Colorado has it’s own version of spring. Where other places have daffodils and tulips covering the yards, the signs of a new season in Fort Collins are slightly different.

10. My daily outfits go from one warm top plus down-coat to three light layers that can be added or removed as necessary.
9. Woodpeckers on our rooftop bathroom fan covering. I guess they like the echoes this time of year.
8. Our stored freezer food is dwindling.
7. The bike racks in Old Town start to fill up.
6. The news is filled with discussion of water access rights.
5. The town’s yards and barns are filled with baby cows, baby goats, and baby kittens.
4. I get sunburnt while rockclimbing.
3. All of Liv’s fur falls off.
2. The kayaks begin appearing on top of cars.
1. The temperature was 80F two days ago, 25F yesterday, and 50F today!

I may not have needed a camera, but by Sunday, I was missing it.

The morning was warmer, and Mark and I felt like we had inadvertently been victims in a South American soccer stampede the night before. Even Liv seemed exhausted as she sulked around the campsite while we packed up.

When it came time to decide where to climb, the simplest option seemed to head up to Sand Gulch. This beautiful limestone canyon towered over our campsite all weekend, and it’s warm sunny east-facing wall beckoned. We have climbed there once before and were unimpressed, but Sunday seemed like a good day for “unimpressive.” We were certainly feeling that way.

I know it seems unlikely, but I actually went on a climbing trip, and accidentally left my camera at home. It was all packed up, ready to go, and on the table rather than in the pile with everything else. So it didn’t go in the car. I realized this around Loveland on I-25, and declared “I don’t need a camera to go rock climbing!” and that was that.

After three days of heavy snow this week, Mark and I decided that most of the rocks and cliffs around Fort Collins would be un-climable this weekend. I took the opportunity to demand one more trip to Shelf Road, and Mark acquiesced. Our last trip had been a lot of fun, and we found ourselves in much better climbing shape than we expected. So we took advantage of the bad weather and headed south to work hard on the long limestone routes at Shelf Road, again.

When we arrived in Cañon City Friday night, the air was clogged with snow like powder sugar in a donut kitchen. As we drove north out of town, the snow began to lighten, and the skies were cold and clear as we pulled into the campground. There was a dusting of snow on the cacti when we arrived, and the desert was white and frozen under the quarter moon.

Saturday morning, we woke late, waiting for the sun to warm up the tent. By the time I crawled outside, much of the snow had melted. We made breakfast and then headed to Cactus Cliffs for some sun-drenched climbing.

Quite the spring storm we’ve had blow through this week. I’ve seen just about everything the atmosphere can throw at us, including rain, wind, snow, freezing rain, and even giant ice balls flying out of the sky. There’s probably a technical term for that (large sleet?) but I’m not sure how to classify them. Anyway, here’s a shot from our front yard yesterday evening!

Kate and I are in Best Buy Sunday night with a primary mission to get the last two seasons of Gilmore Girls so that we quit watching them out of order when our TiVO randomly decides to record one. And yes, I like Gilmore Girls… you can impugn my manliness as you see fit, but it is an excellent show.

The super-secret secondary mission is for me to go and get my monthly PC game purchase. I’ve got my sights on a box-set of Oblivion and I’m heading to the PC gaming section when I walk by some youngsters playing the song “Should I stay or Should I go?” by The Clash on the floor demo of Rock Band.

Instantly, I’m humming along with the song and standing in front of a row of games with absolutely no clue as to why I am there. A blue-shirt asks me if he can help me and I tell him I’ve forgotten the name of the game I came here to buy. I say “It’s the most popular off-line computer role playing game of 2007” and he replies, “so is that the title?” That one caught me a little off guard. “Um…. no, I’ll work it out. Thanks for your time.”

I browse the titles and my head is filled with nothing but The Clash. I might as well be blind. I go back to find Kate and ask her to tell me what I was thinking when I walked into the store. She’s my ace, and when we arrive back at the PC games, the song is now Nirvana. I’m only perhaps 75% engaged by it, but still cannot find what I’m looking for. Kate picks it up from somewhere directly in the center of my vision and we leave the store with a pile full of Gilmore Girls, midevil RPGs and some $10 James Bond movies. Success!

The weather has been mild and we got a big tax refund. Time to shop!

I’ve spent my time and money lately refurbishing Ann’s older (but very nice) road bike into the ultimate commuter bike. This is the most work I’ve ever done on a bike, by myself, and it was a heck of a learning experience.

Ok, here’s all of the cool improvements I made:
1 – Entirely new handlebars, with all new shifters, brakes and cabling. I did accidentally wire the brakes backwards, but I can fix that later.
2 – You can’t see it, but I installed a sweet LED headlight for evening rides home.
3 – A new bike computer! I need to know how far I ride and how fast! This was the first computer that I have installed and calibrated on my own.
4 – Bike lock, of course.
5 – Seat pack to hold patch kit, spare tube, and multi-tool.
6 – Handy bike pump. Don’t want to be caught with a flat on the other side of town.
7 – New chain. Installing this and then re-adjusting the deraillures was one of the biggest challenges.
8 – New tubes and tires. These have more tread for all-weather conditions.
9 – Changed out the clip-less peddles for platforms so I can ride in flip-flops this summer!

Mark also got to spend a little money, and on Sunday we went out and bought him a nice new grill. He loves it, and it made some darn tasty BBQ pork on Sunday night! With the house, grill and gardening tools we’ve collected over the last few years, we’re nearly back to the amount of stuff we had before we left Indiana. I’m not sure that’s a good thing, but at least we have tasty grillin’ again.

Mark had a suggestion for how this trip report should go, so I’ll try to stay as true to his idea as I can. There are a few photos from the day in the gallery.

We went to Lumpy Ridge. It was cold and windy, and we were the only ones there when we left the car at 10:30a.

We walked a long time. The trail was covered in sh!t.

We climbed the first two pitches of Magical Chrome-Plated Semi-Automatic Enima Syringe. It was windy. There was snow and ice on the rocks.

When we walked off, it started snowing. The sun went away. We hiked home.

I used to have a core set of tools to keep my PC free and clean of viruses and ad-ware. Then, about two weeks ago, I was browsing the world wide web with reckless abandon and through some unknown means, I picked up a nasty unwanted piece of software that we shall (for the sake of simplicity) call the lop virus. Realistically, it was the combination of a virus, a downloader and one or more trojan horse. I’m wondering if some piece of internet trash I viewed used a security hole to install itself. These have existed in the past and usually take advantage of a buffer overrun or some such which I am positive are ALWAYS caused by C++ programmers with short attention spans.

The short version is that Adaware is no longer my homey. It failed me. My new best friend is SpyHunter, but it isn’t free…