I'm well into the second week of my not-so-excellent Boulder adventure. Apart from a couple of decent meals, there's been nothing to do around here but try to amuse myself by watching old hippies, middle-aged yoga instructors, and militant vegetarians work themselves into a lather over the Bush administration.

Consequently, I desperately felt like I needed to escape last weekend, and wound up spending all day Saturday and Sunday down in Colorado Springs where I used to live back in the early Nineties. I decided to take the Pikes Peak Cog Railway up to the summit, since I'd never done it before. It turned out to be a pretty cool (and I do mean cool, as in freezing) experience, replete with dizziness, nausea, and headaches from the altitude at 14,100 ft. Fortunately, there's a restaurant at the summit that serves special "high-altitude donuts". There must be something in the grease, because they quickly settled my rebelling stomach. The view from the peak was unbelievable; I could see all the way into Kansas and New Mexico to the East and South, the San Juan and Sangre de Cristo mountain ranges to my West, and Denver to the North.

Speaking of special grease, I reacquainted myself with Conway's Red Top, a fine dining emporium frequented by crank addicts wearing NASCAR hats and old ladies with bouffant hairdos. I feasted upon half of one of their faboo chili-cheese burgers, onion rings, and a chocolate milkshake. For dessert, a slice of strawberry rhubarb pie to die for.

Sunday, I went hiking in the Garden of the Gods for a couple of hours, then drove up to Cripple Creek. Since I don't gamble, there wasn't much for me to do there except have a look at the town's museum.

Oh yea, I went to see a few movies last week to help pass the time; American Splendor, Matrix Revolutions, and Master and Commander. American Splendor was by far the best of the three. I also enjoyed Master and Commander quite a bit. It's definitely a man's, man's, man's life in the British Navy. On the other hand, The Matrix Revolutions descended into utter craptacularity. The Wachowski Bros. need to go back into carpentry and save us from having to endure any more of their sophmoric filmic philosophy lessons, and Keanu Reeves should be barred from appearing in any movie in which his character utters more than "whoa!"