COS Stuff ~ Aviator With Yoho & Happy Anniversary To Us 28May26-31May26

We spent the week in COS to get through some home tasks and Front Range appointments. After fishing the Ark, I showered for a date. We  got out with Jim & Mary for a tasty yet quirky meal at the Aviator atop the new Hotel Polaris near the north gate of the AFA. Superior cocktails were enjoyed as was the Asian-vibe appetizer-sized nosh. View is great too.

Happy 46th to Kala & me! We chose to hike the Blodgett Open Space and did several miles and plenty of vert over there. On the way back down we observed a murder of crows attacking a hawk in the area... they dive-bombed her relentlessly till she flew off downrange. Sufficient physical investment that we even passed on opening the Kala-acquired Champagne. 

Bluegrass & Beer Festival And More With Yohanans In Summit 07Aug21-09Aug21

Mary & Jim came out to visit us this weekend in Summit. We had a packed weekend and began fast with my new cassis sour and a fine heirloom & burrata salad before hitting the Silverthorne First Friday event atop the new parking deck downtown. We listened to a good band and previewed the food offerings from the soon-to-be vendors in the Blue Bird Market in the 4th Street Crossing project... pizza and epenadas were both good. Rather than queuing for bad beer we closed out across the street at Angry James before continuing music training at the Nest Theater.

We were slow to start our Saturday with a bit of chill and plenty of smoke but got a roll going to Breck mid-morning. Mary was riding the nearly new Cannondale eBike and she set a wicked pace on the ups. We scored some PRs on the ride and enjoyed Daylite Donuts in Breck as well as the fine ColoRAD Bro hazy at Broken Compass and hit Steep (no pic) on the way back to the Nest too (to make it Jim's mini-bikery replacement). We made it to Twist in Breck for a decent but expensive dinner coupled to a cycle of commitment to receive a bottle of wine ~ ultimately a nice Chenin Blanc.

We had Dave's Eggs to kickoff our main event day... we were using public transport to get to the Keystone Bluegrass & Beer festival on Sunday. Eggs were great; transport was uneventfully masked and decently efficient (50min door to door); festival was excellent in tunes & brews. We heard seven fine bluegrass acts on three stages - most of the artists were from Colorado and were friends and all great. We even scored a fun meetup & beers-up with my friend Scott Kaiser and his new(ish) daughter Reid. Reid was darling and Scott was is good spirits from a big weekend with his kid.

Sierra Hull as well as Pixie & The Partygrass Boys were there ~ both excellent, but every band was very good. We noted Apex stage & sound did a great job on the sound systems as well. Here's the lineup starting with Many Mountains on the Montezuma Stage.

We moved to River Run stage and caught Pick & Howl...

Then it was back to Montezuma for House With A Yard. The flatpicking lead guitar on the right was excellent.

Again returning to River Run we enjoyed Woodbelly as we chatted with Dr Kizer. These guys are a classic and very tight 5 piece bluegrass band. A blast to hear.

We lunched with pasta and I caught The People's Key on the Quaking Aspen stage (which was strangely moved from the very cool Quaking Aspen amphitheater) for several songs. Very good - very fun with smaller sound (than even they wanted).

The awesome Sierra Hull (mandolin & voice mainly but she plays guitar too of course) closed out the Montezuma stage.

 

Pixie & The Partygrass Boys closed the River Run stage and they were joined by Hull for the final set. They are very good and fun - the lead singer can belt it but the breakthrough is the lady fiddle player who absolutely scorched us. What a great day of bluegrass and beer. On beer... some teams didn't commit and only brought cans and others didn't cater to my preferred styles. But, as my friend BK agrees, new locals @ Steep served their new Badest of the Bad DIPA and won my "best of beer" chit.

Arriving safely back at the Nest via Summit Stage again I invented a new cocktail inspired by the excellent Palisade peaches this summer. We all really like the Summit Sunset (as I named it)... in so many ways. The only bummer of the weekend was that our friends the Brantley's were missing due to ticketing snafus.

Gobs On The Gore 12Jul21

I took my first outing of the season on Gore Ck in Eagle Co today. Nice day though smoky - flows were down to ~60cfs ~ nearly perfect I sense. One other guy was ahead of me initially at the mouth of the Gore near Minturn but I caught up to him and he headed to the Eagle. I caught a gob of ~15" browns and rainbows on a small light colored Chubby Chernobyl, green caddis larva and black DCEZWD40, beaded and non-beaded. There was some bug-sign with midges, BWOs, red quills and lots of caddis. I sense the fish hitting the top fly (10%) were thinking caddis. I could've switched to a smaller caddis dry and raised more but I stayed the course and it worked very well.

Of course I lunched on Rocky Tacos and beer from VBC. They've added a nice covered (could be enclosed in winter) area called VBC Basecamp.

After lunch I moved upstream to the dawg park just west of the West Vail exit on the frontage road. I continued to succeed with the same rig. It was all tossed via the 9' 3wt Rodfather Brookie.

A good day was followed with a smidge of work around the Nest then fine totties on the verranda with Kala. I've "perfected" a tasty new cocktail, the Cassis Sour: in a tall pint glass squeeze juice of one whole lemon; match that volume with Creme de Cassis; sweeten with 1 tbsp of Rock Candy Syrup, match that entire volume with Breck Bourbon; stir; fill 3/4 full with ice; top with Club Soda and integrate mixture slowly with spoon. Yummy and this can really drive any sweet liquor into a tasty summer sour (Chambord, Midori, Gran Marnier, etc.) but the berry ones seem best to me.

Just New Terrain 01Dec20

I was able to catch "the storm" with 2" of snow and an 8° opening lift. Brrr... rosy cheeks. no one was around so I scored some fast laps before Kala and I went down mountain. New stuff opened below the Summit chair and the gondola so that was fun.

Reprise imaging of the fine cranberry aperitif conceived for TGiving with the kids: lemon, simple syrup, Cointreau, cranberry juice, ice, Prosecco... Wow. Served to the Browns as well.

Finally, a new blotter is always "needed;" so is a new watch band, and a new waffle Simms, and a "tip wallet" for the two-handed trout spey Skagit line.

Gettin' Out & Leslie's 70th

Kala & I are getting out on the AFA hiking pretty often. We've discovered a number of new trails and we've wandered off trail too. Keeps us sane and the AFA is a lot more sequestered than Blodgett Open Space where recently Kala counted 50 cars! Get out, spread out.

Our good friend Leslie Wilke celebrated her 70th birthday and we were on point for the online virtual gathering of her family and friends. It came off well. Many attending built Leslie's Sunrise cocktails, a libation I prepared for her previously and resprised on this auspicious day. Another cocktail made for virtual happy hours with the CoWW and family is the Rum Quarantini - a mule variant also shown below.

Recipes for this and the recently used Rum Quarantinis are provided below.
Leslie's Sunrise...

• 1 pt Galiano
• 1 pt Creme de Banane
• 2 pts Anejo Tequilla
• 1 tbsp Cream (if pt = small jigger)
• 1 pt OJ
• Splash of grenadine 
• Shake over crushed ice into martini glasses and splash in grenadine.

Rum Quarantini...

• 2 Aged Rum (I’ll use Pyrat reserve)
• Juice of 1 Lime (~.75)
• Juice of 1/2 of Cutie Orange (~.5)
• 1-2 Ginger Beer (preferably Cock & Bull); BTW, never buy diet Ginger Beer
• 1 tbsp maple syrup
• 1 dash Angostura bitters
• Orange peel twist 
• Shake all but Ginger Beer over ice, pour over ice in tall glass then top with GB and fold in.