I just finished packing for the pedal the plains trip! I'm feeling pretty good considering I haven't had much time to ride my bike. Well, what ever happens happens, I need to work on having fun doing stuff instead of trying to make everything a physical torture fest (though, I find that fun...what's wrong with me).
Even if everything goes to shit and my knee blows up or my hip flexors kill me, the beer garden is open from 9 am to 9 pm.
In other news, today I finally went to a Rockies game. I've walked past stadium I can't even estimate how many times (a lot) but the thought of baseball never appealed to me. But my company gave me a free ticket so I decided what the the fuck. I went with a bunch of my colleagues and two colleagues that were in one of the work movies I made showed me around the stadium. It was so cool. I definitely want to go back there again and I feel bad that my dad suggested we go to a game when he was in town and I declined...
My colleague P, who was a great collaborator on my work movies, patiently answered all my baseball questions (he has kids, so he's used to annoying questions). He also insisted I try a pumpkin flavored micro brew (the bartender said "if you don't like it throw it on him and I'll get you what ever you want for free" - P said "did you give him a bigger tip than I did?").
I found the stadium (which was only a quarter full) totally relaxing. It was cool to watch the pitchers warm up only feet away from where we were standing (you can go to this one part of the stadium and look down into their dug out thing or what ever it's called). And it was a pretty fast moving game for, I guess, a baseball game. I understand now why people have told me that it's better to watch in person.
I had a chicago hot dog for the first time (I was assured that it was beef, no pork). A chicago hot dog has cucumbers, tomatoes, hot peppers, celery salt, relish, and brown mustard on it. The CTO of my company, who was sitting behind me, said "I have never seen someone eat a hot dog with a fork" (it was too big to fit in my mouth - insert joke here). My colleague D laughed, because he's chinese, and he said "great, I have no experience eating this kind of food and I get sat next to the one american who doesn't know how to eat a hot dog".
Eventually everyone sitting around me was jumping in with baseball facts to increase my knowledge (there's a row of purple seats in the stadium that mark exactly where a mile high is, there's numbers on the fence to show how many feet away from the batting mound a ball has been hit, each player gets to pick their own theme song which plays for a few seconds when they are up to bat, you get points if you hit the ball and someone gets a home run, that's called an RBI).
Right then. Off to put my knees through electroshock therapy. Stay tuned for updates on the ride...
Wednesday, September 17, 2014
Monday, September 15, 2014
dispensing the pot heads
On Saturday, FH's birthday, I met him and a group of his friends at the big wonderful. Some of the friends were from out of town and wanted to get some pot. They asked me where the closest dispensary was and I was like "I have no fucking idea". So they looked up a dispensary on the phone and I offered to escort them to it because 1. they are country club kids and not used to my kind of neighborhood and 2. I've never been to a dispensary before.
We walked to a dispensary on Lawrence. It was the weirdest thing I've ever seen. There was a row of chairs like those you find in a movie theater. About 8 people were hanging out in the chairs in various stages of intoxication. There was a glass window like something you'd see in a gas station that gets robbed a lot where pot wanters had to check in (not sure what that process required, showing an ID or something). When it was your turn they would call each person individually to go back into the pot area and pick what they wanted.
One of the guys I brought over there said "this is my idea of heaven - pot and golf" (they were showing a golf game on a flat screen TV). Another guy started asking me about some work I used to do with various law enforcement agencies. I was telling him about working with the calgary gov. Pretty soon all the pot heads had left, quietly shuffling out the door. Haha, paranoid much.
Anyway, at some point your name gets called and you go back into the pot room and pick what you want. The guys got gummi bears. They let two of them go back at the same time but normally they only let in one person at a time. I was outside by that point because the smell of the pot (just the smell of the product, no one was smoking it) made me want to puke.
The pot comes in a white bubble wrap envelope that has what looks like a zipper seal on it. That's how you can carry the pot in public (think you aren't supposed to carry it in public after the zipper seal is broken - I should have asked before the guys ate the gummi bears - one told me "look, I'm just trying to enjoy my high, quit asking me questions").
Oddly while I was in there I had flashbacks of going to the A&E store to buy wine in Abu Dhabi...but that place smelled good.
We walked to a dispensary on Lawrence. It was the weirdest thing I've ever seen. There was a row of chairs like those you find in a movie theater. About 8 people were hanging out in the chairs in various stages of intoxication. There was a glass window like something you'd see in a gas station that gets robbed a lot where pot wanters had to check in (not sure what that process required, showing an ID or something). When it was your turn they would call each person individually to go back into the pot area and pick what they wanted.
One of the guys I brought over there said "this is my idea of heaven - pot and golf" (they were showing a golf game on a flat screen TV). Another guy started asking me about some work I used to do with various law enforcement agencies. I was telling him about working with the calgary gov. Pretty soon all the pot heads had left, quietly shuffling out the door. Haha, paranoid much.
Anyway, at some point your name gets called and you go back into the pot room and pick what you want. The guys got gummi bears. They let two of them go back at the same time but normally they only let in one person at a time. I was outside by that point because the smell of the pot (just the smell of the product, no one was smoking it) made me want to puke.
The pot comes in a white bubble wrap envelope that has what looks like a zipper seal on it. That's how you can carry the pot in public (think you aren't supposed to carry it in public after the zipper seal is broken - I should have asked before the guys ate the gummi bears - one told me "look, I'm just trying to enjoy my high, quit asking me questions").
Oddly while I was in there I had flashbacks of going to the A&E store to buy wine in Abu Dhabi...but that place smelled good.
cherry creek snake street
Got more miles in on my bike last week. I'm even tightening my clipless pedals up. Everything training wise is going well EXCEPT...
why can I not ride ONE FUCKING TIME without seeing a snake?
Saturday was by far my worst snake experience. I was riding on the cherry creek trail, coming around a blind turn, when I saw, just a few feet away, a GIANT snake. I mean that fucker was so long and so thick that it was stretched across the trail and still had part of its body coiled in the grass. If that snake could stand up it would have an NBA contract. Well, it would also need prosthetic arms, but you get the idea.
I couldn't swerve to the left of it because I would have run over its body coil and probably wrecked. I couldn't swerve to the right of it because then I would have been close to its mouth. So I ran it over. It was like hopping a curb. The snake's head reared up at me even though I yelled "sorry about that!" as I ran it over.
Now, you are probably wondering the same thing I wondered. Why was this snake crossing the bike trail? His starting point was next to the creek, with plenty of sunny rocks, and nice trees, and other bushes and shit where he could hang out and not be seen by me. Instead he was crossing the trail to a gravel area that had dog shit and trash in it and which then led to a parking lot. Not exactly snake nirvana. (note to denverites, this happened near the cherry creek mall, so many reasons to never go to the mall, and now I have another one)
So, unless that snake had a car and somewhere to go in it, or was hoping to hitch a ride to Wyoming or somewhere that's far away from me, he had no reason to cross that trail other than to torment me (I should mention the "trail" is a really wide sidewalk, so you can't claim the snake didn't realize it was a trail for humans and not snakes). He couldn't have been trying to get positive attention, like "oh look, there's a cute snake!" because he was too big to be cute (if you consider small snakes cute - probably no one does because they would be called something like "puppy" or "kitten" - I don't know, maybe they would be called "snakey" if they were cute when they were little).
A guy coming the other direction ran the snake over again but the snake persisted in crossing the trail. I actually had my phone with me and part of my brain was like "you REALLY need to take a picture and you can stand 20 feet away where you're safe" but the other part of my brain was like "DAMN IT! WHY did you ride on all those hills KNOWING THERE MIGHT BE A SNAKE ON THE TRAIL AND THAT YOU'D HAVE TO GET AWAY FROM IT???? PEDAL YOU FUCK BEFORE THE SNAKE GETS US! PEDDDDDDAAAAALLLLL!!!!!" That part of my brain won.
Given that the bike trail is wide enough for 3 bikes to ride comfortably abreast, and that at least 1/4 of the snake was still coiled up on the side of the trail, I would estimate the size of the snake to be REALLY FUCKING BIG. The snake was yellowish with a brown box like pattern on its back. I tried looking at a web site to see if I could identify the snake but after looking at a few pictures I decided to let my dad maybe figure out what snake it was as I can't take the trauma of looking at snake pictures anymore.
why can I not ride ONE FUCKING TIME without seeing a snake?
Saturday was by far my worst snake experience. I was riding on the cherry creek trail, coming around a blind turn, when I saw, just a few feet away, a GIANT snake. I mean that fucker was so long and so thick that it was stretched across the trail and still had part of its body coiled in the grass. If that snake could stand up it would have an NBA contract. Well, it would also need prosthetic arms, but you get the idea.
I couldn't swerve to the left of it because I would have run over its body coil and probably wrecked. I couldn't swerve to the right of it because then I would have been close to its mouth. So I ran it over. It was like hopping a curb. The snake's head reared up at me even though I yelled "sorry about that!" as I ran it over.
Now, you are probably wondering the same thing I wondered. Why was this snake crossing the bike trail? His starting point was next to the creek, with plenty of sunny rocks, and nice trees, and other bushes and shit where he could hang out and not be seen by me. Instead he was crossing the trail to a gravel area that had dog shit and trash in it and which then led to a parking lot. Not exactly snake nirvana. (note to denverites, this happened near the cherry creek mall, so many reasons to never go to the mall, and now I have another one)
So, unless that snake had a car and somewhere to go in it, or was hoping to hitch a ride to Wyoming or somewhere that's far away from me, he had no reason to cross that trail other than to torment me (I should mention the "trail" is a really wide sidewalk, so you can't claim the snake didn't realize it was a trail for humans and not snakes). He couldn't have been trying to get positive attention, like "oh look, there's a cute snake!" because he was too big to be cute (if you consider small snakes cute - probably no one does because they would be called something like "puppy" or "kitten" - I don't know, maybe they would be called "snakey" if they were cute when they were little).
A guy coming the other direction ran the snake over again but the snake persisted in crossing the trail. I actually had my phone with me and part of my brain was like "you REALLY need to take a picture and you can stand 20 feet away where you're safe" but the other part of my brain was like "DAMN IT! WHY did you ride on all those hills KNOWING THERE MIGHT BE A SNAKE ON THE TRAIL AND THAT YOU'D HAVE TO GET AWAY FROM IT???? PEDAL YOU FUCK BEFORE THE SNAKE GETS US! PEDDDDDDAAAAALLLLL!!!!!" That part of my brain won.
Given that the bike trail is wide enough for 3 bikes to ride comfortably abreast, and that at least 1/4 of the snake was still coiled up on the side of the trail, I would estimate the size of the snake to be REALLY FUCKING BIG. The snake was yellowish with a brown box like pattern on its back. I tried looking at a web site to see if I could identify the snake but after looking at a few pictures I decided to let my dad maybe figure out what snake it was as I can't take the trauma of looking at snake pictures anymore.
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