Vertical Edition: 01/01/2012

There are lots of pictures to share so

I'll start with some of those.

Thunder Ridge

Sunset and Beers from Trinity after a day climbing with Matt.

Ute Valley

Matt staring out my office windows longing to be

doing something fun.

Atlas Holiday Party

Burger in between two grilled cheese sandwiches.

I love Crave Burger!

Nick asleep circa 8pm

Gross

Baby's birthday present

Love 2 dollar Tuesdays!

It has yet again been many moons since I have written anything on here. It appears that when I am not living alone with few acquaintances within 1000 miles I spend less time writing. Anyway It is almost halfway through my first year at Atlas, Lauren and I have been in the house for 5 months, and Lauren has lived in Colorado for over half a year. Its a crazy thing to see how fast time goes. Its been since October that I have posted anything on this website. It has probably been a combination of lots of visitors, climbing in the gym and some other things. Fall was beautiful and we are now both feet into the winter. We have had our first sub zero night and the high a few days ago was 14. I am almost positive that Lauren was real close to stabbing me...and possibly still is. It has worked its way back up to the 40s, 50s and 60s now luckily. Thanksgiving was great because the family all got to be here. Thank you Denver University. Now we are on the backside of Dad's trip here, and Lauren's Mom came today. Its gonna be a busy and awesome month. Matt gets here the 15th, which is the same day Lisa leaves. Then Drew and Brad come at the end of the month. Time flies. I hope everyone is having a great holiday season, whatever part of the world you happen to reside in.

Well it is now January 7th. I am drinking coffee and looking out the window at the mountains. I didn't end up publishing this post when I wrote it due to video issues. As always it seems. I am becoming frustrated with the video quality that I have to upload with and am trying to figure out ways to improve it. I am also stumped because I have discovered a few problems with my dvd burner so I can't even burn the final copies. I am working on it. Well obviously all the visitors have returned back to their respective places of living. I am one week into the third quarter of the year at Atlas, and things are getting back to normal. Matt and my little vacation together was awesome as expected. We did quite a lot in the short time he had here. We were able to climb both outdoors (in December...I love Colorado) and in the gym. We spent a day exploring a new area called Thunder Ridge. It is a pretty epic place with huge boulders way off the beaten path. It is a 10 or so mile drive off any paved road then a 2 mile hike to find these boulders. Unfortunately the most impressive looking stones were across a barbed wire fence on private land. I need to get ahold of the land owner. We were also up in Breck for a day to do some boarding. We ate good food, drank good beer and just had a great time. As always it was sad to see him go. Oh he was also here for Christmas movie night which was an awesome success this year. It is weird to think that just a year ago I didn't know enough people to even have a real party for it.

Lauren and my christmas was very different from any we had had before due to being far away from family. Although we missed everyone back East we had a terrific day. We woke up, had breakfast and coffee, made a fire, looked at the snowy mountains and opened presents. It was a great day and we were very grateful for all the things we got from people at home as well as each other. We really did have a great day.

Drew and Brad's trip here was a ridiculous success as always. We spent too much time enjoying Extra Gold as usual. We had awesome weather the whole trip and got to climb with the garage door open almost every day. It was great of them to drive all the way here from Cleveland and Chicago.

I think that about sums it up for today. I am planning my day and deciding how I want to spend it. No matter the decision it is a beautiful day in the mountains. I think Branford and I are gonna cross paths at some point to do something either booze or plastic (climbing holds) related. Hope everyone had a great new years and is enjoying 2012. Don't worry the Mayans didn't predict the apocalypse until December 21st of this year so we've got some time. Cheers.