Where’s Samuel L Jackson and Kevin Spacey when you need em? Right now, in front of our quiet little suburban home there’s a hostage situation unfolding. We awoke about an hour ago to our neighbor calling us recommending we not go outside as there are cops with rifles. So as a frantically scrambled to decide how best to defend our home from these renegade cops it was made known that we weren’t who they were after. Just across the street and one house down is surrounded by about 5 7 cop cars and about 10 cops with vests, shields, and an array of weaponry.

Apparently there’s a hostage situation going down. So far 4 hostages, mostly teenagers from the looks of it, have been released from the house. Shortly thereafter 6 cops went in through the front door and have yet to emerge.

bad boys bad boys… whatcha gonna do when they come for you!

//sitting at the window with popcorn… will post more and video later

———-

So it all turned out to be related to this: http://www.9news.com/news/article.aspx?storyid=112729&catid=339

When the suspect fled the home in Firestone it was feared he’d head back to his house which apparently is just a few houses away and so the cops staged up here, eventually went in, and searched the whole place.

Situation downgraded to normal… I’ll still put some footage of the cops storming around in full gear up soon.

As has become annual tradition we trek up into the mountains around my birthday for a weekend on the slopes. It started as a birthday trip and there’s been some regulars from in and out of town over the years but we’ve kinda moved it between my birthday on the 6th and Christmas to afford the mountains a little more time for better snow without crowding the holidays. None of the 8 of us that made it up there this year had ever been to Steamboat and we were all looking quite forward to it.

So on Friday December 12th at the crack of dawn we made the drive up I-70 and the cut-over through Winter Park on US40 into Steamboat Springs. It was a little over a 3 hour trip taking us through a different part of the Rockies than we were used to in which our surroundings were less steep and more hilly than you would see through the I-70 corridor up to the front range resorts like Copper, Keystone, and Vail. It reminded me of some of the hillier areas of Wyoming covered in wild grass and shrubs with a light dusting of snow just about everywhere.

We pulled in to Steamboat and unloaded our gear into the condo we’d be staying in over the next 3 nights. The place was pretty sweet; about 1300 sq feet, 2 bedrooms, a large loft with twin beds and it’s own bathroom, 2 full baths downstairs (1 in the master), a good sized living room and kitchen, and a shared deck overlooking the larger deck for the condo complex. The larger deck had 2 large hot tubs, ski lockers, and a fire pit. The place was about a 100 yard walk to a run you could ride down to the main base area for the resort.

We briefly unloaded, got geared up, and hit the mountain for our first taste of Steamboat riding. They’d gotten about 4 inches of fresh snow the previous night and had about 6 chairs and 70 runs open; still pre-season by most accounts. We got a good sense of the lay of the mountain and got about 5 good runs in before calling it quits in the early afternoon well warmed up and saving our legs for the next 2 days. We slipped over to a bar/grill close to our condo call The Tugboat and got some grub before heading back to the condo to relax a bit.

That evening we made the trip from the resort, through town, and up a dark county road to take a dip in the famous Strawberry Hot Springs. The hot springs are located on national forest property which apparently hasn’t always been open to the public. You can see the source of it all literallybubbling out the side of the hill at burning hot temperatures. From there it’s collected and combined at a controlled rate with the river that runs through there. There’s a series of man-made pools then where one spills into the next making the uppermost pool the hottest and the furthest mostthe cooler of the bunch though still very warm. If you should so desire you can slip right into the cold creek as well. It was super cool hanging out in the middle of a forest withsnow falling down and covering the walkways and trees all around you while your swimming around in your bathing suit… or not… it’s adults only after dark and clothing is optional. The entire area is kept natural as well in that there are no lights except for the moon and it’s all very misty and steamy as the temperatures clash. We swam around, dipped in various tubs, and even ran around on the ice and snow with some opting to preform snow angles and test their limits in the cold creek. We were there for about an hour and a half I figure before we packed up and headed back to the condo for some rest before the morning.

Saturday morning we arose as early as possible and made the short walk to the run then down to the base. Aboard the gondola we climbed to start the first runs of the day. Overnight they got about 7 fresh inches of snow and opened another chair. The riding was great. I absolutely fell in love withthe mountain. The terrain is just so different from what I’m used to in that it’s low enough in elevation and fertile enough that aspen trees make up about half or more of the tree cover, mixed in with pine, and the moutain just feels so open. Even at the busiest times of the weekend we still felt like we had entire runs and even entire faces of the mountain all to ourselves. I only saw a handful of roped off areas and you could ride just about everywhere. We (some of us) rode hard all day without stopping for a break and hit some great runs with some great snow. Most epic. We rode back to the condo and changed into some regular clothes.

That night we took a shuttle into town and hit The Smokehouse for some BBQ. Winter Fest was going on in the town of Steamboat that night which sounds  like a big “to-do” in a resort town but Steamboat is actually quite different in this regard. It’s more of a small western town and really along the lines of a classic mountain ski town. Sure, they had several blocks of downtown blocked off for the festivities but it was like 1 tent per block with coffee and cookies… and a camel. Larry the camel stayed in his truck for a good 15 minutes outside of The Smokehouse while several handlers tried their hardest to get him out and onto the street. Eventually he did make an appearance though. After walking around a bit and checking out some stores we took the shuttle back the resort and settled down for the evening after some folks enjoyed the hot tubs.

Sunday morning brought 12 inches of fresh snow from the previous day/night and the conditions were phenomenal. None of us really believed in the coined term “Champagne Powder” as even though we’d hit some great powder runs and blazed some untouched lines it still seemed similar to any other powder we’d ridden previously at other resorts. This was until we actually found some of the fabled snow and it was obvious that it was superior snow for making joyous turns through. This one magic run we took I will likely never forget. It was steeped through an aspen grove with the perfect grade and pefectdistance between trees to make turns that left you covered in fluffy snow as your wake cascaded over you with each turn. More than just floating above the snow it gave you a feeling of lightness and levity and had an almost effortless flow to it like a cushion of confetti as you glided down it. It’s what we came to experience and it was awesome. We continued to ride fairly hard throughout the day and didn’t have a single bad run. Everything had fresh snow on it and it was a good day to be out there carving up the mountain.

That night we ate the Slopeside Grill and checked out some of the shops on the mountain. We again went to the Strawberry Hot Springs after dark. After wrapping up there we pretty much just relaxed back at the condo tired from our 3 day excursion. Everyone slept pretty solidly awakening to our final morning in Steamboat on Monday. We packed up and headed back to reality happy to have experienced Steamboat for our first time and confident it wouldn’t be too long before we returned.

Pictures

-Matt

The moment you’ve all been waiting for in which I officially announce my endoresement for the next President of the United States is finally here. Barack Obama is not just the “better” of the two candidates he’s the only candidate that should even be considered at this juncture in America. What is largely being viewed as the most important American presidential election for the entire global economy it scares me to think of the turmoil and general evilness that would be brought forth under John McCain rule. It should scare you too. So get out an vote, but make it count… choose Obama and Ba’Rock the Vote!

-Matt

View from the West, facing East, behind the main stage

We had a pretty decent sized crew in attendance for the first ever annual Mile High Music Festival. It was a hell of a good time I must say. With over 40 bands on 5 large stages over 2 days there was a little something for everyone. It was spread out across Dick’s Sporting Goods Park, where the Colorado Rapids play, out here in Commerce City a mere 9 miles from my casa. Covering 18 of the 24 outer soccer fields it was definitely the largest music event I’ve ever attended.

Day 1 

We got there rearing to go, after a little diner food, for the first day and entered the carpool lot that was reasonably close to the main entrance and required you have 3 or more passengers and sign bearing the words “Mile High Carpool”. There were many facets of the overall event that were “green” in nature starting with the carpool lot and expanding to free drinks for 5 recyclable trash items that you picked up around the grounds and a veritable army of recycle stations. I must say that the grounds were kept reasonably clean considering the vast amount of people there. We parked, lathered up with sun screen, and headed to the massive line that took us into the festival. When we first got in we were nearest the main stage and a vendor alley. We got familiar with the place and headed to the southeast stage to catch the end of Steven Kellogg and the Sixers. From there were shot over to the Lizard stage where we watched Hill Country Revue. Then back to the Bullsnake (southeast) stage for the start of State Radio, a Boston, MA band that was the best show of the day, in my opinion, so far. They had a kind of dub sound with a little more aggressive rock thrown in and drew a pretty big crowd.

On the way to hit up the vendors for a little grub we stopped by this giant watering thing that had a series of different types of sprinklers attached to the top of some aluminum beams; like stage lights would be attached to. The sprinklers ran in patterns and shot water all over the place catching people who had stopped there to cool off. It was rediculously hot the first day reaching the high 90s with no cloud cover. A breeze might roll through every now and again but it was scorcher. The sprinkler towers were great and they did have a lot of large tents up; not to mention that the two stages in the middle were completely covered and shaded. You can see them in the picture at the top of this post towards the right. We then continued on to the vendors for some grub and were a little late to catch the beginning of Citizen Cope.

Citizen Cope was the first band that day that I’d actually listened to their music somewhat regularly before the show and was definitely excited to see live for the first time. They were up on the main stage and it was our first time we tried to penetrate the large crowd camped out all over the main stage grounds. We got pretty damn close just off to the right of the sound board. Citizen Cope was good, played all their hits and the songs I expected them to but were kind of a slow band overall for this type of large festival crowd. So we bailed early to check out Andrew Bird (website) and I’m extremely happy we did. Andrew Bird was the biggest surprise/excitement of the entire weekend. That guy, and his band (especially the drummer) are down right amazing. He played the violin, guitar, a host of other instruments, and apparently he’s a world champion whistler which became instantly believable upon hearing him whistle with perfect pitch and sound. He would play different musical parts live, record it and loop it live, and move on to another instrument while the just-then-recorded piece would continue to play. I could go on and on but I’ll stop here. Truly fun to watch and experience live.

We then wandered around a bit from Moe and then over to Spoon and ultimately back to the vendors again before heading off to the main stage for that night’s headliner, Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers. We got in pretty close again actually, about where we’d been for Citizen Cope, and watched as the stage lit up just after sunset. Petty and the boys were good, and they brought Steve Winwood out for 2 songs as well. All the songs I recognized and all likely chart topping hits. Would’ve been kind of nice to see an extended solo or a revised song or something new. We left before it quite got over to attempt to beat the crowd. We made the mistake of walking straight back instead of out to the sides and had to wade through a seemingly endless mass of people. We were beat down and pretty tired from the heat and continuous walking all over the grounds and crashed pretty hard that night.

Day 2 

The next day we arrived a little later to recover from the previous days toils. We’d decided there really wasn’t anyone we wanted to see that started before 1:30. We got there a little later than that and putzed around for a bit trying to meet up with some other friends who were in town for Day 2 of this festive event. We caught a little of The New Mastersounds before heading over to Colbie Caillat who’s very… uh… sexy talented. Heh… she is very talented and I actually enjoy several of her songs.

From there we made it over to the main stage for an act I was super excited to see, Rodrigo Y Gabriella (videos). I’d had the pleasure of seeing them preform live about 3 months ago and was super stoked to see them again knowing they wouldn’t disappoint. Of course, they didn’t and the crowd thoroughly enjoyed them. They were able to wake up folks who’d been jamming hard for 2 days now with some truly amazing jams. Just them, 2 acoustic guitars, no vocals. So good. Hands down the 2 greatest acoustic guitar players alive today.

We then trekked all the way back across the grounds to where we’d left Colbie to see the Flobots, a local Denver band recently gone bigtime with them signing to Universal Records, take the stage and throw down. We watched them for about 30 minutes before heading over to where The Roots were about set up. We wanted a good spot and got one about 20 feet from the stage, just right of center. The Roots brought the thunder and were easily one of the best acts we saw there. Their tuba player, or sousaphone player as they preferred to call him, was quite the talent and fun to watch. Questlove tore up the drum set and Capt. Kirk, as they call him I guess, definitely impressed on the guitar. Good stuff.

There wasn’t enough time unfortunately to catch the end of the Black Crowes so we strolled around, got some grub, met up with some friends, and then wormed our way in as best we could for The Dave Matthews Band. Considering we got to the edge of the mass of people right as they started we actually wiggled in pretty close. After some of the fantastic acts of the day though Dave didn’t really measure up. Maybe we were too far out, not in stereo-sound-land (we were off to the left and our main speaker was kinda flaky) and couldn’t really appreciate it well enough. Maybe we didn’t do the right drugs… but Dave couldn’t keep us there for his whole set. We headed out and crashed hard back at my place once again.

I’d definitely check this lil’ carnival out again next year… I’m excited to see what the lineup will be.

 A little CBS Coverage posted up on YouTube:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KYXMW_MIgok (part 1)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xGE_VCwLMes (part 2)

A couple band videos from the show: http://milehigh.wakeupyourphone.com/videos.html

-Matt

For those that don’t know I live out in the “boonies”; at least in terms of Metro Denver. We bought a new house in a new community that at the time had zero stores, or anything else for that matter, in any sort of relative proximity. The nearest grocery store is still a 15 minute drive ~9 miles away. So you can imagine that we were quite pleased when we saw our nearest (about 4 blocks away or so) “major” intersection under construction with a new strip mall/plaza or whatever you want to call them. Similar to South Dakota where every strip mall has a little casino; in Colorado every strip mall has a liquor store because that’s the only place you can sell real beer and liquor. You can’t buy anything but 3.2% beer on Sundays in Colorado and so no grocery store or gas station is allowed to carry anything but. Consequently they stand up liquor stores just about everywhere. So why it wasn’t much of surprise that our new little strip mall contained one and that it was the first store in the joint I still thought it looked pretty… I don’t know… humorous(?) when I drove by at night and for the whole stretch of the strip all you could see lit up was the liquor sign. It looked kind of like a giant liquor store in the middle of nowhere. I’m no photographer but I did the best I could to try and capture this sight. You can’t actually drive into the parking lot of the place because it’s still very early on in contstruction (which also kind of made me wonder why they even have the place lit up… “Booze coming soon!” I spose) so me and Loni were pulled off on the main road that runs past it, shivering in the cold (I was, she was in the car) and trying to get the camera to stay steady long enough to capture it.

Regular Exposure

Long Exposure

 While we still can’t buy food anywhere close we can at least get our drink on. God bless America.

-Matt

We trucked up to the mountains as is tradition on my birthday and the conditions couldn’t have been better. Well, for winter sports activities anyways… I spun out on the road twice in slick conditions; ask Loni for the grim details if you must. Oh did it snow though. Everywhere in Summit County and the surrounding area got between 2 and 3.5 feet of snow that weekend. On Friday night we made it into Dillon, where we stayed for the weekend at a buddy’s condo, and unpacked and went to the Dillon Brewery for dinner. There was eight of us total (plus one dog) for the weekend adventure and everywhere we went our presence was known. Back at the condo we lit a fire and yaked into the night.

Saturday morning we drove up to Camp Hale which is 16 miles south of Vail and is nestled in the Vail Valley. We rented 6 snowmobiles between the 8 of us, with 2 riding doubles, and tore around 90 miles of trails and play areas for a good 4 hours. 7 of us had never been snowmobiling before but we all caught on quickly and had these Polaris 550s wrapped out at around 60mph at times. It was a blast and just plain gorgeous country everywhere we sped. Big fluffy flakes were falling the whole time and there was plenty of untouched powder outside of the groomed trails to cut loose in; so loose in fact we each got our vehicle stuck several times. Me more than most it seemed and my back was a wreck the next day from pulling my sled out of the snow so much. So much fun though. Back to Dillon that night and dinner at the Red Mountain Lodge which had very cool architecture and decoration on the interior.

Sunday morning we shot up the road to Copper Mountain for some pristine snowboarding conditions. We found a couple runs that by all means should’ve been opened, but weren’t… and weren’t groomed at all. Glorious powder! Once we found these gems we pretty much stayed on them for the duration. Packed up and headed back to the condo to clean her up and then back to Denver.

I made it to 25 and beat the odds that all my arresting officers claimed I was up against. Take that Obberman!

Pictures up here.

-Matt