S&A Party In Denver and Summit 11Aug17-12Aug17

We headed to Denver for the Velorama concerts and to meet up with our long time friends the Wilkes. First stop was lunch at the Thirsty Lion with T&L - very tasty and fun - then on to Union Station for a quick look at our "small" transit terminal (for New Yorkers especially).

Our Friday continued with Velorama. This is the inaugural festival associated with the Colorado Classic bike race. Administration was shit - lines for ID checking, entry, beer and food were all outrageous. The organizers must not have used concert-experienced or festival-aware companies. Even the sound was poor - despite a fav band The New Pornographers. It took Yoho the entire NP set to get 3 beers and return to the seats. We won't be back. We did get good food and great beers at 10 Barrel after the festival... I rank Joe and SS#2 atop the IPAs.

We remained in Denver at the Hyatt with Jim & Mary Yohanan. Nightcaps for some atop the Hyatt was cool. Morning led our team to the Denver Botanical Gardens, which were gorgeous, and then to dine with Jim & Mary at the very good Bistro Vendome, a French-inspire bistro with keen garden seating off Larimer.

[need all 6 in Larimer Sq]

Nighttime back in Summit ultimately took us to a Christmas '14 gift from Scott Brantley, a yummy Primitivo Di Manduria, superb 2010 Italian. Thanks buddy.

Back in the mountains had our Long Island-birthed friends dove on Facebook to find a childhood next door neighbor hanging in Summit Co as well. We me Jodi and Steve with their friends Dave & Valerie (Breck condo owners) at my favorite Summit Co brewery for great beers and music.

Despite a pending ride, Jim and I caught the Persids Meteor Shower from the spa in Summit - nice.

Steve & Anne Visit Summit 06Aug17-10Aug17

Our good friends Steve & Anne Gordon are escaping the desert heat and visiting us in Summit Co. We've had a blast despite some intermittence in the weather... we've ridden to Frisco and Breckenridge and plan the big Brewery Bikery this weekend; 

we completed two vertical wine tastings - one of Bodega de Edgar's Mis Pasos blend from 2010 & '11 ('10 favored) and one of Frantesca's cabs from 2006 & '08 ('08 favored);

we hit the Gore and Vail for some hiking, an afternoon of totties at the Remedy Bar in the 4 Seasons and a good dinner at Mountain Standard;

we were butchered by the Raven among great vistas but difficult lies playing golf;

surely we hit Broken Compass.

Americana & Brews 05Aug17 [FB Repost]

Kala and I hit the Keystone Bluegrass & Beer Festival. Great fun. The music was really good and paid homage to some greats like Garcia & the Dead, NRPS and Pure Prairie League in addition to purer bluegrass sounds. We really enjoyed Peter Rowan and The Wooks on the main stage and The Railsplitters on Montezuma stage - here we are enjoying each. Kala was DD so I was the team's participant in the craft beer festival aspect - I tried 20+ IPAs and DIPAs, mostly from ColoRADo; it was heartening that my favorite was Two Pound Tent from our local brewer Outer Range. Nice too that I now have a true 2# tent. We enjoyed having these fine slices of Americana right in our backyard.

Ark Headwaters & Brew 03Aug17

With 12" of rain on Front Range counties and Freemont recently, down-mountain rivers have been swollen despite it being August. I was headed to Summit and went the long way over Freemont Pass in order to fish the truest headwaters of the Arkansas River - where it initially collects and trickles past Mt Elbert and Leadville. Fishing was very good for me but I think I was setting a standard with my yellow sally dry fly, beaded green caddis dropper and trailing Barr's Emerger PMD. I stuck with it all day (10:30am-1:30pm) and caught 15 or so browns in this 185cfs (smidge high) flow at Kobe (just downstream of Hayden Meadows)... while somewhat crowded and fast flowing, I found some soft spots. I turned over several with the stimi/sally but scored best with the PMD nymph. Both Loch Leven and German browns roam these waters and the Scottish were bigger - the nicest landed being a 15"er on my 4 wt Winston (which was a bit shy in heavy down-valley winds, but plenty for the fish).

Clouds gathered, hunger stirred and the back tired at ~1:30p so I headed to Leadville for brew and lunch @ Periodic Brewery. This is a keen place and I sat at the bar with the owner Aussie (probably, note the burnt orange of UT, or Ozzie) and Leadville's greeter, Jim, with a 3ft white beard and serious getup... both were preparing for Boom Days, a big pending festival for this 3K person town. Aussie has a strong vibe and clever brand borne from his TX roots... get it? He's a finance softie drop out, plus his dad is mayor. I tried his 4 IPAs and chose Hope Pass - it was NOT 105 IBUs, he went in the back and scored me a better (citrusy & flowery) DIPA but commented his experimental pilot batches tended to clog and he couldn't pour me a full pint. All were very good and I gotta say that this is a special place worth the travel to Leadville.

I headed home in a rain storm over Freemont Pass with some slower traffic leading my way. Once stocking up and cleaning up, I cracked a nice IPA from Fort Collins' Nowhere In Particular. Their Batch #12 was crackerjack and never to be repeated - love that.

Cord Cuttin' Status Update 31Jul17

This is an update to my original post HERE. Primarily I'm updating folks on vendors, pricing and experiences. I switched to CenturyLink in Silverthorne too and internet broadband for both sites totals $65/month. Additionally we dropped some over the top services but still pay an additional $47/month for Netflix, HBO and SlingTV - these and many other streaming services are available to us now on any Roku TVs, PCs or iDevices anywhere. though we mostly use them on Blodgett and at the Nest via Roku. Plex as a DVR continues strong and has shows recorded from free terrestrial HD signals in COS on NBC, CBS, ABC, FOX, PBS & CW - the recordings are available again in Summit Co and anywhere else really on our iDevices and Roku. I use Silicon Dust's HD Home Run receivers connected to a bow tie array antenna to grab the terrestrial HD signal and convert them to packet streams for Plex. We rarely use the MediaSonic receiver locally or remotely for live viewing - I mainly want live for sports and then I'm often on ESPN Go. Plex is also used to publish my .5TB music library similarly to any devices and locations. All this stuff is captured, served and backed up on an 8TB Win server in COS. I dropped cloud backup for cost and performance reasons (HDDs are much cheaper and much faster than cloud backup). Performance of CenturyLink in both locations is sufficient to stream three simultaneous HD streams just fine (or other similar total bandwidth need) on top of all the emails and IoT device reporting using the pipes too. I'm sure nothing I do is truly private anymore but we are in no danger there anyway.

Crowded On Williams Fk 30Jul17

Despite the weekend bringing a crowd to Williams Fk (I've never seen this many cars at the TH), I gathered a decent day (wow - 3 articles used, I hate that). I wet my line late at 10am near the mouth with the Colorado facing 125cfs flows (a skosh high) after the 30 min hike to the river. I was clearly "last" in and fishing was pretty slow (as a follower) as a result - and bug juice was very necessary - I even reloaded once to avoid the squitee bites. When I arrived at guides and his clients upstream-bound I'd skip a couple spots to give them space. The 3.5 hr fishing day rendered a number of the small browns typical of this fishery but also several nice rainbows (an 18" and 19" here) also possible on this river, one breaking off below me off my own boot - sheesh. The rainbows came only after some of the friendly passings I made. I caught up with the likely #1 dude near the top I think but scored right beneath him on something he might've overlooked. Best performers for the 'bows were rainbow warrior and olive KF midge though one nabbed a glass head FBPT. I've been experimenting with colors on the glass head and today I threw red intended to mimic PMD red eyes... but I've made them in BWO mercury and red quill caramel color as well. Browns took anything but cream colored stuff. Good outing when good fish get to the net. I left early with the crowd and beat the vacationers to town for happy hour at Baker's.

Wilbur Sailing & Beers In Summit 28Jul17

Though broheme DD couldn't make the event, I sailed varied winds with Jason & his kid Matt and his friend Dr Scott Kaiser. Cool team despite the lineage exclusively Iowa. They executed the maneuvers I needed on time and with a smile under mostly very modest winds. I introed them after to the Nest and to the Whole Foods - Outer Range play. Not universal applause but a strong afternoon with CO appreciation apparent. That not enough that JW would come up mountain for his next gig. His 'tude was impressive actually - confident and not anxious about taking a next step in the face of a year off and such modest skills. ;) Here we are wing on wing downwind but Jason ill-manned his post on the front sail. Great fun.