rhiannonstone | Entries tagged with denver

Lots of people have been asking, so I figured I would write it out.

Things I will miss about Denver:

Breakfast burritos and green chile{s}
Urban bunnies
Fruition Farms cheeses
Being able to bike to work almost year-round (OK I can do this in SF, too, but it's a different kind of prep)
The free Mall Ride bus
1Up
Cart-Driver, Señor Bear, Sarto's, Reunion Bread Co., El Five, Hop Alley, Acorn, Jones Family Spirit House
Hiking in the snow and not actually being cold
Brief and intense afternoon thunderstorms
Being able to hop on a bus and be in Boulder in under an hour
Cheaper-than-SF rent, and a housing policy that (for now, at least) still allows for new dwellings to be built
Public art everywhere (even when it's bad)
Mountains
Denver Airport conspiracy theories
Being only a 45-minute car ride away from being able to see the Milky Way unassisted
My Denver work family
Opportunities to spend more time with randomdreams and threemeninaboat
Shorter flights to the east coast
Having superpowers when I return to sea level

Things I will not miss about Denver (besides being too far away from my chosen family):

High facial moisturizer and body lotion budget
One of the highest transit fares in the country
Strong car culture --> Major gaps and lags in transit infrastructure, especially for getting out of Denver proper
Not being able to bike more than 25 miles in any direction without having to go up the side of a mountain
Recycling being so difficult that I sometimes throw away even the recyclables that actually get recycled
Most of the concerts I want to see being at a place that is beautiful but nigh-inaccessible for folks with mobility issues
Hail, and hail bruises
Extreme rapid weather changes
Having to go to the suburbs for good Chinese, Mexican, and Vietnamese food
Everyone wanting to go to Linger and Snooze all the time
Maintaining the polite fiction that TAG Restaurant Group restaurants are any good when people enthuse about them to me so I don't come off like a total California food snob
The Denver Airport
The Denver Airport Bathroom Smell
Dog food smell days
Cow poop smell days
Basically all the smells, especially all the apartment lobbies, hotels, bars, and street corners into which artificial scent is pumped
Also all the smokers of all kinds, smoking in public as if that is somehow not unspeakably rude
Everything being about weed

The Bomb-Ass Cyclone died down relatively early last night. Before it did, it left a legacy of record-breaking windspeed and pressure.

I was lucky and never lost power, and did not have any trees fall on anything I own. Several of my coworkers were not so lucky, though everyone's okay.

Today there was a lot of "What blizzard?!" joking, and indeed at first glance today looked like just another normal day-after-a-snow-day. But when I stepped outside this morning everything was covered in a thick glaze of ice, and every tree, post, and building was frosted with frozen snow on the windward side, all the way to the top. It reminded me a bit of the water marks left on trees after a flood, in a weird way.

It was a very slippery walk to work (I'd have taken the bus but the route starts much farther out where many roads are still closed, and so it was very delayed), and I nearly regretted not getting my YakTrax out of my bag several times. A lot melted throughout the day, so the walk home was a game of "Is that water or ice? Let's not find out!" I have managed to remain upright.

The weather's supposed to be much less exciting for the foreseeable future. It's forecast to get to nearly 50degF this weekend, which means I'll get to go on a much-needed bike ride.

Last weekend was one of the nicest weekends we've had, weather-wise, in ages. Yesterday was gorgeous, too--it got up to nearly 60degF and I went on my lunchtime wander without a jacket.

So it was really weird to spend yesterday prepping and building contingency plans for blizzard conditions due to (I am not making this up) an impending Bomb Cyclone.

I have been through many, many tropical storms in my life, but this is my first one in a landlocked state.

We closed the office today and told everyone to WFH to keep people off the roads, and last night I managed to get the the grocery store early enough to get ahead the French toast frenzy and stock up on the essentials, so it's been a cozy day of working from the couch with soup and muffins for me.

The snow here in Denver proper has been relatively light compared with the forecast--we might be just barely at 3" so far?--but it's wet and sticky and freeze-y, and the wind is ridiculous, with peak gusts at 75mph (cat1 hurricane territory!). The winds and ice have led to power outages across the area, and downed power lines are keeping the snowplows from getting around. Many of my coworkers who live in the suburbs and beyond are without power. My power has been flickering all day, but hasn't yet gone out completely. I've got all my devices plugged in, the Goal Zeroes and other backup batteries charged, and flashlights and headlamps at the ready just in case.

I'm okay. I hope everyone else is, too!

On Saturday I did the Denver Century Ride, or at least about a quarter of it. The headline: I finished! And I finished with most of the same people I crossed the starting line with, which feels like an accomplishment to me, especially given how long it's been since I've done a timeboxed, large-group ride and how much I hated life for several stretches. And in spite of those moments of hating life, it was a lot of fun.

Here are three things that are lies:
"mostly flat"
"mostly cloudy"
"25 miles"

Other than the heat and sun I was doing just dandy until we hit the first climb at mile 15. And, look, I know that for most cyclists in good shape, that was not "a climb." But it was up a hill that's so very a hill that the neighborhood literally has "Hill" in the name, and it sucked. I challenged myself to stay on the bike instead of succumbing to the temptation to hop off and walk it like I usually do, and when I got to the park at the top of the hill, I collapsed on the grass for a bit. The SAG wagon happened by and gosh I am so grateful for them but I have never figured out how to properly and politely express "I am thankful for you and appreciate that you stopped to see if I was OK and offer me every foodstuff you have in your car but I am really OK and I really need to you to go away and let me recover in peace so I don't have to waste the breath I am trying to catch reassuring you." Thumbs-up is supposed to work, but it never does.

I caught my breath, slogged through an annoyingly perfectly flat bit (perfectly flat means no opportunity to stop pedaling and coast!) to the one and only rest stop at mile 18, and pushed myself through a love-hate relationship with gravity about 4mph faster than my average for the last 10 miles of ups and downs. I probably shouldn't have pushed myself, the ride home and the next day would have felt much better if I hadn't. But it was nice to have a fellow Athena catch up with me just before the finish line to tell me my pace kept her going. <3

People were expectedly super friendly and supportive overall, and there were only 2 people I wanted to punch: the parent who lectured her ~7-year-old son on his attitude and technique as he was struggling up the aforementioned hill as if he were a professional athlete who needed a tough-love pep talk, and the guy who thought it would be HI-larious to come up to me as I was clearly dying on the final overpass to ask "So how many laps are you gonna do today? Hahahaha." I did not respond with the single raised finger I wanted to, but I death-glared the back of his helmet so hard when he passed me.

I would definitely do this again next year. I'm looking forward to a much more leisurely long ride this weekend, though.

Current Mood: accomplished

Like last year, I did the 30 Days of Biking challenge in April. Unlike last year, I didn't lose momentum after April 30. To encourage myself to keep it up, I signed up for the Denver Century Ride--well, a quarter of it, anyway.

Before I moved to Denver, I was doing ~50-mile event rides a few times a year. They were challenging, but I was riding regularly enough and long enough distances that they weren't insurmountable challenges. Lately, my weekend rides have been ~5-12 miles, and as recently as last weekend I was having second thoughts about having signed up for a 25-mile event ride--y'know, where I have to ride with hundreds of other people at a reasonable pace while exhibiting basic group riding skills.

Yesterday I set out to ride 12-15 miles with a friend from work, and ended up doing 23. It kinda sucked! But that was mostly because of the brutal heat (91degF in direct, unmitigated sun), and because it had been so long that I had forgotten the important lessons I learned the first time around about longer rides. To wit:

Eat a food you idiot
You need more water than that
Cycling gloves exist for a reason
Just wear the shorter bike shorts already, no one cares about your fat knees

Of course once I was done, I felt great. And astonishingly, the only thing that hurts today is the sunburn and my head from the slight dehydration.

So now I know I can do it. I just need to spend the next couple weeks practicing doing it with the right fuel, hydration, and weather-appropriate gear so I don't want to die, and within a reasonable amount of time.

After that's under my belt, the next biking goal will be rebuilding some climbing endurance, because anywhere else I want to go from here involves riding at least partway up the side of a damn mountain.

Current Mood: accomplished

Last night my coworkers took me to a place that had jalapeno popper cheeseburgers (with half a brick of deep-fried cream cheese on top) and key lime cheesecake milkshakes (with an actual chunk of cheesecake inside). Last weekend, we got hot dogs topped with grilled onions and cream cheese, and fried mac-and-cheese sticks on the side. Denver is very good at stoner food. (But today I think I will have a salad.)

Bye Bye Fog see you later
Tell the egrets wait for me
Give my love to shoreline breezes
So long ocean view
We’ll be back beside the bay
Sure as tides and sunset

--Poem found at a shellmound

And the Strangest Things Seem Suddenly Routine

Life's Been Good to Me So Far

Entries tagged with denver

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All the snow has turned to water

Hello from the Bomb Cyclone zone!

Denver (Quarter) Century Ride

Back in the saddle again

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