Stump Jumper

The title of this blog back when it was run with WordPress was "The Stretch of Vitality", a phrase of my own creation that continues to ring true for me. This week was another fun week in that hurts-so-good kind of way. Afronauts rehearsed Tuesday night and then played a gig at the Laughing Goat on Wednesday. Prior to that I got stood up by my OKCupid coffee date and ended up getting a bunch of bike parts at Full Cycle instead. Thursday night I did my weekly bike to Boulder for a fabric workout at CATS with some additional cardio stuff thrown in. Friday I headed in to Boulder in the early evening and hung out at Dojo4 a little bit. Justin and Ara looked over my new bike a bit. This is the Specialized Stump Jumper M4 that Rhonda crashed and gave to me for free. I'm happy to report that it is now again operational thanks to some help from Justin, Josh, and my neighbor Markus. I can't wait to try it out on the trails. Sadly, it's been cold and rainy all weekend so it will have to wait for now. I was planning to busk on Pearl St after hanging at the Dojo, but it was drizzling rain and cold, so I hung out a bit at Atlas Purveyors and did some last minute work stuff. Then I stopped at Bay Leaf to replenish my stash of Chocolove bars and then up to Laudisio to meet Mandaline for a drink. We were debating which of the poorly-reviewed movies to see and ended up going to see Avengers in 3D. We also ran into Ryan from acrobalance and his parents so we hung out with them and dipped into their gigantic industrial-vat-sized popcorn bucket.

Today I got the Stump Jumper tires working and then took it over to Markus's, where he made some minor adjustments, inflated the rear shock, twiddled a few screws here and there and called it good. So now I have four bikes in my garage - a new Colorado resident acheivement unlocked. However, once I test out the Stump Jumper, I'll get rid of my Mongoose mountain bike which has served me well for my first 3 seasons of riding.

I had planned to spend all day at Community Cycles working on the bike, but it was done by 10:15, so I took the Peugeot road bike to the Boulder Circus Center for open workout to work on my pagoda pops and ginger drops. Afterward, Jasmine, Gala, Alex and I had lunch at Whole Foods followed by sharing a delicious pint of gelato.

Then back on the bike to get home before the drizzles got too big. Not much time to shower and rest though before I had to drive in to Denver to catch the 2nd night of the Aerial Acrobatics Arts Festival at the Oriental Theater. There were some great performances including many of my friends from the local studios. It was very inspiring and encouraging. Jasmine was cross dressing as she does periodically and looking adorable. One of the sponsors was Boulder Ice Cream and they gave out decent-sized free ice cream at intermission, which was delightful.

I'm so glad it's still only Saturday. I feel like I've already jammed in a weekend's worth of good stuff. Tomorrow some work on the Gypsy Wranglers COIL music and then Afronauts are playing in Denver opening for Khaira Arby from Mali, which should be some good exposure to the local African music scene.