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Fish & Blocksma BBQ
Ann’s brother Randy (Fish) & his family (wife Amy and sons Jonathan and Nathaniel) are in town on their way to Redding, California. My cousin Dougie Blocksma and fianceé Liz are in town before leaving for their wedding in Michagan. Sean joins us to celebrate the convergence with grilled turkey dogs, sauerkraut, salad, and beer.
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Movie: Born Into Brothels (2002)
This film offers a glimpse into the lives of children in a Calcutta red-light district, and follows the filmmaker’s attempts to rescue some of them from it. The frustration she encountered when she attempted to film or photograph there led her to teach photography to some of the children, which provided a small doorway through…
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HDR Experiments
The sky is looking good for a sunset, so I grab my big tripod, climb up on the roof of the RV, and take a bunch of different exposures to play with. I’ve done a little more reading about High Dynamic Range imaging, and what I’m doing might not technically qualify as HDR, which in…
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Movie: The Return of The King (Extended Version)
On Father’s Day Dad and I kick back to finish off the trilogy. Once again, the extended version does nothing but enhance the film with more character development. The battles are still long, of course, but the interludes that keep you identified with the characters involved make them far more gripping. I still have gripes…
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Father’s Day on Bald Mountain
When Dad chose Boreas Pass and Bald Mountain as the locale for a Father’s Day hike, I doubt he expected to enjoy long glissades on remnant snowfields, much less to participate in the wedding of two perfect strangers. He knows as well as I do, though, that you don’t visit the high places on the…
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Geo Mashup 0.5 Release
This release of the Geo Mashup WordPress Plugin includes some of the feature requests I’ve been getting. Others I’m still working on. I’ve seen some errors that I haven’t figured out yet, but they’re not showstoppers so I figured you might want the new features in the meantime. Still in the future: the coordinate entry…
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A little CDT stroll
Hoping to encounter Sidewinder, we wander south for an hour along the Continental Divide Trail from Marshall Pass. Even here the trail is quiet, but not the total silence I recall from my 2004 hike through the Cochetopa Hills. My best guess is that he’ll be along later in the day, so we leave a…
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Mount Ouray (13,971′) West Ridge Route
Mount Ouray to a northbound Continental Divide Trail hiker is the welcoming guardian of the range of giant Sawatch mountains that follows nearly 80 miles of low-lying Cochetopa hills. The inspiring contrast stuck it in my memory, perhaps along with the fact that it marked the vicinity of Monarch Pass, the path to town food…
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Camp near Buffalo Springs
We take a nice drive up Clear Creek Canyon to I-70, then south on 9 from Frisco to Fairplay. South of Fairplay we pull off on Forest Road 431, and stop to watch this storm unfold on the high plains of the South Platte headwaters to the east. There’s a National Forest campground here, Buffalo…
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Eldorado Canyon – Wind Tower
We didn’t initially plan to do any climbing this weekend, but looking ahead we realized this might be our last chance for a while. Hoping for reduced crowds on this weekday, we head for Wind Ridge, 5.8-, on the Wind Tower in Eldorado Canyon. Our guidebook says these three pitches of red sandstone arete climbing…