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Archive for March, 2010

Armory Open House

Sunday, March 28th, 2010

It’s an event hall in Old Town:

In 1907 it was a drill practice area for F Troop, Fort Collins’ National Guard; They kept horses in the basement. It became a ball room then a skating rink and now it’s going to be an events center. Last week there was an open house, so I went in.

The Conference Room

There’s a central stairway up to a small conference room; Not especially private unless you can install the “Cone of Silence” over it, and not very big. But cool nonetheless.

Skylight

The light from the skylight directed me to the Butter Cream Cupcakery that happened to be one of the display vendors at the open house. I hear that they are going to open a new store next to Ben & Jerry’s in Old Town!

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An evening with Harpee!

Thursday, March 25th, 2010

At Councile Tree:

It’s Harpee!

It’s our good friend Maryellen doing a comedy gig! We’ve seen her here playing her harp for real at the Art Lab in Fort Collins. She was performing a Marx Brothers style comedy act with her husband Dave at the new Poudre River Library branch called “Council Tree”.

Dave

Dave plays the straightman in the act and he’s darn good! He also handles the props and runs the sound effects board. Hey, who’s that in the lower left of the picture?

Dave and Harpee and the ‘bun’

In this shot it looks like Harpee is pointing at the woman with the ‘bun’ hairdo and the blue scrunchie. The mystery here is that it seems that just about every event that we have attended in the town of Fort Collins we have seen this mystery woman with the ‘bun’ and blue scrunchie. We’ve seen her at the Science Cafe and the Keven Cook lectures and any number of CSU events. We believe that her name is ‘Mary’ but that’s all we know.

Note: If you attended the Harpee performance and wondered where they got the toilet flushing and burping sound effects– They came from Roadside Mysteries!

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The Cold War!

Tuesday, March 23rd, 2010

or maybe ВОЙНЫ И МИРА

The Entry Way

Between the towns of Greeley and Windsor is hidden this relic of the cold war. It’s an underground ICBM site that used to hold an atomic weapon!

The 549th

As reported before, the 566th out of Warren AFB was one of the squadrons in charge, but apparently the 549th had some control as well since their patch is painted on the inside wall of the entry way.

The Atlas E

Here’s the truck with the Atlas E going down the street. They would carefully back the truck into the entry way to load the silo. If the command came it would be ready to launch in fifteen minutes.

A Safe Place

The place was well protected and could be used as a fallout shelter! I wonder how many citizens in Greeley or Windsor actually knew it existed? I can remember doing evacuation drills in grade school. We were supposed to go home. To what? Our own fallout shelters?

Fun for the whole family

For a few hours at least. Then what?

Mr. Ambrose

Pete Ambrose is the manager of the area site. He lives in a house built on the grounds and manages the area camp site and gives free tours of the facility. Here he is showing off a personal radiation detector. Pete told us that the farmland just east of the missile site used to be a WWII German POW camp!

Crackers!

Pete and his friends have a collection of cold war items to view. Since there is no real rocket in the gantry or liquid oxygen to play with (You can pick it up with a magnet!) you have things like medical tools and condensed food and this can of crackers. The large box says: CRACKER, SURVIVAL, ALL PURPOSE (CIVIL DEFENSE). They were made by the Sunshine biscuit Company in Elmhurst, Illinois – Near the Keebler Company. There’s a joke in there somewhere!

The Tunnel

There is a tunnel. It’s not very long, but there had to be a way for the missile personnel to get away from the rocket when it fired and still be underground and have control of the rocket.

Control Room

The equipment looks like an early Burroughs Corporation computer and a few analog relay racks with a strip-chart recorder. Note that there was lots of reading material on the left wall.

Some years ago it was revealed that this site used solvents to clean fuel tanks and allowed residual rocket fuel and solvents to flow into the floor drain! Didn’t I say before that this is about a mile away from a water treatment plant near the Poudre river? There is some remediation underway with a proposed plan available for public comment in January 2011. Stay tuned!

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stihl chopping wood!

Friday, March 19th, 2010

Someplace northwest of here…

The Timbersports Collegiate Series Lumberjack Competition!

It was the 71st annual Association of Western Forestry Clubs’ Logging Conclave at CSU.

The Cal Poly Loggers were there!

…and representative lumberjacks and jills from 10 other universities were on hand to chop and cut wood in every imaginable way.

Women’s Single Block Chop

Other events included: Tree identification, pole climb, axe throw, caber toss and pulp toss.

Pulp toss? “The object of this event is for team members to toss pulpwood back and forth between two sets of stakes as quickly as possible. Only wood that lands between the stakes is scored.”

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happy St. Pat’s day!

Wednesday, March 17th, 2010

Time for some animal pictures!

CSU RAM

There was a parade in Fort Collins and everyone apparently was Irish on that day. Jeanne, Duncan and I found a group in the parade to join and we just started walking! Hey, My knee feels OK!

The Famous Duncan Madog! (from the Coloradoan’s Sunday edition, Page 3)

Of course the parade was last Saturday, but we had a party on Wednesday and cooked up some corned beef and cabbage for a group of friends! Even Duncan Madog got to eat and drink Irish! Not bad for a Welsh Corgi!

Party Animal!

Notes:

1) There are MORE dogs in Fort Collins parades than any other place in the world!

2) DO NOT FEED YOUR DOG CABBAGE! TRUST ME!

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RAGBRAI BANJO update #3

Tuesday, March 16th, 2010

As reported here in 2009 and over here in 2008, it seems like every year something needs work on the ol’ RAGBRAI banjo. We had a bent-over tail and then a broken neck, and now this:

The banjo head exploded!

It had a crack in it a year ago, but it was still playable until I dropped it on a concrete sidewalk about a month ago! At least half of the drum head rim is split; it could not hold the bridge anymore! How sad.

The head is laid to rest.

This was a Remo Banjo head, about 30 years old I figure. As shown above, it has the last RAGBRAI lettering from the 2009 ride and you can still make out some of the signatures on the left of some of the Iowa folks who put up with me and my playing in 2005. Most of the other lettering has worn off as this banjo spent time outside in the rain at times; even got a dip in the Atlantic Ocean…

But it’s the TIMEX® of the banjo world! “It keeps on plinking”; I also like the neck– it’s fairly straight for a table leg and I put in the mandolin frets myself! After all these years I can’t let it go.

So, I will replace the head soon and with luck I’ll have it ready for playing outside in the park in no time. And then I can start painting up the head for RAGBRAI XXXVIII. There’s still time. Ragbrai ain’t until July 25th!

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BUGS IN FORT COLLINS

Sunday, March 14th, 2010

at OpenStage Theater:

Peter and Agnes getting to know each other

With Rebecca Spafford as Agnes and Brian Landis Folkins as Peter; this is a play about paranoia and bugs! And it came with the label: “Bug contains nudity and strong adult themes and language; those ages 16 and younger will not be admitted”

“There’s an insect egg sac implanted under my tooth!”

Besides nudity, drugs and violence there was a self-extracting tooth scene and lots of fake blood all over the place.

Agnes and her lesbian biker friend

This was another of our theater picks for the FoCo Newcomer’s club; I just had to see something called Bug and I got a group of twelve to experience it with me!

First there was a little bit of itching

…Then a bit more. Some self-inflicted wounds appear by the end of the first act. The bugs are everywhere on the stage by the beginning of the second act!

This play really worked. I believe I saw a few of the audience members begin to scratch and swat imaginary flies as we left the theater. Also, just having the government implanted notions of bugs under you skin was not enough! Peter began raving like this Fort Collins citizen about stuff like The Bilderberg Group and the real reason there is radioactive Americium in your home smoke detector.

Next month we’re going to see the musical comedy Native at the Nonesuch; it better be funny!

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An Evening with Todd

Friday, March 12th, 2010

…And All It Creates

Todd Siler

Yet another ‘Science Cafe’ at Dempsey’s (sorry, it’s dark in there!) and this evening’s lecture was by Colorado artist Todd Siler. Remember? We saw his art on display here. After the lecture, the BeetStreet opened up the FoCoMoCA for a special showing of Todd’s art.

Brain pathways or something of that nature

The ArtScience of Grasping Synapses, 2000-04, mixed media on spunbound synthetic canvas. We had some time to discuss various Art-Science applications with Todd outside the FoCoMoCa that evening and it was very pleasant. We hope to see more of him in the future.

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Roadside Mysteries Visits the OCR

Wednesday, March 10th, 2010

or the Orthopaedic Center of the Rockies

OCR Mascot

OCR has changed their name to include the word “Spine” so maybe now it’s the Orthopaedic & Spine Center of the Rockies or “OSCR”. Primarily the headquarters for “Sports Medicine”, I was amazed that they let me anywhere near the place to get a simple arthroscopic partial meniscectomy.

My GP sent me to see Dr. Rocci Trumper at the OCR for treatment of a torn meniscus on my right knee, an obvious sports injury don’t you know! After talking to many people in Fort Collins it seemed that:

1) They either had a torn meniscus at one time or knew someone who did.

2) If they got treated in FoCo, it was by Dr. Trumper.

So this guy must have seen the inside of everybody’s knee in town by my estimate. And he gave me pictures to show:

THE BLADE

This appears to be a miniature X-Acto blade pointing at my knee bone. I think it was used just to intimidate the surrounding tissue in anticipation of what was to come.

THE PROBE

It was important to check the parts of the meniscus between the bone to make sure there was no folded-over flap that could just cause more pain in the future.

THE NIPPER

This miniature needle-nose plier can not only help grab onto various sections for inspection, it also has piraña like teeth on the end that can nip off parts if need be.

THE HOMOGENIZER

Oh sure, they called this a little shaver tool or resector but it looked more like some kind of a chopping mechanism or ‘homogenizer’ that turned whatever it touched into purée. Watch the video below (if you dare).

Scope video

Interestingly this video has had over 100 views in less than 24 hours since it was posted. That’s more than the ‘Annie the Railroad Dog’ video has had in 6 months! Arthroscopic videos are HOT!

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