So after the bike ride ended Sandy's parents came and picked us up. We drove to Glenwood Springs and met her sisters and their families for the weekend, we all stayed at the 100+ year old Hotel Colorado. It was their parents 40th wedding anniversary so we all hung out for the weekend to celebrate.
On Saturday we rode a tram up to the top of a mountain next to the town where there was kind of a tourist trap thing. There is a cave up there that they give tours of, it was pretty cool.

This is the cave which looks like it might be made out of plastic or something, however I'm pretty sure it was all real. It looked much more authentic in person although they did stress that we not touch anything in the cave, hmmm.
Sandy got a "cave kiss" while we were in there. The tourist trap part was the "thrill rides" and "Indian teepee" there was a kind of gravity powered rollercoaster thing that I was kind of interested in but we decided not to spend the money on that.
Later we drove up to a nearly defunct town up in the mountains named Marble. 100 years ago it was a booming marble quarry with a huge building for cutting and sculpting the stone. They quarried stone for the Lincoln Memorial and the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier among other things. Then at some point the whole business went to crap, the building burned the railroads serving it went away and most of the town disappeared. There is currently some quarrying going on there but it's hard to get a feel for how much really. There were some big blocks of stone waiting to be hauled away, here's Sandy holding one up.



At one point Sandy absconded with our godson Zach and tried to teach him a bunch of nature stuff, but pretty soon his dad got wise to that and separated them. Here she is looking for a lizard or something to tell him about.



There was a big marble wall that used to be part of one of the quarry buildings, it had some curious marmots living in it.



After that we had a nice dinner and then sent Ruth and Dick on a buggy ride to get them out of our hair for a while.













Here's the wild party we had in their room while they were out on their ride.




That's the end of the vacation pictures. We did go and have a soak in the hot springs the next morning which was nice.
After that we had a long car ride back to Denver followed by a short night and more travel to get back here so we could work at least some of the day on Monday. It was all fairly mundane travel stuff except there was one brief interlude in the Denver airport where I thought I was going to get in a fistfight with a racist jackass but it didn't really amount to anything.
Now we're back to our usual routine until tomorrow when we are scheduled to have dinner with Ron, Paula and Sarah, then over the 4th of July weekend we go up to Sawbill for their 50th anniversary and all employee reunion. We're also hoping to spend some time at our property up there.

Good news everybody.
I just heard that Fox is producing a new season of Futurama to be shown on Comedy Central in 2008.
I realize that anybody who really cares about this is probably already aware of it, but I'm excited.
Here's a helpful link if you want to geek out about the show:
http://www.gotfuturama.com/

OK, so I've been thinking about doing this since the "ten year challenge" came along on all the other 'blogs.
Here's what I have for the ten year challenge (all give or take a year): I bought 1610 Center Ave, in Iowa City, I got Lucy from the IC animal shelter, Sandy and I "hooked up" at the Sawbill 40th anniversary/reunion, I became a "technical planner" at the Iowa City Pop Secret plant. That's all I have off the top of my head. It was a fairly eventful time in my life.
So, now on to the present...
Sandy and I just got back from Colorado this morning. We were out there for Ride the Rockies ( ridetherockies.com ) and also her parents 40th anniversary. We did the bike ride and then spent the weekend in Glenwood Springs at the Hotel Colorado with her family.
The ride went really well for both of us, the altitude wasn't really a big problem and the weather was very cooperative. Sandy spent most of her spare time buying clothes and getting massages, I spent my time finding/drinking chocolate milkshakes and reading.
Here are some selected photos from the week:

Here are Emily, Alex and Daisy having a time visiting with the old people. Tom dragged them along to Durango to see us the first and second days of the ride. You can see how much fun they were having, and this was before I made everyone go to the Durango and Silverton narrow gauge railroad museum...
But then suddenly there was a commotion!

It's a bird, it's a plane, it's someone's tent blowing away! Please excuse all the exclamation points, but this was one of the craziest things I've ever seen. There was a bunch of yelling and whatnot and when I looked up there was a tent flying through the air over the gym we were camped next to. If you look carefully you can see it slightly below dead center in the above photo.
First it kind of hovered over the gym for about a minute slowly going higher and higher then it started travelling horizontally. I'd say it went about 2-3 miles to the north out over the valley that Durango sits in then it slowly descended out of sight. Here it is out over the valley

It's the blackish dot over the left upright on the goalpost.
Enough of the flying tent.

Here's a nice picture of us I took on day two of the ride. Sandy is paying more attention to the weird guy that was offering to take the picture for us. We let him take some pictures but they suck.
We spent that night in Chama NM home of the Cumbres & Toltec scenic railroad, a remnant of the D&RG's former narrow gauge system. I took a lot of pictures of steam locomotives and whatnot but most of you would be bored with them so I won't post any here. We did take a short ride on the train with about 275 other bikers.

Here's me the next day as we left New Mexico. The picture is from the wrong side of the sign because the view was better. I know I look like a dork.

Here's a shirt I though Rob would appreciate.
In some ways it was unfortunate that I chose a quiet spot near the rodeo stands to set up the tent in Alamosa.

How was I supposed to know there is a weekly steer roping competition in Alamosa? Actually it was kind of fun to watch (not so much for the little steers who usually end up getting their heads and hind legs jerked in opposite directions between two horses) and I met a guy from the TransAmerica bicycle trek '87. We talked about our respective Seattle to Atlantic City bicycle rides, I think his name was Jerry. Ironically Jerry was smoking while we watched the roping ("Trek" was a fundraiser for the American Lung Association for those of you that have forgotten)

Back to the biking, here's Ms. Sassy shortly after we ate some free baked potatos in Moffat CO, it's the center of the second largest potato growing region in the US. We rode the remaining 44 miles that day on potato power.

Here she is riding up a 17% grade the last day as we approached the Royal Gorge suspension bridge, highest suspension bridge in the world. FYI a 17% grade at 7,000 feet above sea level when you've been training at about 800 feet above sea level is no picnic.
We had to walk our bikes across the bridge to continue our ride. The bridge was built in the 1920's and has a wooden deck, you can see between the boards if you look down. It's about 1,200' down to the river. I was "uncomfortable" so there aren't any photos...

Here's Sandy heroically riding across the finishing line at the end of the ride in Canon City, home of Colorado's Supermax prison.
Enough of this, I need to go to bed. If you made it this far you probably need to go to bed too. Good night.