Another self portrait

Here is a picture of Lova and I both looking fantastic. We had a great time and I can't think of anything I would have rather done for my birthday, thanks baby.

Birthday, Stitches, Vegas, Blood...Not in that order

2008-02-07T19:07:00.001-07:00

I think that I have told many of you, but for the few that still don't know, on the first group ride on jan 27, I was the victim of an incident of panic in the "peloton". I was riding on the front of the group, i took one of my gloves off to eat a package of pina colada shot blocks, yum... After finishing the shot blocks i noticed that my hand was not cold, so i removed my other glove. At this point I decided to go the back to talk to one of the new riders on the team. Then people started hitting their brakes. My proper drafting position at the back of the pack resulted in me coming in contact with the rider in front of me who had his brakes completely locked up. Elapsed time from when I had removed my gloves before my front tire was so elegantly removed from underneath me was approximately 3-4 minutes.

Having had my fair share of experience with the ground while cycling, i knew it was in my best interest to just get back on the bike and ride back before it really started to hurt. Above is a picture that I tried to take a few minutes after it happened whilst riding back with the group. I decided that riding with no hands and my new camera out was not the greatest idea.
Here is my hand after cleaning at the urgent care center. Please note going to urgent care on sunday is not highly encouraged. The wait time I was quoted upon entering the clinic was 2 hours, i said thats fine, do you have any paper towels?

Here is the sterile field where my mini hand operation took place. It took 7 stitches to close this little adventure in human hand anatomy

Above is my hand about 30 hours after I was stitched back together.

Here is my hand today 11 days after.

Here is the proof that of my bicycle carnage. Don't worry the Orbea is fine.

Next post will be about my birthday trip to

Vegas!

Elivs and More...

2008-01-26T21:13:00.003-07:00

I had the pleasure to accompany my fabulous girl friend to the gala of wine tasting to benefit Connections, which helps disabled people in Weld County. To my surprise the king was there, rhine stones and all. Apparently he has good taste, because he plucked Lova out of the crowd to dance with him. I'm sure you are asking yourself if I was jealous, maybe a little. We tasted some wines, although I didn't taste any that are worth reporting here. All in all, it was a fun evening, and for a good cause.

In true Brian fashion, here is my first self portrait taken whilst riding my bike earlier today with my new digital camera that I got from Lova-clause for Christmas. It was finally warm enough not only to ride my bike with some level of comfort, but I didn't even have to cover my ears.

Here is another tribute to the blogging skills of our white house staffer, the handle bar/ leg shot. If you maximise the picture you will notice that I am riding within the correct heart rate range at 143 beats per minute. Today was my first official day of "base" and I was constantly battling to keep my heart rate at an acceptable rate.

This is a picture of a very popular sport in the country, mail box baseball. In case you are wondering tampering with mailboxes is a federal offense and a felony to boot.

Since the majority of my faithful readers are no longer in the Greeley area, I thought that I would update you on the status of an intersection I'm sure you are familiar with. It is the intersection of CR 53 and HW 34 in Kersey. A 16 year old was killed at this intersection earlier this summer by a semi truck. I think it was the 3rd fatality and CDOT decided that they would put in a light even though the death toll is usually 4 to get a light at an intersection. Upon zooming you will also notice that the truck in the intersection is carrying sugar beets, big business in Northern Colorado.

The first meeting of the Biking team went well, we had 8 people show up. It seems like it will be a good group of guys that are excited to race this season. I have been playing the waiting game with the President of CU's team, trying to get the details figured out for the weekend of racing that we are sharing over Easter weekend. After waiting 4 days I was able to use the power of the World Wide Web to find his telephone number. I called and had a good talk, he even said that he was willing to give us Saturday, because the turn may be better than on Easter. The first team ride is tomorrow, check back for pictures. Until my next moment of genius...

First Ride of the NEW YEAR

2008-01-14T00:35:00.001-07:00

Today was my first ride of the new year and probably would not have happened without the encouragement of the long lost Alex Lewis. It was a balmy 25 degrees above Fahrenheit. We slowly made our way to Eaton. This gave us the opportunity to have the first official officer meeting of the semi defunct UNC cycling team.

Since the first of the Year, I have been trying to make up for my 6 month hiatus from the working world by working myself to death with the overnight shifts. I thought that you my fellow readers would enjoy sharing in some of numerous sunrises that I have seen on my return home from work.

Here I am working very hard, notice a required tool of the night shift, the coffee cup.

As all of you know G-reality is know for it ability to fly a kite aka the wind blows always. Because of this constant wind, I have had a hell of a time keeping my pilot light lite, resulting in the temperature plummeting all the way below the range of the thermostat to display an accurate reading. I hope everyone is well and life is good.

PS I'm going to Las Vegas for the first time for my Birthday at the end of the month.

Back to Work

2008-01-03T00:40:00.001-07:00

Life has been pretty busy since my last update (forever ago). I finished my 15th semester of school, with only one to go! I got the all clear from the orthopedic surgeon to go back to work on the first day of winter break. It feels pretty good to be making money again, after a 6 month hiatus.

I have yet to get back onto the bike since before finals at the beginning of December. Good news from the RMCC- UNC will be sharing the weekend March 22,23 with CU and hopefully hosting a race. I was hoping to share with CSU, but they won the bid to host nationals. I got a verbal agreement from the Mountain bikers from CU to share the weekend, but I have yet to confirm with the president of CU. Maybe the UNC team will survive another year, and hopefully a new and competent president will take the helm.

Well the holidays have come and gone, thank god. This was supposed to be the first Christmas in about 20 years that I was going to spend the day with my Mother and Father. Thanks to the snow, I didn't see either one of my parents. It was the best Christmas in years thanks to my wonderful girl friend, Lova. She got me a new digital camera, that is waterproof, shockproof, and freeze proof, so expect more pictures to come.

For New Years, Lova and I went to Cattleman's in Greeley for dinner, followed by a relatively quiet night off the dangerous roads. I had to work at 3 pm on New Years day, so I was glad to avoid the blackout that has occurred in past years.

As you can see above, my car has surpassed the 180,000 mile mark and is showing its age. I am having some trouble with my windshield whippers and washer spray, but who needs these superfluous extras, especially in the winter.

With tha advice from the boys at Roubaix, I finally made it over to Fat Albert's for a Moscow Mule (vodka and ginger ale in copper cup). The camera on the IPhone is meeker at best, and failed to capture the mule that is stamped on the side of the cup above. I am going to blame the inability to post pictures taken on the Iphone directly to this blog as my main impetus for my lack of updates. This has been the largest problem that I have had with the Iphone, otherwise it is super sweet! I guess thats all for know, I should probably make sure all of my patients are still breathing and not laying on the floor.

i'm officially blogging on the go with my new I-Phone

2007-11-09T21:36:00.000-07:00

Yes i know it has been over month since my last post. The cause for this lack of updates was due my lack of a digital camera. Today my contract with Verizon ended and I was finally able to start to have fun with my new I-Phone. Life has not been all that interesting as of late. I recently finished my clinical rotation in public health at the weld county health department. To fill this void in my schedule, I started working at a mental hospital in fort Collins. I had the lucky ability this week to get two decent rides in this week, Eaton and most recently Johnston. I'm loving being able to ride again with 2 cycling shoes. It has been about a week and half since i started wearing two regular shoes. I'm not even having to use the cane anymore. Its a miracle to be regaining some element of normalcy back in my life.

I drove out to my Mom's house to exchange the mini van that I have been driving with my BMW. When I got there I discovered that my mother forgot to take my only key for my car off of her key ring. What does this have to do with anything you my be asking yourself, it means that I' m still stuck with the mini van for another day. I did get a chance to play with the 1 month old greyhound puppies at her house. I guess the trip was not a total loss. I will up load some pictures tomorrow when I get back from my dads house. Thanks for checking in.

Back On the Bike BABY!

2007-10-05T10:33:00.000-06:00

Yes your eyes have not deceived you, that is a picture of me on a bike.

I have ridden the bike for the last 2 days in a row. Today I even made it all the way to Kersey. A whole 9.5 miles. It felt exactly as you expect, terrible. My broken leg felt fine, but everything else felt as though I hadn't ridden a bike in about 15 weeks! It has been one week since I got my below the knee cast off. My new air cast can be seen in the picture above. I forgot just how glorious it is to shower without a garbage bag on my leg.

I scored a free ticket to the Bronco game against the Raiders. It was fun, but a challenge in my current role moon lighting as a cripple. By the time we got to the stadium, all of the close handicapped parking was taken. We solved this minor speed bump by finding parking a short 5-6 blocks from the stadium at the honest price of $25. The parking attendant tried to set my mind at ease by assuring me that this fair price for parking was going to benefit some sort of children's center or something. After the warm fussy feeling dissipated, I started my trek to the stadium. As you can see from the picture below our seats were almost up at the very top of the stadium ( 5th level) 31 rows up. I'll have to say that I was climbing the stairs better than the morbidly obese people all around my seats. The cane did a great job. Sorry still no pictures of the cane.

This is Walt a fellow nursing school chum

This is picture of two new neighbors, who recently moved into my building. They took a moment out their busy moving day to reflect on the finer nuances of life in front of my house.

I think we all know who this is

Can you believe that Evan can wrassle this beast into submission long enough to get a bike helmet to perch upon it substantial mass.

Other than that life is good, glad to be in unencumbered from the cast. School is a big pain in the butt to keep it PG. I finished the my first paper of the semester a modest 21 pages. It was not worth that much only 40% of my grade. I saw on the news today that we have new dopers coming out of the wood work every day, houston from the broncos (weed), Marion Jones (vitamin Steroids). At least some other sports are taking some heat. I hope every one is enjoying fall. Until next time.

Field Trip

2007-09-14T18:29:00.001-06:00

My wonderful Lady and I just returned from a field trip to the Denver Museum of Nature and Science, shown above at night. I now feel a little more cultured.

This was the exhibit that we drove down to see.

We decided to take in the IMAX Show before we brought our eyes to rest upon the artifacts. Like any IMAX show it was very well done and had new footage of the inside of the ship. This footage was obtained from little vehicles that were brought down with submarines to explore places the submarines can't go. The new pictures were breath taking.

These are the submarines which were used to get down to the Titanic, which is 2.5 miles below the surface, with a pressure of 6000 psi. These subs seat 3 people, dives usually last 12-15 hours. It takes 2 hours of sinking to reach the bottom.

This is a picture from the IMAX movie. They used lots of new camera technology, which included another ship that suspended a lighting chandelier to light up the reck for better video.

This is a copy of the boarding pass that they gave at the beginning of the exhibit. It has a bio of a passenger on the Titanic on the back, which could be used to see if your passenger survived at the end. Alas my person was not among the living. So sad!

Labor Day Weekend in Eagle County

2007-09-04T17:32:00.001-06:00

I hope all of my fellow reader had a good holiday weekend. I made my way up into the mountains for a weekend with Koch and E-Strong. I arrived at Koch's house just in time to go out to the bars. Thanks to Matt's roommate, Jeremy, I had a cane to walk my crippled ass around instead of toating around the single crutch. Apparently some time during the drunkiness I agreed to go the mountain bike race with Evan on Sunday morning. Because of this blunder on my part, I was awoken up at 6 in the morning by Evan's bushy afro head. We made our way from Edwards to Keystone so Evan could pay some money to suffer for a few hours. The picture below sums up how Evan and I felt Sunday morning.

Its ok Evan, I was tired to. Evan finished the 18 miles of cross country in the fast time of 3 hours or so. That a boy!

This man was riding a unicycle down the finish of the race that came down a blue ski run. I'm certain that I would have had difficulty riding down this run on a mountain bike. Later I saw this man riding his unicycle with his daughter (also on a unicycle) who was probably 10-12.

This was taken on labor day at 1:30pm on my way back to Denver in Frisco. The temperature was absolutely perfect. I am ready for summer to be over! I had to stop and get gas because I knew I may hit some bad traffic.

I knew when I went up to the Mountains that I had the potential to get stuck in the holiday weekend traffic on my way back to Denver. Man, did I hit traffic. I got stuck about a third of the way up the hill to the tunnel.

This is me waiting patiently on the I-70 parking lot. It was really boring

I have officially started driving with my right foot again! Back in the game baby.

Another great shot of the I-70 parking lot

Required materials for a drive of this length, too bad my I-pod battery ran out about half way home. It took me 4.5 hours to get home. It only took me 2.5 hours to get to Vail on Saturday. So I spent 2 extra hours in traffic, fun times let me tell you.

I can bend my knee again, sort of.

2007-08-31T17:53:00.000-06:00

I'm not even sure where to start. I have been back in Greality for a little over a week. I have spent the last 4 nights sleeping in one place (my apartment). I have not spent 4 consecutive nights in the same place in almost 11 weeks. Last Friday was the "Rec Fest" at the university rec center. Unlike last year I was aware of this engagement before the date. Let me tell you a little something about gettting to the rec center when you are handicapped. It is quite a haul from the main parking lot to the west of the rec center. Fear not, I made it to the door after fighting my way through a very long line of freshmen. When I finally got the small gym where the tables for club sports was set up, I discovered that I had to share a table with another club, any guesses....The fencing club. I thought to myself why the fencing club. Any way I could only take that torture for about 90 minutes or so. I followed up that boring endeavor with another hot event, the fall bizarre . We got better interest that we got last year, but it was almost 100 degrees and I am still a cripple. My 15th semester started on tuesday with a large amount of trepidation about putting up with the bull shit again. I did however pick a good time to hurt myself, I have got the green light from my clinical teachers to work as a cripple.

Here is the new below the knee cast that I have about 3 weeks left to wear. I have had to completely regain the range of motion in my knee that I had before the 10 week imprisonment. Note the very classy shoe that I was blessed to probably pay $300 dollars for. I can now bare about 50-70 % of my body weight on this great blue leg. I was planning on going out to purchase a cane today, but I have not made it to the store yet. I have achieved about 80-90 degrees of knee flexion, which still is not enough to complete a whole rotation of the pedals. I think that I will have to wait until i get this cast off to start "riding" again.

Here I am working really hard with two computers surfing and downloading things
(not actually doing any real work)

This is Bentley the most spoiled of all the dogs at my moms house, He is the only one that gets to sleep on her bed.

This was his best attempt to get a nose print on the lens of my camera. He also tries very hard to leave a nose print on recently cleaned sun glasses.

This is me at the Greeley kennel Club dog show a few weeks ago. If you look closely you can see the show rings in my glasses.

This was a competitor at the dog show, note the very large bald spot and the compensating long rat tail. Who has a rat tail when they are at least 50 and bald?

I was trying to show just how dirty the first cast got by the end of 8 weeks. Sorry the lighting was not very good.

I took this picture while I was driving back to Boulder from Sterling, picking my dad up to buy a new car. These sun flowers were wild growing on both sides of the road along I-76, some times as far as the eye could see. My dad who has driven this road for 50 years or so, said the flowers had never been this vibrant.

Here is my dad standing in front of his new 2004 VW passat 4 motion, which I helped him find and buy. He paid cash for the car and it still took us the entire day to take possession of his new car. His last new car was in 1990.

Thats all I have for now. I will be updating with pic of the first cycling meeting of the new semester in about a week.

I can't believe that it is August 13th

2007-08-13T12:02:00.000-06:00

Every one loves needle point owls!

Greetings to all my naked legged friends out there. I decided that I have accumulated enough pictures to formulate a post that is worthy of your time. Not much has changed since my last post. Still working in boulder and commuting back to g-reality for second half of the week. I'm not really sure how people maintain their sanity whilst being imprisoned to a desk for 40 hours a week. I'm only working 30'ish hours a week, and what I do here I can't in all honesty call "work". It takes a special person to stand for this torture. My leg is still attached, and healing slowly. I will be going back to the doctor in 10 day to get a new cast that will be a little smaller than the current one, just below the knee. This will be just in time to have the new cast before my 15th semester of school starts. It is going to be interesting to see what my professors say when they discover that I am unable to ambulate during my clinical hours that are required every semester.

Here is a picture of the flatirons coming into boulder

This is me driving after I realized that I left the Rudy Projects in Greeley. Note still in the greatest chick magnet in the entire world - the mini-VAN!

A little democratic propaganda for you ( on the side of some ones car)

When I captured this piece of photographic genius, I was under the impression that there were colors associated with the democratic and republican parties, blue and red retrospectively. When I asked my republican lady friend, she did not feel that this association was legitimate. She instead took it to be a relic of the Cold War and those fascist communists. So the jury is still out on if this is a anti republican or anti communist slogan.

Here I am with 2 of my second cousins, both of which share my fantastic last name. We were in sterling for a 40th wedding anniversary of a family member. The party was at the Knights of Columbus building. The air conditioning worked about as well as the time period for which the building was named after. I was fortunate enough to have my father wanting us to leave this sweaty sauna of a place much earlier than my fellow cousins.

Keeping with Brian's theme, I shot a few pics of dinner yesterday. I made a take off of a basil pesto. I didn't want to stay with tradition and took a Mexican foot path to this delicious dish. A traditional pesto 5 ingredients; basil, pine nuts, olive oil, garlic, and Parmesan cheese. The dish consisted of cilantro, pumpkin seeds, manchego cheese, garlic, and olive oil. The usual piece of kitchen equipment for this production is a food processor, but I didn't have access to one of these, so I was forced to use a blender. This got the job accomplished, but took about 4-5 times long as the correct piece of equipment.

Here is the penne after I added the "pesto"!

The post would not be complete without the a finished product. It was very delicious. Although I failed to document the wine, I did have a great glass of German Riesling to accompany this fantastic new recipe

I guess thats all for today try to stay cool in this hellish heat

A day in the life of a cripple

2007-08-02T13:52:00.000-06:00

It has been a long few weeks. I have been spending Monday through Thursday working at my mothers accounting practice, moonlighting as a receptionist. Because of the exorbitant price of fossil fuels these days I've been carpooling into work with my mother, which of course includes spending 3 nights a week at her house. The best perk of this deal was the access to Tivo for recording the TOUR. Now that the tour is over I feel like I am forced into once again surfing aimlessly for anything on that's worth watching.

This is me troubleshooting a computer problem. I have spent the majority of my 1 month here trying to fix problems with both computers here at the office. Total time spent talking with Microsoft support - 4.5 hours. Number of computers requiring re-formatting---- all of them (2).

As you can see here in this pic, the fixing of the problems is going just as expected, poooorly! I feel like giving up, but then I remember I must have the Internet to waste the time away at the office. If I didn't have the Internet or computer problems, then I would be forced to do actual work.

I finally was able to get some pics of my leg prison for your viewing enjoyment

Note - cast is 5 weeks old in this picture (still sort of clean, bottom notwithstanding)

This gives some perspective to the extent of my imprisonment. Note my still great biking tan (6 week hiatus from the sun) and my left quad still looks great. I went to the doctor yesterday hoping to have this cast removed, only to be replaced with a new one that is right below my knee. Unfortunately the X-rays didn't show enough new bone growth at the break site to risk replacing the cast, so I am stuck in this monstrosity for another 3 weeks, bringing the total time in this cast to 8 weeks!

This is the arrangement that I have for maintaining my mobility in my crippled state. I am shifted out of my typical driving position to facilitate viewing of the leg position. Driving with your left foot is easier than one might think. It only took about one day to master. Although I would not want to have to explain this to the MAN! I have the foot in question proped up on a sleeping bag to help eliminate the pain of my knee trying to break through the top of the cast and take a breath of fresh air. The vehicle that you see pictured here is a 2000 Chrysler Town and Country Mini Van

With 150,000 miles on it. The day that it broke the 150,000 mark, I was blessed with a break down at Red Rocks amphitheatre. I think it was a clogged fuel injector. I was able to get running again, but it would not idle, forcing me to keep my foot on the gas (even while stopped or breaking) Now I like to see some of my faithful readers try to keep pressure on the gas peddle while applying break pressure at the same time---with only one FOOT. I made it to the shop and they gave it a much needed tune up.

Here I am driving with the only dog (Tiger) I have ever met that would smell a McDonald's french fry and not eat it.

This is the same french fry from above- note (still in tack) and the french fry was hot! Don't worry I was just surprised as you that there is an animal out there that would turn is nose up at the corner stone of the McDonald's empire-----The FRENCH FRY

This car was in font of me in the drive through to receive my delicious french fries from above. I am all for standing up for a cause that one believes in, but to obstruct one's view with that message is a little extreme

This is the license plate that I cut off above. Apparently this person is all about the messages on their car, even the license plate is a message. Well I guess that all for now, I have to try to get out of boulder before the traffic starts to get bad. Greeley here I come-- :(

Thanks for reading.

- Borat Causes Heavy Crash -

2007-07-18T10:32:00.001-06:00

I love toast!

2007-07-12T13:42:00.000-06:00

Borken

2007-07-02T21:17:00.000-06:00

I have had quite an eventfull couple of weeks. On june 20 I went to boulder to visit a friend that lives in flordia. He had the great idea to go tubing down the boulder creek, which runs out of boulder canyon from nederland. I tried to convience him to let me drive to the creek, but he insisted in taking his dad's sports car. We bought the tubes and started filling them up with air. It was at this time that it occured to us that we didn't have much room to put the filled tubes inside the car. Since I didn't know the pressure rating of said tube, I filled the tubes up to what I considered an adequate volume. After all I didn't want a blow out of the tube right in my face. So we made our way up to the park near the mouth of the canyon. My brilliant friend embarked on this adventure with a pair of flip flops. We changed into our swim suits and made our way to look for a put in spot. When we saw the water it was clear just how bad of an idea this truly was. The creek was not a creek, but a raging torrent of a creek. We found a decent place to get in and discovered that our tubes were grossley underfilled. My friend floated out in the cold water and stayed on the tube for about 20 seconds before a rapid filpped him off his tube and made him hold on for dear life. I lasted about 45 seconds before I went over a large drop off into a big eddie of swirrling torrent. I had to swim real hard to make it to the edge and grab onto some rocks. It is important to note that right above this eddie was a walking bridge over the creek, with a few people wathcing as I was tossed violently right under their feet. So I am stuck on the wrong side of the river. I decided to try to jump back in and try to get to the other side. I was forced to swim for my life. The Dane Cook joke was going through my head as I made it back to the same rocks that had been my savior a few momments ealier "don't float over me when I'm dying in the abyss". I finally made it bavk to the correct side of thr river without being sodamized by a shallow rock, but I did get brussed up pretty good. My friend with the flip flops lost one right where I had all of my truble, but was able to retrieve it. All told we probably only went 300 yards down stream.

The next evening a different friend and I decided to make the best use of the summer solstice and go dirt biking to find a good place to practice our marksmanship with our handguns. The dirt bike that I was riding was a old honda 250. It was getting dark on our way back, with no problems. The problems statred when I missed the turn to go back to my friends house. I turned around to go back to the turn, it was up hill and I killed the bike.I tried about 5 time to get the bike up this hill which was on pavement without any luck, the bike just kept stalling no mater how much gas or clutch I gave it. I was starting to get nervous because I was in the middle of a paved road "sugar loaf rd" in the dark without a tail light. My buddy suggested that the bike was low on fuel, so I switched the reserve switch to try and get the bike up this rise. This is when all the trouble started. I gave it too much gas or let go popped the clutch, and I lost control of the bike and made a bee line for the left shoulder of thr paved road. It was here that I layed the dirt bike down on my right side. I got up and realized that I was not able to put any weight onto my right foot. My buddy got the bike running again after a few minutes as I slowely tried to put weight onto my "sprained ankle". I rode the bike the mile or so back to the house with my leg dangling. As soon as I got back I sat down onb the ground and let my buddy put the bikes away. It was at this point that I decided that I didn't want to navigate the stairs into the house and we went to the hospital for some x-rays. After the doc had a chance to review the films, he came in and said " well the good news is your not going to lose your leg". It turns out that I broke both boned in my lower leg right above the top of the hiking boots, which saved my ankle.I spent one painful night in the hospital, not becuase the break was really bad, but because the nurse waited hours to get me pain medication once I got admitted. I was released later the next day to wait for the swelling to go down. I went home to my mother's house for a few days. I went back to the hospital on tuesday 26th not knowing if I was going to just get a cast or have to have surgery and then cast. The surgeon didn't know which option he would have to employ until my splint came off and I was asleep. So when I woke up in recovery I didn't know if I had surgery or not. The answer to tht question was no surgery. The surgeon was able to just cast the leg. I'm in a full leg cast that goes above my knee and half way up my thigh. I'm still not sure how long I will have to be in this cast, but its going to be a long time. I will find out in about a week when i visit the doctor again. Well I'm getting tired of typing all of this on a blackberry so I will keep all of you posted. Thanks for checking in.

Climbing Mt Yale

2007-06-18T21:46:00.001-06:00

My friend Matt and I decided to continue our quest to climb all of the 14ers in Colorado. On Wednesday we drove up to Buena Vista and found a great camp site (in the daylight) and set up camp. Thursday morning at the crack of dawn, 5 am we broke camp and left for the trail head. Below is a picture of the surrounding mountains that lie to the west of Mt Yale. This picture was taken fairly early in the morning and as you can see I'm still below tree line (which is 12200 ft for my non hiker friends)

This picture shows the ability of biking clothing to be made useful in different sports, I'm fairly certain that this vest could be seen from space.

This is getting closer to the top, note the elevation at which the trees stop growing, again this picture is looking west from Mt. Yale

Here I am at the top of MT. Yale, 14206 ft. If you look behind me you can see path we had to follow to get the summit. A path of snow that was flanked by large drop offs on both sides made this rather interesting. It took us almost 5 hours to get to the top. Our total time for the hike was 8 hours with time alloted for stopping for lunch and of course bathroom breaks. It was a great time, and I had no problem asking my massive cycling legs to propel me up to the top of Mt. Yale.

More pics from early summer

2007-06-18T21:14:00.000-06:00

Hey guys so I have finally found some time to get some pics up from the last week or two. I went up to Fort Collins to see our friend e-strong grind it out on sunday. Walking back to my car to leave for my dads house, i noticed someone who has fantastic taste in fine cycling equipment.

Next is my dinner the night before this bike race from above. I marinated a t-bone and grilled it. Next I placed asparagus on the grill with EVOO and S/P. I plated these two items on top of a bed of Parmesan couscous. It was delicious!

Below is a picture of my new bike rack(no matter how I uploaded this pic it was sideways)

Here I am driving to my dad's house

The Pics have finally arrived!

2007-06-02T14:59:00.001-06:00

The trip back continued to be lesson in cultural differences. The bus service that we paid for to get us to and from the airport and the dog show site every day, never came to get us for the return trip to the airport. We were lucky that the one taxi driver at the hotel with a large SUV whose name was Andres pulled up just in time to save the trip to the airport. When we finally get to security to get to the gate, the federal police decide that the dog (which is flying on the plane) cannot go through the x-ray machine with out documentation. After a few minutes of me arguing with the security guard I got an American Airlines employee to come over and explain that it was ok for the dog to ride inside the plane with the passengers. Once finally through security after an hour of discussion, it was time for me to have a drink. The trip back was uneventful.

These three pics are of murals inside the palacio Nacional painted by Diego Rivera.

These pics are of the ceiling inside where the Mexican govt has its meetings. Note the all seeing eye.

Look at these plants

Drinking at the Dog Show

Keeping myself occupied

This is what the dog looked like
at the airport

Look at this crowd!

Teotihuacán Pyramids near Mexico City and even a BIKE RACE!!!!

2007-05-28T18:02:00.000-06:00

Today was our last and only completely free day to visit historical and cultural places of interest here in Mexico City. With the dog show over we decided to make the 50 Km drive to the pyramids build by the mesoamerican people before the time of the Aztecs. We met a very nice couple while eating breakfast yesterday and decided to go together to share the cost of the trip. Mind you I use the term couple loosely, because this particular couple was without a penis between the two of them. We set out at 8 in the morning and made the 1 hour drive to the north of the city and after sitting in morning traffic (which is a spectacle in itself) finally made it to Teotihuacán. My new lesbian friends and I walked to the top of the pyramid of the sun ( or Sol for my spanish speaking friend). My mother waited at the top of the first level catching her breath. I'm happy to say that my extensive experience in cardio activities enabled me to get to the top first. The view from the top of this pyramid would have been much better if the haze aka pollution was not so bad ( but it is the most polluted city in the world). Videos and pics to follow once I am able to get my hands on a camera cable.

You will never guess what I saw yesterday morning. Do I have you salivating yet..... . I had the pleasure to see a family bike race on the large avenue near my hotel. Don't worry I took pictures of some bikes and the race. It was more of a community ride on one of the largest streets in the city than a race. I did see a few people with were dressed in the correct attire ( I even saw a kit on a kid from Mexico) Many of the people were riding steel "double suspension" mountain bikes. There were only a few road bikes, but I did manage to see a Colnago from at least the 70's (very cool), a few bianchi's, and best of all an ORBEA!!!! (but alas it was a mountain bike) I felt relatively confident that I would have been able to drop all but a few people in the race. I got a few weird looks for taking picture of people's bikes. This bike race was accompanied with a women only 5 k run(walk). Any way it is time for me to go back to a restaurant that we at a few days ago that has possibly the best mexcian food in the world. Their daily special on mondays is mole ploblano, muy delicioso! I will have some time to kill in the airport tomorrow, so be expecting an update. And unless it is too much trouble post a comment you bastards!

Floating gardens a bust

2007-05-25T17:01:00.001-06:00

Today I was blessed not to have to make the long and boaring journey to the dog show. Instead I slept in and then had to figure out how to describe to a driver on the phone where and how to pick my mother up from the show ground. With my limited spanish skills this was quite the challenge. I would say that my spanish skills are similar to Evan's (not good). When my mother finally returned to the hotel, she was intent on going and dpending one of our few sightseeing days at this place called the floating gardens. 1e aquired a driver for the approx 1 hour trip across the entire city to the south. We made our way to the edge of the canal system in which a large number of boats that were so brightly coloured (that's for my european friends) that if you looked uppon them for to long blindness was certainly to follow. We boarded a boat that way surrounded by other boats on all sides. We then some how got the boats around us to part like moses and the red sea to allow us passage onto the canal system. The propulsion system was a man with a large stick much like you would see in venice, but with none of the class. We were them bombarded by merchants peddling their crappy tourist items via smaller boats. I think that I have said "no gracis" so many times that I will be saying it in my sleep. Apparently the gardens which were susposed to be breath taking are still in the dead stage of life. We went about 2 k up the canal and turned around and continued back the way we came. The total elasped time of said boat ride to look at the non existant gardens 38 minutes. The price for the fabulous forae on a dirty canal 300 pesos ($30 for my american friends.) We then had to endure horendous friday afternoon traffic to get back to the hotel so we could again return to the god forsaken dog show to engage in more waiting and sitting on a concrete floor until I no longer have feeling in the lower 2/3 of my body. As I am sitting here writing this a black lab owned by a mexican rescue team member took the liberty to squat and take a massive shit about 15 feet away from where I am sitting. How joyfully plesant! Let me asure you that this was not the first occurance of a dog performing this action in my immediate vaccinity. The only benefit that I can possibly see from todays adventure was getting to see much of the city from the back seat of a car. I drove right by the national university which according to my driver has 250,000 students. + guess I am out of inspiration, thanks for suffering through my slaughter of the english language. Adios para ahora.

floating gardens a bust

2007-05-25T16:20:00.000-06:00

Mexico D day + 2

2007-05-24T16:31:00.000-06:00

If I had to sum up today with one sentence it would be bored out of my mind at the dog show. I awoke this morming not feeling so hot (too many margs last night) at 5 am. After getting dressed I made my way to the bus (without coffee) that would be taking us to the dog show. The show started an hour late (still no coffee) all the while not a chair in site. I was finally able to have breakfast at 9:30 (finally good strong coffee). I followed this breakfast with 3 beers all the while reading cycle sport. These beers were followed closely with nap time. After a much deserved nap (all be it a bad one) I was able to Procure my mothers blackberry which I discoverd could be a very usefull for sqelching this everlasting boardome. I took this time to catch up on all of the giro action that I have been missing here. I then had to spend countless minutes tryinh to get into my blogger account on the mobile device. You can see that I was finally sucessful due to this update. I am now at hour number 11 at the dog show with no end in sight. I hope to eventually return to civilization before the day is out. Asta lluego.

Leaving for Mexico City

2007-05-23T15:52:00.000-06:00

For those of you who don't know I am now in Mexico City sitting at the lobby bar working on a looong over due update. This trip had a very insteresting start. I went out to dinner with my new older lady friend the night before I left. After an uneventful dinner, I returned back to my casa and got the rest of my things together for the trip. I then went to her house in Kersey to spend some quality time with her before I had to continue to my mothers house to leave for the airport the following morning. When I got to Kersey I walked in the door to a very dejected looking lady friend. I soon discovered that one of her children, yes she has two kids, was in trouble for something. Learning all of the juicy details, I discovered that the daughter was caught trying to steal a shirt from the Greeley mall.(This is after going shopping with mother earlier that day) I found out that she sent the father(x-husband) to bail out the daughter from the loss prevention office at the mall. This put a serious damper on our "quality time". We then discover that the store had decided to involve GPD (Greeley Police Department). We figured that this would buy us some time. One thing led to another and to keep this post PG-13, we were indisposed when the doorbell rang. I then got to listen to lady friend and X argue about the punishment while sitting in the master bedroom in the dark, hoping not to be discovered by said x-husband. Pretty Funny.

My flight down to Mexico City was uneventful except for the fact that my mother brought the dog on the airplane as a service dog aka seeing eye, complete with a home made leather harness. The dog layed down at our feet taking up every inch of foot room infront of myself and my mother. Because of this dog in the airport I was forced to become the center of attention at the ariport. I had to field questions from all sorts of people about what the dog was for ( and I could not say that we were just swindling the system). We were even stopped in Mexico's airport so a senior could take a photo of the dog. We spent our first day (today) going over the dog show site (yes we were here for a dog show) and then we did some sightseeing. We went to the palacio nacional which houses many of Diego Rivera's epic murals. I would be including pictures, but my mother neglected to bring the camera cord home from work, so I am unable to upload pics. Any way I guess that is all for now Adios y buenos Noche!

Spring Break BITCH!

2007-03-20T23:11:00.000-06:00

Spring break is almost half over, I can't believe it. I started my spring break on last Friday by drinking at a house party(the first in months), followed by the Dug Out. I had a total of 4-5 drinks all night and I ate dinner. When I woke up on Saturday, I felt like I had 10-12 drinks. I made it to boulder, only 2 hours later than I had planned. I sacrificed my st. Patrick's day blackout for the CU road race on Sunday. I was DD for one of my friends in boulder, I waited until 1:30 to go back up Boulder Canyon (where I was staying), and the person I was driving around decided to stay in boulder. So basically I hung out with a bunch of drunk people, while I was sober for no reason. The race on Sunday after a restful 3.5 hours of sleep went like I expected, 47 minutes of pure hell. I managed to stay in the race for 2 out of the three laps. When I finished with my DNF certificate of participation, I looked at my heart rate monitor to discover that for 47 minutes of racing my average heart rate was 191. After the race I did my best to pay my respects to st. Patrick a day late. Monday consisted of going on a hike near red feather lakes off of the peak to peak highway. We manage to get 8 miles of hiking on top of snow. I cooked dinner for 7 people and it came out great. Sunday started with me getting up a 9:30 in the morning and thinking my calf's were going to explode when my entire 135 lbs of weight were applied to them. I was just a little bit sore to say the least. We finished out the day with a few hours of rock climbing after a two year hiatus from the sport. It has been a good break so far. Tomorrow I am riding up boulder canyon and sugar loaf mountain. 8.4 miles of pure pain. If you make it this far than please ask me to recommend you a good book, because there are sure better things to do than listen to me ramble via text. Thanks for checking on my fanastic piece of the universe

Auf Wiedersehen Der Kaiser

2007-03-01T09:40:00.000-07:00

You will notice the devil chasing after Der Kaiser. I took this devil to symbolize the urge to dope in the sport of cycling. Der Kaiser you will be truly missed!

On another note argyle is making a come back, but I think this is going a little to far to put a jersey onto a rat's excuse for a dog!

Crashes!!

2007-02-06T12:42:00.001-07:00

As some of you know I had a crash of my own inside a gas station, but what don't know is I took another dive due to albert squeezing me into an ice patch. With all of these crashes I though that I would offer this video!

My Box in a Box

2007-01-25T17:23:00.001-07:00

This video is really funny! For your viewing pleasure

So I am President Now

2007-01-24T08:51:00.000-07:00

So with half of the offices for the cycling team abandoning ship, this left leadership roles in the top tier of the team. After talking with the only remaining commissioned officer, this role of president fell onto my shoulders. After becoming president, it became very apparent that we have some serious work to do if we want to get our crit onto the schedule for this season. I have been pretending to be president for only about one week, I have sent more emails than I sent over the entire winter break. I sent an email to the coach of CSU to find out if they are planning on having two days of racing , or if we could continue to have our race on the same weekend. Our other date that is an option is the weekend of April 7-8, which is open. I am writing this during class and should probably be listening instead of blogging. Have a good day and keep on keeping on.
Dana

Am I susposed to update this myself?

2007-01-17T12:31:00.000-07:00

Do to the long dramatic absence of updates about my exciting life, I felt that I should relieve the anxiety of my fellow readers and give you a riveting description of my life. I have spent the last month before school working every shift you can imagine. One week I did 4 nights shifts 6p-7a. Followed the next week with two day shifts 6a-7p. The effect that this has on an individual is cruel and unusual punishment. Another event that transpired over the break was getting to look at my bike on the trainer in the middle of my kitchen for weeks at a time. Every time that I walked by the bike, I thought I should ride that thing. Did I act on that thought? Oh course not! I spent about 5 days over the break in Louisville and boulder trying my best to avoid g-town for a few days. I got up into the mountains for a snow shoeing trip on the 31 of December. As you all know, school started yesterday, and I got an interesting email from the office of financial aid office. To summarize the letter for you it said that the financial aid office is withholding my financial aid for the semester because I have exceeded the maximum of allowable credits without graduating. After going all over campus getting "herbie handcock" from the many different adviser's that I have for my may different degrees, I turned the form in. A few days later, I got an email that said that "I was approved until may 2008 only!". Well this is long enough for now. I will be updating again later today. Thanks for reading about my boring life. Dana

I can't believe IT

2006-12-03T03:15:00.000-07:00

Its 3:15 am and what am I doing up at this hour if I am not DRINKING? Thats a very good question. Well I had to complete a homework assignment to by 12:pm earlier or I would no longer be in nursing school. To make a long story short, I got the assignment completed, but it took me 9 hours to finish it today. So with all this productive work completed today, I felt it was only fair to spend a few hours rotting my brain away on the Internet. And what better place to destroy brain cells then the per verbal myspace the black hole of time and productivity. During my quest to find the end of the Internet I was able to run across this video that my faithful readers will enjoy. That is to say. if I have any readers left after my long stints of being above continuous blogging.

You Have to watch this video

http://vids.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=vids.individual&videoid=558456953

Ps- Are you enjoying this refreshing cold weather we have been having. You mean we get smell cow shit all day and freeze our ass off, where do I sign up, that right I already did about 3 years ago. I woke up thursday morning (the day after the snow storm) no water. Pipes frozen. No problem I'll just shower at work. Come home no water. no problem go to bed. Get up go to school (no shower). Go to work take shower. Clock in. Come home. no water. get up saturday. no water. Get home at 3 pm. you got it.no water. Went to library got back 8pm and got water. One would think that this would make me at least sing a little tune, and it did for a little while. Toilet flushes-good/-very good. But alas this pinnacle of light would not last but only a short time. Went to take shower 12am. water. COLD WATER, and ONLY COLD WATER. And it makes me warm inside to know that I get to give these people a very large sum of green backs to tomorrow and they have prevented me from the joy of depressing the toilet lever for 72 hours. Until tomorrow(or 2 weeks), I bid you good day.

2006-11-13T03:52:00.000-07:00

Arrived in Berlin!

2006-11-11T08:39:00.000-07:00

Against all odds we were able to navigate our way across the border of Poland and into germany. I only almost crashed the car twice. We are going out on a bar and pub tour of berlin tonight. German beer here I come.

Above you can see a statue in the town square of poznan poland, a polish flag, the air plane that we flew from munich to poland, and the cars in poland parking on the side walk.

Poland Day + 2

2006-11-10T10:11:00.000-07:00

SO it has been two days and I still have not been able to post any pictures because they will not let me connect my camera to the computers here are the internet cafe in Poznan. We went to the dog show today, and no I didn't have a chance to see any corgi's for steve. My Mom's camera had a major memory card malfunction today, but you are in luck because I have another card. I am hoping that when we go to berlin tomorrow I will be able to upload some pictures. The weather here has been cold and wet, what a big surprise, eastern europe in november. We have had some good food, and yes pork is the meat of choice here in poland. We have parked our rental car 3 or 4 times, and have gotten 2 parking tickets so far. It was an adventure trying to figure out the parking ticket system, which was not in english. We decided that we may pay these when we give the car back at the end of our trip. Today I was able to wear clean cloths, because they lost my baggage when I got here on wednesday. The time change has been hard to adjust to, but not in the way that you would think. I would have thought that I would be up late and have trouble getting up in the morning, but the reverse is true. We are going to bed early and having no trouble getting up in the morning. Tomorrow we set out on the trans european adventure to find berlin. We don't really know how to get there or what the signs say, but with the grace of god we will make it and find a hotel with wi fi for a picture update. We are heading south west to berilin from poznan, but don't know what direction that is.(evan thanks for not reminding me to bring my compass, what an eagle scout you make), Well that about all that I can come up with for today, I would say that it is expensive to use the internet, but that would be a lie, its about a dollar an hour. So until tomorrow from germany, gutentag!

Lost in Poland

2006-11-09T06:34:00.001-07:00

So apparently they will rent a car here in poland to just about any one. The fight went pretty well with both my mother and me sleeping most of the way, thanks in part to xanax. Against all odds we were able to navigate our way to the hotel in the dark, which is a feat considering there are no street signs at intersections. It is harder to find internet here than I thought it would be. When I finally found it, I realized that I forgot my cable to up link pictures. To my dismay, they didn't have wi-fi and so I was forced to use their computer, which is in polish. The word for the back button is (wstecz) and forward (dalej). We made it to the national museum which was filled with polish art dating back to the 1300's. We have been driving our rental car around town and have realized that driving here is rediclous, people park their car on the side walk (picture to follow), there are very few signs and when ther is a sign it is impossible to pronounce the street name. On the positive side, most restaurants have english on the menu and the people here speak some english. I will try to make it back here tomorrow with my camera cable and see if I can up load pictures. Thats all for now. Dana from eastern europe.

On the air plane flying over the atlantic

2006-11-07T22:42:00.000-07:00

So I was unaware that airlines offered wireless internet in flight. I am some where over the atlantic flying towards munic germany. I have about 5 hours to go and are starting to get sleepy. I will be posting pictures of poland tomorrow, unless I have trouble finding an internet connection. Keep checking back and I will do my best not do disapoint any of my trusty audiance! Until tomorrow, Dana the world traveler!

Flying over the BIG pond to the east

2006-11-06T15:40:00.000-07:00

Greeting to all!

For all of you faithful blog readers, I wanted to let you know that I am going to Poland and Beriln tomorrow so check back often because I will be posting picture of the trip for all to see. I would give you a picture right here, but I broke my camera the other day. I hope all is well in every bodies world.

Osama Bin Laden Family Guy

2006-09-19T21:51:00.000-06:00


Here is the video that I eluded to in my post a few days ago. I still don't know how to get that hyperlink to work. Enjoy the video and take notes because there will be a test later. Enjoy

I'm out of Coffee

2006-09-19T21:14:00.000-06:00

So I have been out of coffee for almost a week. I know this is not a big deal to some people, but to us cyclists this is a major problem. Instead of just going to the store to buy more coffee, that would be to easy, I have been going to different places every morning to get that ever so important morning coffee fix. Well today I was starting to run out of different places to go get this fix until an idea popped into my head. What was that idea you may ask? Well it has to do with certain smells that are overwhelming at brian's house. Still don't know?

Now you may ask why this last picture is not turned the correct way. The answer to that question is do you think that I have the time to make sure that all my pictures have been formatted correctly before I post. I just don't have that much time on my hands.

Space Shuttle Launch

2006-09-18T14:52:00.000-06:00


In case you missed it here is the shuttle discovery in all her glory on August 28, 2006

Its Monday again

2006-09-18T13:27:00.000-06:00

Its monday again and I thought that you all could use some uplifiting today so here is a video for your viewing pleasure.

Go to this link in google video. I could not figure out how to get the link to work

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-5156309062057571174&q=family+guy

I have been trying to save money by cooking at home over the past week or so. I thought that you may enjoy some of the culinary masterpieces that I have created.

I know you think it looks good. Especially you evan!

Board in class again. Money well spent? NO!

2006-09-13T13:04:00.000-06:00

So I have decided that bringing my computer to class is not the greatest idea that I have ever had. The reason for this is my inability to pay attention during class, due to my surfing the internet for any thing other than what is being discussed in class.

Reading evans blog today made me decide to put this picture up for corey's sake to contribute to coreys sun flower collection.

My life this last week has been nothing but school, with a big presentation and a test this week. I'd like to think that this is the reason that I have not been riding since last wednesday, But I have been lazey and not getting out there. I am thinking of doing pine wood climb on friday I think if anyone is interested. I plan on continuing the tradition of drunking biking on friday nights. Last weeek I blacked out at pitchers and aparently myde my way back to my house by weeving and swerving all the way home. Let me know if any one wants to participate friday. Thanks for reading my great blog.

Can You believe that I'm Updating

2006-09-06T09:02:00.000-06:00

So I have been avoiding updating, but I decided that I was so bored in class today that I decided that it was time.

Is anyone else ready for Christmas vacation? I know I am!

So by now most of you know about my recent induction into the century club. Well I didn't think that I could do it, but thanks to Corey sitting in the wind from Estes back to greeley I was able to make it back home. This was the first time that I got to decent on a bike that fits me. So after a long wait here is the bicycle review for the 2005 Oreba Onix.

What can I say about riding a bike that fits you properly, how did I go so long without a bike like this? Riding up hill on the onix seemed much easier than it was on the steel monster, probably again due to the better fit. I have decided that on this new bike that mathematically I can't be beaten.(yeah right)

Starting my 6th year in college I am getting really sick of having to take classes that I have already taken. For example I took a class my second year called health promotion for sports and exercise science, now I am taking a class called health promotion for nurses and it is exactly the same thing. Money well spent I think.

Living the CARBON LIFE!

2006-07-12T15:04:00.000-06:00

So as the majority of you faithful readers already know my big news for the day. But because it looks so good in writing, I bought the orbea onix today from steve. I am going to go on a farewell group ride tonignt with the bianchi to feel the italian glory for one last time before she assumes her role as a fixed gear. And I cant wait to see how good my new shifters are goignto feel before they get transfered to the spanish lady.

On a different note when I got home from the bike shop, I was trying to make room for jason's ocr2 and I broke the coffee pot into a million pieces (with a half a pot of coffee). The worst part of the coffee maker breaking is the fact that I mopped my floor for the first time in a few months the other day, and now I had to re-mop all the coffee off the floor. Then a few minutes later I broke a glass drinking cup. Apparently its my day to break stuff. Well thats all for now.

Trouble on the road!

2006-07-07T12:31:00.000-06:00

I decided that I figure out how to get pictures up on for all the world to see. The picture that I decided to post is of a flat tire that I got on HW-85. The best part is the fact that I didnt have a spare tire to put on after this happened. Last night I had more people over at my dirty appartment than I ever had before. I had 7 people over drinking and and trying to explain to non-cyclists how the tour works. Koch and evan tried to explain the domstique thing to evan's old roommate. This kid was not getting it even with them arguing with him for over an hour, all talking at the same time. All of the officers of the cycling team except the pres were in attendence. There was an ex-pres, but thats not the same!

On the fourth I went to the parade that and got a few pictures that I though you would be sort of interested in. I would have posted these with the independence post, but I didn't know how to get picutes up until today. For your viewing pleasure

Independence Day

2006-07-03T19:22:00.000-06:00

It has come to my attention from the former president of the cycling team that it is imperative that I make up dates to my site. So here it is.

I have been bikeless for almost a week because of a complication with the rebuilding of my shifters. It turns out that a part that was not expected to be broken was and apparently this part is not being manufactured by campy any more. Steve at Roubaix is attempting to find the part in Campy junk yards around Colorado, but until the part is found the veloce is lying naked over in the shop. I did get Steve to put the speed play cleat onto my shoes, now I'm only waiting for Corey to get me the pedals.

My Six day weekend off of school has been full of nothing but work. The only day that I got off with nothing to do except watch the tour was today and I am trying to make the most out of the day by already drinking for the last hour or two. I am evening working on the fourth because I will be making double time. I am going to get off my ass this week and try out the new thompson seat post that I got for my mountain bike, only this time I will try to keep the falls down to a number that I can count to on one hand.
Thanks for reading, Dana

Because Every One is Doing It!

2006-06-19T20:32:00.000-06:00

After spending so much time readiong other peoples blogs, I thought that it was time that I start my own blog. It is finals week for those of us that are in summer school. Finals are going like they always do, stressfull.

I went into Roubaix today to borrow an allen wrench because the saddle on my mountain bike was loose and found out that the seat bolt was bent and the top plate to the seat post was destroyed. How that Happened I'll have no idea. It must have occured during one of the many fall that I sustained during the ride up devils back bone last tuesdaty with biking scout and cory.