It's Better in Wyoming.

Last Wednesday night I headed for Nebraska, to give George a hand with the roofing project at his folks' place that he's been putting off for a few months now. I took Old Highway 30 most of the way, preferring the old route to the steady truck traffic on I-80. Along 30 east of Pine Bluffs I passed several custom combine crews making their way west and north. I don't know where they go from Nebraska, after laying low the fields there. Jon Krakauer talks about the combine crews in Into the Wild , and I wish I knew more about their migratory path. Thursday morning dawned hot and sunny, and even hotter with the sun reflecting off the corrugated metal we were pulling off the shed. By midday it was approaching one hundred degrees, so we took a long lunch and then went back out to tear off wood shingles and pull more nails. Friday I helped George for about a half day--between the two of us and his brother Charles we were able to strip the roof down to the base layer and get i...

This summer's been an odd one. I'm still trying to find a rhythm or pattern to it, but no dice. Something new or changing every few weeks, no set schedule, no major events to build towards. Just a lot of small pieces to put into place. This weekend George came into town to help me put a new roof on the shed and till and seed the back yard. I'd planned in May to help him with a roofing project at his folks' place in Nebraska, but it didn't quite work out. Now it works out for me to go next Thursday and Friday. This weekend is a trip to Fort Collins on Saturday to catch up with my friend Melissa--the one who's biking across country --who will be at a BBQ on Saturday and then riding in New Belgium's Urban Assault Ride on Sunday. This reminds me to find out if I need to bring anything else to her. And I just realized that the Albany County Demolition Derby 2009 will be next Saturday at 7 pm. I missed out last year, and year-before was a muddy slow-motion...

I missed the concert on Saturday. Not the Fire in the Sky concert, but instead the Lonesome Heroes at Centennial. Tickets for the Fire in the Sky concert were 20 bucks this year, which seemed like more than I wanted to spend. (And it turns out that the Fire in the Sky concert got cancelled anyway, on account of the weather. I guess the Jubilee Days folks intend to reschedule it for "later in the summer," whatever that means.) So instead, Julie, Chad and I drove out to Centennial hoping to hear the Lonesome Heroes and to see the fireworks show out there. Since I'm my father's son, I didn't do much planning in advance; we just jumped in the truck after a nice afternoon barbeque and arrived about an hour after the Lonesome Heroes had finished their show. But since we still got to stand on the Bear Tree's rooftop patio, drink PBRs, and watch the Centennial fireworks, I'm still counting the evening as a success.

Quite a while ago I wrote a post titled sore bits . It was about my long bike ride on the rails to trails project up in the Snowies. My, what a difference 7 degrees makes. After riding for the past few years on a bike seat was essentially level, I decided to tilt the seat down a bit. After the ride yesterday at Happy Jack, I'm optimistic. On the less optimistic side, I may have contracted the West Nile virus yesterday, too. I started at the Happy Jack trailhead rather than at Tie City like I usually do. I rode up Aspen and then decided to try the Haunted Forest trail, which I'd only been on once before, so my memory of the trail was spotty. Despite all the sunshine or the last few days, the Haunted Forest trail wasn't very dry. In fact, it was like a swamp, mostly. A mosquito-infested swamp, but just steep enough that I couldn't keep traction. Plus, I couldn't get my derailleur to shift down when I was first starting the ride, which meant that already by t...