LaPorte

In some other town...

Pretty weird jam on Sunday night! We will try again next week.

Colorado Crop Circles! More of 'em!

I know! I need a new hobby. Well guess what! I'm starting one in December!
In the meantime here are more circles I found around here:

From sugar beets to microchips?

To Tom Quinn, the first roundhouse foreman?

?? I got nothing!

They likes trains. Trains am good to FoCo!

People too!

...and some older ones:

In the last of this series I have found some real old ones! Just wait! Oh boy!

Steppe Squirrel

Per Kevin J. Cook:
The name 'prairie dog' is egregious on two points: the animals are not dogs and they do not inhabit prairie. They are, in fact, squirrels that inhabit the steppe, hence the name.

A Steppe Squirrel near Shields St. and Trilby Rd.

Since 1952, Johnson's Corner has been serving up old-fashioned, home-style cooking and hospitality.

I biked out to this place with the FoCo Bike club. Quite memorable indeed! The cinnamon rolls are to die for (i.e., they'll probably kill you!)

Wood Shop, Part Third

The headboard is finished!

Here it is in the hallway. The finish is supposed to be "espresso", but in order to achieve the look, I first coated all wood surfaces with flat black paint. Then I coated all surfaces with "Kona Brown", available from Home Depot. Both coats were sprayed on. The final coat was Minwax Polyshades Bombay Mahogany applied with a sponge.

The crown molding at the top is not exactly what I wanted, but it will do for now. If I find the right molding, I can easily replace it.

Bike Fort Collins!

FORT COLLINS CYCLING CLUB @ Mulligan's Pub Tonight!

They had grub!

And this guy: David "DK" Kemp, Fort Collins Bicycle Coordinator
Sorry, lighting was poor.

and this guy: Jeff Morrell, President of Bike Fort Collins

Did you know it costs $450,000 per mile of bike path?

Woodshop, Part Deux

We're havin' a heat wave!
Well, today it was 76 degrees! A nice day to work in the garage:

Here's the headboard I warned you about. The parts are shown here on the garage floor.

Here the 'bottom' of the headboard is clamped after the glue was applied.

Tomorrow will be nice as well. I should be able to apply at least two coats of finish before winter sets in!

As You Like It?

We see Shakespeare's stuff from time to time.
This evening we saw fellow RAGBRAI rider Lenny as Duke Federick in "As You Like It". 

"Reminiscent of the Woodstock festivities and political protests of the 1960's 'summer of peace and love,' director Judith Allen's production casts a critical eye on social injustice and pokes fun at self-destructive behavior."

 

Woodshop, Part 1

What? You expect me to goof around looking for roadside mysteries every day? I've got work to do. This week I am making a headboard for our bed. Here's the deal:

Our bedroom has an Oriental look, so I thought that I would make a headboard that sort of looks like the above painstakingly rendered PhotoShop picture. The wood lattice motif is taken from the armoire (not shown) , and I plan to build something like it that has the same height as the armoire (why not?).

Hey! I did something like this when I built a drum in 1995. So just like that, I am building it while I update this blog! Hope I don't screw it up! First I make a bunch of dado cuts to 16 pieces of 1x2's. There are evenly cut 3 U's and 2 L's on each end, if you get my drift.

Here is the first part of the lattice pairs using the 16 pieces. The things hold together without glue (so far).

Now the cross pieces are cut. The lattice pair won't hold together without glue, so I must glue the parts. Gotta do one side at a time, wait for the glue to dry, etc. so that's all for today. I realized also that I can't complete the whole project in the basement because I won't be able to get it into the bedroom from the basement! I'll have to measure and cut all the wood first and then move everything into the garage in order to complete this project. Ha! That's showbiz!

Umami Tsunami

A lecture on Molecular, Cellular and Integrative Neurosciences?

Here Dr. Sue C. Kinnamon from the CSU Department of Biomedical Sciences tells us about what's new in taste.

She likes to talk about G protein, T1R receptors, immunocytochemistry and stuff like that.

It was our first "Science Cafe". Very interesting indeed!

Vererans Day Treck!

On the night of October 18, 1943 a B-17 "Flying Fortress" and a crew of eight went down in a fiery crash into the mountainside of Stormy Peaks near Pingree Park, Colorado.
The men that died that night: Richard M. Creamer of Ohio; Joseph R. Arnold of California; Warren M. Dean of Seattle, Andrew H. Christensen of Wisconsin; William N. Cook of Texas; Robert J. Hopkins of New York, Carl E. Hamre of Iowa; and Philip Doddridge of Colorado.

I joined a group of five others and hiked out to the crash site to review the 65 year old remains. From Fort Collins, it's about an hour and forty-five minute drive to Pingree Park. From the park, you can hike to the site (if you know where to go!)

We started out by the park at an altitude of around 8,880 feet.

There was three inches of new snow; It would be difficult to find the crash site in the snow!

We climbed up another 1,400 feet and with the help of our GPS, we found what we were looking for! Here's one of the 1,200-hp Wright R-1820-97 Cyclone turbocharged radial piston engines.

We found pieces like this scattered all over the mountainside. Although most of the aluminum was carted off by local residents, there were still some recognizable items left after all these years.

Here is part of the wing section. We ate lunch on top of the wing.

Here is one of the B-17's electrically retractable landing gears.

Here is another engine. We searched around and found all four engines in the snow. We didn't see any other hikers out today, probably because of the snow. On the way back, a blizzard started coming in from the south so we got the heck out of there ASAP!

'Paca Party!!!

Today we went to the Alpaca Breeders of the Rockies 12th Annual Fall Festival Alpaca Show !

Alpacas are members of the camelid family. They are mild-tempered, gregarious animals with an inquisitive nature!

Indigenous to South America, the alpaca is raised for its soft fleece.

Had we purchased House Number One we would have had enough land to own a few of these critters.

Heck, they require only modest amounts of food! They are very intelligent animals that respond to a variety of training and handling techniques.

And they sure are cute!

Here's Jeanne with a huacaya.

This one with the dreadlocks is known as a suri.

Not one of them spat at us! Hooray!

Jabberwocky

A Frabjous occasion! $535 to a good cause!

Symphony Happens

BACK STAGE PASS!

We saw/heard the Fort Collins Symphony on the 4th of July at City Park. They were quite marvelous then, and we just knew we would hear them again soon. It turns out we had our chance last night! There was a late announcement that Lincoln Center was allowing a select few to come backstage to listen to a rehearsal and actually BE ON STAGE for part of the rehearsal!!

Here is music director Wes Kenney telling us about the music we will be hearing tonight. He will direct the orchestra and we will be right there with the musicians as they play the 'National Anthem', John Williams' '1984 Olympic Fanfare' and Rimsky-Korsakov's 'Dance of the Tumblers'.

We sat in the row behind the violin section and in front of the woodwinds. No photography was allowed, but my camera was set on movie mode, and it was collecting a few frames! Here Mr. Kenney is addressing the cello section.

Now he is asking the violin section to be a little more 'andante' on that last part!

The sound was amazing! We never experienced symphony like this before!

We were on stage for about 30 minutes. After that, we were allowed to listen to the rest of the rehearsal in the music hall. I took a few pictures from there as well:

They are really quite good!

The harp player was on break at this moment! We never heard her play! We will have to check the FoCo Symphony out again real soon!

Jim & Jeanne & Ruth & The President

Someplace on Mason Street in Fort Collins:

Here we are with Ruth, who has been visiting us from California!

She came to canvass during the campaign! What a tireless worker! Have a safe journey home tomorrow!

Colorado Crop Circles, part one

OK, not really crop circles, but they can be found by the roadside:

These are bronze medallions about 16 inches in diameter. This one is a commemorative to the growers of sugar beets, so I guess this really is a crop circle!

I'll guess this one is about the handiness of bar code labels?

Transportation?

Save the Poudre River, damn it!

Railroad dog revisited

Remember Annie the Railroad Dog?

There is a statue of her in front of the main library, but I had heard that her grave site is someplace else.

I had asked around town. Some people believed that it existed, but where they knew not. Even Roadside America does not give the exact details.

I missed it about four times because I didn't think that there would be a metal gate and brickwork protecting the dog's grave site. Must be lots of disrespecting dogs around town!

El Dia de los Muertos

Students of FRCC PSY 227 Psychology of Death and Dying put some of their altars up for display. The public was invited to create altars for display in the main library. I was too late to enter an alter this year, but next year, JUST WAIT AND SEE!!!