South Boulder Peak

A few weeks ago, I talked Patrick into going on an impromptu hike and he talked me into climbing a mountain. When I was convincing him on a Sunday morning that it would be a lovely day for a hike, I thought we would do an easy jaunt that would take us about 2-3 hours. I've never been a person to summit anything. I don't care about getting to the top or working too hard... I usually just hike to be outside and enjoy the scenery. We did a little research for hikes close to our house and found some great trails just a 10 min drive away. Packed a few snacks and we were out the door.

Our hike started out leisurely enough. We crossed a bubbling river and headed into the open meadows that climbed the slope of the foothills. The trail gradually began to climb through the meadow and into the canyon. There were beautiful butterflies and wildflowers lining the trail and for a short distance the trail closely paralleled the creek coming down the slope. Once in the canyon, the trail widened and we were looking straight up at two peaks: Bear Peak and South Boulder Peak. Off to the left was a very tall spire with very brave people dangling from it. You could hear them yelling to each other and the chink of their gear. It was a steady climb to this point and we were sweating in the sun, breathing hard from the exertion and the altitude.

We stopped for a break and I ate my snack. I'd brought a snack for both of us with the assumption that's all we would need for a 2-3 hour hike. I hadn't had a lot for breakfast that morning and I was starving, even after my snack. I knew Patrick wanted to continue, so I agreed to go a little further, thinking we would turn around soon. The trail started climbing at a steeper grade and we were in the shadows of big boulders and trees. We were taking giant-steps up knee-high rocks and having to take breaks more and more, our legs and lungs burning. Me, getting dizzy from time to time because I hadn't had enough to eat but also because we were gaining altitude and my lungs were working hard. We were about a mile away from the saddle where we would choose which peak to climb and I was pretty sure I wasn't going to make it to the top. By this time, it would be 3 hours until I got more food (Patrick had already let me eat his snack as well) and I didn't think I could wait that long. But I told Patrick that I wanted to get to the top and that was enough... He kept me going until my mind flipped over and I no longer just wanted to, I was determined.

When we got to the saddle, we took a break and looked at the map. We'd come this far, we figured we should go for the glory and summit the higher of the 2 peaks. We headed for South Boulder Peak and it only took an additional 15 minutes to get to the top. Once at the top, we climbed out on a ledge that dropped straight down, looking out to the west. From where I sat, you could see the golden great plains stretching to the eastern horizon and the green and blue valley below to the west, undulating towards the Rocky Mountains.

My heart rate slowed, my body cooled and my hunger subsided now that I wasn't working so hard. I was able to look out and enjoy the view and really appreciate the climb. We had hiked from 5,600 ft. to 8,600 ft. in 3 miles, the last 1.25 miles being just shy of a 2,000 ft. elevation gain. Patrick, all along, knew I could make it to the top. I knew I could make it to the top if I had had a bigger breakfast... but the body is amazing and can do anything if your mind is set. I've known this for a while, but it's always good to have a refresher. We can do anything if our mind is along for the ride.

That day, we hiked 5 1/2 hours. Not the longest day of hiking I've done but a very successful day of hiking... I made it to the summit. And now I get it. From our house, from the freeway to Patrick's work, from the grocery store, from the windows at the gym you can see our mountain (we later learned it's the highest peak in the Boulder Range) and every time I think "I can't believe I climbed that." I'm ready for another summit... and maybe the next one will be a littler higher...

Climbing through the meadow at the base of the foothills.

The spire in the middle of the picture is where people were rock climbing.

Patrick relaxing at the summit.

Enjoying the view. You can see the Rocky Mountains in the background.

Colorado Summer Lovin'

It's been a great and busy summer and now it's already August! I can't believe how quickly the summer has gone by. We haven't had time to do all the summer activities we wanted to but we've definitely gotten in a lot and had a great time doing them. Here are some pics from our Colorado summer:

As part of my birthday celebration, Patrick and I went to a Rockies/Red Sox game. We went early enough to see the Red Sox batting practice. We got to see all our favorite players up close and be surrounded by fellow Red Sox fans. Batting practice was probably my favorite part of the night.

The next night was my actual birthday and Patrick planned a night out in Boulder with our friends. We grabbed happy hour at what has now become one of our favorite spots. Then we had some wine at a wine bar and went to dinner at a wonderful restaurant. We were the last people to leave the restaurant, a sign of a great night. It wouldn't have been nearly as good without my wonderful husband planning it all or without the great friends celebrating with me.

After a pretty serious mountain biking accident 6 years ago in Jackson Hole, I never thought I would be willing to get on a bike again. This summer, however, Patrick was determined to get me back on a bike. We'd done a few small bike rides around the neighborhood and I had so much fun that I suggested we load the bikes on the car and explore some of the bike trails in the neighboring town of Lafayette. Patrick was surprised by my suggestion but totally thrilled. We had a great bike ride with some pretty big hills (which is my biggest fear since it was coming down a hill on a bike that I had my accident) and Patrick was impressed with how well I did. So, now, we try to do a bike ride every weekend and I'm loving it! Thanks to my husband for pushing me!

We did a great bike ride starting from our house that ended up being about a 14 mile ride roundtrip. We were both so proud of me because there were lots of big rocks and things to navigate around. Not to mention the signs warning you of rattlesnacks, but I just took a deep breath and did it all and had a great time doing it.

A view towards Denver from our ride. You can see the open space and Standley Lake with the high-rises of Denver in the distance.

The trail ended at this pond. There were wildflowers, including wild sunflowers, everywhere. Butterflies surrounded you as you rode the trail to make you feel as if you had your own troupe of butterflies cheering you on.

This picture is from the bike ride, as well, but we've ran and biked around this lake many times before. One of my absolute favorite views!

On a Sunday afternoon, our friends Pat and Lindsay called to see if we wanted to go hiking. We ended up hiking just outside of Boulder and then grabbing a beer at one of our favorite breweries in town.

The hike was great. We saw lots of wildflowers and butterflies, not to mention the great view down the canyon towards Boulder.

Mexico, Muy Beuno

Recently, Patrick has been traveling quite a bit for work. Back and forth, between Denver and Pasadena. He's been gone for week stints, a day at a time or a couple days at a time. I've also picked up more work and so we really hadn't had much quality time together in a few months. One evening, after picking Patrick up from the airport after yet another trip, we impulsively booked an all inclusive trip to Playa Del Carmen, Mexico. We decided it was high time for some relaxation and some time together, just the two of us...

Well, if you know me at all, you know when I go on a trip that I have to do and see it all! Yep, before we knew it, our 5 day not-gonna-do-a-thing-trip had become a fit-in-as-much-as-we-can-extravaganza. We may not have had as much relaxation time as we were planning on but we definitely had a blast!

Here are a some pictures from our trip:

This bottle of tequila was a welcome gift from our hotel. That's right, it's wearing a mini sombrero and poncho! We haven't tried it yet... a little scared.

Beautiful beach at our hotel. You could see Cozumel off in the distance and the water was as warm as bath water! We had drink service while lying in lounge chairs on the beach. It was absolutely wonderful!

Our half-day trip to Tulum, old Mayan port city on the Caribbean. We saw pyramids and carvings left by the Mayans. In some places on the pyramids/carvings you can faintly see dyed plaster that still hangs on, after all these years.

Mayan ruin above the Caribbean Sea.

Giant Iguana at Tulum. These guys were all over the place but this one was by far the biggest. They had plenty to eat out there in the jungle... mosquitos the size of house flies!

One of the temples at Tulum. We were standing in this open field when Patrick's sandaled foot was viscously attacked by a troupe of fire ants. This, in addition to him being car sick on the drive out, having blisters on his feet from our previous day's adventures, being eaten alive by mosqiutos and it being 95 degrees with 99% humidity, made for a miserable Patrick.

The beautiful swimming beach at Tulum. By this point, all Patrick was looking forward to was getting in the water and cooling off... and then he lost his VERY nice sunglasses in the ocean. It was not a good day for Patrick!

The day after our trip to Tulum, we took a full day trip out into the jungle to visit the Mayan ruin of Coba. Coba is the most recently discovered Mayan city and at over 80 square miles it's also the biggest they've ever found. It's the least excavated at only 5%. Since this city was built at the beginning of the Mayan society it doesn't have all the carvings/art to be studied so the archiologists are more interested in other more advanced cities. This is one of the temples at Coba. Some of the temples are 9 levels high. Every 50 years the Mayans would add a level to their temples, so doing the math, some of these temples took 450 years to become what you see today!

Half of the Mayan ball court. The game they played wasn't for fun or exercise but to see who would give the blood sacarafice to the gods. You may think it would be the loser to give the sacarafice but actually it was the winner. It was viewed as an honor. The Mayans never did human sacarafices (that was the Aztecs), they would pierce different body parts and give the blood to the gods. Before this, they only did animal sacarafices, but when they were going through hard times they heard from the Aztecs that if they wanted more from the gods they had to give more and that's when they decided to give human blood as well as animal sacarafice.

Our guide didn't talk about this temple at all but we did learn that the Mayans learned about rounding their buildings from the Toltecs. I found this one so interesting because it was so obviously different and influenced by the Toltec culture. The slab of rock under the grass hut is an altar to whatever god this temple was for. There were these altars at most of the temples throughout Coba. The rocks had Mayan writing on them which to us look like a whole bunch of dots and lines.

At the end of our tour through Coba, we finally came to the highest and oldest temple in all of Mexico and the only one that you can still climb. I'm not the biggest fan of heights but we biked through the jungle for half the day to finally get to this point. It was so hot that we were both drenched in sweat (My legs were running with sweat. I had no idea you could sweat that much.) and there was no way I was missing out on climbing a pyramid!

The people on the right are going down!

Taking a much needed rest at the top. Each step was about a foot high. At one point I stopped to look about me and realized that was not a good idea, so I put my head down and didn't stop again until the top.

After visiting Coba, we stopped at a Mayan family's house. This is their pet monkey that greeted us when we arrived.

Also, at the Mayan house they kept coatimundis, which is basically a Mexican racoon. They kept some as pets but others to eat.

After visiting the Mayan family, we traveled down the road to a Mayan village. Outside the village, was this beautiful lake. The same lake that earlier in the day we had seen crocodiles in. We canoed over to the other side, hiked through the jungle and then ziplined over the lake back to our starting point.

That's me ziplining across the lake!!! I don't do well with heights, but Patrick was so impressed with how well I did and how excited I was to do it.

You can barely see me out over the lake. At the end of the zipline, there were 2 little Mayan boys to catch you. I was very grateful that they were actually able to stop me. When it was all over, I totally wanted to do it again. It was so fun!

Patrick paddling us back across the lake.

The view from our boat. It was so beautiful. After we got to the other side again, we rapelled down into a cenote (a cave with water in it) to swim, snorkel, and cool off. We had been so hot all day and the water was so cold because it's in a cave that I cursed when I hit the water and then had to explain to our guide what the curse meant since he'd never heard it before. The cenote was really dark and pretty small, but as your eyes adjusted to the darkness you could see much better. Our guide brought snorkel gear so we could view the Mayan bones at the bottom of the cenote. In ancient times the Mayans used this cenote as a burial ground. So, we snorkeled with Mayan bones. It was so awesome! We don't have any pictures of rappelling or of the cenote because we would have had to have a water proof camera, but it was the highlight of the day, for sure!

Sadly, the last margarita before heading to the airport to fly home.

Home Run for the Homeless

A couple months ago, Patrick and I raced in the Home Run for the Homeless. It's a local 5K race that benefits the homeless, but really it seems to benefit the racers quite a bit as well. For your entrance fee into the race you get a t-shirt, 2 tickets to a Rockies game and free beer and food after the race. Also, as part of the race you run the warning track at Coors Field, the home of the Rockies.

Patrick had been in Pasadena the week before and had been running at sea level, I hadn't been training at all, but we both did pretty well and had lots of fun. We used to run through downtown Boston and have missed running through a city these last 3 years, so running in downtown Denver was so fun and eye-opening. We discovered downtown Denver has a lot more hills than we'd ever noticed before!

At the end of the race you run around the warning track at Coors Field. As you run the warning track they put you up on the jumbo-tron. It was at the end of the race and I wanted to end strong and pick up my speed but running the warning track was such a special experience that I slowed down to take it all in. Patrick was still impressed with how soon I crossed the finish line after him. So I guess I didn't do too bad. I am always amazed at Patrick's running abilities since he has asthma and doesn't have a typical runner's body. He placed in the top 9% overall!

We had a great time and were proud to be a part of the Denver community. I think we'll definitely do it again next year.

28 Years Old

Last month Patrick turned 28. Every year for his birthday I make him a different flavored tofu cheesecake (not because we're some weird hippies but because Patrick is deathly allergic to milk). I know, I know, it sounds disgusting. But I have witnesses to attest to the fact that you cannot taste the difference. I've made him mocha cheesecake, peanut butter cheesecake with butterfinger topping and this year was chocolate-mint oreo cheesecake. Patrick's favorite so far is the chocolate-mint oreo.

The day of Patrick's birthday I had some training for work and was unable to celebrate with him. So, a great friend took him to a indoor rock climbing gym and then out to dinner. I don't even think he knew I was gone. Then on the weekend, we went out to a bar that has hundreds of whiskies (one of Patrick's favorite things). He got to try some that he had been wanting to taste for a while. I'm pretty sure he was in heaven!

Patrick's alien cheesecake.

Celebrating out on the town.

Cheers to growing older!

The guys standing by the locked case of the really good stuff.

Red Sox in High Definition

For years Patrick talked about the day we would get high definition. Yeah, yeah, yeah. There was no way I would agree to paying extra for this feature. I didn't understand it and it wasn't worth the extra money to me. When we got our new tv in December, though, Patrick was able to convince me that our new tv wouldn't be worth buying unless we signed up for HD.

We've been watching HD for 4 months now and at first it blew our minds. We figured it had mostly to do with the fact that we went from a 22" Daewoo that we bought in 2003 to a 46" Samsung. On opening day for the Red Sox, though, for the first time, we could truly appreciate our tv's high definition. We'd never noticed the sunflower seeds on the ground by the dugout before and you can actually look for people you may know in the stands. The strike zone and where every pitch goes is like a bulls-eye, it's so obvious. You can see the guy in the stands raising his middle finger to the Yankee's right fielder (I don't condone this kind of behavior, but it does make you feel like you're really there). You can see the booger hanging out of the pitchers nose... Ok, maybe this is a little too much high definition, but I am officially converted to an HD lover. Patrick, of course, knew all along about the power of HD.

Settling In

Well, we've lived in CO for 3 months now and it just gets better and better. We fall in love with it more every day. We've been up to a lot of fun things, but unfortunately we haven't been good at taking pictures. So, I'll just tell you about most of them instead.

We had a great Super Bowl party, with lots of snacks and a "crappy-beer blind taste test." The beers we tasted were Colt 45, Olympia, Milwaukie's Best and Keystone Ice. All pretty disgusting. We tasted the 4 beers without knowing which ones were which and then had to name them and decide which we liked best. Surprisingly, I won for getting all the beers correct. Apparently, I know my gross beers (funny, since I don't really even drink beer). And lucky us, we still have a ton left over in our garage!

We also have had quite a bit of snow and decided we needed to find a way to exercise when there was snow on the ground. So we bought some sleds. One night we walked across the street to the high school which has a giant hill that ends in a fenced off creek to go sledding. There was a lot of snow on the ground that covered up all the bumps, but as they kick you up in the air it becomes apparent that maybe you should scout out the run first! Patrick flew into the air and landed on his butt pretty hard and was sore for days. I kept being unable to stop and slamming into the fence. Oh, I know, sounds like fun... But for days after you could see our sled tracks in the hill, marking it as ours and bringing a smile to our faces every time we drove by.

Another fun day was when we drove up to Fort Collins to visit our college town. We walked old town, had lunch at our favorite restaurant, bought cookies at our favorite bakery, went for beer tasting at New Belgium (Oh, how things have changed there. We used to get 8 free tasters of beer and they would bring them out to you and tell you all about them. Now you get 3 and you have to go to the bar to order them and the tasting room is crowded with people. Boooo to becoming popular. You were so much cooler when only the locals knew about you, New Belgium.), then we went for beer tasting at Fort Collins Brewery (which reminded us of New Belgium back in the day, very small and friendly). We then drove over to campus and walked around to see what had changed and found they have a whole new building since the last time we had visited. We also bought new CSU shirts at the bookstore (we're now ready to cheer on our Rams come fall).

Also, on a recent warm Saturday afternoon, we decided to go for a hike in Boulder. Apparently, everyone else and their dog had the same idea. When we got to the trailhead, it was swarming with people. It's like they had been hibernating all winter and at the first sign of spring came out of their dens to play. So, Patrick and I decided to head up a trail that no one else seemed interested in. Of course, it crossed my mind that maybe they knew something we didn't... like it was covered in ice and snow. But we had a great time anyway. It was an adventure that had a great view at the top and stone chairs to sit in and enjoy your accomplishment. After making it back down we headed into town for lunch and then out to Twisted Pine Brewery for some beer tasting. I definitely have a new favorite brewery! Sorry New Belgium, you've been bumped off your pedestal! Patrick and I were both really impressed with Twisted Pine and will definitely be going back.

We've also been up to the mountains for skiing/snowboarding a few times and every time has been beautifully sunny. Definitely multiple-application-sunscreen-but-you-still-get-burned days. It's been really fun getting to ski again after 3 years of living in LA. Next year, we're determined to buy season passes and go up all the time. We've been reintroduced to how expensive it is to ski here, though. We paid $10 for a locker the first time we went up! $10!!! Someone could have stolen our stuff and we wouldn't have even been out $10! Anyway, we learned our lesson.

Here's a few photos and I'll try to be better about updating more often:

Hiking in Boulder with a view of the Flatirons.

View from the top of our trail, looking out at the plains.

All the stone chairs at the top of the trail. A great spot to enjoy the sunshine and outdoors.

Twisted Pine Brewery

View from Copper Mountain

Enjoying our day at the mountain.

Done strapping into his board and ready to have some fun.