Peter Lyons

Tubing Boulder Creek

June 30, 2010

Last weekend was a blast. Friday night I hung out at Stephanie's and watched the Blue Planet on her big projector. Saturday started with pancakes with Michale and then we headed to Boulder for the farmer's market and tubing the creek. We borrowed one tube from Big Wave Lew and bought another one at the Conoco on Broadway and Arapahoe. We met up with five other folks from CHAOS by the library and walked up to Eben G. Fine park to put in. Overall, my takeaway from the experience was: don't tube Boulder Creek. The water was cold but mostly that didn't bother me, at least not until I got out. It was fun to cruise along on the fast smooth sections, but going over the little waterfalls while thrilling seems just too dangerous. Everyone got knocked out of their tube and into a big fountain of water holding you under the surface. You have to wait until the current brings you out from under the waterfall before you can get your head above water again, and that's just very much a not fun "I'm drowning" type feeling that I'd rather leave out of my recreational experiences. There are lots of rocks around waiting to knock you unconcious or scratch you up a bit. Michale got a bit banged up. Of course, once you pull over to the side or get out, the fact that you are soaking in ice cold meltwater hits and I started shivering right away even though the air was 90 degrees.

Saturday we had a very yummy sirloin for dinner, which marks only the second time I've grilled steak here. Michale whipped up some blueberry vinagrette dressing for a nice salad with jicama (that's a new one for me) and walnuts. Sunday after breakfast we lost power so we went over to Dragonfly Coffee Shop and hung out on our laptops for a while. I got to show off my fancy new MackBook Pro. In the afternoon, we went to the Rec center and then ate some broiled salmon with garlic butter for dinner. It was a very fun and relaxing weekend.

In other news, three n00bs tried to walk into the Chris Wall level 2 group fitness class "Cry in the dojo" on Tuesday. The regulars looked around and started placing quiet bets on how quickly they would bail. This is not a "try it and see if you like it" type of class. Surprisingly, they made it through the whole first round, about thirty minutes worth of vigorous Tabata intervals before they excused themselves and bailed.