Singapore is a great city, but it’s also incredibly hot and sticky, as the following photo of air conditioning units barnacled onto the side of a building can attest.
No durians allowed
Durian fruit does not smell very good (at all), so they are banned from the Singapore subway system, as noted in the following warning sign on one of their trains.
Night lights in Singapore
We just completed a massive trip that routed through Singapore, then Bali, then the Wakatobi dive resort in the Bandu Sea, and then a week on the Pelagian liveaboard dive boat. The return was 44 hours, including 2.5 hours just to get our luggage in Denver at the end of the trip. The following photo is the Marina Bay Sands Hotel in Singapore, from the helix footbridge that leads to it. Amazing city! Incredibly well planned, with a massive subway system and immaculate streets. The only problem is the weather - hot and humid.
The New Orleans Experience
We just attended the wedding of a friend’s son in the New Orleans cathedral. Great party town, though the calorie count was questionable. Here we are in our finery, and, yes, those are Cafe du Monde beignets, drenched in powdered sugar.
...and more snow
This was the scene on May 22 after yet another snowstorm. This was only about 3”, but still - May 22?! I don’t recall ever getting snow this late in the spring. And, the trail running was fairly mucky. My shoes were caked in mud.
Snow #@! again?
There is about two feet of snow above 10,000 feet elevation, as the following photo shows. I managed to (sort of) trail run up to the wilderness boundary for the Mt. Evans Wilderness, mostly hopping around the piles of snow and being generally unhappy. Will this snow ever melt out?!
The giant sprinting toothbrush
It is not every day that you see a giant sprinting toothbrush, in this case being beaten by a giant sprinting tooth! In the following picture, that was the scene at the Rockies game last night. A nice benefit of our seats was being able to look over the cameraman’s shoulder at home plate. Oh, and the Rockies lost to the Padres, 3-2.
Not so dry trails
An alternative title would be “ah, springtime in the Rockies”. Here we are on May 10 with 3” of fresh snow. The following shots were taken from the upper portions of Falcon Park. And in the second photo, yes, that is the trail in the lower right corner (ran it anyways).
Finally, dry trails
This is the view of a rock spire, just to one side of the Chimney Rock Trail in the back corner of Staunton State Park. Just picked off my 36th consecutive month of doing trail run half-marathons. And finally - no snow on the trails! I was a foot deep in snow on this trail just three weeks ago.
A soggy day in Maine
Just drove over this beautiful bridge while going down the coast of Maine with my dad. The nearer tower even has a glass-walled observation deck on it, though you can’t see it very well in the fog.
Choked with snow at 10,000'
The following photo shows conditions on the Cub Creek Trail in Evergreen at 10,000 feet elevation this morning. The snow is perhaps 18” deep and not really great for trail running, so I turned around after going about 3-1/2 miles up the trail. Definitely deeper snow than usual this year.
So much for Spring
Yep, the following picture is of solid ice about two miles up the Mason Creek Trail at Staunton State Park. I especially like the image of the slipping hiker on the warning sign! This goes for quite a ways, and will probably not melt out for a few more weeks, since this area doesn’t see much sun until late Spring.
Ice flows
While knocking off the monthly half marathon (now 35 in a row) at Staunton State Park, I came across this nifty little sign about 6 miles from the trailhead. There is an ice flow going down the trail that is about 4” deep, and which could make for some great inadvertent skating!
View from Bergen Peak
This was the view this morning from the top of Bergen Peak in Evergreen, looking west. Everything is choked with snow - including the trail up, which appears in the lower right corner of the photo. Elevation about 9,600 feet. This is a stiff trail run of about 2,000 vertical feet over 3.5 miles.
Backcountry skiing shots
Our favorite cat skiing operation, Steamboat Powdercats, shut down for the season yesterday, with 104 recorded days of operations during the 2018-2019 ski season. Here are a couple of shots of us from our seven days of skiing with them this season (and yes, they have a photographer):
...and this is why we wear cleats
Just did a 10 mile trail run in Falcon Park, which had highly variable conditions. The snow from the recent storms was heavily packed down and frozen in on the north-facing aspects of the Turkey Trot trail, so it was pretty much solid ice for a mile or so (see photo below). This is why we wear cleats!
Half marathon in the snow
I just completed the monthly half marathon trail run (34 months in a row so far). There were snow showers in the parking lot at Staunton State Park, but that ended fairly quickly. Still, there was a lot of snow from the massive snow storms of the past few weeks (see the photo below). Luckily, the park staff had run a snowmobile through a number of the trails, which packed down the snow somewhat (see the trail grooming sign below). Incredibly, someone else was going through on a fat-tire bike!
