we all forgot our watches on the 3rd shortest day of the year

the plan was set for saturday morning. a quorum of the Depth Hoar Research Society gathered at my house an hour before sun-up and hit the road. we decided to go check out a familiar spot that we hadn't yet been this season. we like to keep it simple so here's kind of how the day went, in a nutshell*.

we saw some wildlife:

we took a long walk:

we saw some stuff:

some stuff happened (a good opportunity for some actual depth hoar research):



we saw more stuff:

some places along the way we earned some turns:

uyup. keeping it simple.

*nutshells themselves were first used as metaphors for something very small back in 1602, when Shakespeare had Hamlet declare, "O God, I could be bounded in a nutshell, and count my selfe a King of infinite space."
**six of the eight images in this post taken by my gb dean. can you guess which ones?

a walk in the woods

skinny skis are fun

but the wind and a wild moose

can make you think twice

feels so good feeling good again

Dave's New Skis from Eight Feet on Vimeo.

the plan - first in a series

great day in the bc

each of these pictures is worth a thousand words. credits to my good buddy dean.

its just how we do it

i overslept a bit.

pack packed the night before.

the bacon part of a bacon, egg, and brie bagel.

sorry buddy someone's gotta stay home and man the fort.

the tools.

coffee, conversation, and a bumpy road.

day break at the pass.

on the approach.

decision time.

climbing into the sun.

skinning along the continental divide. not long after this the real fun begins.

where it all began

crappy weekend #970_003

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.