Sunday, May 15, 2011
Sunday, May 8, 2011
Saturday, May 7, 2011
18 Hours of Fruita
Here we are again: Back to Fruita for the epic 18-hour race. This year was a hot one! The daytime temperatures hovering near 80 and the nighttime lows in the high-40's, maybe. For the cheering section, there was a nice strong wind to keep us cool. Unfortunately for the racers that wind only added to the already tough laps around Highline Lake.
Billy, Ken, Rob and Ben made up the Natural Grocer team this year. Ben formed the four-man Natural Grocer team with a couple of the old 18 Hour racers and another of his N.G. teammates. And a highlight for me in my second year at the race, Gina and Tracey (Billy and Ken's significant others) came along for the weekend!
Ben's Race Series:
Here's Higgins. He was Ben's biggest fan out there. It seems he could pick Ben out in the distance and his eyes would not leave his path until B. passed us. Then it was a tug of war with the leash to try and catch Dad. Oh, he was so excited!
Back at camp:
The team and race support hiding in the shade.
Tracey and Squiggy (AKA Dog That Doesn't Leave Tracey's Lap)
Ken starting the grill with a blow torch. Blow torch courtesy of the neighboring camp.
Ben, grilling.
Relaxing after the race!
A little before six pm, the Natural Grocer team finished the race and immediately joined the crowd at the finish line cheering in the last of the finishers. The team was pretty pleased with their race; Natural Grocers placed 11th out of 31 four-man teams and all raced pretty solid laps. To Ben's surprise and delight, he was the fastest man!
Congrats to the team and to you, Ben! Another great year of racing begins.
Billy, Ken, Rob and Ben made up the Natural Grocer team this year. Ben formed the four-man Natural Grocer team with a couple of the old 18 Hour racers and another of his N.G. teammates. And a highlight for me in my second year at the race, Gina and Tracey (Billy and Ken's significant others) came along for the weekend!
Ben's Race Series:
Here's Higgins. He was Ben's biggest fan out there. It seems he could pick Ben out in the distance and his eyes would not leave his path until B. passed us. Then it was a tug of war with the leash to try and catch Dad. Oh, he was so excited!
Back at camp:
The team and race support hiding in the shade.
Tracey and Squiggy (AKA Dog That Doesn't Leave Tracey's Lap)
Ken starting the grill with a blow torch. Blow torch courtesy of the neighboring camp.
Ben, grilling.
Relaxing after the race!
A little before six pm, the Natural Grocer team finished the race and immediately joined the crowd at the finish line cheering in the last of the finishers. The team was pretty pleased with their race; Natural Grocers placed 11th out of 31 four-man teams and all raced pretty solid laps. To Ben's surprise and delight, he was the fastest man!
Congrats to the team and to you, Ben! Another great year of racing begins.
Sunday, May 1, 2011
The Koppenberg
Ben finally took the plunge and signed up for the Koppenberg race this weekend. He's been a bit apprehensive about the road scene and I sure can't blame him. Racing around at 35+ mph in a tight pack filled with bikes and people taking sharp turns and jostling for position does not sound fun (or safe) to me. As it turned out, he loved it!
The course is a 5.5 mile loop around Superior/Marshall which is just minutes from our house. This made for a happy girlfriend who didn't have to wake before dawn to drive to the course. (I've had my fill of 5am wake up calls on race day.) Ben warmed up with a couple of his Natural Grocers teammates, toured the course (he'd be doing four laps in his heat) and headed to the start line with one of his teammates, Samer, who was also racing in the men's 35+ cat 4 race. Ben's goal was pretty straight forward: Finish without crashing. We talked a bit about race strategy and his plan was to get in with the pack early so as not to be dropped right away. This is key in bike racing as you are significantly more efficient and therefore faster when riding in the pack versus on your own. The problem is that getting in the pack is easier said than done: it's an all-out sprint in the first portion of the race. Gotta weed out the ones just looking for a free ride. I drove to the top of a big hill to cheer on the team and take some photos, so when I saw B. he was already a couple of miles into the race. He was lagging off of the back of the pack with Samer, but once he hit the hill he started passing people left and right and caught the back end of the pack.
Unfortunately just after the uphill is a long downhill dirt track and Ben quickly lost the pack again. He never regained his position, but had a solid race anyway. Samer and Ben rode together challenging and pushing one another the entire race.
Ben learned some valuable lessons during the race and he'll have plenty of opportunities to put them to practice, too. There's a road race just about every weekend in the Front Range. Summer racing, here we come.
Monday, April 25, 2011
Big News in the Garden
This is the beginnings of the first of this year's home-grown garden goodies: arugula. I planted the seeds about three weeks ago and they're thriving! Thankfully, we've had a few spring showers here in Boulder because, aside from my little seedlings' need for moisture, the front range has been dry, dry dry. I've welcomed the last couple of weeks with their dark skies, brooding storms, snow and rain. And I know that Colorado sunshine won't fail me. We'll have our bluebird skies again soon.
In addition to our little vegetable garden plot on the patio, I'm also so so excited to report that we have a plot in the community garden in our neighborhood! Can you imagine the possibilities?!? Oh, to have our very own (well, borrowed, but still) respectable amount of space to grow! I can hardly believe the good news. And, and! Something I've been considering for a year or more... I signed up for a CSA share and an organic fruit delivery service. Eeee!
I'm sure at some point we're going to have tomatoes, lettuce and squash coming out of our ears, but I don't care. I'll give it away if I have to. I love that we will have 100% local (and home-grown even!) produce all season long. I can't contain my excitement! Time for planning the garden plots. I've ordered this book and this book to help. Suggestions welcome.
Now, if only we had the space for canning...
Saturday, April 16, 2011
On the Homestead: Update on Bathroom Remodel
So it's actually been over a year since Ben and I began the process of remodeling the bathroom, but because we've now started to work on the kitchen (and I just finished taking photos of the progress), I realized that I never talked here about the bath and so decided, months later, to do so. And so, without further ado: the bathroom remodel.
Ben and I began the process last March and it was finally finished by the end of August. We had big ideas for the crumby bathroom that we were tolerating. Glass shower doors, a shower seat, a new and larger washer and dryer (oh, we pined for that new washer and dryer for months!) in the bathroom rather than in a closet outside of the bath, subway tile, glass tile, and so on. Surprisingly, most of the ideas came to fruition in the end--after much deliberation and angst.
A couple of months into "Demolition 2.0" (that's right, the second iteration of remodel--Ben did the first round when he moved into the condo in 2003) we realized that our warm summer evenings and weekends were quickly being filled with trips to Lowe's, drywall dust, 2 x 4's and a whole lot of frustration. Ben decided enough was enough, that he would hire some contractors to take over the job. In the end, I'm not sure what would have been easier on him: the long slow process of piecing together the bathroom ourselves or dealing with contractors and sometimes downright shoddy work. Alas! By August we had our bathroom and we love it.
Higgins at four months, helping dad.
Yes, I did help in this process, but I was also in charge of documenting the progress!
In this picture you can see the new beam we've installed. We wanted to take out the old door frame but still needed enough support in this load-bearing wall to keep the ceiling from caving. After much sweat and cursing, we did it. But it was the tipping point. After this, Ben hired help.
Choosing floor and shower tile was tough for us. I didn't think I had the eye for design and I was so worried that the three different types and colors of tile we eventually settled on wouldn't work together. I'm into simple, clean looks. Solid colors. Yes. My wardrobe is a testament to that: all solid colors and maybe a few striped shirts. Plain Jane right here. I'm the first to admit that. We spent a lot of time searching for bathroom designs online; weeding through endless god-awful tile and paint jobs. At the end of it, we both liked the subway shower tile look, Ben chose the blue glass tile and we both picked out the 12x12 floor tile. I wasn't completely sold on either the large floor tiles or the glass tile. Our bathroom is small so I worried large tile wouldn't work. And I wanted to keep the shower clean and simple with all subway tile. In my mind, painting the walls light blue in combination with the floor tiles and dark wood vanity was enough. But we bought some samples and had the contractors test out the glass tile and flooring. It looked great!
Believe it or not, our bathroom and the washer and dryer are in the middle of the condo. With.no.ventilation. You read that right. Needless to say, the top priority was installing ventilation. The HOA approved venting to the north side of the complex. This meant venting from the middle of the condo all the way through the dining area, living room and out. It was major task and the contractors did a great job on it. We used to have a 1-inch lip in the wall where the living room and dining area meet, so the contractors pulled the wall out flush and managed to install the vents for a nice clean look.
And Ben's wonderful idea of putting in a heated floor worked out. He installed it himself.
The finished product:
We decided to skip the bathtub in trade for a larger washer and dryer (we're lacking in the space department) and added the shower seat instead. Love it. Frameless glass door. Delightful.
We have yet to hang the towel racks, shelves and decorations -- we're trying to wait until we have the kitchen done and the house re-painted (thanks to the lack of ventilation, we have mildew on the walls of the hall and our bedroom). One decoration I'm really excited about hanging is the Mayan mask I brought back from Honduras:
So that's it, the new bathroom! We love it, but what do you think? Would you buy a place that has a bathroom like ours?
Ben and I began the process last March and it was finally finished by the end of August. We had big ideas for the crumby bathroom that we were tolerating. Glass shower doors, a shower seat, a new and larger washer and dryer (oh, we pined for that new washer and dryer for months!) in the bathroom rather than in a closet outside of the bath, subway tile, glass tile, and so on. Surprisingly, most of the ideas came to fruition in the end--after much deliberation and angst.
A couple of months into "Demolition 2.0" (that's right, the second iteration of remodel--Ben did the first round when he moved into the condo in 2003) we realized that our warm summer evenings and weekends were quickly being filled with trips to Lowe's, drywall dust, 2 x 4's and a whole lot of frustration. Ben decided enough was enough, that he would hire some contractors to take over the job. In the end, I'm not sure what would have been easier on him: the long slow process of piecing together the bathroom ourselves or dealing with contractors and sometimes downright shoddy work. Alas! By August we had our bathroom and we love it.
Higgins at four months, helping dad.
Yes, I did help in this process, but I was also in charge of documenting the progress!
In this picture you can see the new beam we've installed. We wanted to take out the old door frame but still needed enough support in this load-bearing wall to keep the ceiling from caving. After much sweat and cursing, we did it. But it was the tipping point. After this, Ben hired help.
Believe it or not, our bathroom and the washer and dryer are in the middle of the condo. With.no.ventilation. You read that right. Needless to say, the top priority was installing ventilation. The HOA approved venting to the north side of the complex. This meant venting from the middle of the condo all the way through the dining area, living room and out. It was major task and the contractors did a great job on it. We used to have a 1-inch lip in the wall where the living room and dining area meet, so the contractors pulled the wall out flush and managed to install the vents for a nice clean look.
And Ben's wonderful idea of putting in a heated floor worked out. He installed it himself.
The finished product:
We decided to skip the bathtub in trade for a larger washer and dryer (we're lacking in the space department) and added the shower seat instead. Love it. Frameless glass door. Delightful.
We have yet to hang the towel racks, shelves and decorations -- we're trying to wait until we have the kitchen done and the house re-painted (thanks to the lack of ventilation, we have mildew on the walls of the hall and our bedroom). One decoration I'm really excited about hanging is the Mayan mask I brought back from Honduras:
So that's it, the new bathroom! We love it, but what do you think? Would you buy a place that has a bathroom like ours?
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