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Salmon fishing can be a harsh mistress.

A couple weeks ago I hopped on a plane to beautiful Vancouver B.C. Canada with hopes of bringing home more than a couple of pounds of delicious Chinook and Coho Salmon. It didn’t quite work out as I had hoped, but more on that later.

The view from our room at the Westin Bayshore was great. Props to Seth and his points for scoring us this room!

Vancouver B.C. harbor and the air tour port. I think that’s what it’s called, but I could be wrong.

Seth’s favorite beer!

There were high rise condos going up all over Vancouver. Out shuttle driver mentioned the read estate market is cooling off there just like in the US.

Capilano Suspension Bridge. We flew in on a Friday afternoon and had a free day on Saturday so we strolled Vancouver before taking a SeaBus to North Vancouver to visit the Bridge.

It was neat, but honestly, if you don’t have kids I’d say skip it. Head farther north and swing down a zip line or something.

The view down from the bridge.

The view back at North Vancouver from the SeaBus.

This was one FAST kayaker! While we were fishing on Sunday morning there was some type of kayak race and this guy was KILLING the field by a country mile, seriously. Oh and we had plenty of time to watch the race since we were trolling for salmon and it was going S-L-O-W. Little did we know at the time that it was going to be a theme for the rest of the fishing.

After almost 11 hours of trolling we finally hit a fish. Seth was the first to the rod and brought in a 6 pound Chinook Salmon. It got us all a bit worked up, but no more fish were caught this day.

Avo spent most of day two in this position. I dubbed him “The Sleeping Beauty.”

Turns out that wasn’t the worst way to spend the day. We actually got a couple hits, but they didn’t produce fish. On one bait check we had a Rockfish sitting at the end. Brenden our Captain tossed him back in. My reaction was like, what!? He then informed me that they were protected in the area and we could couldn’t keep it. Soon after we caught another Chinook, but it was undersized and had be thrown back. So after roughly 21 hours of fishing and $2000 plus dollars spent on the charter we got ONE fish. It was a bit of bummer, but we smoked some Cuban cigars and some drinks and all was well. A bad day fishing is better than a good day working.

It was just O K.

A decent shoot ‘em up with lots of CGI bits ‘n’ pieces. But, I’m not writing this to talk about ‘Wanted.’ I’m writing because there was a very small role in the movie played by Terrence Stamp. He’s probably one my favorite actors just because of ‘The Limey.’ Thanks to the greatness that is YouTube, here is one of my favorite scenes from said movie:

As mentioned in a previous post I spent my last evening in a pub playing trivia.

Team Monkey Army was assembled and ready for battle. Alexis, Josh, Christine, Laurence, and I were armed with our sharp minds and pints of beer!

Team Monkey Army!

WE WON! Sure the 1st place team after round 5 left early, but screw them! In my hand there is $25 gift certificate to Wyman’s No. 5, the host pub for the evening. Much thanks to them and their crew.

If you’d like to read the full write up on our amazing come from behind victory visit geekwhodrink.com! Thanks to Quizmaster Drew @ geekswhodrink.com for these photos.

With this I close the “I Like Colorado” posts . . . for now. I had great time and send many thanks to my friends in Denver! Christine, Alexis, Eric, Gary, and now Laurence are all great folks who took time out to entertain this Los Angeleno, who knows I might be a Denverite to Boulderite sooner than later.

More specifically Central Park in Boulder, Co.

Monday I spent the day in Boulder to re-visit the Pearl Street Mall (for you Los Angelenos, think 3rd street in Santa Monica minus the crowds and homeless) and see other parts of the city I hadn’t seen before.

The night before this, when I had dinner at the Buckhorn Exchange with Christine and Gary, Gary had suggested I check out the Boulder Dushanbe Teahouse. Finding it lead me to Central Park in Boulder where I spent a couple hours exploring the area and how well they integrated they city, park and creek. Nice Job Boulder. Unfortunately I didn’t eat or have tea at the Dushanbe, next time.

That photo is pretty representative of the vibe in Boulder. Mom biking with her kid in the trailer across a bridge over Boulder Creek.

Here is the outdoor amphitheater in Boulder’s Central Park. Looks nice, but it’s no Hollywood Bowl.

A ‘boulder’ with Central Park carved in to it. Heh.

Another shot of Boulder Creek in the city. There’s more where these came from.

As I walked along the path in Central Park I got to the Charles A. Haertling Sculpture Garden. While not quite my cup of tea, it’s nice to see art in public spaces.

A nice mile marker (kilometer marker?) I saw on my stroll back to the car.

Bridge over the bike/walk paths.

A nice relaxing area by the creek. It’s nice to have space like this in they city.

Okay, last one, I’ll stop torturing you. I was just really impressed at how they managed to build and maintain such a nice park in the city with out making it feel too urban. Nice job Boulder!

I wasn’t rooting for you but you guys pulled it off!

This morning Audi won the 76th 24 Hours of Le Mans. I was pulling for the Peugeot 908 driven by Villeneuve, Gene, and Minassian. They ended up 2nd after a rough night and slower speeds in the rain.

The top 3 spots were Audi, Peugeot, Peugeot, and they were all powered by modern diesel engines.

2nd, 1st, and 3rd.

Maybe next year for the Peugeot boys.

Call it a ‘tourist trap’ if you want, but they got ‘game.’

Get it?! ‘Game.’ As in game animals . . . to eat. If you’re a vegetarian you might want to turn away for this one. After Alexis waxed poetic on the possibility that she could eat a 72 ounce steak, I decided to see if we could find her something close in the great Denver area to have a practice run on. My search took me straight to the Buckhorn Exchange, Denver’s oldest restaurant and holder of Colorado Liquor License No. 1.

This place is lined floor to ceiling with mounted animals. Even some strange ones as you will see. Unfortunately Alexis and her man Josh could not make it, but Christine, Gary, and I definitely did.

Who wants the last piece of gator tail!? I did, and it was delicious.

Hidden behind some butter in the top left is Elk, half eaten in the lower left is quail, on the right is Cornish hen, and last but not least a tasty mash potato. Clearly I’m not a great photographer, sorry for the over exposure and crappy Photoshop attempt at some correction. There’s more of bad photography to come so brace yourself.

Here’s Christine digging in to her Cornish hen with focus and delight!

Gary got the Bison Prime Rib and it looked and tasted great. I think the smile on his face says it all.

Nothing like gettin’ an angery stare down from the food!

The Buckhorn Exchange isn’t just a restaurant, it’s also a museum and genuine piece of Denver history. Many Presidents have had the pleasure of eating here along with hunting for dinner with the restaurants original owners.

The two headed calf. I had to ask and there was indeed a story behind it. It was born and survived as the family pet until a terrible winter storm cost it it’s life. I twas found frozen next to a stream well preserved and was mounted by it’s owner. It had otherwise been leading a normal life, well as normal as a two headed calf life’s is I guess.

The happy diners. From left to right, yours truly, Christine, and Gary. Thanks to our waiter for snapping the photo.

Nothing like a buffalo stare down.

Here it is! Colorado Liquor License No. 1. It made me wonder where California (my native state) Liquor License No. 1 is? Anyone know?

The upstairs bar filled with more early Denver memorabilia.

Gary gettin’ friendly with the bar Moose.

I wonder how many restaurants can flaunt a “National Register of Historic Places” Plaque.

More mounted animals in the upstairs bar.

Even a Jackalope makes an appearance upstairs.

More guns that have been used to get game in to the kitchen.

Even fish make an appearance at the Buckhorn Exchange.

It was quite an evening and enjoyed it quite a bit. Hopefully on my next trek to Colorado Alexis can make it out for a few pounds of beef, or bison, or quail, or something.

After getting my Darth Vader wake up call it was off to Fort Collins, Co.

Got up sorta bright and early to drive north to the New Belgium Brewery, but first I had to pick up my fine ladies. Christine and Alexis. Must give mad props to Christine for picking up a Rockstar energy drink for me to sip on the way up to Fort Collins.

Driving, driving, driving, BEER!

The sign that lets you know you have found some great beer.

Can you find Alexis is this photo??? Click on the photo to find her!

The entrance to the Liquid Center. Nice folks with no trash cans. More on that later.

Need to some air for your bike tires, well, here you go.

Sitting on a stool ready to taste some of their fine brews.

You can see quite a bit of art hanging on the walls, it’s all made by their own in house artist at his whim. I think that’s pretty cool. Also note Alexis in the lower right hand corner, well at least her head.

In this corner you can check out the schwag they sell. All nice stuff. I, of course, spent some money here.

Christine HATES having her picture taken, much like her good friend Jerri. So I did the only thing I could to help . . . post the worst photo I took of her the whole trip.

Our tour guide. I totally forgot his name. But, I did remember that he was from Kentucky. He was great as were every single employee I interacted with at New Belgium.

They like bikes over at New Belgium, which is cool since I do too.

Here our guide gave us lots of interesting background info and a taste of some mighty fine beer.

Steinecker! (Say it loud and with a German accent.)

The brewery has a fleet of bikes for employees to use as they please. They also award everyone at their one year anniversary with a new bicycle. At 5 years you go on a one week trip to Belgium with the company founders and tour Belgium breweries. Sounds good to me!

This is like a back yard deck where they clearly have BBQing at times. The grill certainly looked like it had been used recently. There is also a nice stream that runs by this area.

See the gal next to Mr. Kentucky? Her camera battery died and we ran in to her later in Fort Collins. She asked if she could get a copy of my photos, I of course assured her she could. Hopefully she remembered the name of my blog. Here is a link to a zip of the photos: LINK. If that doesn’t work for you leave a comment and we’ll be in touch.

Here we have another tour guide cheering on our tour guide, isn’t that just freakin’ great. Nobody cheers for me at my job.

Remember when I said the didn’t have a trash can, well this is why. They recycle as much as they can. Forget that recycling isn’t really all they great for the planet, it’s the thought that counts right? Well recycling metal is smart, but not much else. I digress, it’s an awesome place.

This is a sculpture in the entrance to the bottling plant. Way rad!

They have a ping pong table ON THE BOTTLING PLANT FLOOR! Reminds me of the Foosball table at my old dot com job. Sniffle.

You can see the edge of the gray wall at the bottom of this photo of the bottling plant. That the same gray wall in the photo above with the ping pong table. Pretty cool.

It’s hard to top a day like this, but we followed it up with naps, poker, other games, and such. Props to Christine for crushing us all at poker and winning my money back for me.

Last Friday I flew from my fair city of Los Angeles to Denver Colorado to have some fun.

I got motivated to head over by Southwest Airlines $69 fare between LAX and Denver. That is smoking cheap in these days of high gas prices. Of course my flight was delayed an hour so I got spend a extra hour enjoying the terminal and hearing folks complain about the ‘complicated’ system Southwest uses to seat passengers. Honestly, if you don’t get, you’re not the sharpest tool in the shed.

Landed in Denver late at night and picked up my rental car at Payless Car Rental. It was a BRAND NEW car! A Dodge Caliber. Well. Um. I’ll put it this way, it reliably got me around Colorado. It’s also built out of left over blind spots. There might as well be no windows or mirrors. ‘Nuff said.

I booked my stay at The Curtis Hotel in downtown Denver. This is a wonderful hotel and it’s right in the thick of things in Downtown Denver.

Nicely refurbished hotel with all the fixins.’

The more photogenic of the two comfy beds in the room.

Here is the desk and TV area. They also have FREE wireless internet access which is a big plus.

Bathroom sink. Yeah I know it’s pretty obvious. Nice stuff overall.

I’ll also say that the freebie soap etc was really nice. Christine mentioned that the lotion was also very nice. So I give the Curtis an A. It’s got other neat gimmicks too. You can get a board game from the lobby to play in your room. They have a Nintendo Wii that you can play in the lobby for I think $5 for 15 minutes, all the proceeds for that go to charity so not too bad. Every floor has a theme and my wake up call on Saturday morning was Darth Vader. Not too shabby.

The Monkey Army wins Geeks That Drink dot com Trivia night at Wyman’s #5 in Denver.

That’s right folks! Team Monkey Army needed (okay maybe they didn’t need me) this Los Angeleno to kick things up a notch and CRUSH the competition. I would like to thank my team members in no particular order, Josh, Alexis, Christine, and Laurence “The Law.” More to come on this exciting development (ie - photos and links). Those that know me well know that there was LOTS of yelling by yours truly.

Quick link to the victory page over at geekswhodrink.com.

Not bad people, just annoying.

I’m sitting at LAX waiting for my flight in to Denver and woman sat next to me and proceed to strike up a conversation with 3 people around me and then talked NON-STOP! Now I know we’re not at a library and I also know that I’m well on my way to being a crotchety old man, but for the love of humanity SHUT-UP!!!

Okay, I feel better now that I have ranted and I hope the annoying lady has a good time at her blues dance in SF. I’m also glad she’s doing better after her hysterectomy. I hope her career as a music teacher flourishes. I shouldn’t know this much about her!

Rant over.

Must see movie of the year!

They are simple egg flies and they came out like crap!

I’m not going to be too hard on myself since I don’t even have most of my fly tying tools yet. I didn’t use any head cement, my knots are wrong, and Kevlar thread is a bit of pain. Alas here they are:

Both are egg flies, one on the left is just yarn, Kevlar thread, and a hook. The one on the right adds a tungsten bead head for weight.

I’ll post another pick in a day or so after I trim them a bit with some scissors and make them look more round like an egg. Thanks to Mr. Tsuno for recommending the materials, next time I see you how about a lesson.