Author: cosmo

On Saturday, we decided to ride in the annual Longmont G’Knight Ride, which is a short bike trip around town. You can select one, five, or ten-mile segments.

Since La and I both had ancient mountain bikes we’d bought in 1995 (no kidding!) we’ve been thinking for a while about buying something new. What better time than the day of the big race? So we went over to a local bike shop, took a few test rides, and picked out a pair of nice Specialized hybrids. Neither of us wanted a true road bike, but at the same time we recognized that we really don’t hit the singletrack trails any more. A hybrid is a nice mix of the two: front suspension, larger and narrower tires, and a bit of a taller frame.

We tuned up the kids’ bikes and posed for a team picture.

When Laralee registered our family, she had to enter a team name. Zack chose The Midnight Riders. We felt like we should at least have matching outfits, and since all of us have black Zing shirts, it was a done deal. Now we can say Zing is officially a biking team sponsor, just like the USPS!

We biked a few miles to Roosevelt Park, where all of the festivities were happening. There were thousands of people there! We all put on our official race bibs…

… and Zack made sure he was Mr. Cool.

Then we were off, with a wave of about a hundred other people. It was slow going for the first mile or so, including a few stops at intersections where the police were directing traffic.

(Is that guy to Laralee’s left actually talking on his cell phone?)

Kyra did the five-mile tour with her friend Hannah and her mom, while La, Alex, Zack, and I all did the full ten-mile loop. Once we broke out of the pack, we made pretty good time and enjoyed the tour of Longmont.

After we crossed the finish line, we biked back across town to Nicolo’s Pizza, our favorite pizza place (conveniently located a few blocks from home). We enjoyed some good pizza and called it a night.

It was a lot of fun, and I love my new bike!

This is my new favorite anti-drug sign.

Last night, Team Zing headed to downtown Denver for the Rockies game.

Due to some scheduling difficulties, some of us made it before the Boulder crowd, so we decided to grab some food. We went to Biker Jim’s, which is sort of a dive restaurant that specializes in hot dogs. Yes, that’s right: their menu is basically a bunch of unique hot dogs like the Rattlesnake Dog, Alaskan Reindeer Dog, and a dog wrapped in bacon. According to Ben, there’s an “explosion of gourmet sausage restaurants in the area”. I didn’t realize “gourmet” and “sausage” could be used in the same sentence with a straight face, but regardless, the food wasn’t bad.

When we met up at the stadium, we went through the gate and Indiana Ben was immediately pulled aside for some special fun with a security agent.

Aside from the authentic Indiana Jones hat, it was unclear what made Ben seem suspicious. Luckily he passed the frisking and was allowed to watch the game.

It was a gorgeous June evening.

After a few innings without much action, the Rockies came alive and knocked two home runs to go up 5-2, then another home run later in the game gave them their final 7-3 victory. All in all, it was (as usual) a good time.

(Sorry, Amber, about the closed eyes!)

I’m booking a trip to London. There are some pretty cool titles I can select here…

Maybe I should be Lord Schroeder? Or a baron?

A graduate student did a nationwide survey of how people pronounce words, or use certain words to describe things. He compiled them into heatmaps of the country, and the results are awesome.

My favorite, of course, is the map about whether people say “soda”, “pop”, or “coke”.

Check out my hometown of St. Louis, which is clearly a hot spot of “soda” in the midst of a bunch of hicks who say “pop” and “coke”. Nice!

I just finished setting up my new CenturyLink (formerly Qwest) internet connection, and of course I had to check the speed.

Holy bittorrents, Batman! That’s some pretty sweet download speed.

Although I’ve had some unpleasant run-ins with Qwest in the past, they’re offering more than double my bandwidth I had through Comcast, at about 60% of the price. Nice!

Seen on a billboard in Wyoming:

I love email. With email, I never feel lonely. I just got up to pee, and when I came back to my desk I had three emails from clients. That’s pretty much how it goes: head out for lunch, and twenty are waiting. Leave for a three-day trip, and there are a few hundred. Whee!

We just returned home from our trip to Utah to visit Laralee’s family. Of course it was fun, and featured such highlights as…

A visit to the Salt Lake Temple. La’s brother Doug was sealed to his wife Jen in a wonderful ceremony.

A guided tour of the BYU campus, where La struggled to remember what the buildings were, and what apartment complex she’d lived in. (In her defense, it was 20 years ago.) We did find the Marriott Center where she’d worked for a few years.

Unfortunately all of the doors were locked, so we couldn’t get in to see anything… until we ran into La’s old boss Dale, who actually remembered her after 20 years. He not only let us in, but gave us his key ring so she could take us all over. We saw the main basketball court, of course:

We also poked around the restricted areas, like the team locker room (freshly renovated, and apparently nicer than most NCAA schools):

Driving around campus, we spotted the fateful stop sign where La was ticketed by campus police for failing to stop. In her defense, this is at the bottom of an enormous hill, so you’re cooking along at a good clip on your bike and hardly want to stop. On the other hand, the sign is pretty clear. She still gets worked up about it if you mention the incident.

After BYU, we headed over to Saturday’s Waffle. This is a small business started by my nephew Colin and two of his friends. They park a little trailer at a strip mall on Saturday mornings and sell… waffles. But these aren’t just any waffles. They’re loaded with everything from chocolate and marshmallow (the S’more) to biscuits and gravy (the Lumberjack) to bacon and eggs (the Benny). These guys had a wild idea, put it together, and now they’re famous. There was a huge line. They’ve been voted Best Waffle in Utah (who knew there was such a thing?) and apparently receive a lot of calls from investors and people who want to franchise. They’re thinking of quitting their day jobs to sell waffles full-time. Awesome.

Oh, and I saw this cool license plate:

On the way home today we stopped at Little America for some 50-cent ice cream cones…

… And a chance for Laralee to try on some cowboy hats and tell me how she doesn’t look good in them.

Good times all around.

We went out to eat at Red Robin the other night. While walking to the restaurant, Kyra and I were amused to see this establishment across the parking lot: