Random

I’ve actually been back since Wednesday the 21st, but with things being so busy I haven’t had a chance to post until now.

Florida was amazing, and in many ways was exactly what I needed in terms of rest and relaxation.  I came back to Colorado refreshed and ready for the rest of a busy summer.  It’s also nice that this will be my last big trip for a while.  After Kansas City, Glenwood Springs and Orlando it’ll be a good month before I’m traveling again, and even that is just a quick 3-day trip.  I’m looking forward to being at home and catching up with everything.

Speaking of catching up…  that’s going to be the theme for the next few weeks.  I pretty far behind in some big projects at work, I have a laundry list of NCSC things I need to do, and my apartment is a disaster.

Some updates on a few things

• I thought it would be a cool idea to try out Windows Vista on my work laptop.  I learned pretty quickly how much it can suck to be an "Early Adopter".  The installation took forever, and gave no progress indication.  After I got everything installed, Vista decided that my laptop didn’t need to access the network.  Both my wired and wireless connections were hopeless.  I got this stupid "Local Only" status on my network connections.  After messing with it for 3 hours, I had no choice but to nuke my laptop and put XP back on.  The rest of the day was spent rebuilding the laptop – what a waste of time.

  Right now I’m pretty discouraged about Windows Vista.  There don’t really seem to be any features in there worth paying the $$ to upgrade.  Also I’m pretty concerned about my ability to upgrade.  This is the third time I’ve tried to upgrade (using 3 different machines), and while I realize this is a beta I’ve never had such bad luck before.  When you’re beta-testing an operating system there a few things you’re willing to live with – but all of the problems have been show-stoppers.  I don’t think I’ll be "adopting" Vista for a while.

• This week is Bike to Work Week in Fort Collins, adding with the national Bike to Work day. For me, it’s a 10 mile trip into the office, so these next few days will be spent preparing for Wednesday’s trip.  I have my route mapped out, it’s just a matter of covering all of it before I leave.  My second biggest issue is what to do with my laptop.  I need it for work (as it’s my only computer), but it may be interesting fitting it into my camel-back backpack.  I don’t want to drive to work the night before just to bring my laptop – it seems like it’d defeat the purpose of biking to work.  I’ll have to play with the backpack and see how things go.
• Lastly, I’m back on the drumming market, looking for a new band.   There have been a few opportunities and people indicating interest.  It’s be helpful putting up a Craigslist posting as well.  In the next few weeks I’ll meet some of these people and jam with them.  What’s funny this feels a lot like on-line dating…  We’ll see how things go.

Hello from sunny Orlando, FL!  Since I arrived on Wednesday, I unfortunately haven’t had the opportunity to sit down and blog about my travels.  I hope to offer some reflections in the next few days, but in the meantime I’ll let the pictures tell the story.

Check out my Flickr for all trip pictures!

Greetings from Glenwood Springs!  Bethany and I journeyed here this weekend to celebrate our one year dating anniversary!  It’s amazing how fast time has flown, and we are very happy to be up here at such a beautiful place to celebrate this awesome occasion!

We headed up on Friday after work and made the 217 mile trip to Glenwood Springs.  As Bethany just got done taking vacation time, and I am taking vacation time this week for Orlando, we decided to wait until after we got off work.  Unfortunately we didn’t get out of Fort Collins until 6pm.  However we made good time, and ended up pulling into Glenwood Springs before 10pm (and that included a 20-30 minute meal stop).

Saturday was amazingly fun.  We journeyed up to the Glenwood Springs Caverns and rode a tram way up the mountain towards a big cave.  Once there, we took a tour into the cave and saw some of the most amazing sights!  There were areas on that cave that were huge, and we saw some of the most beautiful rock formations!  Two hi-lights of the tour included the "Exclamation Point", which was a scenic overview of the Glenwood area, then another called "King’s Row" which was an amazing view of rock formations within the cave.  I ended up taking upwards of 70 pictures, and will post them in the coming days.

After our morning spent in the cave, we enjoyed some lunch over at Glenwood Springs Brewing Company, which was located at the beginning of the Glenwood Canyon bike trail.  We hopped on our bikes and made our way down the trail.  Because of some difficulties on Bethany’s bike, we had to cut the ride a little short (only doing 6 miles round-trip), but we still managed to spend some quality time by the river.  During the bike ride is where we got this picture, one of my new favorites of us:

After the bike ride we went back to the hotel for a nap, then enjoyed some dinner at the Riviera Restaurant, then enjoyed some wine and ice cream at the hotel.

We are now in the process of packing up to head home, but we are very happy to have celebrated an awesome milestone in an awesome place!

Check out more "Glenwood" trip pictures at Flickr.