Long Weekend

Nothing like jamming a long weekend full of activities to ensure you need another weekend right after it just to recover. The weekend pretty much started on Wednesday with the bachelor party events, followed by the burlesque show on Thursday, wedding on Friday, long ride and party at Mike's Saturday, and a race on Sunday to top it all off.

The wedding was a lovely affair up in Lyons. I saw a few faces I had not seen in a little while, but there were a lot of the usual suspects. It was a very nice spot for an outdoor wedding and Brian and Jessica could not have requested better weather. The only thing we couldn't figure out was who the guy in the turquoise, zoot suit was. We were lucky enough on the way home to catch the finale of the Coors Field fireworks show from the highway. Traffic slowed to a crawl, some people were smart enough to just pull over to watch instead of playing bumper cars.

Over the course of the evening, I got suckered into riding Squaw Pass with Derek, Doug, Ewam and others on Saturday morning. I headed out to Golden by car since I wasn't really looking for a 5+ hour ride. It made for a lovely day of climbing in the big ring. The time has come to refocus my efforts on seated power in prep for the Masters' Worlds time trial. We made it up and down the hill just before the thunder storms started rolling in. I got home with just enough time to relax a little bit and throw together my first batch of dough, using the master recipe from Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day, and then head over to the party, or so I thought.

I got a call from Deb just as I was getting ready to leave the house. Long story short, the hardware store cut a new key for her that didn't work, but handed her one of the new keys thinking it was the original and she ended up being locked out. I got to practice both my B&E skills and my reglazing skills, all on Ace Hardware's dime. It was very upstanding of them to cover all costs associated with the snafu . . . I'm sure they were glad we didn't call an after hours locksmith.

Sunday's race was kind of ridiculous from the get go. I was standing around waiting to register and started noticing who all was out and about. You'd think there wasn't anything going on nationally and/or internationally in cycling given the strength and depth of the field. I played the survival game for a while, floating at the back, coming around gaps as guys popped off. It took its toll and I called it quits about 50 minutes in as the break had gotten away and I was doing nothing but riding at the back. No skin was lost and I lived to ride another day.

Back to the grind I guess . . . only five days until the weekend.