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“What do the beer fairy, the queen of Wal-Mart, and Spiderman have in common? And what was this odd assortment of characters doing running down the streets of Old Town Fort Collins today?”

These are questions Alene posed in her ultrarunning blog. The explanation is that it was the 3rd Annual Human Powered Brewery Tour — as organized by Scott and Celeste — and this year, a bunch of us wore costumes to draw greater attention to amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or Lou Gehrig’s disease. We hoped that people who saw superheroes and cowgirls running or biking down the street would ask us what we were doing and offer to make a contribution to the ALS Association. Continue reading »

After celebrating the last two New Years with my buddy Bandy in California, I made a point of returning to my hometown of Fort Collins to kick off 2010 with Tori. While hanging out with my BFF pretty much guaranteed that we would not be belly dancing or getting drunker than Charlie Sheen, we looked forward in particular to the city’s annual First Night Fort Collins celebration. Even if no Elvis impersonators were scheduled to perform this year.

There was, however, a juggling unicyclist, a balancing act involving hoops and balls of the type you might see in a Suzanne Sommers infomercial, and a bunch of men tooting brass instruments to tell the story of Peter and the Wolf. Continue reading »

It came as no surprise that my gal-pals Ryan and Tanya were not going to be staying home on what’s got to be their favorite holiday of the year, the day when 70-pound ghouls and goblins roam the streets carrying shopping bags like they were strolling through Macy’s. I also was not a bit astonished when they said they would be dressing up. However, I did raise an eyebrow when they asked me to come trick-or-treating with them. I mean, none of us even really like candy.

“No, not for candy,” said Ryan. “For books.” Continue reading »

Roller skating nights sort of fizzled out; there were no more Passion Parties to attend; and I declared myself “retired” from a karaoke career shorter than William Hung’s. One might suspect, then, that life in Northern Colorado for my friends and I had suddenly become more boring than pouring through a programming manual on C++. But this was not the case. No, not with gal-pal Ryan living here. Somehow she always manages to find new places for fun, exercise, and doing things more off the wall than sweeping leaves off the front porch with a mop. Continue reading »

“Have some peach cobbler for me,” Tanya text-messaged on the morning of the Peach Festival of Lafayette, Colorado. “And peach bread, peach ice cream, peach pastries, peach pizza…”

I would have been glad to, but there was one problem: at the festival, I could find almost none of this. At a drinks stand there was lemonade, orange-ade, lime-ade and other fruity concoctions, but no peach-ade. The jams and jelly booth had plenty of jars containing strawberry preserves, grape jelly, apple butter, etc., but no peach jam. A pizza vendor only served wedges with cheese and pepperoni or sausage. None of the crafts tents featured any artwork of fruit. Continue reading »

It’s not often that I go to the same place other than home twice in a single day. But this July 4th I was not at Fort Collins’ City Park just two times, but rather, three. Continue reading »