so we had a pretty significant snowfall in the fort last wedesday - 18" in my front yard. i managed to get a little kick and glide in on thursday (can i call 3 hours in town a first day of skiing for the season?), then got a message from drh re: going up to the pass named after ferris buellers best friend on friday and would i like to join him in such an endeavor. sure, why not get things started.
it was good to be out stomping around, finding our ski legs in this again:

drh getting his trail break on:

ski bases only slightly gouged, we had a good time. a few first day misteps (one of which was forgetting to bring
apres-ski refreshments, i'm not proud to admit) but all in all a great first day. and an early one at that.
so as i said i went skiing. saturday i cleaned the house, ran some errands, and made some black bean chili. and it was good:

sunday was the first of the fort collins winter rall-eye series: the border bash. around 30 like minded yahoos rode bicycles to the wyoming border (well pretty much the border) and back. it was windy, but sunny and warm. really nice day for a bike ride.
here is a picture i took on sunday of an old friction shifter being used as a brake lever, with v-brakes. me and about a dozen guys i know have a combined total of a bazillion years of bicycle wrenching experience and i bet none of us has ever seen this. i'll give it an A++ for ingenuity, but i think it results in a false sense of security. sort of like my health insurance plan:

we're on a road to somewhere:

all these
new belgium employees and not a keg anywhere to be found:

somewhere around that hill and down the road a bit is the
wyoming border.

i think it was close to a 70 or 75 mile day. then we drank beer and played horseshoes at
bar ss in laporte. next months ride is on december 20th. could be a tough slog over pennock pass if there is much snow ... hard sayin' not knowin' though.