Laughter: A Self-Preserving Evolutionary Mechanism in Mammalian neuro-Adaptation during the last Ice Age

holee shmokes. i'm in a malaise-fed, faulkneresque, non-sequitor, miscellaneous rambling mode. whenever the age of mammals flourished some 1.whatever millions of years ago, the ones that didn't make the split were the ones that couldn't laugh (or find anything funny). case in point: i, being a non-lactating mammal, am in the middle of a mean bout of gastro-intestinal distress (read: da shizzles). i got it after my moab trip. the headaches and spaciness are gone but the diahrhea and deregulated thermostatic responses are still full throttle. so when i'm not in bed reading and drinking non-sweetened green tea, i'm going to the john and peeing out my boom-boom. yes i'm hurting and feeling malaise but the sounds that resonate from the porcelain are funny. daz right, funny. at first it sounded like an i.a.d (as opposed to an i.e.d.)which is an improvised assassinating device. even when sick it still brought a smile, even a laugh occasionally to me. now it just sounds like an impassioned bratwurst-eater eager to blast some spicy mustard from its half-used container onto his portable feast (yes, sometimes air interrupts the colloidal suspension's flow). i guess i could've gone to work (i'm losing my voice now, and my left, middle-ear's clogged) but i would've been under the influence of random and numerous, spontaneous code browns. how embarrasing would that be for me (but deep inside, that's funny)? okay, as for mammalian neuro-adaptations (this is only my theory), imagine the first caveperson. imagine him/her sitting in their cave eating some choice mastodon meat cooked by fire (i'm a vegetarian, but that's not the point now). now imagine them liberating a noisy air biscuit. i propose to you: the one who laughed at their methanogous, exothermicity would've been the ones better adapted to the ice-age challenge(s). they would've found more meaning from their mundane existence and increased value to their perceived meaningless lives. why? because of their ability to place an abstraction onto something mundane (the farties) which releases endorphins (or some other neuro-chemical designed for happiness/elation). i say self-preservation because no body else would find it funny except for, maybe, british cavepeople who would've worked themselves into a stitch. oh. read the life of pi by yann martel. it's great, slightly educational, and it uses the occasional big word that you have to look up so you sound reasonably intelligent next time you're at a social gathering....
ps. alec hooked me up with these two sonic gems: thom yorke's the eraser and the flaming lips' the soft bulletin. as yoda would say, "lovely they are..."
pps. read the writeup i have on life of pi on previous blog entry.

Moab, Utah

the drive out to moab began super early. woke up at three so that i could be at hez-billy's place at 5 in the a.m. when i warmed up the car there was at least three inches of new snow that fell the night before. i checked my cell phone to see if there was a message from hez-billy saying that he wanted to cancel the trip. but no such luck so i take my tired, cold self down the hill...
once we pick up kevin and get rolling there's some avalanche preventative shizzle going on on i-70 that shuts it down just west of the eisenhower tunnel for at least an hour. that sucked. was not a good sign and we were all tired from getting up so early. 7 hours later, we arrive. the sun's shining and it's close to sixty degrees. ah yeauh.
hez-billy has a mountain biking book from moab mike or something or another and from perusing it, he suggests a trail called top of the world. it's a 22 miler but we drive in 5 and a half to cheat a bit. it's a 2.5k feet climb with spectacular views. it was at such dizzying heights, i had to crawl just to peer over the edge. with about two miles left to summit, snow was our biggest obstacle and we said that the downhill's going to be sloppy yet technical. basically we were just shooting in-between the snow melt so that our tires can grab wet rock underneath. scary. billy and kevin are climbing real clean (clean or cleaning is a mt biking term used to describe people who can pedal up or coast down technical spots on the trail) and steady while i'm dabbing like crazy trying to get my rear, bald-assed (i didn't change it out for slickrock) tire to hook up on the lifts (shelf-like rock ledges). at the summit, it's surreal. the funny thing about this picture is that everybody looks so non-plussed but it's easily a 3k foot drop to the valley floor. kevin noticed that billy's sidewall had a cut therefore he patched it a la vulcanization. look at the background, horizon action. unreal. that's me standing over the ledge where billy and kevin's having a relaxed conversation 3K feet above groundlevel.
on the way down, it's friendly downhill competition. i have a hardtail whereas hez-billy and kev have a dual boinger. so, i have to pick my lines carefully and dem bastidges pretty much point and shoot. kevin takes the lead because billy and i can't go that fast down. kevin takes off like a rocket and takes some pretty tough lines that i can't follow because i like, like my spinal chord? anyhoo he waits for us to catch up and we go again. once we're out of the snowline, i shorten the gap through some technical spots (baby heads, tree roots and nutty valleys formed by the congregations of huge, slabby, irregularly-sized pieces of rock). every now and again on the trail there's these nutty moonrock sections that i can't control my bike because it's bucking like a bronco and i don't want to ehf myself or my bike (up!). these parts is where kevin pedals in the middle ring and i'm hanging on for dear life. i catch up again, he pedals harder and there's this lefty, switchback coming up. i wanna hit it like a roady (outside-inside-outside), apex turning and he crushes a huge gear right through the middle. once i hit the inside, my tire gets sucked in by that crazy wet, red, silty fruita/moab dirt/clay and i have to throw my feet over my handlebars to jump off my crashing yeti. it was awesome fun and kevin hits some of this same mud near our car (billy's sweet, honda ridgeline actually) at the bottom. i thought he was resting on the ground, he said, "the mud grabbed my front tire too." it was a sweet ride: the top o' the world. at the bottom is a nationally registered historical site for the world's whatever suspension bridge built in 1916. the dewey (suspension) bridge it's called. history and a good ride, this moab is great!
unbeknownst to us, president's day is a pretty busy time for moab. as well as the four-wheelers, there was also a cowboy poetry convention going on too. we had a hard time finding lodging, until betty hooked us up. betty owns the westwood guest house on 81 E. 100 South. $55. what we got was a three bed, suite with lots of hot running water. it was the dealio. i think billy best said it when he said the theme this time is off the beaten path. we then went to city market to eat like no other and grab a starbucks.
the next day we try and find the sovereign trail but we're trying to find our original path from last time. where we were, we couldn't hit it and billy said, "well, here's part of the sovereign trail we didn't do. we can either try and find the original one, or, here's the map..." we do it and it turns out to be amazing. the trail's nice and hardpacked, the climbs doable (billy was again a cleaning machine) and the downhill switchbacks remotely safe. the sun was again shining brightly and in the sixties. that's kevin, sandwiched between a rock and a hard place. we see some nutty rock formations and check out this singletrack climb...this part of the sovereign's like a saddle. once we get to the end we can either trace back our path or head back on the road. since a cold front's coming in, we head back on the road. billy, did a superman crash at the end of the trail. notice the scrapes on his forearms. i don't think we've ever had a bad day in moab. i am currently sick as a dog writing this. hopefully kev and billy aren't experiencing what i have. check out the rest of the pictures on my photosite url.
addendum: the life of pi gets a b-. ever watch a wim wenders movie (pronounced Vim Venders)? well, it has such an ambitious, promising start then it goes tangentially ill. still, very clever, very creative but i thought i could head it off at the pass. i was remotely and pleasantly surprised by the ending though...won't spoil it for you. it's still worth reading.

I Rode Both Days this Weekend!

'bout damn time! yup. the weather finally was agreeable, no snow, and i hit the road bike outside. first time since october. called up my teammate and buddy chris at 7:30 on a saturday morning. he was still asleep. here's chris' deal: chris is a good boy who's getting his masters in mechanical engineering. after that he plans to either live in australia or paris. as a teammate he is vertically challenged but if the course profile's flat, he does a real good impression of the tgv. he's one of the most charitable fellows i know as well. on team rides if someone's hurting he'll be the first one to drop off the back and pace 'em back to the pack or back home for that matter. his sense of humor is kinda wacked too, that's why i like him. his girly-girl, kendra (who's also pretty cool), just left for australia. they both have a bad case of the wanderlust so when kendra heard of a job opening, she left and has a house to live in for a while with good friends until she can find her own joint. i believe one of her housemates is an american. anyhoo, when i arrived at chris' joint he was telling me of how aussies don't like to have shizzle mailed to their country if it exceeds a certain proportionate girth. they'll take it but it'll cost you; for example, he wanted to mail her bike in a bike box and it would cost $500. damn those former penal colonial british bastidges. speaking of which, that john howard individual rhetorically bashing on mr. o'bama is pretty uncool as the spineless prime minister of said country...
once we role, i forget to mount my fender. i ask chris and he says, "nah, but you'll be as wet as me." i listened but it was a bad decision. nothing like road grime on your cycling kit and water in your bum to keep your chamois nice and damp.
on the cherry creek bike path we ride and it's waterway central. so i do my organic impression of a fender, whenever i see a puddle ahead, by putting my hand (palm out) in front of my bum crack as a barrier to hydrogen hydroxide. over time, during the two hour ride, my gloved, right-hand gets sopping wet. we hit some icy patches but if your confidence is up and you have some speed, you slide in a straight line right over it. some patches are super long and we dismount. after the second ice patch, a girl in a texas jersey rides over the patch i just walked. i find out she's a newly transplanted texan, who graduated from texas, and is a bit planner for kosi and some other local station. chris and i invited her on the ride to the golden (,co) starbucks. on our rides, chris, who's a talker, makes for interesting conversations. i remember one time when chris and i met kenny l. at his new place for a ride, chris tore into a diatribe against homophobic, sanctimonious, fundamentalist christians invoked by kenny's annoyance of his district's voting habits. it was both funny and protracted at the same time. that's why we love him that christopher. we get back at chris' and we mutually admire our efforts and the thermal righteousness involved during our vitamin d synthesis due to exposure to sunlight. this was our first ride (back) since the october (november, december and counting...) blizzards of '06.
sunday would be a short, solo ride because my in-laws, who're awesome by the way, were coming over for dinner. i do the lookout mountain loop starting from morrison: up lookout, down the i-70 frontage road, pass red rocks, back into morrison. i do my cardinal sin of riding with an ipod. what's playing currently are these lovely pieces of sonic candy: fountains of wayne's welcome interstate managers, tv on the radio's return to cookie mountain, and my chemical romance's the black parade.
fountains of wayne is pop in its most glorious form. yeah the lyrics aren't deep but it sure does have some nice hooks. see alec's review for tv on the radio. and lastly my chemical romance draws from heavy, past greats like the who's quadrophenia, the beatle's sgt. peppers, pink floyd's the wall, with some c/overt queen-esque style guitar licks and vocals. my goal on sunday was to go fat burning pace and climb lookout in my penultimate granny gear (39x19), just in case i have to bail. on my way up during some switchbacky portions, i see this chump trying to chase me down. i don't pick up the pace because i don't want to become poisoned by testosterone (one guy riding it's a ride; two guys riding-especially if one's unknown-it's a race). i don't mind someone drafting off me but when they start half-wheeling me, it's annoying. pack protocol requires alternating leads so all can benefit from the slipstream. he doesn't. therefore, i mentally prepare myself to put the smackdown once the finish line is near (it's the buffalo bill grave sign marker). at this point, near the top with about 500 meters to go, the sun's at our backs and i can see his shadow's hydro encephalitic head bobbing like a metronome behind me. it's getting close, 200 or so to go, so i drop it a couple of gears (i don't hear him breathing to gauge his intensity because of my earbuds on) and i still see his gargantuan mellon bobbing behind me. after the last switchback it's less than a 100 meters to the sign and i slap it on the big ring and do a poor impersonation of the lion king, mario cipollini. no shadow. i win. poseur loses. ah yeauh. i wanted to yell (but didn't), "you got hosed by a 40-year old fat guy who rides twice a week, beeyahhtch!" testosterone poisoning has occurred. shnap.
here's why i ride: riding and meditating (two things i wish i could do more of) accomplishes the same thing - a quieting of the mind. contradictorily, in meditation you're as mellow as can be, but cycling's the opposite because you're active (duh!). how cycling quiets the mind-for me at least-is when the pilot's one with the bike. when the pedaling cadence is in-sync with your breathing rate that's also in-sync with your heart rate a magical thing occurs in your brain. i refer it to "white noise" for you stereophiles. it's soothing and elating at the same time. when all levels of cycling are achieved on the bike like: a mechanically sound (when i say "sound" she should be pretty quiet) steed, perceived effort of intensity's attenuated, all rhythmic components synchronized, it all adds up to an illuminating experience. like any esoteric sport (stuff the major networks don't show), talking about the highs are like speaking a foreign language to the unenlightened.
ps. the picture above is what i think's the most magical place in colorado: crested butte. as my boy javier can attest, this picture is of the elk mountain range on the road up to gothic, to mountain bike trail 401 or schoefield's pass. if you continue up the pass, and there's no avalanche blocking your progress it'll eventually drop you into aspen (not the most magical place in colorado).

Went To Work On My Off-day

i'm going to preface this with, be on the lookout for stream of consciousness bits. today was a comp day for one of our parent teacher conferences. it was also the day after an arctic cold front visited colorado. the low last night was -9 and we're going to be in a cold snap til tuesday. i'm taking the kids to school today but it was so ungodly cold, i took melissa's suggestion to sleep in a bit and wait til traffic settles down. being stationed in germany made me somewhat used to driving in black ice but here? you'd like to think that seasoned coloradoans can drive but law of averages says different. the mountain folk here are pretty mellow in snow and ice. they definitely follow the rule of slower traffice best be in the left lane. almost nascar like when the weather gets better...
i made plans to meet my colleagues (one, nicknamed lawrencium after the element and chris) at work to construct a common assessment for our evolution unit (that's right, take that kansas board of education). my kids ask when i talk about evolution, "what do you believe in?" i tell them i like the buddhist way of thinking. this elicits more questions and i tell them get this: your version of truth might not be everybody else's version of the truth and you have to be tolerant of other peoples beliefs. then i tell them i'm going to test you all on this material so we might as well make it a pleasant experience for all. i also tell them, "yes it's a theory but it's a theory you can take to the bank, or credit union if you're a public employee." at worst, they try to play stump the chump with me and i avert a theological battle in the classroom by crushing them morally (not really).
before i arrive to work i check out the local music place with plans on purchasing the arctic monkeys latest cd. for grins and giggles i check out the used section and score: i see beth orton's central reservation (she's a brit you know) and neko case's fox confessor brings the flood. if you haven't heard these cd's the music is amazing. beth orton's like an english rickie lee jones whose music is layered and slightly bluesy and neko case has this am radio sounding version reminiscent of june carter cash in her heyday.
i dig my colleagues. before our latest incarnation of the science department there was one acquaintance who was poison. being a great teacher doesn't make you socially adroit. for her, these two qualities were inversely proportionate. in fact when she wasn't teaching masterfully she was sabotaging somebody else's good name (or ratting them out to administration if they rubbed her wrong). what a toxic combination she was in our mix. i'm glad she left. she didn't retire, but if she came back i'd like to be on the hiring committee to wholeheartedly not recommend her. what a backstabbing, duplicitous person she was.
my goal in the office was to knock out this common assessment on scientific method and to finish grading my test. did both and enjoyed their company over lunch. over time you get know your colleagues. for instance, you know which ones to treat professionally versus friendly and which ones are as tilted as you. teachers are predominantly women but our department is mostly men so our manners sometimes are lacking (and/or amplified). larry's as tilted as me and he's a science geek too. our whole department takes pride in being geeks. chris is a newbie and he's teacher of the year material as well as being an all-around good guy. we finish our assessment and it's a creative, skills based activity with a CSAP-style response. as teachers we have our own personality and it's that that drives our teaching style and work ethic. some have no personal life. some have no kids so they work and make people feel guilty when they bellyache about going in during the weekend. i feel sorry for the ones with kids and work like indentured servants. it's wrong to treat your clients better than your own kin. i have a family, so, when i work my 9-hour day, i leave or else it's hell to pay on my 53 mile commute to pick up my kids and head home. on the way in that morning, i use my ninja like skills to check out the front office to see if they have any doughnuts from their morning pow-wow. no luck, so i fill up my water bottle. i see the principal (who's the shizzle) and for talk sake i ask her if i can do doughnuts in the staff parking lot. she says, "sure". so when i leave i hit the skinny pedal and turn my wheels. i suck at doughnuts. need more practice. chris saw me and we both weren't impressed.
i arrive home and this is what i saw on my thermometer. the top number's the interior and the bottom number's for outside. yup. gotta start that fireplace and cook dinner. tonight we have home made french fries and egg salad on english muffins.

Yup. We live in Colorado...

it was an indescribable day. it was filled with good omens, endorphin poppin' ski-action with good company (alec), sunny skies, and an even gooder (remember i learnt english in tejas) time with the family checking out the whatever annual breckenridge international snow sculpture championships. friday, the day before, was spent checking the noaa website for weather the drive up saturday morning. it forecasted snow last night and a front coming in breck at 11am with gusts up to 39 mph and wind (ch)ill factors ranging from -1 to 3 degrees fahrenheit. we considered bagging it but then we figured skiing is like sex and/or pizza. it might be bad pizza and/or sex but it's still that.
we rendezvous at the evergreen park and ride across from el rancho. the weather is just like noaa forecasted coupled with an atypical amount of traffic volume at i-70, 6:30 in the morning right before floyd hill. not a good start and alec was coming down with the sniffles (ahhh, the joys of being a secondary ed. teacher). good omen numero uno (das right, i'm bilingual and shizzle), after the winterpark turnoff, almost no traffic. good omen dos, we see blue skies behind the eisenhower tunnel. good omen tres, the gondola at the no-longer-free-parking-it-costs-ten-bucks-now is running and we park right underneath it. good omen quattro (i used to own an s-car audi so when i write or say, "quattro" i get all teary eyed) we are first in line at the gondola. all good things unfortunately must come to an end. when alec and i were in the gondola i began to get my gear dialed-in, which included zipping my pant leg over the cuff of my boot. get this, the plastic, male portion of the zipper that inserts into the female portion of the actual zipper, sheared off. and like a dodo, i pull on it and all the zippered portions are now coming unzipped. i bought these pants in the 90s and i don't know what they were thinking with a full zip on the lateral part of the leg up to the waist. anyhoo i was intrigued by the unzipping pattern and by the time i stopped pulling it, my freaking long johns were showing all the way up to my outer thigh. i was wearing my baby blue long johns too (cute for your honey but not to the general public--oi vay). i tried in vane to line up the teeth but alas it was to no avail. so here i am in the gondola with my left leg exposed, showing my baby blue long johns. luckily there was a clothing place at the foot of breck where i purchased some obermeyers that's slightly too big for me (i need a small instead of a medium, oh well).
we do some warm up stuff and over the prime bowl areas we see some clouds start to roll in. so we figure we better hit that stuff now before they close the access lifts for those areas. when we get to the imperial summit, there's a line of people portaging their skis to get to the extreme area (chutes and the 3 or 4 or so bowls back there). i'm not the type who seeks this type of terrain (but hopes that the group doesn't do groomers) but i figure what the heck, alec is a pretty accomplished skier, and we ski within our skill level (if not a smidge past it to get better). if you notice on the picture, the path up is already notched by previous skiers jamming their extruded toe portion of their boot into the snow. on the way up (alec's behind me), we see this ski-hiker fall and i swear while she's actively falling she has this non-plussed look on her face and attitude and is actually talking to the ascending skiers while she's sliding down (saying stuff like she's okay and she'll try it again). it was all slow motion and nutty to boot. alec and i saw the same nuances on this girl and it was straaaange. it looked like the hilary step because of the log jam it caused. the pause in the ascension was due to the some off-camber rocks on the path. if you didn't step way past the little rock abutments in the path, the angle of incidence of your step might be enough to rebound you backwards, or to slip (which was homegirl's case). get this, we're already leaning mightily forward. i was envious of alec's ski-specific camelback that had straps to portage skis. he used his poles as outriggers whereas i right-shouldered my dynastars (thank-you javier), and jammed my two poles in the baked snow, with my left hand, to give my steps a contra-lateral shove-off. it was a physiological feat (no pun intended) to hike in snowboots, carrying gear at mid-11k feet. when we got to the top, alec's spigot (on the camelback) was on and water leaked onto his whole right side. it looked like the abominable snowman spritzed on him to mark him as part of his property (look closely, you can see it on the picture). alec dropped-in first and rocked it and yours truly did likewise. we thought it would be a hop and turn gig all the way down. we were pleasantly surprised by how styrofoam-like the snow was and there was no need to hop-turn. the skis contacted the snow the entire time and it was telegraphic between the brain, ski, movement, snow and the carve. in our mind's eye, it was like we were starring in our own ski video. yes our thighs were burning but you should've seen the smiles on our faces. incidentally, road cycling has no crossover fringe benefits leg-wise in skiing, but holy mackeral that run was sublime...
round two, we do the opposite bowl and we don't have to hike up steep terrain. at 11.5k feet, it's colorado's treeline and at this level, it's all scree. were we want to go, it looks like a saddle (side-view) so we tuck the downhill and portage our skis the rest of the way up, by now we're walking the ridge line. we don't know which bowl to hit so we ask another skier which one has the best snow. seems confident it's this a-way so we follow him. we take off our skis again to walk over a scree field. then lo and behold, like moses looking at the promised land, we see this palavacchini-steep run that's 20x longer with no hidden rocks (here, the rocks are large and conspicuous), and on a bowl, check out the picture. if you've been to the grand canyon and look over the precipice, your body feels like it's entered some electric void. this is how we felt. pictures do it no justice. it was steeper than the imperial chutes, but it was a bowl, so again we turned often and quickly to keep our speed in check and the snow was again, styrofoam-like. good omen cinco: 11am rolled around and the skies were as blue as a colorado day in june. fast forward our break and some mogully attempts but we're jonesing again for that latter bowl run. my legs are cramping so alec agrees to call it quits, for my sake, once we finish this run and i can meet melissa and my kids for the ice sculptures. this time at the top of the saddle the wind is greater than or equal to, gale force winds. the people in front of us (and we) were being buffeted. we thought if it were any stronger we would be blown off the ridge line. all of us had to stop, face leeward and make our ski's surface area as small as possible because they were acting like sails, not to mention we were getting a bead blasted paint job on all exposed skin due to the snow pommeling us. nuhh-teee. once the wind died down, we hit it again and the endorphins are flooding us, and my cramps are telling me to head on down (which we do). on the gondola ride back, euphoria is oozing out of our pores. good omen sies: no one's manning the parking booth when we leave, therefore it's free. after alec and i do our oh so masculine goodbyes, he drops me off in town, i hook up with my family, have a nice lunch and check out the ice sculptures. wow. somebody pinch me....
ps. we're tied for sixth currently in our state's top ten of days snowed, which is 32 (and counting).
check out the rest of the pics on that glorious day on my photosite url.

Round 5

okay, we moved out here because we actually like snow, but now i have to be more specific: i officially don't like accumulating snow especially when its sooo windy it creates drifts that are a pain to shovel. we already received 9" with another 3-5" more tonight. hopefully school'll be cancelled. that would be a nice surprise. my neighbor and i did some plowing (me shoveling). the important things were to clear the mailboxes. our postal service dude is kind of on his own schedule.
going a wee bit stir crazy. burned a lot of wood today and shoveled a path to our shed for more wood because the 39 mph gusts blew snow over my old, shoveled paths. was going to ride the rollers, but the shoveling was my workout. if you notice on the picture the snow's actually blowing sideways. i snapped the other picture of the girls hugging ruby, the airedale terrier/dane mix when we were all playing upstairs with the musical instruments. noaa says after tomorrow the highs'll be in the upper 30s here. about time.... the crazy part is, march is the snowiest month.

ennui=hooooweeeeeeeee!!

as a dad living up at 8800 feet and socked in snow except where i dug pathways for places like the shed for firewood and the barn as a holding area for junk, weekends can be pretty mundane. but today, the girls are skating this morning at evergreen lake and later going to grandma/grandpa's house and onto the national western stockshow. that means i get to spend time with my boy, mason, today. on tap for today (hope you're sitting down!) is: grocery shopping (oh snap!), going to the jefferson county library to peruse their kids books and cds(who needs iTunes?), cleaning the hizzouse (sorry, i listen to too much rap), AND nap time (aaaaw-shite!).
alone time with one kid is good for me and mason because when all the kids are together it might could spell disaster (sorry i learned my english in texas)if they choose to use their powers for evil instead of good. so, when it's one-on-one time it's special for both parent and child (that's me and mason if you didn't catch that).
my special time today, if i don't lame-out (there's a 50 percent chance of that happening unfortunately), is snowshoeing with mason on the kid kelty backpack, or dragging him on his sled a la rickshaw-action with my hounds in our backyard. we moved from lowry in denver to a 5-acre lot zoned for horses in conifer to escape the keeping-up-with-the-joneses mentality of that area (albeit it had all the conveniences a yuppy could ask for!) and live a more quality, natural life, surrounded by trees where you can't see your next-door neighbor, along with the cast from the movie "deliverance".
what's cool with mason is that he naps. when he naps, daddy naps. or, when masy-mase is napping (you get nutty nicknames for your kids, if you don't have kids that privilege goes to your pet monikers), and if i'm feeling like a cyclist, i might could hop on the rollers and watch the 1998 tour de france for the 90th time and pretend to chase the doper marco pantani up alpe d'huez. i think that's french for "up yours".
the top, left picture is of the girls all duded out for the national western stockshow. the middle picture is of the dreaded rollers that are wearing out my tires like no other (that's my son in the foreground). and the bottom picture is of our backyard. gone are the days of looking into my neighbors yards at lowry (although they were great acquaintances). here's some non-sequitors: the last great book i read was "the places in between" by rory stewart. excellent read, and if i was more secure with my masculinity i would've cried. and currently i'm liking a cd called "blue cathedral" by a band called comets on fire and method man's "4:21...the day after" listen to the latter if your subwoofer needs a workout. the cds were courtesy of the jeffco county library. they're awesome by the way.
tentatively, my friends and i are planning a trip to moab. the cast: kenny l. (not to be confused with kenny g.), hez-billy (teacher of the year and all around yoda master), grunt (formerly known as the artist grant and former college roommate), and alec (a newbie in our science department and a grasshopper in the world of off-road cycling). if it's too cold in moab we'll do the roadie-thang 'round boulder and hopefully won't anger too many hillbillies in their diesel belching dualies. i guess it's the sight of grown men in lycra sporting the purple and orange of the vitamin cottage racing team that gets their adrenalin pumping. speaking of which, i just received via the usps my annual race application renewal form...