Rams and Cowgirls!

at CSU's Moby Arena:

the usual suspects dressed up!

The pre-halloween women's volleyball game between the CSU Rams and the UW Cowgirls had advertised that if you came in costume, you would get in free. Since we have a large inventory of costumes in the basement, it was no problem assembling something last minute.

In the first game, UW lead most of the way until the last minutes when CSU pulled ahead and won 25 to 22. Not many fans came in costume but we didn't mind.

The RAM audio dashboard (to the left of where we were sitting) kept record of the sound level in Moby Arena. The highest level was noted when the fans picked the "Best Costume Award" and gave it to the little kid in the baby bee costume. Not too many people were watching the RAM however, because to the right of us

This group of women were removing their clothing!

After watching them it became obvious that they were taking off one piece of clothing for every point that CSU made! After the first game they had stripped to these one piece suits. During the second game, they would put on one piece for every CSU score.

In the third game, we saw at least one sneak on some clothing before taking it off (just in case there was a tie game situation!) We were told that they were members of the CSU Women's water polo team and they do this once a year. Some guy ran out and danced in his underwear, but nobody seemed to care...

The Rams swept the Cowgirls! GO CSU !!!!

Extra stuff folder

Here are some pictures in the "Extra Stuff" folder I haven't figured what to do with yet:

The Liberty statue in City Park, Fort Collins

Sage and Richard at drum practice in City Park, Fort Collins

Turtles at Troutman Park, Fort Collins

Surplus @ Larimer County!

This Saturday at the Ranch:

You can bid on the kitchen sink

... or a CDOT road maintenance truck!

Plenty of late model cars to chose from

lots of them!

Champion 6WD Road Graders

Cushman utility vehicles

Giant snow blowers!

and a few garbage trucks!

So, we're looking for something to replace the old VW fairly soon, but don't know what to buy. We would want it to be a fun ride like the convertible is, but maybe something a little more versatile on snowy roads. Maybe like a smaller ragtop road grader. It was worth a look. Maybe someday the Windsor secret service will get rid of their Aston Martin DBS Volante?

City Parking

At the park the other day:

Across the street from our samba practice

some people have gone medieval

That reminds me... we're going to the Colorado Renaissance Festival next month! Huzzah!

Folks passin' through

This guy came to visit:

It's Tom from the Edgar Rice Band!

Remember that post last week of that old photo somebody sent? That somebody was the guitar player on the left in the old photo.  Tom was on his way from Seattle to his new home in Washington, D.C. with a truck full of stuff including saw horses, ladders, weed-wackers,  and oddly enough some works of art from Uganda. I haven't seen Tom since 1976 and we spent a good evening catching up. Among other things, Tom is the volunteer coordinator for a small school in Uganda! He thinks I would make an ideal math teacher in Uganda! 

I've been to East Africa but not central Africa; Hmmm... if I run out of roadside mysteries around here I bet I'll find all sorts of things in Uganda! 

(gimme some time to think about that!)

Deathrow Dolls?

At the FoCo Girls Gone Derby!

It's the Deathrow Dolls (orange) against the Chanel Cartel (black)

Above it's "Lulu Ferrigno" making sure the team captain from the Chanel Cartel, "Coco She'll Nail Ya" won't get past the pack!

Wanna try out for the team? Come on down TODAY and see if the skates fit!

Can't skate? We'll teach you!

It's happening tonight at the Rollerland Skate Center!

Just wanna watch? Make sure you sit near this sign!

The Booty Zone is an area on the track floor where you have a good chance of getting hit by a roller girl.  On May 9th it's where I sat! Admittedly it's not that same as when I scored four front row center first balcony seats to the 2006 premiere production of R. Strauss's Salome starring Deborah Voigt at the Lyric Opera of Chicago, but at the opera, they didn't have a raffle for a $100 gift certificate to the local tattoo parlor! 

Note1: Derby is better than opera.

Note2: Only one derby girl crashed into me.

Note3:No! we didn't win the tattoo certificate!

Bryan visits Fort Collins and gets shot... Twice!

This is cool; Watch this:

Don't worry... He's OK!

Standing Stones

South East of town at about 40 30 57 N 105 03 37 W

there are these stones on a hill (looking North).

View from the East

These stones were obviously placed here on a hilltop by man more than fifteen years ago. Their purpose is not clear, but many scholars believe the monument was used as a ceremonial or religious center.
Compare with:

Pentre Ifan
Slightly older standing stones in Wales.

Jack Benny's Bank Vault

In front of the Columbia Savings and Loan building:

there are hand prints in cement and some sort of memorial plaque.

WTF? It's Jack Benny! !?

I still remember when Mr. Benny returned to Chicago to dedicate the Jack Benny Middle School in Waukegan, IL (I've met at least 3 people who claim to have graduated from 'Benny School'). The town of Waukegan (not as funny sounding as Cucamonga) rolled out their best red carpet for the event. To this day I don't think anything more exciting ever happened in Waukegan since!
I was astonished to learn recently that Jack Benny visited Fort Collins three years after the school dedication and there is actually some sort of proof that he was indeed here in town.

As you can see from the picture, the plaque clearly says 'Jack Benny' and there is something that looks like a hand print. The hand print is somewhat of a mystery according to Lost Fort Collins. Maybe the cement got screwed up and it's really some truck driver's hand immortalized in the sidewalk in FoCo. I don't know. To me the mystery is:

WHY IN FRONT OF A BANK?

Jack Benny, the entertainer, could have made his mark in old town center or in front of the Arts building or even any civic building, but no! He chose a bank. Is it possible that that miserly Benny had a secret vault in the basement of the bank building? Could there be stacks of silver certificates and gold bullion stored right in the middle of town?

It may be that one of Joseph (Ed) Kearns' relatives worked at the bank and made arrangements to have a section of the abandoned Fort Collins subway tunnel that was built in 1904 to be sealed off and fortified to Benny's personal specifications! This makes perfect sense because:

1) There is no known record of any of Joseph Kearns' relatives ever living in the Fort Collins area.
2) The idea of a 1904 subway in Fort Collins has been exposed as a hoax by 9 out of 10 FoCo historians.
3) If you ask anyone in the building, they will deny any notion of a vault in the basement.

…of course this is exactly what Jack Benny would want you to think!

Geraldo Rivera: Are you listening?

Surveillance Video Part I

In the town of Lyons one evening:

Mouse in a box mystery

It's a box with a spinning drum on the bottom and something at the top that looks like a rat or mouse running around in circles.  There appears to be some electronics (tube amplifier) and a large loudspeaker facing downward over the spinning drum.  Does the mouse (rat) generate electricity or is it there just for show?  After a few drinks, who cares!

Join the club?

Today we joined a health club! No, we didn't make any kind of resolution!

Jeanne loves the indoor and outdoor pool

And I will go to spin classes!

We SAY we are going to go AT LEAST 5 times a week! Where do we find the time?

FoCo weather:

When we came back on Jan 1, the high was about 37 degrees. It got a little cooler by Jan 3rd, but today it reached 50 degrees and it is expected to get close to 60 tomorrow.  There is snow in the foothills, but not in town. 

Happy New Year!

WE MISS THIS PLACE!!!

Ain't no Dondi's in Fort Collins!

New Year's Eve

We are at a party in the Chicago area. HAPPY NEW YEAR TO YOU ALL!!!
-Jim & Jeanne

Open Road Trolling

He didn't invent the internet, but did did invent the BLOG:

Guess who?

In other news:

Transfiguration is the next new event at the 2012 Olympic games in London!

Jabberwocky

A Frabjous occasion! $535 to a good cause!

Boo!

Note to self: next year buy more candy!

Big Brother Knows where you Parked!

Yet another reason to RIDE YOUR BIKE in Fort Collins!

I saw this SUV going down the street at about 10 MPH.

Near the front top of the windshield were mounted these cone-shaped devices on both sides of the vehicle.

Inside the cones were these neat flashing lights. What was going on?

The SUV stopped at this one car and man got out of the SUV and placed something on the car window.

The SUV is part of a high-tech program for Fort Collins Parking Enforcement. It can scan license plate numbers and match them to previously scanned plate numbers to see if any cars are parked over the two hour limit. A computer prints out the ticket. It can also be linked to the Department of Motor Vehicles and a Global Positioning System for even more fun!

Fort Collins Can Has Chickens!!!

At the Tour de Fat you may have noticed at least two pictures of cyclists in chicken costumes. Actually there were quite a few people dressed as chickens that day. They were making a political statement from the "CLUCK YES!!!" party. Apparently on September 2nd, the FoCo city council voted 5 to 1 in favor of on an ordinance to allow hens in Fort Collins. So now I can have up to six egg laying pets. No roosters or roasters allowed! They are PETS, damn it!
Gotta see how our homeowners association handles this one...

Observation

Of coarse we are watching the Olympics on NBC. It's all good stuff. However, there is one thing that I wonder about. When I see an NBC Olympic newscaster on the tube, they are wearing their Beijing logo on their clothes someplace:

Whenever I see the logo, I can't help but think of product placement. Is this a coincidence?

Nah! I'm just being weird, as usual!

Mystery Lizard

A couple of years ago I purchased this plush doggy chew toy from the Dollar Store. The toy is some kind of lizard or salamander or something. It has a blue-green body color with yellow eyes and orange, red, yellow and blue legs. The toy made a squeak sound when the tail was pinched unlike the sound made by many of the salamanders found in North America. Why did I buy this toy? I do not own a dog! OK, I wanted something that was soft so I could rest my elbow on while I was driving the car!
It is just the right size and it works perfectly. And for one dollar, the price was right!
When not in use, the lizard gets stuffed into the car door pocket. This leads to some problems at times when the toy pops out of the door pocket and falls to the ground when the door is opened. This has happened a number of times but I was always quick to retrieve it and get it back into the pocket. But one time, the poor lizard was run over by the car, permanently damaging the squeak mechanism.

NOW COMES THE MYSTERY:

Last week we were in Winter Park and we had accommodations at the Pinnacle Lodge. We stopped in at the office to check in and I immediately noticed on the counter a plush doggy toy lizard that looked like the one that I owned. It seemed strange at the time, but I did not think much of it.
For the rest of the week I did not drive my car until check-out time. After the car was packed, I got into the driver's side and looked down at the car pocket for the lizard. IT WAS NOT THERE!!!
I went back to the Pinnacle Lodge office and asked if they had seen any sort of toy lizard lying around. They went to the back and brought out the lizard doggy toy. I inspected it carefully. It was the right size, shape, and color of my toy lizard AND THE SQUEAK MECHANISM WAS DAMAGED!!!!

WAS IT THE SAME LIZARD AND IF SO, HOW DID THE LIZARD GET THERE?

AM I NOW DRIVING AROUND WITH THE WRONG LIZARD IN MY CAR?

I have no clue!