Author: jon

Honeymoon, Portland to Santa Barbara,  12–25 October 2015

Warning: this is a long one, written mostly by Megan… Megan’s words… Jon’s words… enjoy. ( oh, and see if you can find Megan’s head hidden in one of the photos! )

Monday

Our amazing honeymoon started bright and early Monday morning, actually it was still dark out so I guess it was just early. We left Arvada via an Uber and took the shuttle to the airport. As my wedding bouquet was so amazing we brought it with us to strap on the motorcycle and share the journey. We arrived in Portland and lugged our giant and heavy moving boxes into the second Uber of the day and headed to Sven’s house where we would stay for the next 2 nights. Portland was really fun and beautiful. After Jon made the solo journey to the Harley Davidson dealership to commandeer our wheels for the next 2 weeks, we set off to explore the city on a couple of Sven’s bikes. The awesome part about Portland is that there are bike lanes and therefore people on their bikes, everywhere. We eventually made it to the International Rose Garden and were surprised to find out that despite being October, the roses were still in full bloom and looking as beautiful as ever. Peddling our way back home we stopped at a fish market and bought a whole Dungeness crab that rode with me in my front bike basket. Dinner was amazing. Fresh crab, butter, wine.

 

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CA – Christmas Party

Last Saturday, Megan (my invited +1) and I experienced our first ever swanky corporate holiday Christmas party. We took an Uber ride and arrived promptly 15 minutes after 6 and were greeted with many open bars, long lines for food, and decorations that reminded me of Vegas. Oh, and they were handing out selfie sticks as party favors… classy.

 

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The Lost Coast, King Range, CA

Three weeks into starting my new job and I was ready for some time off. Megan had just arrived the previous week, and after a few days of unpacking she too was long overdue for some RnR. Luckily, the company gave me the full week off for Thanksgiving, so we headed North five hours to the Lost Coast for a backpacking trip.

 

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Moving to California

Well, we’ve just gotten married and are moving to California. Campbell to be exact, in the South Bay area. I’m actually here already, two weeks before Megan is coming out, living in our newly rented duplex with no heat or hot water, and an air mattress as my only furniture for the foreseeable future. I rode my bike Monday to my first day of work in the pouring rain. 

I plan to post CA related items throughout our first year here to help keep track of things. This should be a great adventure…

Pikes Peak, Pike National Forest, CO

Pike(1)s Peak Highway is 19 miles with over 150 turns(2), and at the top, you get to turn around and ride back down. I’ve been wanting to ride up this mountain since buying my first motorcycle, and now with fuel injection and sticky street tires on the Monster we had to make it happen.

The long weekend started Thursday night with a Beatles cover band playing at Red Rocks. After a leisurely morning, Megan and I left midday Friday, towing the bike down HWY 67 to avoid some traffic already clogging the Front Range. While this was intended to be a bike trip, Ducati Monsters are not built for two over long distances, so we pulled the bike down to Rampart Range and planned to ride from there Saturday morning.

 

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Snowy Range, Medicine Bow, Wyoming

Happy Fourth of July! To celebrate our Nation’s independence Megan and I drove up to our Northern neighbor ( Wyoming ) for a two night backpacking trip in the Snowy Range portion of the Medicine Bow Range.

After a leisurely start to the day on Friday we drove up and were amazed to find very few other visitors at the trail head parking area. We started on the trail around 1PM and made camp a few short miles later at Sheep Lake, on the backside of Browns Peak. The scenery was incredible with rolling peaks and lush grass and flowers everywhere! Camp was a small patch of trees on the West side of the lake and we got right to fishing. If memory serves, this was the first lake in which Megan landed a trout on her second cast, a feat she repeated two more times when arriving at a new lake.

 

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Ouray, Jan 2015

Another trip to Ouray. Megan and I went in January with Dan and Ashley after having talked about an ice climbing trip for a while. Leaving on a Thursday morning we were able to get in a half day of skiing and riding at Copper Mountain before finishing the drive to Ouray that afternoon/evening. We stayed in the AlpenGlow condos where I have stayed in the past and an inattentive house keeper wound up providing us with an upgrade to a 3 bedroom unit since the two bedroom was trashed still from the previous guests!

Overall we had good weather and made it out to Buen Tiempo for dinner and margs one of the nights. Ashely had never tried ice climbing before this trip but did well despite the lack of experience. Most of our climbing this trip was done in the Grad School and New Funtier areas of the park since warm weather had caused much of what ice was there to have been severely picked out in the lower bridge areas (some of them were even closed, which was a first for me to see).

 

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Robber’s Roost, Hanksville, UT

Canyons!

After our inaugural canyoneering trip to Moab in November we decided we needed more. Detailed scouring of the Interwebs showed the desert surrounding Hanksville, Utah to have a plethora of great canyons, and, most importantly for us, readily available GPS coordinates to walk us straight to the first rap, ensuring our novice abilities weren’t tested in some inescapable drainage we thought was correct.

 

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New York City

10/31/2014 – 11/2/2014

I’ve wanted to go to NYC for a while now, and with the opportunity to go before a work trip I decided this would be a good time. The original plan to get Megan a ticket and totally surprise her while at work didn’t quite pan out, but she was still surprised when I told her the Sunday before leaving, and, this actually worked out pretty well since she was able to help plan out the trip and find things to do.

Jump to Friday afternoon.

 

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