One of the reasons I love living in Denver so much is my ability to hop on a bike and pretty much go anywhere. Today I rode with a friend up the Cherry Creek path. It was a very nice ride. We stopped at Daz Bog for coffee and goodies. The path was covered with the white fluff the cottonwoods give up. It was so thick in spots, it looked like it was snowing. It was a pretty good ride.

One thing I’ve noticed over the past couple of weeks is the number of people tooling along on the trail with earbuds in. I have an iPod, and I love it. One thing I don’t do with it is ride. The reason I don’t is because it’s rude and it’s dangerous. I passed a guy today. I came up on him and yelled at him (cause I saw his earbuds) “On your left.” He started to drift over so I screamed at him, “On your left!!!” Still he drifted. My bars cleared his by a bare half inch. He then started mouthing off.

I, being the gentleman that I am, flipped him off. He was offended. I know iPods are cool, I know the ability to access your music pretty much anywhere is cool. I had an iPod when you were still in diapers. Riding with an iPod is a seriously bad idea. Not only can you not hear the person coming up on you, even when they are screaming at you, but you seem to develop an attitude like you are the only person on the planet.

My solution…

I’m taking the riser bars off and putting the straight bars back on. I’m also putting on some bull moose bar ends, except I will rename them “retard bumpers”. If you are so self involved that you can’t turn down the music enough to tell whats going on (I doubt you could hear me anyway with all of the wind noise those things generate), I’m not going to worry about hitting you. I’ve got some serious curve on those bar ends, excuse me — retard bumpers, and I’m not going to be shy taking a clean line past you. I’m pretty sure I won’t hook you and I’m pretty sure those bumpers will be enough to ward you off if I give a good lean in.

So, ditch the headphones and earbuds and pay attention to what is going on. If not and you get all squirrely and self involved out there, the retard bumpers will win.

Gas prices are up. It’s not surprising to me that the Steve Raabe of the Rocky Mountain News is reporting this morning that four refineries that supply gas to Colorado are shut down or running below capacity for “maintenance and repairs”.

To me, it smells of the “screw California” move that Enron rolled out to create a fake energy crisis in California, make massive unjustified profits, and unseat Pete Wilson as governor of California.  Maybe it’s time for Mr. Ritter to roll out the big guns and put the responsible parties in jail, revoke their charters to do business in the state of Colorado and maybe, just maybe, turn them into regulated utilities.

There are some days when it is very apparent that some companies just don’t care about service.  We leased a color printer to do marketing material. The lease is with a well known local company that advertises heavily on drive time radio.

Today, the printer began folding thicker paper in two instead of printing on two sides. We’ve been using it for two years to do this very thing.  So, we called this much advertised service provider and were very surprised that a guy showed up within a day.

When he got here, he told someone standing next to the printer that “this model won’t do that” and took off before anyone could get over to meet him.  It’s been doing it for two years… Needless to say, their contract will not be renewed, and with service like that, it might be enough to breach the contract and give them the good old heave-ho well ahead of schedule.

This weekend we had a work retreat in Edwards. I skied, or came close to it, for the second time. The weather didn’t cooperate, we had rain and snow. It was fun, but it was very wet and very cold. I tweaked my knee again, it reminded me why I chose to stick with bikes. Tom and Ben patiently shepherded me down the mountain.

We usually don’t get to relax around each other, when we are all together we generally talk about strategy, tactics, and scheduling. There is always an air of urgency about our meetings. It was a bit weird with that sense of urgency being absent, but it was nice.

As usual, I took the camera without having the battery fully charged. Select photos are on Flickr, the full lot are posted here.

Back in the day, I bought the first version of the Stumpjumper FSR XC. It was a very very nice ride. I rode the crap out of that bike. I went through four drive trains, two front forks, and three wheelsets. I finally had to put it down a couple of years ago because the bushings had ovalized their frame mounts. The swing arm was kaput. I stripped all of the parts, because I figured I would need them again. I was right.

I found a new one! Picking it up tonight. I think this time around, I’ll leave the granny ring on. It’s gonna be good riding this summer.

This is more for my peace of mind than anything else.  I can’t seem to find a site that has everything in one place. I always need it when I bork a Ruby installation and need to reinstall.  Place the ADO.rb file below into the following directory: c:\ruby\lib\ruby\site_ruby\1.8\DBD\ADO  You will need to create the directory first.

The file is here: ADO.zip

A couple of things I’ve noticed today that I’d like to leave some notes on.

Today, people were better.  They were better than they are in their daily lives.  I saw complete strangers helping each other out.  I saw kind-hearted, genuine conversations between people who would otherwise never speak to each other.

Some, more ethereal than me, might say that the blanket of white that covered everything served as a sort of clean slate.  I see it a bit differently.  There was no stress from work today.  There was no boss staring over shoulders and offering critical reviews of snowmen and snowangels.  It’s the way I remember the world when I was growing up.  It’s the way I wake up everyday expecting the world to be.  It’s the world I almost never see anymore.

I feel a bit like the soldiers of World War I, during that first Christmas when they came out of the trenches and had a soccer match in no man’s land.  Today was good, but the fact that tomorrow everything will be back to “normal” weighs heavy on me.

Well, the office is closed today, but I didn’t make it anywhere close to home yesterday. Delynn’s car got stuck in the parking lot momentarily when he gave me a ride and dropped me off at Joey’s, so I knew the Camry wouldn’t make it far. The Trooper, bless its heart, just didn’t have the mojo to run during the storm.
I am supposed to be heading home for Christmas tomorrow, but the United web site is alternatively telling me the flight is on time and cancelled at the same time. Thanks United.

Update - United is finally in sync at all locations on their website as to the status of my flight — Cancelled.  Not the resolution I was hoping for.  I’ve gone to great lengths during the storm to stay within striking distance of the airport.  My small window of opportunity, though, has pretty much doomed my travel plans.  My new philosophy, living so far away from home, Thanksgiving is for friends, Christmas is for family.  So much for that this year.

I got some much needed sleep last night, and was up bright and early to get my ride on.  It was drizzling when I walked out of the hotel, so I headed downtown to get some coffee at Aspen.

I was welcomed by ‘Tater, at least I think that’s his name. He seems to be the town greeter, and is always smiling.  I always see him when I’m out there and he always seems happy and cheerful.

I picked up some gifts at Over the Edge. They recommended heading for 18 road before more rain came in. The rain held off for a while, and I managed to hit Joe’s, Chutes and Ladders. I stopped back at the car and was heading for the Edge when it uncorked.  I short cutted back to Joe’s and cut back up Kessel.  I was completely soaked, and luckily hadn’t picked up too much mud.

The forecast called for more rain, so I decided to head home.  It rained all the way to Vail, and was snowing pretty good on the Pass.  It was snowing like crazy at the Divide, I’m betting Loveland will be open for skiing next weekend (if it’s not already). So, now, safe at home, some images are posted in the album.

Our annual operations conference let out a little early today. The timing was a blessing, as last night I’ll remember for a while as the “Night of the Dirty Martinis”. Top that with my insomniac behavior, and it makes for a very very long day. Once out, I boogied and headed for Moab. Well, I forgot this weekend is the 24 Hours of Moab. There isn’t a room available at any price in town. Even the Lazy Lizard had no room. Normally that’s not a problem, but I removed all of my camping gear to make room gadgets for the conference.

I thought I was gonna die on the highway, I was so tired I actually took a couple of naps while driving, you know, the ones where all of a sudden you’re awake again and have no idea how many seconds you were gone. I did make it back to Fruita, and grabbed what appears to be one of the few rooms available. So, tomorrow will be Kokopelli and Joe’s Ridge, maybe throw in a bit more singletrack on the Bookcliffs side. That was my plan for here Sunday, so it just gets bumped up a day, and I get to go back home a day early.