For the first day of the weekend, Zack and I journeyed to our condo in the mountains. We have not been there in a very long time as my broken leg, leg surgery and 3 back surgeries had essentially made it so that I can't do much of anything in the mountains. I haven't been able to hike, ski, snowshoe or bike ride for over 7 months. So there has been no reason to go to the mountains. Our trip to the mountains was all about cleaning the condo. There was 7 months worth of dust over everything in the condo so it was good to get there and do laundry, dust and sweep the carpets.
We left for the mountains around 4:30PM on Friday afternoon. Traffic getting out of Denver and onto I-70 near Morrison stunk as usual. We didn't get to our place until around 6:00PM and then we had to feed the dogs and get them out for a walk. After our walk we made a quick trip to Target and then headed to the Dillon Dam Brewery for dinner. The rest of our evening was low key and we didn't do much of anything.
Saturday morning we awoke to the smell of wood smoke and a thick layer of smoke in the air. Visibility was greatly restricted and most of the mountains were hidden from view. At that point we had no idea where the smoke was coming from but later in the day I learned that it was coming from a massive 80,000 acre blaze in Western New Mexico. The winds were blowing such that the smoke was sucked up from New Mexico into Central Colorado.
I spent most of the day cleaning the condo before we headed down to Denver for the evening. It was good to get everything clean as now when we come up to the condo later in June it will be all nice and clean.
Beside the smoke in the mountains we faced some out of control winds. As we were driving down from the mountains the winds caused the car to be almost swept off the road. There are several places along I-70 where the wind is funneled through canyons and the gusts can be pretty intense. Near the small town of Georgetown and as we crossed through the hogback near Morrison, the wind gusts pushed the car so hard the steering wheel was jerked around in my grasp. I really hate when that happens!
Saturday evening Zack spent with his cousin and I went to dinner with Lisa. It's wasn't anything too wild and crazy - just Pizza Republica at the Landmark center. It's one of my favorite places for a causal dinner.
Sunday was a very big day for me as it was "Tattoo Day". I had wanted to get my second tattoo last weekend, but the tattoo artist who I wanted to do it wasn't working last weekend. So I waited for this weekend. Unfortunately he wasn't working on Sunday, so I ended up going with another artist. Due to the size and coloring of this second tattoo, I only had the outline done. I am going to let the outline heal and then I will go back sometime in July to have the coloring added. I had spectators this time as both Zack and Lisa went with me. I think they were both amazed at the process. Zack refused to look most of the time and only wanted to see it once it was done. I will take a picture of the tattoo later this week and post it here.
The only other major event for Sunday was Zack had a sleep over that turned into a sleep "under" for me. He ended up staying up until almost 2AM and kept coming to tell he that neither he or his friend could fall asleep. I wasn't particularly thrilled about that situation!
Today has been a relaxing day for the holiday. There was a special lunch at Cranbrook so Zack and I went and had lunch with Nancy. She was very happy to have us there and we got to meet or re-meet many of the people with whom she hangs out. After that we did some shopping and then spent the day doing some work around home and relaxing.
One of the things I spent my day doing was playing with video I have shot with my GoPro video camera. The GoPro camera is a very small, but high quality video camera that can pretty much be mounted to anything. These little cameras don't cost a lot but they take really high quality video. (These cameras have revolutionized how many reality TV shows are shot. If you have ever watched "Gold Rush" on The Discovery Channel, they use these little cameras all the time.) I had hoped to use a car mount for my GoPro this past weekend and then drive over Boreas Pass on the way home from the mountains, but Zack was really not into it so I scrapped that plan - though I will do that yet this summer.
Despite not doing my planned drive and video capture I decided to do some simple editing of footage I shot last summer. The video below is an edited version of some of the raw footage I shot last Memorial Day when we went to South Dakota and rode the Michelson Bike Trail through the Black Hills. The sound track I have used for this video isn't necessarily the best, but I was just playing around and I figured what the hell. If you get a chance take a look and see what you can do with these GoPro cameras. They are a ton of fun!
I really didn't do much editing to this video other than adding the sound track and increasing the speed at which it plays. There is much more that I can do with my raw video to turn it into something really fun. Unfortunately posting the video here doesn't allow for it to be viewed full screen. I really need to find another site to host video as this site - Blogger, doesn't do a good job. Posting my videos to Youtube is always a pain because they do the whole copyright check for all components of your video and I like using good songs for my soundtracks.
That's it for this weekend. I really hope everyone enjoyed their weekend and is ready for the short work week ahead.
Thanks and peace to all! ~ J.
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