Greetings from the People's Republic of Boulder!

Figured I should check in and let my two or three faithful readers know that I'm still alive. For the past week, I've been squirreled away at a defense contractor's secure facility that has no network access, teaching a class. I'll be here for a few more days, then I return home to try and sell my house, buy a new one, and wait for my employer to initiate yet another round of layoffs.

Quite frankly, Boulder's been a bit of a drag, it can't seem to decide if it wants to be Berkeley or Palo Alto, and appears to have appropriated some of the worst qualities of both locales: outrageous real-estate prices, noveau riche snobs, dopey earth muffins in tie-dyes, aggressive panhandlers, and smugly self-righteous lefties, all set against a backdrop of gorgeous mountains that you unfortunately can't hike in because the trails are closed to protect the breeding grounds of endangered bats. I'd like to present the city with a giant "Get Over Yourself" award, but San Francisco still wins that prize hands-down.

Boulder does have one superb and very eclectic restaurant at least.

I managed to escape this weekend and spend my Saturday mountain-biking in Winter Park. The trails were very challenging and a hell of a lot of fun to ride. I bought a lift ticket which allowed me to take my bike up to the top, then ride down very, very fast. I did this until the regularly scheduled Colorado afternoon thunderstorm rolled in and they shut the lift down.

Unfortunately, the base resort was crawling with a couple thousand drunk Harley enthusiasts who'd come to town to partake of Hawg Fest; an outdoor concert featuring such super-luminary knuckleheads of the rock firmament as David Lee Roth, Ted Nugent, and some band called Lewis & Floorwax and the Groove Hawgs. w00t! I'd never seen so many fat, tatooed men and floppy-breasted women with big hair together in one place before.

That night, I stayed with friends who took me out to dine at a Tex-Mex fusion restaurant called The Shed. It was really excellent. Who knew that prickly-pear chutney tasted so divine? We shot the breeze until the wee hours, when the sound of unmuffled choppers roaring by finally died down outside.

On Sunday morning, I drove back to Boulder via Rocky Mountain National Park I stopped several times to do some hiking and was rewarded with incredible vistas of the Rockies. I also encountered two herds of elk while trekking through a glacial col above treeline. Excellent.

That's all for now. I return you to your regularly scheduled channel of 'blog static.