Today, and Pumpkin Ale

So today it was 60 degrees and very sunny! Beautiful weather indeed. After two stressful days of school work and curriculum maps, I was ready to get out for a ride. Natalie went to tutor a high school student in Algebra 2, so I went out for a short ride on Boneyard. This trail is so cool being only about a 1/2 mile from the house. It's hard enough that it still presents a good workout and a chance to work on handling skills, yet easy and short enough that it only takes about 35 minutes tops to get up it. Then about another 5-10 minutes to get down via the Ice Rink trail. Shown are some pictures of Mr. Lister riding on the Boneyard trail. Up boneyard, and down ice rink. Resting at the top of boneyard, not for sure what he is trying to explain... prolly something about the amount of chocolate he ate in the past week or so......











When I got home, I popped open a Pumpkin Ale. I have had quite a few different brands of this beer, but this one is quite good. It is brewed by Buffalo Bills Brewery in California. Tastes a lot like pumpkin pie. I would recommend this if you can find it, and have a taste for pumpkin beers. And no I didn't ride and drink at the same time, that was only for the foto!

A Simple Day

Saturday was forecast to be beautiful, sunny and 67 degrees. So we decided it would be a great day for a hike. Nick had the perfect place in mind - Two Elk trail, where his mountain bike ride had ended a few weekends ago. That trail turned out to be a bit of a bust given the fact that the trail begins at a shooting range and many hunters were out for the 2nd week of rifle season. So, we moved on to a different place...the top of Vail pass. We found a nice trail:





There wasn't anything uber-special about this trail - no waterfall, or great view at the summit, nothing like that. But it was in the middle of a meadow, with a little pond, some snow hidden in the shady areas, and just lots of peacefulness. We took Wrigley with us and he loved exploring. Enjoy the pics below :-)

What a Drive!

Glenwood Canyon. The picture to the left shows the drive down I-70 through the canyon. It is so narrow that the only road that can fit through there is I-70, and also a bike path that runs alongside and underneath the interstate. (oh yeah, also a train track) I had to drive down to Glenwood Springs today to get the car looked at. (airbag light was on) It is about 30 minutes from Eagle, and has to be one of the most beautiful drives around. Everytime I drive through there (which isn't often) I am just amazed by the sheer size and beauty of the canyon. It just amazes me to think about how they were able to blast out the walls of the canyon to be able to build the road through there. In two of the spots, they had to tunnel through the rock because it was so narrow. The Colorado river runs right next to it, and the canyon wall climbs straight up on either side.

I/We have yet to ride the Glenwood Canyon Trail from Dotsero (or as my kids call it... Dotghetto for the trailer park there...) to Glenwood Springs, but will be sure to do it sometime in the future, if not yet this fall, then for sure next spring or summer. It is not a steep trail by any means, but is slightly downhill for the 16 mile length of it, then a slight uphill for the ride back, so I think it would be a nice ride for us to do together.

will you be my HONEY???

As I've aged... I have really developed a taste for some of the finer things in life. For example, good wine, crispy fresh veggies, fine micro brew and European beers, and HONEY! Yes, I said it honey is one of the finer things in life. We use it for many things, but three of my favorites have to be: pnut butta and honey on waffles, pnut butta and honey on pancakes, and my special honey and sweet dijon mustard glaze on porkchops. A true mountain man recently came into school to find out if anyone wanted and fresh high country honey. At 8 bucks for a 2 pound jar, I wasn't about to pass it up.

You can see the differences in the colors. That comes from different varieties of flowers. Pretty cool hey? The guy that brought in the one on the left informed me that the lighter the color is, the sweeter the honey tastes. Let me tell you what, I poured a little on my finger and it was phenomenal!!!! This stuff is AWESOME!!

Try some honey on your favorite snacks, it's an awesome source of natural sugars!!

Just like Grandma's....

OK! So on Sunday night I had a First! There have been a few firsts since we have moved to Colorado, but this was a different kind of first. I made my first pie! PIE!

I love pie!, apple, blackberry, RHUBARB, strawberry, strawberry rhubarb, among others. My grandma Brummer always makes the best pies, and Grandma Pruemer makes a mean strawberry pie not to mention Natalie's pies. The only problem with Natalie making some of them is that she just makes them and then I have to eat the whole thing (i hate that....), cause she doesn't want to try her rhubarb. SO I had a lot to live up to!

A co-worker brought in a bucket full of apples from a tree in her yard, so I asked Natalie if she could help me make an apple pie. Nads being the wonderful wife that she is say's, "of course dear, I will help you make a pie." ahhhh how sweet!.....

1st peel the apple's...... (This is where that Pampered Chef crap, that I tried to make Natalie get rid of at the garage sale,
comes in handy.)




















Then slice the apples in pieces. (also a nice pampered chef tool) :)



















After slicing the apples, I placed them in a big bowl (pampered chef) with some sugar, whole wheat flour and cinnamon.












Next was rolling out the dough. I first tried this with whole wheat flour, but the dough didn't roll out correctly. So.... I had to go to the store to pick up some all-purpose flour. This worked like a charm.

Natalie showed me how to roll the pie crust onto the rolling pin and then lay it out onto the pie plate. Worked like a charm.

Whad'ya know, but my pie turned out. Since it was now about 8:30 or so and I am getting old, I had to get to bed. (actually because I needed to get up at 4:45 to go work out) I didn't get to try any of my precious pie. But the next day I took it to school to share with our awesome staff! I of course had the first piece and I thought I had done a pretty awesome job! As you can see, it looks pretty amazing. The golden crust is my specialty!!!! Look at that smile... think I was excited????

EPIC:

EPIC:

Adj.

1.

epic - very imposing or impressive; surpassing the ordinary (especially in size or scale); "an epic voyage"; "of heroic proportions"; "heroic sculpture"

WOW!.... A co-worker/new friend invited me to do this ride with him and his buddy this week. It was a point to point ride, requiring a vehicle at both ends. They picked me up at about 7:30 this a.m. We drove up to drop a truck off in Minturn which would be the end of our ride, then all hopped in with James and drove to the top of Vail Pass, which was about another 15-20 minutes up I-70. The ride was Vail Pass to Minturn via the Boarman shortcut and Two Elks Trail. We parked at the top of Vail Pass and started off on dirt road at about 8:30ish with a temp of 38 degrees and about 10,500 ft in elevation. We climbed about 2 miles on the dirt/rock road until we came to a singletrack (Boarmans Shortcut). After hitting the singletrack we climbed for another 3-4 miles before topping out at TOP OF THE WORLD.

It was so hard to breathe up here. We live at around 6,600 ft, but there is a huge difference between 6,600 ft and 11 or 12,000 ft. There were many short steep hills that just sucked the energy out of ya and left you gasping for air! And after every short steep hill, you transferred to long gradual hills, so there wasn't really much opportunity to recover. But man, the views were incredible! From where we were you could see 60-70 miles in any direction and the colors are absolutely incredible!

From the Top of the World we then had some rolling singletrack and a bit more uphill. The rest of the ride was pretty much rolling, some climbing, some amazing downhills, and lots more beautiful scenery. After we were done climbing, we had a short steep and technical downhill for a bit, out into a beautiful meadow. By this time we were in the backbowls of VAIL.

We had a nice long downhill to navigate through one of the back bowls. James and I were bombing down it, at one point I went through a little dip and thought I had broken my fork. Kinda took me by suprise. Came up on two other bikers, and the guy wouldn't let me pass even after I asked him, so I just went off trail and went around him. We were doing about 20-25 all the way down this 3-4 mile downhill. Just really feeling it and getting in the groove... becoming one with our bikes.... What an amazing feeling until... I must have cased my back tire on a rock cause about a 1/2 mile from the bottom I flatted. I took about 4-5 minutes to change the tire while James went on to the planned stop at ORIENT Express Chairlift (pg 2 of that map). I changed my tire and waited about another 5 minutes for Jeff, the other guy with us. After I had waited so long and he still wasn't coming I knew that something had probably happened. The SLOW guys that I had passed finally came by and told me that my buddy had cracked his frame in half. I thought OH NO! We were about 6-7 miles from any kind of town, so a long hike carrying a broken bike. I went back to check on him and here is what I found....

After helping him load what was left of his "bike" I took off to find James. He had been concerned because at this point it had been about 25 minutes that he had been waiting. After informing him that Jeff was ok, we went to the meeting point to wait for him and take some pics of him hiking while carrying his bike. I know it wasn't funny at the moment, but it was kind of comical looking back on it.
While wondering what we were going to do about this SNAFU, we saw a white VAIL resorts truck go by (a worker getting the lifts ready for operation). Somebody suggested that someone should chase him down, and me being the eager beaver and ready to do some good, I hop on my trusty steed and start bombing down this dirt road at about 30 mph (EMERGENCY HERE PEOPLE!) I caught up with the truck and explained to him the situation and he said sure he would help. He gave me a ride back up to where I had come from and gave Jeff a ride to the ski aid station where someone else gave him a ride back to Vail Village where we would pick him up in a bit. Meanwhile we still had about 5 miles of SWEET and TECHNICAL!!!! downhill to hit on the way to Minturn. This section of downhill was the most TECHNICAL I have ever been on. Lots of large rocks to navigate, (and a beaver dam to cross...) This whole downhill section took us a while and was very challenging, prompting James at one point to "jump" over the handlebars and land on his back to stare at the cloudy sky above. On the left side of the trail was a straight drop to the stream below, and on the right beautiful colors of the Aspens. Several times I tried to sneak a peak to the stream below and almost ran my bike off the cliff straight into the stream (FOCUS NICK!)

James and I made it down in fine shape. It started snowing close to the bottom, we picked up Jeff's truck in Minturn, drove up to Vail to pick up Jeff, then drove up to the top of Vail Pass to get James's truck. Then headed home to a nice warm house where Natalie had informed me that all the work was done and all I had to do was come home and drink a beer with her and the dogs. What a Perfect Day!


I would highly recommend this ride, and will be for sure to take any visitors on it that come out to ride. Although since it is in the high country (all above 10,000 ft) it is only open for about 4-5 months of the year. I would say that now (fall) is by far the best time to do it. It was an awesome and gorgeous ride! An EPIC ride for sure!