I'm Still Kickin

I have not fallen off the planet, I promise…

I have been busy with all sorts of adventures but once I sit down to blog about them, my camera is dead and my battery charger is at home where I am not. So any pictures I have come from my crackberry.

Quick up date…

Great American Beer Festival was a huge success, see even the bear wanted into the convention center to get some delicious beer.


I also got the opportunity to volunteer at Bristol Brewery (in return for free beer—which I will never complain about). Every year they make a seasonal pumpkin ale (Venetucci Pumpkin Ale) that is absolutely delicious and this year I helped make that happen. Be watching in the next couple weeks for this beer to be in Colorado Liquor Stores and local taverns. YUM!


My father had a small set back two days before he was to head back to the Midwest to start on his own adventure. He was in the hospital for 10 days with a nasty case of pancreatitis. Luckily he is out of the hospital and on the mend. Unfortunately he missed going to the CSU Homecoming game. I am thankful I had the flexibility to come to Fort Collins to spend some time and cheer him up. I think the morphine got to his head though because he got an idea that I was interviewing for jobs up here. I had to remind him Fort Collins is low on my list of places I want to relocate too. Sorry.

More to come later. For those keeping track, I am still running, swimming and cycling like a mad woman. Next event: Half Marathon in December, (I hope…)

Tonight: PUNK ROCKS! (and a peek into a past life…)

The Vandals at Red Rocks…along with The Offspring and others

The Vandals: Last time I saw them perform, was at Penny Lane coffee house in Boulder Co in 1998. It was a small punk rock show. Babes in Toyland opened for them.

That was along time ago. Also a long time ago I was a teenager living in a college town with not a lot to do. So a bunch of us would “produce” small punk rock shows. My part of the production process was small. I was in charge of copying off copies of the fliers and distribution.

My step father had an insurance office and I had a key and access to a lot of paper (uh, sorry Larry—If you are reading this now. I guess this is one of those childhood secrets I just let loose. I wasn’t REALLY doing homework in your office all those evenings--I am busted)

Anyways, I digress. We had a lot of small garage type punk bands perform at our shows. Many faded away over time but a few actually made it “big” – The Offspring was one of those bands. I have not seen them perform since they were playing for us and 50 of our “friends” we charged $4 to get in the door, the venue was a vacant office space we rented for the evening next door to Front Range Records on College Ave. Some of the other bands that played for us in those years: Social Joke, Libido Boys, Green Day, 7Seconds, No Doubt, All, Descendants, and many many more…

There are lots of stories and fun times from those years…Someday I will write them all down along with the bands that I met, listened too and drove around to and from the gig’s in my Blue VW Rabbit…Good times (Nuclear mom—you may need to help me with that…Since my memory is shady…I was not kind to my mind/body in those years)

As for tonight…I am excited to relive a little of my youth in a MUCH larger Venue…and I doubt I will be anywhere near the mosh pit. Instead, I will be that “old person’ the kids will wonder where I could have ever heard of such punk bands…oh if they only knew…

Calling It Out and Keeping It Real

Note: The following blog is not the happy-go-lucky typical blog I may normally post, it is raw and for me, something I needed to write about. It is life, it is a window into a dark sub-part of my extended family. You have been officially warned...

I have a drug addict in my family.

Many family members of mine would be upset to know I just typed that last line, they still may if they read this blog. Oh well, one thing I have always been is outspoken and I will call it as I see it.

When I see a person get sent to rehad more than three times, follow the same patterns as they did before, steal, cheat and lie, and expect the rest of the family to support them, my patience runs a tad thin one may say.

This morning, I was drinking my tea, reading the Denver news like I usually do and I saw an article that sparked my interest. A headline about a meth bust. I opened it and in the list of people arrested, I see my niece’s name.

Lovely

Just a couple of weeks ago she sat near me at my sisters wedding, this is the same girl who I as there when she was born and at one point I would do anything for this child. As I sat next to this shell of a person, I realized the vibrant young, beautiful girl was gone, I was sitting next to an empty shell of a drug addict wearing a pretty dress.

My sister lived at home until my niece was 3 years old, being I was a young teenager it was my responsibility to be her in-home babysitter. As she got older and started experimenting with drugs, I was still able to talk to her. I felt like we had a good connection and she told me things she didn’t trust to anyone else. We had good conversations and she promised me she would never do anything but experiment. I guess I held onto false hope. Like I had always known, never trust a junkie. Little did I know at the time she was just that. I have known many addicts in my life and I have a low tolerance for them. The first time she went to rehab I held onto some hope she would come home cured, or at least able to be a contributing member of society. What I learned was she came home to fall into her same habits, manipulate the same people and thrive off the enabling that surrounds her.

One of the hardest things I have ever done was to practice ‘tough love’ on someone I love so dearly. I was there the moment she came into this world, in fact she is the only birth I have ever experienced. It is hard to look at someone you care so deeply, at one time thought you would carry the world on your shoulders for them, and in your mind say “I can not and will not help this person”.

I don’t really know why I felt the need to blog about this, I guess to feel some catharsis about the whole ugly situation, to hope through my frustration and writing something will change. These are changes I have no control over. All I can do is be thankful this person is in jail and safe from themselves for the time being and hope that someday they will find the strength in themselves to change their life. Until them I will continue with my own, be thankful I am removed from the situation by proximity and keep my family in my thoughts that they also have the strength to realize they too can not make this person change.

Girlfriends Get-A-Way

This weekend I got the opportunity to reconnect with some old girlfriends. These are girls I have not seen since I was 18 years old, *ahem* eighteen or so years ago. LL, AGM and I decided to meet up in Keystone, thanks to LL arranging a condo rental.

It was fun to get together and catch up. Unfortunately I was too busy talking, eating, and drinking to take any pictures. I am kicking myself now.

It is so fun to see and listen to the stories our lives have taken us all. None of us got too far away, but far enough from our hometown to create our new lives with the tools we all received during the times we spent together last. We have discovered selves that are not defined by the high school we went to, the clothes we wore, the neighborhood we lived in or the people we hung out with. We are now the people we decided to become. What an amazing thing.

I have always been a believer that we make impacts on everyone’s lives we touch, and many times we never learn, or even know for that matter the impact we made.

I am lucky that I have the most amazing friends in my life, both from my childhood, and all through my adulthood so far.

As for my impact on my friends? My claim to fame I learned this weekend, Sautéed Honey Nut Cheerios. The legend lives on. Who would have guessed an afternoon culinary experiment in my parents kitchen when I was 12 years old would be the thing that another girlfriend remembers most, and now serve to their children. AWESOME!!!

Time to fry up some Cheerios...

MS 150 2008 Part II

E and I finished riding 80 miles on Sunday at 2 pm, hung around the FRCC campus that was the finish line/expo area for about an hour and a half eating, collecting our baggage and changing clothes before heading home. We pulled into The Springs, collected my doggy from day camp and headed to E’s house. We pulled into the driveway at 5 pm. By 5:05 pm we were fast asleep. Woke up for a brief time around 1 am to unload the car, put our doggies to bed, and go back to sleep until the alarm so rudely awoke us this morning. I guess we were a little bit tired.

There were a few changes to the ride and route this year. The biggest being that they put a cap on the ride, making it about half the size it was before. I still don’t understand why they would ‘close’ a ride for charity. One would thing the organizers would want it to be as large as possible. This gives me something to research. This years ride was 3700 people, compared to the 7000+ it was last year. It started and ended at Front Range Community College in Westminster. Instead of going to Carter lake this year, we by past that area. My only guess is people didn’t like the steep climb up to the lake. Personally I was sad not to go that way, true it was a steep climb up, but also a great descent down afterwards. Gravity baby, Gravity…

At least we still had the killer climb at Horsetooth Reservoir and on day two I got to attack my childhood nemesis again, the climb up the first dam at Horsetooth Reservoir.

As a kid we lived an the base of this hill and on our dirt bikes it was a grueling hill, one we rarely accomplished without a rest or walking our bikes at one point or another. For the second year in a row, I spanked it! Childhood vendetta resolved once again.

All in all it was a great ride and I felt stronger than the year before. Less than three weeks from now I’ll be on my bike riding across Iowa…WAHOO!!!

Wrongly Convicted?

Today Tim Masters has been released from prison on his life sentence for the murder of Peggy Hettrick almost 21 years ago.
You can read the story here

This murder happened in my hometown, on the eve of my 15th birthday. The body was discovered in a field blocks from my fathers house on the morning of my birthday. It was the first murder I remember really paying attention too. It hit close to home, the main suspect in the case was a boy I went to school with. I did not know him, I only knew of him. I guess like everyone else I had always thought him to be guilty. By our justice system we are supposed to believe people are innocent until proven guilty. I was 15, I was believing all the rumors I heard. Today I am questioning myself because I guess I still remember those rumors, all the talk, the friend of my sister, whose uncle was on the police force, that knew someone that saw… you get the idea. I am questioning also the media. What more of this story does the public not know? I can’t help but wonder…