Karla & Friends Visit Summit 26Jun22-30Jun22

It's great to see Karla & Kevin and their friends, Sandi & Joseph and Marsha & Joey, here at the Nest in Summit Co. We quickly took advantage of the Sunday weekend, despite intermittent weather events, with nosh and a tottie (cassis sour) and then out the door for music. We visited Sauce On The Blue for a reprise of the Shaky Hand String Band (no pics) then went onto the Keystone Bacon & Bourbon fest where we just grabbed free music on the three stages. I sponsored the move to catch Funkiphino but we saw the other Sun afternoon artists too including O'Connor Brothers Band (kind of bluesy) and the team's fav, Queen Nation. Sandi and Kevin in particular were stoked to see this show. That night we dined at Dillon Dam Brewery in prep for the Avs championship game. Great start.

 

We arose on Monday for coffee and got to Mtn Lion Cafe for a fine breakfast. The weather was better than the previous day and we got out the back door into the White river NF for a quick wildflower hike. Marsha & Joey showed up and we headed our for some fun, starting out at Sapphire Pt for a view hike above the Dillon Rez; Kevin came out this time and saw the fox. We returned through Frisco and stopped at ORB for some beers and Thai chix. Joey generously bought some rounds and cans.

The PM was laden with alternative birthday activities with Joey going stealth, the team listening to tunes and watching The Shining, and our celebrating Karla's & Sandi's birthdays. Another great day capped with some Code Names to test our melons.

We got up a smidge late Tue but still got out to eat fine Colorado quiche, send off Sandi & Joseph for the Front Range, walk among the wildflowers, get some nice beers at Broken Compass, and then stop at Royal's @ Tiger Run for a visit. I made a killer heirloom & burrata salad for dinner and sent everyone to bed.

 

Wednesday was a hoot getting breakfast at Mtn Lion, finding the troll in Breck and then some frisbee golf on the tough Frisco course. Gorgeous Colorado mountain day closed out with competitive Rumikub.

Thursday was mobile as we headed down mountain for dinner with Matt & Alexa. We hit Red Rocks, CU, Chataqua Park, Boulder Canyon, and Pearl St mall (and Mountain Sun brewery) before meeting M&A in Golden for sushi and a cider. Golden is a nice town; I loved the fly fishing bronze and seeing M&A most of all.

Thursday witnessed more wildflower walks on the Old Dillon Rez hike and the return of Sandi & Joseph. In the evening we hit Sauce on the Blue for dinner and then Rainbow Pk in Silverthorne for the Expendables (SKA) show ~ we didn't stay long as the view & sound were modest. We played Code Names at the Nest instead and the ladies redeemed themselves from many losses with a resounding victory.

Friday we had bagels and fruit and play CornToss before our guests, and ultimately we, departed for the Front Range.

Recon Short Hikes & Other Summit Stuff 17Jun22-23Jun22

Kala & I came to Summit Co to recon some hikes, fix some stuff at the Nest and otherwise enjoy. The first thing I did was build out the final vinyl audio path as declared prior. Next on the agenda was to raise the sails on Mon Ami - I had to wait a day due to windy/stormy days (but I verified the new selfie stick works).

Unfortunately I picked up a staple on the Crusher Too and had to repair that - always a dirty task. Unfortunately too, there are no Discount Tire shops in Summit or Eagle so a repair to the flat will have to wait ~ and I'm running risky. After the tire fix I did find a fine 4 pk from 4 Noses called Ecstatic.

We have a number of guests arriving from North Carolina and so we also spent some time on reconnaissance missions to find shorter, lower elevation hikes the entire team might enjoy. The best we discovered in recommended order are:

1. Sapphire Point (loop @ the top of Swan Mtn Rd) - Great views of 10 Mile Range and the Rez over just .6 miles and 60ft of vert.
2. Old Dillon Reservoir (TH off Dillon Dam Rd) - Views of Buffalo Mtn/Silverthorne & the Rez/Dillon & Frisco from a quick 1.6mi and 200ft of vert ~ wildflowers were out and the Old Dillon Rez is pretty big.
3. Ramblin' Salt Lick (behind the Nest just go)
   
4. Rainbow Lake & Masontown (hike above Bill's Ranch in Frisco) - More remote than it sounds; just 2mi & 250ft of vert through varied forests and fields.

We stole out to Keystone this afternoon for a beer at Steep (Mountain Juice) and the Friday Acoustics session. This weekend the session happened to kickoff the Bacon & Bourbon event (which we'll only attend for FREE music sets and/or Sun) and featured the awesome locals Shaky Hand String Band. Their 2 X 1hr set was awesome and we were fortunate to have mostly sunny PM skies and a respectable sound system on Montezuma stage; they are a 4 pc rock/alt/grass band from the 'hood with mad skills and a great sound. Attendees featured a dad with pink lady dancers especially cute. Tomorrow they play ORB and then Sun @ Sauce '; there is nothing not to like about this band cheatin' bluegrass with a standup drummer and no bass, but yeah wow, we loved it.

Nest Theater Part Twenty One ~ Final Vinyl 17Jun22

Again as reported in the Compare Tracks entry, going Back To Vinyl has not been dialed in yet. For my next pass at adding some needed EQ to the vinyl playback path, I abandoned the analog solutions (too expensive or too lame) and chose to connect my phono pre-amp out to an A2D converter then to the miniDSP DDRC-22D to use it's EQ/corrections just as I do for the digital paths. Speaker and room corrections are made downstream and assume inbound signals are flat. To implement this I could only find a cheap ($17) A>D with 48KHz/16it sampling, or something whacky expensive. Plus, unfortunately, to get the digital output of the A>D  into the DDRC-22D I need to convert it to an AES connector (all other inputs on the DDRC-22D are already used); that converter box will run me ~$120 from Hosa! I am very pleased with my current miniDSP box with Dirac Live room correction in the digital domain and bringing the vinyl path into it too will be relatively easy and allow equivalent controls and corrections as for the FLAC streamer and YouTube sources.

I used REW to measure the NestT frequency response with Hosa converter and Musou A>D installed by sending analog frequency sweeps to the ADC. I measured this new "vinyl" audio frequency response SPL twice: with Dirac Live defeated and with Dirac Live active. I also show a comparative sweep from the digital realm with Dirac enabled too.  Not unexpectedly the vinyl path now measures out similarly to the digital paths with some notable exceptions. The low end of the A2D cannot cut it and again at the high end it falls short but at least Dirac compensates some.

I also listened to several albums to personally judge sonic fidelity & quality... it is vastly improved. It may not be an audiophile vinyl setup because I do adulterate the signal with DSP, but it does sound good. Given the objective measures, subjective listening and and my sense of use models and convenience, this scheme is the "final vinyl" audio path ~ with the possible exception of an ongoing search for a better ADC which might represent the vinyl more purely. Here's the final NestT connection diagram.

50 Fish Day On Grape Ck 16Jun22

It's June and Greg was right, Grape Ck was hot and hot. It was over 90° as I left on the still-really-shitty 4WD road out, but fishing was fire. The fish are not big here, I'm showing the better ~15"ers, but they seem eager for almost anything (though I did get some rejections on the dry) and the flows were a smidge low but great for wet wading in the Astrals. Wet wading made it pretty comfortable. I used a tan UV Chubby and BHPT dropper all day and scored 2/3 on the dropper and 1/3 on the floater. I hiked downstream from the end of the road in West Bear Gulch at 10:30am for about 3/4 mile and was scoring ~15/hr on my way back to the car. There were a lot more rainbows caught on this outing than in prior years for me here; over half were 'bows. I wielded the Rodfather Lightning Rod 8'2" fast 3wt - it seemed perfect and shot 30 ft well but only snagged in one tree. Fun day, brutal drive. I guess 50 fish days can still be had in the Arkansas River Canyon, just not on the Ark itself, at least not by me.