Back "Into" The PT 18Oct16

It was 38° as I pulled up to the Nature Center parking - I had to set out in a ThermoBall! There were no fires nearby, skies were clear and the lot was empty. Flows had increased to 187cfs from a week ago and the water was way off color with <12in viz to my eye. Undaunted I rigged Wire Squirmy, Silver Surfer and Jimi's Axe ~ and I pretty much stuck with this all day. The water color called for silver and I caught most fish today on the SS but squirmy nailed a couple as did my purple haze variant. It was far from an epic fall day with most landings of the smallish variety. One notable unphotoed fish was a "pure strain" Snake River cutthroat of ~14" like I've caught @ 11 Mile. He jumped out of hand before the pic but that's the first "pure" cut I've caught on the PT. Else in "disappointments" were 3 pretty decent fish I didn't land ~ one was even on the rim of my net. Oh well - they all looked about like this 18" rainbow I sense. The day was eventful to a fault anyway as I dipped my 6S after forgetting to put it back in the Crusher after lunch. Grrr... the black 7/128GB is on it's way ~ I decided against Google Pixel just on familiarity and infrastructure, despite my really preferring Google for the rest of my services.

Carniceria In Blue River Valley 15Oct16

Kala and I ate at the Carniceria La Perla on Blue River Pkwy today. Very good and very authentic Mex spot - speaking Spanish often needed. Great salsa bar. Who knew?!

Sauce on the Blue & Another Ghetto Fix 14Oct16

As theDay of the Dead looms near, and attendance at audiophile nirvana wanes, I chose to repair my venerable AKG K702 headphones. Sure Kala said she can hear them in the next room and would turn them down even as background speakers, much less as objective head-mounted cans. She said "don't buy the (~$1,700) closed ones." But I needed a better fit for these ~$250 pure flat headphones driven by my $200 Schitt stack. The elastic had limped on the K702s so I devised this very sophisticated fix... some rubber bands; sweet. We also hiked Rock Ck then dined during 50% off pizza and happy hour at Sauce on the Blue... this is a fine spot with excellent vibe, good food and great outdoor seating (though we hung near the bar)... worth enjoying; we will be back.

Remembering Zevon 11Oct16

October, and a dive on artist Amanda Shires (soon to appear at BellyUp) led me to reprise listening to one of my favorite songwriters, Warren Zevon. Thirteen years ago near Halloween Warren Zevon died of lung cancer... 14 years ago was his last spot on the Tonight Show (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r3KK6CJfZ8c). This is a great watch with a man facing his eminent demise after waving a finger in life's face for his entire life. His stuff was complex and evocative ~ I still love it. I caught Amanda sing Mutineer, a special, and nautical, song from WZ ~ then, the musical history session & dive ensued... starting with Mutineer from that same final show. A Simple Quiet Life will lead you into some of Zevon's best including Werewolves of London, Roland the Headless Thompson Gunner, Mohammed's Radio, Excitable Boy, The Envoy and much more. I think my love of WZ stuff may show some esoteric tastes not always comprehended by my friends ~ nonetheless spectacular... I know every song, every album, not just the "hits."

PT Rainbows On Columbus Day 10Oct16

It's time to head back to the PT for fall fishing ~ it's my first time back for several months. Flows were 120cfs today but only 2' visibility with turnover in the reservoir. Fishing was very good and I caught a passel of rainbows, no browns. I caught a variety of sizes on the day with a number of 6" fry and 12-14" second years among the bigger guys. Morning started at the Nature Center and yielded a number of nice fish behind the weirs. I started early but could've gone even earlier ~ the trico mating balls were huge as I arrived. I did not fish the spinner fall as there didn't seem to be big fish rising ~ I nymphed all day. The best morning fly was Jimi's Axe (dark purple electric midge) though squirmy worm and rainbow warrior took some too. The morning story was really that I lost likely the biggest fish when, after a time on the line, he went under a rock in his weir and ultimately broke me off... and I had a second similar break off, though on a stump, in the afternoon. After lunch in the state park I headed upstream from Valco. Again fishing was good but fish were a bit smaller in the PM. It was not too crowded, even for a holiday. It was good to be back on the PT and catching big fish, despite the colored water, but the day got warmish and fishing slowed mid-day ~ 8:30-11:30 and 3:00-5:30 were best. Here are some of the nicer fish.

RMAF Review 07Oct16

The Rocky Mountain Audio Fest (RMAF) is oddly one of the biggest and most radical audio gear shows in the world - now copied in SD, NYC and Singapore. Inside this great show is CanJam - a section dedicated to headphone gear. It's gotten so big that the dedicated room for CanJam was moved to tents outside in the parking lot... kind of odd really and the vendors were not impressed.

The three coolest things I heard included: #1 Focal Utopia headphones $4K, #2 Woo Audio WA8 transportable Class A SET DAC/AMP $1.8K and #3 Sanders electrostatic speaker/amp system $22K (with two amps). These 3 things were spectacular and far above the nearest competition in their respective categories. The finally released WA8 was something I'd heard prior in prototype form but this battery driven tube DAC/AMP was stunning in production - it trounced the ALO portable tube amp - and it bested my desktop WA7 tube DAC/AMP. The biggest surprise/delight for me was the French Focal Utopia headset - full range - full size beryllium drivers so far above my planar magnetics it was weird... super expensive though at $4K. Their $1.5K model was good too, but it was hard to come down from the mountain after hearing the Utopia early in the day (and then coming back to assure I heard it right). I hit all the esoteric speaker manufacturers too after CanJam - I've always liked the electrostatics like Martin Logan but the Sanders Model 10e system was definitely better - and they bested the best of the efficient horns this time. These babies crushed everything else I saw at the show, and they are designed and built in Colorado ~ so cool.

That's not to say that other stuff wasn't worthy - there was plenty of new stuff I tested. One category of particular interest during this outing was portable high def players - a steroids version of an iPod called a DAP, digital audio player. Astel & Kern pioneered the category but I sought a full survey and tested released and prototype gear that was easier to use than A&K. I came into the show wanting to like the AR M2 - a venerable brand reborn from Chinese engineering with great design and power ~ but by far my favorite was the Android-based Onkyo (Pioneer had an equivalent model); the A&K, FiiO, AR and Sony "walkman" were all harder to use and less feature-filled. However, the Walkman heritage is strong and Sony, though unreleased till 4Q, has a new line and included a new 4.4mm balanced jack output with 5 poles - larger and nicer than all others. Other models with balanced output use 2.5mm 4 pole jacks which seem prone to fail (but are perfect for IEMs actually). Amps and DACs in all models are sufficient but I'll get the Onkyo, it has more storage, is easier to use, and supports more file types. I did try the EchoBox Explorer but it is not ready for prime time. Here are 1) Onkyo $700, 2) Pioneer (basically equal) $800, 3) FiiO $500, 4) Sony $1,200, 5) A&K $900. 6) AR M2 $800 and 6) Explorer $800.

I also listened to several other new headphones of interest and talked to the dev team members or inventors when I could. Breakthroughs include Dan Clark's (MrSpeaker) Ether C Flow @ $1.8K, the closed back model of these pleated foil diaphragms have cool carbon fiber appeal. Closed backs are hard to drive to clean full range and typically suffer dynamics but these are without compare in these regards. Dan had open versions too - but those have plenty of competition. He was co-boothed with Cavali, who's stuff (Liquid Gold, Liquid Glass, Liquid Titanium and other amps) is great but out of touch for normal humans. The experience this Friday also led me to research and appreciate Miley Cyrus. It's strange to me but her version on the non-twerking Lilac Wine is terrific; she's every bit as strong as Adele, Natalie Merchant and Alicia Keyes. Who knew? - I went back and listened to some of her other stuff and a lot of it is good. Everyone let me use my USB drive of specific listening tunes on their macs, when computers vs players were involved. That was nice as their playlists never had any of my material (Miley, Wheatus, New Pornographers, Killers, Flim & The BBs, Mark Knopfler and Vampire Weekend); I really didn't know my tastes were so obtuse. Also of note are new Swedish headphone designs for wireless operation via bluetooth called uJay Wireless $180 - sweet on-ear gear with minimal tomfoolery and cool UI where swipes are used on the outside of the earpieces to control the material, and the sound is very good. Finally noteworthy for me were strong and well-priced Romanian entries from Meze called the 99 Classic for $300.

I also met Darin Fong who wrote the software behind "Out of Your Head." This is very cool signal processing code for Mac or PC which installs like a sound card and processes the stereo signal from any chosen source into something which seems like much more, on any set of headphones. It was super cool. His pricing was 50% off the normal $150 at the show but I did not buy. "In app purchases" of $25 each allow you to listen to any speakers you want. Darin has measured many high end speaker systems and mimics them with signal processing for headphones. It's a cool idea and seems to work - how big the market is however, I am dubious. There's a free demo on his website and it is very cool.

Of course I wrapped the day with some IPAs. I headed to Declaration Brewing's Preamble brewspot. The vibe was quite different from the festival where many old dudes (at least on Friday) or press weenies were littering the hotel - to one of a young Denver hangout full of action. I tried all the IPAs (4) but settled on a dry-hopped limited (Citra dry-hopped) release of King Nalu Koa'e DIPA. "Keep your pinky on the glass at all times." Too, the Churn & Burn food truck was excellent - I enjoyed a "bowl" with salad, topped by cornbread waffle, topped by mac 'n' cheese, topped by house-smoked brisket, topped by habanero aioli ~ so good.

CoWW Fish the Ark, Camp Beneath the Sangres, Ride OWF and Enjoy Some Pump Action 30Sep16-02Oct16

The annual fall pilgrimage to upper Big Horn Sheep Canyon of the Arkansas River for some fishing and riding continued in style. On Fri I set up camp beneath the Sangre de Christos (left to right these ~13ers are Galena Peak, Mt Otto, Bushnell Pk & Twin Sisters North) among the fall aspens in Hayden Ck CG (no evidence of the fire near camp but there was some burned patches on the way up to the campground) while Wilks played golf in Salida - Yoho showed about 1:30pm. We shared a beer then headed upstream for some PM fishing at Rincon. I did fine and caught some decent browns on RS2s and rojo headed black zebra midges. We caught up with Wilks there and headed back to camp for excellent gumbo and pumpkin scones from MaryY - the food was great as was the guest "IPA" from 4 Noses - really an award winning imperial pumpkin ale called Pump Action. 

On Saturday we went further upstream and trundled down a cliff with Wilks outfitted. Yoho found a good hole which produced an opening rainbow for me and TWO brown trout for Tom (caught on trailing FBPT). We headed into Salida to have lunch at Amica's (super long wait and strangely only guest beers as they're moving the brewery to out on Rt 50 and didn't reopen yet). We returned sated to the Chaffe Co line CG area to fish and meet up with GL. Both done and we all caught some more browns and a high percentage of rainbows. Yoho got some good top water action. Back at camp around 7pm we prepared roasted chili & chix fajitas (though Tom ate gruel) and tossed back a few ales by Greg's fire. 

Sunday led us to pack up camp, have a nice breakfast of french toast and go fishing! We hit Lone Pine where the river was off color (presumably from Hayden Fire runoff) and none of us caught anything (big change from last year). We wrapped up there and drove up to the Oil Well Flats trail system above Canon City for a great mtn bike ride (7.5mi & 850ft elevation) through high desert. I snagged some cholla spines but else we had a blast climbing up and bombing down through the rocks ~ and enjoyed a great view with GL's leadership.

We capped the day (we thought) with a stop at Royal Gorge Brewery for dinner and to watch the Broncos wallop the Buccaneers. Yet, a funny thing happened as I climbed out of Canon City at 60mph ~ the wheel flew off the camper and we could not find it! We had one hell of a time getting the full size spare on since I lost five lug nuts in the process. The prison guards were spying on us through binoculars through the entire repair. I limped home with again just one lug by the end and spent today getting a wheel back on after finding and buying lug nuts and an appointment for new bearings, drums and studs in 10 days. Sheesh.