Just wanted to point out a great, great article on a “peakbagging club” in New Jersey:

New Jersey’s undeveloped peaks rise above the rest

Yes, you heard me. A club devoted to cataloging and “climbing” the many precipitous peaks in the grand state of New Jersey; high point: eighteen hundred feet, complete with monument to memorialize the majestic magnitude of the, uh, hill.

Five of the peaks aren’t even mountains per se — they’re called hills — and one of the more modest, Guerin Benchmark in Randolph, is about a five-minute jaunt from the parking lot.

The guys are totally tongue in cheek about it but at the same time it really does celebrate the hiking in NJ, of which there is plenty. Brenda & I discovered our love for hiking in NJ, not Colorado. It’s just that when you know you love something that requires certain natural features, you need to relocate to places that feature them. You don’t find a lot of surfers in Iowa, for example.

So while I am eternally grateful for living in Colorado and having access to amazing trails close to home and 14,000’ peaks not far away, this article reminded me of our humble hiking beginnings in the Garden State.

Enjoy.

Last Thursday, I hit the airwaves, yakking about lighting simulation. For some reason the Boulder Green Building Guild was interested in my take on the use of simulation in optimizing the energy efficiency of building designs in the US, on the latest installment of Footprint Radio.

It was a thrill to share the half-hour with Kostas Papamichael from the California Lighting Technology Center, and my buddy Mike Plann from Lightlouver. I hope one or two people listen, and are intrigued enough to explore daylighting design, or at least turn off the lights once in a while.

The cool thing is I’m now in the iTunes Music Store. Check it out by listening to the show on the BGBG’s website, or by checking out the podcast on the iTunes Music Store.

Thanks again, Tasha, for having me on the show.

Been a while, I know. Will have more to say later. For now, we are having us a nice little blizzard here in Colorado. The best part is that my favorite bar is on top of things. Here’s an email I received today:

From: mtnsun@mountainsunpub.com Subject: Cold Rain and Snow won't close us Down!! Date: March 26, 2009 5:47:49 PM MDT To: rpg@rumblestrip.org Happy Spring Blizzard Phamily and Phriends We ARE open today at the Mountain Sun Pub & Brewery. (11:30 AM till 1 AM) The Southern Sun Pub will be open regulars from 4 PM till 1 AM. The Vine Street Pub in Denver is open from 4 PM till 1 AM.(1700 Vine) Please DO NOT drive! Walk, Snowshoe, or ski in! Please tip well...Many of our folks are working doubles to stay open! If anyone got any extra Phish tickets...We have 100 hardworking employees looking for extras! Enjoy the snow!

(yeah, Phish; whatever. You take the good with the bad, right?)

Man, I’m wiped out. So’s my dog.

This weekend I racked up a whole bunch of great experiences with Hooper, and we (and Brenda) are all tired out! Hooper ran with Jasper and Jackson for about an hour straight Saturday morning, which warmed my heart as I watched him interact with other dogs instead of just playing fetch. Last night, pissed that I didn’t have my camera to document the aforementioned morning trot with the cattle dogs, I brought my camera and got some nice pics of Hoop and the local pack having their usual fun. And today, Brenda, Hooper & I hiked up to Lost Lake near Eldora and enjoyed being outside, the three of us. I love this guy.

Tonight was one of those nights I truly felt lucky to live in Boulder. Tonight, at the fabulous Boulder Theater, the Reel Rock Tour kicked off to a packed house, and Brenda, Leslie, and I were there.

The Reel Rock Tour is a traveling film festival celebrating rock climbing, in the extreme. Good god, it was fucking amazing. The only thing better than the photography was the amazing skill and daring of the people in the films. Well, that and the rocks; the rocks were amazing. From Eldorado Canyon—right here in Boulder—to Yosemite to Chamonix, France, these places served as playmates to people who tested their limits; their drive, determination, balls and boobs, as they climbed, slept on, and B.A.S.E. jumped off of some of the most amazing fucking rocks on the planet. It was awesome.

In case you didn’t know, Boulder Colorado is kind of a hotbed for rock climbing. More importantly, in case you didn’t know, Brenda (my wife) is really into rock climbing. I reveled when Brenda took a rock climbing course at the Boulder Rock Club, and enjoyed her stories every time she came back from the gym, and especially when she came back from Eldorado Canyon on a climbing adventure with her classmates from the gym.

So when I saw this film festival advertised, I jumped at the chance to check it out, and I ended up being totally sold on the idea of rock climbing.

By the time the feature event rolled, I was totally engrossed; the beautifully brilliant mountainous landscape projected on the screen was wonderful to look at, but then the reflected light from the screen revealed an amazing thing: the Boulder Theater was totally packed. Every seat was full, and people were sitting in the aisles and standing in the stairwells, to catch a glimpse of these amazing athletes groping their way up the most impossible of routes.

The alpine hikers were my faves, but there were so many characters both in front of and behind the lens that you just wanted to be your best friends, and the fact that half of them were in the audience watching the show (and occasionally tossing out swag, including climbing legend and Rob’s girlfriend Beth Rodden’s husband Tommy Caldwell tossing out shit like ten feet from us) just added to the drama.

All in all, a good night. I am so going to try rock climbing now!!

Brenda, Hooper & I all piled into the car today for a drive to Denver, to attend a birthday party for some friends of ours. Partners Greg & Ted share birthdays a day apart. Greg aged a year today, and Ted did the same yesterday. And so a joint birthday picnic/barbecue in the park near the Denver Zoo was in order, with dogs.

Greg & Ted have a pair of winning canines; Guinness the Pug, and Lucy the Mutt (I used to threaten to kidnap Lucy and take her home with us from their parties ever since we moved to Boulder; she is adorable and built just like Hooper). Many of their other friends have dogs as well, and so dogs were invited to the birthday soirée.

And so it was that we loaded a backpack with Nalgenes of water and a Tupperware container to act as a bowl, poop bags, dog treats and a couple of tennis balls, and rolled out towards Denver. We also had a secret weapon. We brought the basketball.

You see, Hooper is quite the ‘baller. He has an uncanny ability to dribble a ball around a field using his muzzle and his front paws, and this is a skill that he demonstrated the very first time I produced a bright yellow utility ball on one of our walks back in November of 2007. Hooper took to that ball like Pele, coaxing it around the field under the moonlight for over an hour, managing to steer the ball back to my feet every once in a while so I could try to kick the ball past him (which rarely happened). But suddenly, a pop and a hiss was heard, and the fun ended.

A regulation basketball is 30 inches in circumference, and comprised of a tough leather cover that can resist a dog’s attempts to bite through it, and we have one of these objects. And today, we felt that if Hooper was to be allowed to roam free on the grass of the Denver Zoo Park—with heavily trafficked roads bordering us—we wanted a reliable distraction to keep him close, hence the basketball.

When we arrived, we rolled the ball out onto the grass and Hooper immediately began working the field with the ball. People immediately inquired about how we “taught” him to do this. Shrugged shoulders and allusions to that cold November night followed. Hooper spent the next several hours rolling that basketball around, beckoning me and anyone else who was interested to kick the ball around, and to engage him in some goalie practice.

Brenda had mentioned to me that a couple of the small children present at the party were terrified of dogs, and that we needed to make sure Hooper steered clear of them, and I was paying strict attention to his movements around the guests. But at one point, a couple of kids showed up with Hooper’s basketball, and they were fighting amongst themselves over who should be the one who kicks the ball toward Hooper. I watched with great interest and joy, as Hooper adapted to the kids’ erratic movements and gestures.

This one kid was literally pushing his friend out of the way, directing the action. He was moving the ball around and gleefully watching Hooper’s attentiveness and reactions to his direction. I had a great time watching Hooper play with the kids, but when I heard on the ride home that the one kid was one of those “afraid of dogs” kids, I just beamed.

Hooper is turning into quite a gentleman, and an ambassador. A saint.

Today is Hooper’s birthday, making Hooper one year old! In truth, we brought him home at six months of age, and he was picked up as a stray in Utah sometime before that, so unfortunately we really don’t know the exact circumstances or conditions of his conception, birth and early development. The vet guessed he was six months old, based on his teeth, when we took him in or his first checkup in early August. So we counted back from there and picked Groundhog Day as his “birthday”. In truth we’ll never know, and we don’t care. Just as we’ll never really know his genetic makeup. He’s Hooper the Dog, he’s ours, he’s one today, and we love him. So we took him out for a hike.

Up past Jamestown there’s a trail that meanders through the tall trees and it seemed as good as any for a winter hike. Hooper seems to love the hiking, the snow, the altitude, the adventure, as much as all of us. Once out of the car, he starts whimpering if we don’t get on with the business of plodding through the snow in a timely fashion. He’s generally uninterested in drinking water because that would involve stopping. Instead, he snags chunks of snow and ice on the fly, and keeps on marching.

Today’s hike led to a vague trail hidden by snow, and Brenda eventually became more interested in scaling a boulder for the view at the top than continuing to the summit. Hooper & I ventured onward, but he kept looking back at Brenda and I lost all sight of anything recognizable as a trail, so we headed back to join her. We snapped a few pics, headed back to town and picked up new treats and toys for the birthday boy. He’s cached out on his bed now, amidst the debris of yet another destroyed stuffed toy. Life is good.

Any doubts about Hooper’s hiking abilities, including high altitude, cold/snow, distance, have been put to rest. Hooper is a wonder dog.

With the holiday weekend winding down, and with the entire Front Range experiencing a very late start to the snow season, I decided to go up to Brainard Lake and scope out the trail to Mount Audubon, a hike that Brenda & I successfully did last summer. Mount Audubon stands over 13,000’ tall, so generally by this time of the year it’s totally covered with snow and is a challenge to summit. But with the dearth of snow we’ve had so far this year, I thought it might be a doable climb, and a great intro for Hooper to a longer and higher hike. Brenda’s been a bit under the weather, so she stayed home but Hooper & I headed out around 8:30 this morning to see what kind of trouble we could get into.

The access road to Brainard Lake is closed this time of year, which adds another two miles of walking just to get to the trailhead; I totally underestimated the impact of this, especially in winter with all the snow. Forty minutes after we left the car, we finally arrived at the Marshall Lake trailhead (I was totally going from memory of our hike last year, and I have to say I was pretty happy that I was able to find my way back!). At this point, I had already pulled a couple of chunks of ice from Hooper’s paws and his whiskers had icicles hanging from them, but he seemed interested in nothing but proceeding in a forward direction. I decided to hit the trail for a little while.

As we walked along the trail, I recalled the great hike Brenda, Bryce and I did up this trail last summer, and on we pushed, through the snow. I decided we should at least try to make it to treeline…

When you hike these high peaks, you eventually reach a point somewhere around 11,000’ there the oxygen is so thin, most vegetation gives up and heads for lower ground: treeline. You emerge from the cover of the thicket of trees and enter a rocky moonscape, windy and barren; ironically, I find myself the most alive when I’m up there.

And so when we emerged from the trees, and the winds began to blast us—no longer shielded by the trees—I concluded that we simply must continue on. I was not expecting to make the summit, but I wanted to press on for a little bit at least, in hopes of making the ridge before the final push to the summit where there are some spectacular views in their own right.

The winds picked up as we pressed on, and there was little shelter available for relief from the wind. Checking my watch I realized we had been walking for almost two hours, and simple math makes that out to be a four hour hike to the car, so I decided we were done for the day. I found a spot that wasn’t quite so windy, fed Hooper some food, and snapped a few pics:

Here’s my favorite picture from the day, with Hooper looking at some hikers on a lower peak while Long’s Peak looms in the background:

After that pic was taken, we headed back home, and arrived at the car three and a half hours after we left. Looking at a topo map after we got home, I estimate we turned around just a little short of the goal, but sill walked about ten miles in total and got up well over 12,000’ high. After giving him dinner, Hooper has been asleep ever since, but I think he’s proven his mountain mettle. Next summer is gonna be awesome. You’ll be seeing us on top of many high peaks, you can bank on it.

It’s been a while, again. First off, it’s Facebook’s fault. That’s right, I joined Facebook and I can’t seem to stop checking in every day to update my “status” message and see how many friends my friend Lauren has. But, that’s not the purpose of this post. Discussion on the insanely silly endeavor of Facebook will surely follow, maybe after Thanksgiving.

Anyway, Brenda has been working crazy hours again, and it all came to a head over the last couple-few weeks, and finally ended this past Thursday, when the show she was building some suits for opened at the University of Colorado. And it turns out that the guy who she was working for has a condo in the mountains that was going unused this weekend, so we loaded up the truck and moved to Keystone… resort that is; snowbarders, movie stars…

Brenda & I (and Hooper) had not been in the mountains in the winter yet since moving to Colorado, and it was fantastic. So far this year, old man winter has not really visited the near mountains but that’s ok with us since we’re not skiers or snowboarders. But this gave us a chance to experience a typical Colorado mountain resort town at the beginning of the high season, and it was certainly entertaining for us.

With Hooper settled in the condo, we headed out into the village to find some lunch. As we walked through “town” (Keystone resort is home to several fabricated centers of Starbucks and clothiers and liquor stores situated maze-like, Disney-style, around the lifts) we started to absorb the amalgam of skier/snowboarder fashion/lingo/gait/attitude. At one point Brenda said “uh, yeah, we’ve definitely entered a foreign world”, and I could only laugh and agree. I have been soaking up some of the lingo just from listening to office conversations about ski conditions (apparently the amount of base is important, and for some, a nice run of groomers is awesome, but that definitely outs you as a skier and the boarders will, like, totally frown on you), and I caught some glimpses of the fashions in the sale circulars every week last year, but it wasn’t until we walked through a living breathing throng of True Believers that I really came to grips with the odd, different, and let’s face it, totally cool world of alpine sports.

There’s a certain swagger that the snowboarders have; it almost seems like they’re fully conscious of the outlandishly baggy nylon clothes they’re wearing, emblazoned with obviously targeted graphics that they’ve paid a lot of money for, but don’t care (and to those of you that truly don’t care, I salute you; especially those that can’t really afford all that shit.

The skiers, then: they have this cool way of slinging their skis over one shoulder and hooking their arms over the end of the skis, backing that up with a swagger all their own, a more muted swagger that seems to say “we were her first, assholes, don’t fuck with us (but boy, it sure does seem like you guys are having a simpler, cooler time of things)”.

I was struck by the sense that this was one big party that I had no idea was going on (god dammit); at every bar (of which there were several), there were racks out front where people would leave their boards or skis, after a hard day of sliding down the slopes. My initial reaction was to look for some sort of locking mechanism, but there was none; these people were leaving their high priced equipment at the door, unlocked! This did not compute for this northeasterner. Inside, people sat around and ate and drank in the gear they wore all day as they careened down mountains on slippery planks of various sizes with no brakes. I felt inadequate. I ordered a beer. Here’s what we woke up to, out the front door of our place:

Brenda, Hooper and I made the best of our abilities by going on a couple of short hikes, punctuated with Hooper discovering his love of snow (or perhaps re-discovering; Hooper was a stray from Utah and we figure he was born around early February of 2007, so he’s probably no stranger to snow, but who knows?).

We left early on Sunday, took a scenic way home along the Peak-to-peak Highway, and got home in time to enjoy an early dinner at Zolo Grill, one of our favorite restaurants in Boulder. All in all, a great way to spend Brenda’s first free weekend in a long time.

OK, I know it’s been a while. Here is what’s on my mind:

• When you own a dog, you clean more than ever, and yet your place is generally messier.
• It’s snowing on the high peaks. Winter is just about here. While I like the look of the mountains with the snow on them, I’m dreading the thought of a winter like we had last year here in Boulder.
• The Colorado Rockies (baseball club) are absolutely tearing it up, and they remind me of the Phillies of 1993, another team of lower-paid gamers who ended up playing like a team instead of a collection of overpaid egos. I’ll be rooting for a National League team this year in the World Series.
• Speaking of baseball, I would love to see the Red Sox fold like the bunch of pussies that they are. They should already be declared the losers of the ALCS simply for Manny Ramirez’s bullshit posturing when he hit that home run last night. Sorry, I just fucking hate that guy. Actually, I’m not sorry. He is a douchebag.
• Speaking of baseball, who’s idea was it to have Dane Cook do ads for major league baseball!? I truly believe I’d rather watch Carrot Top try and generate enthusiasm for the game than this no-talent ass wipe.
• I got a new camera; just wait ‘till you see the incredible pictures.
• I saw my sister and my brother-in-law.
• Things are generally good.