aerial photos of LA wildfires

Peaks Trail

Waiting for friends with a flat change behind us. Nice day on the
trails.

Alina at the playground in Vail on Friday

of course Vail has nice playgrounds. This one in particular, the Pirate Ship Park, is very cool.

7 days left!

Go Tigers!

Old school telephone switchboard

TransRockies Run 2009

Helen is off at TransRockies run this week. In a nutshell, she and her teammate will be running 110 mi of mountainous terrain from Buena Vista to Beaver Creek. Her teammate for The North Face team is Dean Karnazes, a very well known and self-promoting runner who's been on the cover of Sports Illustrated, Outside, Runner's World and others. Helen told me he's not doing so well with the altitude. She waits for him on the big climbs, but he can run fast on the downhills. Helen seems a bit frustrated as she wants to be more competitive. Oh well, they're just going to try and have fun with it all at this point.

Always fun on the mtb

Check out my new lid, a Giro Athlon. First time rocking a visor in
ages. We'll see if I use it for cross races or not.

some shots of Alina at the pump track

vid of Alina riding the pump track

video footage of Lance from Leadville 100

Lance Armstrong on his way to winning 2009 Leadville 100

A few of us drove the hour over to Leadville to see Lance in his quest to win Leadville 100. We rolled in and heard he was within an hour of finishing. We hung out for a bit, checked out the scene, walked around some and let the kids play at the playground. Soon the crowds gathered and sure enough Lance came up the "Boulevard" (home stretch) into town for the victory. Record-breaking time of 6hr28min for a 100mi mtb race! Apparently he flatted (more so developed a slow leak) within the last few miles. The Velonews article said he stopped once to inflate his tire with a CO2, but ultimately decided it wasn't worth the risk of stopping to fix it, with Dave Wiens only 20min back or so.

With all the hoopla and kids around, I did manage to get one good shot of LA-

grandma and Alina rule the house on Fridays

Life is rough

We sent Helen to the store, we're relaxing. Not bad!

36 degrees, and Alina's still riding to school

hammock time

Alina's napping, so I'm enjoying some late day sun in the backyard
hammock.

Alina enjoying Breck 150's ice cream social

In town for Breck 150 festivities

Breck 150 fireworks

Alina's haircut, the finished product

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Hair cut for Alina

Helen goes to the Serenity Aveda spa in Keystone to get her hair done.
So We took Alina along for a trim as well.

plants doing well this summer

nap time

Weird place to sleep

Down at the river with Alina after work

Alina at the zoo

This past Saturday Helen, Diana & I took Alina to the zoo. Alina said she wanted to go since the last time she went, she wasn't wearing glasses. Kinda like going from VHS to Blu-ray. We had a fun time with some nice warm weather. Diana snapped a couple pics.

replacement sky technique

I need to re-learn my lost art of skillful sky replacement for real estate exteriors. Learned it last summer, but haven't had much practice. Can really come in handy up here in the mtns when good weather/backdrop can't be counted on for too long.

riding to school

Her pigtails are pushing her helmet up and kinda crooked!