New Years Eve day walk

Cold 34° and windy Tuesday afternoon walk at South Platte Reservoir. I had numb hands and cheeks after just a minute or two. Happy New Year’s Eve day!

We think we saw a Common Goldeneye on the reservoir. Fun! 

Beginning of decorating

We started decorating the house for the Christmas holiday today. The kitties have been paying close attention to all the changes. 

Rufus exploring the tree skirt 

Bean checking out the nutcrackers

Rufus getting in the way in the kitchen

Rufus in an ornament box

Christmas tree with lights in the breakfast nook

Christmas tree needles and lights

Christmas tree in the front yard with lights and snow

 

Oops... I tried a different way of getting photos into here, which seemed to work OK... but I just noticed that this method doesn't set them up with the feature that lets us click on them to see them bigger. I like that feature! I guess I'll need to re-think how I'm doing this...

Happy Thanksgiving!

 Wishing you a Happy Thanksgiving 2024! I took “the girls” out to a Thanksgiving buffet, at the Garden Terrace Café, in the Inverness Hotel, about 20 minutes from here. We had a wonderful Thanksgiving dinner! And no cleanup! No leftovers, either...

Saturday bike ride

 

With cold weather and snow in the forecast, this might be my last bike ride of the season. 

I am hoping to sneak out whenever it gets sunny enough to dry out the trails. We’ll see…

Friday ride

Fun to get back in the saddle for a Friday ride, after being away for awhile. l had a chance encounter with a squirrel running through my front wheel, or maybe just behind it. It happened so fast, I barely caught a flash of movement out of the corner of my left eye, then heard/felt some frantic activity underneath me, before everything quieted down and I continued with my ride. I’ve heard of this kind of thing resulting in serious injury and worse, so I’m feeling pretty lucky. 🤷‍♂️ 

Sharing a few photos from today…

Fall colors have arrived in our view from the breakfast table. 

Snowy Egret on a rock in the South Platte River. 

Cormorant on a rock by rapids in the South Platte River. 

Cycling event organizers taking down some of their signs after an event. 

Railroad tracks curving toward Denver, with the Rocky Mountains in the background. 

I’m seeing more red leaves along my bike rides. 

Purple and green colors along the Highline Canal Trail. 

Pleasant view of fence and fall color along the Lee Gulch trail. 

A little flash of red beside the Highline Canal Trail. 

Pretty reflections on the lake at Sterne Park during an after-dinner walk with our neighbors. 

Crested Butte

We drove to the little town of Crested Butte this week, and did a little exploring and fall color viewing. 

The town is nestled in the shadow of Mt Crested Butte, 

A photo from our delightful Monday scenic Colorado drive through Kenosha Pass…

Spectacular view from Cottonwood Pass. 

We tried a shortcut that put us on a rutted dirt road for a dozen or so miles. Not expected, but also not too bad. 

Saw some more colorful flora and some striking mountain peaks. 

Finished our Monday with a short walk to Secret Stash Pizza for a pesto pizza for dinner, and a great sunset.

Cool 35° Tuesday morning walk in Crested Butte

Tuesday afternoon drive over Kebler Pass to Paonia, for some great views and a delicious late lunch at Rio Brava.

Wednesday afternoon hike on Mt Crested Butte — we got some exercise, checked out the ski area, and saw lots of the Colorado Fall color!

Sunday ride

I got buzzed by a C-130 Hercules at the beginning of my warm 87° Sunday bike ride, then they kept coming around in circles, so I finally stopped to take some photos. 

I caught a few pics of sailboats and storm clouds, as I was making my way around the lake. 

More sailboats on Chatfield lake. I heard a series of warning horn blasts about this time, I’m guessing they were warning the boaters about some approaching storm cells.

At my midpoint hydration stop, I encountered a young man with a disabled bicycle and a bike trailer with two pug dogs in it, that were looking and sounding very thirsty. He’d already used up all of the water he was carrying, and was hoping to find a water fountain, with no luck so far, so I volunteered my water bottle to fill up their dog bowl. They were very happy. 

There were some dark looking storm clouds moving around the area, and on my final mile, I realized that one of those cells was racing me to my house, so I went into sprint mode, and I made it home about a minute before the rain hit.

After I got home, I used FlightAware to show me the track of that C-130. Presumably they were loitering over Littleton, until their moment to do a flyby of the Broncos game.

Trying Fedora 40

Every once in awhile, I boot my laptop computer into a different operating system - Fedora Linux. I miss my many work years of developing on a Linux system, with the command line terminals, the programming shells, and the VIM text editor, so I find it fun to step into a tiny version of that world, and see how things are going. 

I started messing with Linux at home in 2020, struggling a little with USB flash drives, trying to set one up with a bootable Linux image, and I eventually succeeded, but it was unbearably slow. It wasn't until later, that I discovered that some USB flash drives (including mine) don't support simultaneous reading and writing of data, which is an impossible constraint in a bootable disk. 

 

I resolved that issue completely, by setting up an external USB hard drive with a Fedora Linux boot image. I think back then, Fedora was at version 31, and I've been updating it occasionally, as they release a new version twice a year. My original installation, and the first few updates, were relatively complicated, but with clear instructions, and some helpful ISO boot image management programs like Rufus, I got through it. 

 

Last week, I updated my system to Fedora 40. Wow, what a difference. The update was pretty much painless, and the user experience is smooth and polished.

Freaky Friday

I hope you have a safe and fun Friday the 13th! It’s the first Friday the 13th of 2024, seen as one of the most unlucky days of the calendar year, a “spooky” reputation it earned centuries ago, although I had a positive experience on this day during my childhood, so I've always thought of it as a lucky day for me. This year will see the date occur twice, with the next one in December.

Thursday ride and repair

Hot and head-windy conditions for my Thursday bike ride. I was handling it ok, but then just to test my mettle a little more, my rear derailleur suddenly couldn’t access its two highest gears. While troubleshooting that in motion, I discovered that the front derailleur couldn’t shift out of its lowest gear. Hmm… 

I finally came upon a shady spot to continue my sleuthing, whereupon I found that the front derailleur shifter cable had pulled through its clamp. It was an easy fix, thanks to the compact multi-tool that I carry under my seat. 

After I got moving again, I encountered yet another rider who was having difficulty finding his way through the various trail discontinuities, and helped get him back on track a few times.

Remembering 9/11

The attack on New York's World Trade Center on September 11, 2001 was such a horrific event. In some ways it seems like forever ago, but it also feels like yesterday… I was on my way to work when I heard on the radio of the first aircraft impacting the North tower, but then the succeeding events of the attack played out in the news over the rest of the morning. My heart still races in protest, just thinking about it.

I haven’t been to the September 11th memorial and museum in New York, but I’m pretty sure I’d be too choked up to fully appreciate the experience.

We lit an all-day candle this morning, in memory of those who didn’t make it past that day, 23 years ago…