Turmoil at Le Tour

Over the last several years my interest in pro cycling has been increasing. I started watching an occasional stage, then every stage and now I watch other races besides the grandaddy of them all, the Tour de France. Well today shocking announcement after shocking announcement has now blown this year's tour wide open.

The top two favorites, Ivan Basso and Jan Ulrich are out. Both riders suspended by their team (along with 20 or 30 other riders from various teams) for this years Tour. Basso looked unbeatable at the Giro de Italia this year, and Ulrich (a 5 time 2nd place finisher to Lance Armstrong and a winner of the Tour de France) looked to be peaking at the right time. Now they are both gone, along with lots of others.

This whole event pretty much makes me think there is no such thing as a "clean" cyclist, maybe not even professional athlete. How many 6ft 10in 255lb guys with 50in vertical leaps really exist? How about 295lb defensive linemen that run 4.5 40s? And don't get me started on Barry "My head has always been this big" Bonds. Ugh.

As long as the $$$ and notoriety are there, cheaters will be diligently working to stay one step ahead of the testing. Its really sickening to me to think that all these people that us normal athletes use as inspriration when we're struggling up what seems to be an insurmountable obstacle may not be that impressive after all. So thanks to all you cheaters who make me feel like maybe I am human that my legs hurt after a day of climbing and that now I know that you are not human.

Regardless, I'll watch the Tour and cheer on the remaining riders, who may either be clean or maybe just didn't get caught this time.

Bike to Work Day

Yesterday was "Bike to Work" day in Colorado, so I played along and did my commute via bicycle yesterday. Boulder is a very bicycle friendly city, with lots of bike lanes and multiuse paths that help aid you in getting across the city safely. I've got a pretty good route established these days.

Bike to Work sponsors have breakfast places setup all over the city. There were probably at least 30 different places that you could stop and enjoy free breakfast on your bike commute. I expected I'd wait till I hit Boulder then stop somewhere along Pearl St. and sample the cuisine.

So backpack stuffed with clothes, I headed out. Pretty typical commute for me except there were a lot more cyclist on the road. I was pleased to see so many people joining in. I cruised along making great time on my way to Boulder. On the NE edge of Boulder I hit my first breakfast station. Scanning over their contents I decided the bagel & OJ weren't for me so I kept on moving. After that I hit Pearl St but didn't really feel like stopping, so I just motored on into the office where a shower awaited.

I skipped out a little early from work and headed back home to avoid potential T-Storms that were brewing up on the Divide. Luckily for me I made it home without any precip falling. Upon arrival, I realized I had done door to door commute via bike in under an hour, a first time for me. My typical driving commute is about 35 minutes, so I managed to commute via bike and do it in 57 minutes. Not too shabby...

So yesterday I ended up riding just under 40 miles roundtrip, in 1:59, so about a 19mph average for the day. The bike commute bit is pretty nice, gets in a good amount of excercise, saves me at least $6 day in gas and helps me destress. I'd do it more often but to be honest, I'm still not crazy about riding the roads with all the idiots on their cell phones yelling at their kids while taking a drink of their coffee and smoking a cigarette.

I'll just keep spinning the cranks and be try to be as safe as possible out there.

The Summer of Joel

Just like George Costanza once declared the "Summer of George", I have decided that this summer has to be the "Summer of Joel". Every weekend is packed full of adventure, fun and exciting things to do and places to go.

This weekend is proving to be what is becomming quite common in the Summer of Joel, two action packed days with little time to rest. Today Jill, Sarah and I headed up to Winter Park for some lift-assisted downhill mountain biking. We got there early and got some early runs in, grabbed a quick meal & a beer then headed back up for another run. After some rusty navigation the first run, we found a fast, swoopy trail that all 3 of us really enjoyed bombing down.

Jill railing a corner.


We had a couple minor injuries, one self-inflicted due to equipment problems and one inflicted by a group of asses. Sarah had a cleat screw fall out, rendering her pretty helpless when trying to clip out. Down she went and out came the blood. She was bleeding pretty badly at first, but we found a course worker who had a first aid kit and we got her patched up. Check out the carnage...


Then on the last run of the day, Jill went down thanks to some punks. We were on a doubletrack road when two guys in full body armor and big bikes blew by us. Two more started to come through, but when the 3rd guy got up next to Jill the course narrowed up. He was going too fast and started to come into her line, which scared her and forced her off the side of the trail where she lost the front wheel and slid down. She got several nasty cuts and scrapes. The maddening thing was the jerks didn't even stop to offer a sorry or help her out. She showed her displeasure for them and I bombed down and had some words with them. Unfortunately you find people like this all over these days, where the heck has common courtesy gone?

Regardless of the group of jerks, we had a great time and got to blast down the hill quite a few times. I will admit I'm pretty shocked at how much work it is even though gravity helps you out. Shoulders, biceps, triceps and your back all get worked over pretty well keeping things pointed the right direction. Of course Sarah and Jill probably felt that much more than me, as my Yeti really took the edge off the bumps out there today. That bike continues to amaze me.

Anyway, onto a couple more pictures from today.

Here I am getting some huge air. That's gotta be 5-6ft off the ground.


Sarah bandaged up and rolling again.


Stay tuned for more antics tomorrow as we're spending another day white water rafting some Class IV & V stuff down Buena Vista way. I lead a charmed life.

MS150 - Sponsorship Needed!

After passively donating to my sister's MS150 fund raising the last several years, this year I've decided to actively particpate. The ride is 150 miles from the Denver metro to Canon City, and totals 150 miles over 2 days.

Multiple sclerosis (MS) is a devastating disease that affects the brain and spinal cord. People diagnosed with MS can have a hard time doing routine tasks, let alone doing the things we all love to do (like riding bikes!).

My goal is to raise $500 for researching a cure to this dreadful disease. If you can help, I encourage you to do so. Skip one days lunch and donate that $10 to helping others. I will be reporting about the two-day event and my experiences here on my blog, so please help out if you can.

To sponsor me in the MS150, Please click here.

Thanks for your support,
Joel

Thanks to our Dads

Just a quick post from Jill & I to our Dads on Father's Day. In a world where there are countless examples of people who have had to deal with bad father figures or none at all, it has really been great for Jill & I to have such great Dads (and Moms too). We are both very lucky to have such great examples in parents.

Beat the heat.

We took the pups west of Lyons tonight for some swimming in the creek. They were glad as always to get some swimming and fetching in. The cool creek water felt great after the stifling heat we've had that only got worse today.


One more quick picture from the swimming. Baloo and Molly struggle for control of the stick as they approach a rapid in the creek.

Bring the pain

After seeing that the MS150 Royal Gorge loop seems to have a 2 mile, 10% average grade climb on it at the finish (after you've ridden 140 miles in 2 days) I decided I better start upping the ante on road bike climbs. So yesterday I headed back to my nemeis climb, Sunshine Canyon.

Sunshine Canyon starts about a mile from my office, which makes it convenient but doesn't change the fact it hurts. It hurts real bad. The numbers I've seen on it say its a 6.7% average grade for about 4 miles, with stretches up to 14%. Combine that with my smallest gear ratio of 39x25 and it all equals a serious effort for me.

So off I went, marking my laps in the normal spots. I've done this climb on my mountain bike many times, but the gearing advantage (22x34 rules) more than outweighs the weight difference. I can climb the entire climb on my mountain bike without having to stop or having my heart jump out of my chest. Not so much on the new road bike.

As I get into the "meat of the climb", my heart rate skyrockets as my pedal cadence starts to grind downward with every pedal stroke. I typically spin the pedals at 90rpm, but once I run out of gears going up Sunshine my cadence starts dropping into the 60rpm area. I trudged and trudged until I felt I needed a break, my first of two. Looking down I see I had made it about 2.6 miles before blowing up and stopping. The good news is that my heart rate was dropping quickly when the effort stopped.

So I hop back on knowing that I've got a whole lot more climbing to do if I'm going to reach my goal of Bald Mountain before turning around. I mentally have to keep myself going, focusing on breathing and turning the cranks. The sun feels like it is resting on my shoulders and there is nowhere to hide on this climb, it just never feels like it lets up at all.

Finally I come around the corner to familiar territory, the cutoff for Poorman Rd. This won't be my ultimate destination, but it is a spot I deem worthy of my next break under a shade tree. On my mountain bike, I often am coming from the other direction as I climb the dirt Poorman Rd climb quite often. But today I am on the road bike and I've got a lot more work to do.

After I get my heart rate under control, drink some fluids and wait for another roadie to get by me, I hop bake on my trusty steed and go into unknown territory for me. I had never ridden past the Poorman cutoff in Sunshine Canyon, so I had no idea what was around each corner. What I quickly found out was that around every corner was a huge dose of pain. Using the guy in front of me as motivation (and learning from how he was riding across the road to cut out some of the steepness when he could), I kept going. I got to a section that was so steep I had to get out of the saddle and literally have gravity help me push the pedals towards the ground, in a rocking, totally unfluid motion. My legs felt like huge pistons in an engine, just chugging along at max capacity, but barely moving.

Somehow, I managed to keep chugging even though I was into what was surely the 14% sections I had read about. Finally, I crested a hill that gave me a short descent, and felt like I had just found an oasis in the desert. After the short descent, I continued climbing until I had reached nirvana, which today was in the form of the Bald Mountain parking lot. I pulled into the lot and sat under a shade tree to cool off from the searing sun. Happy that I had made it to my ultimate destination, but wondering how many more times I would have to do this climb to alleviate those two stops....

As you can see from my heart rate monitor graph, I was at the upper limits. The two big dips are from where I would take my rests, and then get started. It didn't take long for my heart rate to jump from the 120s at the rests back into the 170s. The ride up took somewhere around 40 minutes, the ride down about 10.

Sundays Long Ride

After crashing my road bike on the walking path next to my house, I decided to not subject my sore shoulders to mountain biking last weekend and instead burn up some tarmac. Knowing that the temps would be reaching 90s by noon, I also knew that we had to get up and get going if we were going to get significant mileage in before the temps got too unbearable.

So Sarah & Molly (of ex-coworker Chris & Molly fame) showed up at my house right about 7a.m. to set off for a long road ride. Our route would take us East out of Longmont to 75th St., or "Road Biker Rd." as I call it, where we would head North. The route would be mostly flat until we started heading up to Carter Lake, which I thought would be nice as to give my legs a chance to wake up before starting the climbing. Looking at the route via Google Earth, it looked to be about 50 miles roundtrip, with several bail-out points and options to add more mileage if we felt good.

So off the 3 groggy gringos went spinning down the road. We were spinning along nice and easy making our way through a lot of countryside none of us had ever ventured past before. We made pretty quick work heading north, reaching the turn for Carter Lake pretty quickly. As we started the approach towards Carter Lake, which is nestled in the foothills SW of Loveland, the road turned upwards. In the final stretch, a series of pretty steep switchbacks led up to the dam. I hopped in behind a couple of older guys and thought I'd be content to spin behind them, but I quickly had to hop out and make a run at it as it was more effort to ride their speed than my own.

We regrouped on top of the dam, grabbed some energy bars and Gatorade and continued on down the road. We quickly hit the big descent of the day, a steep, long hill that pushed our speeds up into the mid 40s.

Turning away from Carter Lake, we came to the first decision point of the day. Left turn meant 60ish miles. Right turn meant a little less than 50 miles. We did a status check in the group and got the thumbs up from everyone, so we took the left and motored up the road towards Loveland & Ft. Collins. We found a couple more substantial climbs, and did a lollipop type loop across Hghwy 34 and then back.

Molly had only been on her road bike 3 or 4 times previous to this, and the positioning was starting to take a toll on her by the 35 mile mark. I dropped back and tried to keep her out of the wind as much as possible to ease her efforts. The 25 miles heading back south consisted of rolling hills, and when the gas tank is empty the hills all seem much bigger. Molly did a great job of sitting on our wheels and grinding up the hills, saving energy when she could.

After a couple breaks to get off the bikes and into the shade, we started to see the home stretch. Temps were rising and all the Sunday drivers were starting to come out in droves. Thankfully our final 8-10 mile stretch was wide shoulders and bike lanes, so we could avoid the perils of traffic for the most part.

We ended up putting in 62.1 miles, in a little over 4 hours of riding. Sarah & I upped last weekends 52 mile ride by 10, and will need to keep adding distance each weekend to prepare for the upcoming MS150 ride we'll be doing July 8-9. For me, a nice, easy day in the saddle. I got to do some lower zone (130 heart rate avg), endurance type riding which is something I really need. When I ride alone, I tend to do 80% type riding so I welcomed the chance to back off the pace and just get some good, base type mileage in my legs.

You can see in the graph below(the red line that is more linear) how the temperature jumped 30 degrees over the course of our ride. At mile 7 it was about 63, then by mile 62 it was 94. I was sure glad to be done with the ride and out of the heat. My big regret is my dumb crash that kept me off the mountain bike last weekend, but there doesn't seem to be any lasting impacts so hopefully this weekend I can get the Yeti out for some much needed singletrack miles.

Legend:
Red, spiking line is heart rate curve
Red outlined white area is elevation curve
Red line graph is temperature curve.

The Rockies and Rocky Mountain Natl Park

Friday night we took advantage of some afternoon T-Storms that cooled the temps off and went to a Rockies game with Chris & Molly. The Rockies got shutout, only had 5 hits, but the weather was magnificent and we had a good time regardless of the outcome. Coors Field is a cool place to take in a game, especially on a nice night like last evening.

Today we got a bit of a late start after somehow managing to sleep in till 8 a.m., which is about 1.5 hours longer than most Saturdays. We ended up deciding to head up to Rocky Mountain National Park and explore a new trail.

We set out to hike to Timberland Falls above The Loch, about an 8-9 mile hike with quite a bit of elevation gain. We started just below the Glacier Gorge trailhead and hiked up and started on our way. We encountered some groups of people near Alberta Falls (pic below), but we really didn't have any trouble making our way through the increasing summer crowds.



After Alberta Falls you continue on the same path as Mills Lake, before the trail splits and goes west to The Loch and continues to Timberland Falls. As we continued on the crowds thinned, but the weather threatened. Its pretty much a fact of life that every afternoon T-Storms roll in, especially near the Continental Divide. The Loch is at 10,200ft elevation, so I kept a watchful eye on the fast moving storm clouds as we treked along.

After a mile of rocky switchback climbs, we started seeing more and more snow which was a precursor of things to come. We eventually came around a corner to see an enormous snow bank in front of us. Luckily, the snow bank was packed and able to be walked across easily. Just passed the first snow bank we found The Loch, which is a high elevation lake comparable to Mills and/or Emerald.



We decided that due to the pending storms (we had no jackets) and the mounting snow at 10k and above, that The Loch would suffice as our ultimate destination and Timberland Falls would have to wait. So we sat on a rocky ledge, had some lunch and repeatedly said how lucky we both felt to live so close to such an amazing place.

We didn't stay too long, as a wicked wind was coming off the peaks and the temps were easily 20 degrees less at The Loch than at the parking lot. We made great time heading back down, stopping only for a couple photos before arriving back at the car. We ended up doing a bit over 7 miles, with somewhere around 2,000 ft in elevation gain.

I decided to take the scenic route home (Hghwy 7 instead of 36) for a change, and we stumbled upon St. Malo Chapel (The Church on the Rock). We stopped long enough to snap some pics, take a quick tour inside and then headed back home for some pizza for dinner.

Triple Digit Week

After hitting 90+ miles last week, this week I surpassed 100 miles on Wednesday. Of course, doing a 50 mile ride on Sunday gets me 1/2 way there, but 100 miles is a 100 miles right? And yeah I know that tons of people do a 100 miles in a day, but a milestone is a milestone regardless of how small it may be to some people.

Sunday - 52 miles at Elephant Rock
Monday - Rest Day
Tuesday - Easy ride at lunch, 14 miles
Wednesday - Hard 36 mile ride. Ouch.

102 miles Sunday - Wednesday with a day off thrown in there. Pretty good by my standards, but I keep upping my standards so in two months time it will look pretty poor.

I'll probably approach 150 miles this week assuming I do something pseudo-big on Saturday. The road bike has really helped me be more consistent with riding and get in a lot more miles, but I do hear the sweet siren that I call singletrack calling my name this weekend.

Thinking about possibly doing a big ride at Winter Park, the Tipperary Creek Loop. If I don't do that, maybe either lift-aided downhilling at Winter Park with Jill or go up to West Magnolia and explore some new stuff.

When I get home and get the chance I'll throw up a glorious chart or graph detailing some quantitative method of tracking mileage/distance/speed/etc, as I know that Jill just won't be able to sleep until I bore her to sleep with some statistics. That is if she is really reading this.... :)

Sunday Doubleheader Part 1 - Elephant Rock

Yesterday was a great example why I love living in Colorado. Wake up at 4:45a.m. to drive to Sarah's house to head down to the Elephant Rock Ride in Castle Rock. Sarah & I had opted for the 50 mile route and would be riding along with about 6,998 other cyclist. The doubleheader aspect is that we had also booked a Class III/IV whitewater rafting adventure in Idaho Springs from 3:30pm. Sunday would not be a dull day.

We arrived at the event a bit before 7 and by 7:30 we were rolling across the start line. The course elevation profile showed 1900ft of climbing, with almost all of it in the first 25 miles. So off we went, slowly ascending as the miles clicked off. After about 8 miles we hit the first rest stop and we regrouped after the climb. I pulled out front for Sarah trying to shed the wind for her, but the road as the road continuously climbed gradually she slipped off my wheel and I pushed forward to the second rest stop.

Hitting the 2nd rest stop, we were at the decision point. Right turn meant we'd do our original plan of 50 miles. Straight and we could do the 65 mile route. Sarah openly chastised me that I should do the 65 mile route and see if I could catch her doing the 50 mile route. I thought about it, but considering most of the remaining 30 miles of her route would be downhill I didn't think I could make up 15 miles on her so we hopped back on our bikes and trudged over the next 5 miles of rolling hills before getting an easy pass on the downhills to Palmer Lake where the next rest stop area was located.

After Palmer Lake we headed for home, although into a sometimes stiff headwind. Sarah & I both hopped into pace lines (a group of cyclist riding single file, where the person up front is doing most of the work) and made great time from mile 30 to mile 40. Leaving the 40 mile rest area, we had another steady climb that split us up again, but I waited at the apex and we descended together.

We hit the service road (the last 6 mile stretch) together and started down the home stretch. We hopped on the back of another pace line (or so we thought), but the pace quickly dropped. As the pace dropped I notice Sarah jump out and start to hammer forward. I figure she's found some new life in her legs so I jump out to take the pace making duties and cut the wind for her since my legs are feeling great. As I hammer forward, I feel someone drop in behind me (it makes a noticeable difference in wind on a bike) so I get on the drop bars and start powering a big pace down the final stretch.

As I looked back I realized it isn't Sarah behind me, but some random guy who jumped on my wheel. No big deal, I'm assuming Sarah is behind him and the three of us are powering along. Up front, I do a huge pull of about 3.5 miles in the upper 20mph range. Finally I've used myself up somewhat and motion to the random guy behind me that he needs to pull through and do some work while I recover. As he pulls through I realize that its just the two of us and we've either dropped Sarah or never had her. Well after about a mile the guy in front blows up so I jump back around and try to take over the pulling duties, but he can't get back on my wheel and so I just motor ahead on my own for the final 1.5 miles.

At the stop just before the finish I wait up for Sarah so we can finish together. She shows up looking somewhat dejected and somewhat angry. She tells me that when I jumped up earlier the random guy jumped on my wheel before she could and she missed her chance and wasn't able to bridge the gap to his wheel and then the two of us were long gone. So some random guy got a free pull back to the parking lot, but at least I made him do a little work.

We finished up the last mile, coming across the anticlimactic finish line area about noon (4 hours total, 3 hours ride time) and then grabbed some of the complimentary BBQ. Knowing we had to get back to Sarah's by 2pm to meet up with Jill (who was already at Sarah's house) and Scott & Kim Turner, we headed to the car.

Here is the data from my heart rate monitor. Averaged 17ish mph pace with an average heart rate of about 150 (my max is 200). I probably hit 85% on some of the climbs, but never felt out of breath or hurting too much. All this climbing/riding I've done really paid off as felt really strong out there yesterday.

On the graph, the solid line in the back is the elevation profile, and the jagged red line is my heart rate curve.

Sunday Doubleheader Part 2 - Whitewater rafting

We got to the car about 12:15, loaded up and assumed our spot in the line of cars that was trying to get out. After about 30 minutes of sitting in the same spot (hadn't moved 5ft) Sarah got out to see what the problem was. An enormous line of cars had formed behind us as there was only one way out of the fairgrounds (and with 7,000 cyclists all finishing up about now there were lots of people wanting to go home).

Sarah had been up and back several times and basically said there were about 15 different parking areas funneling into one line, but since our line was furthest back it wasn't moving. We had literally moved 15ft in about 1.5 hours. We're now getting frantic and paranoid as we're already too late to make it to Westminster to meet up with the other rafting crew, but can maybe make it if we cut across straight to Idaho Springs.

In what can only be divine intervention, Sarah was running around the fairgrounds looking for a back way out. At the same time, I had flagged down a worker in a golf cart and asked what was going on. He told me there was a back way out but he needed to get a gate open. Sarah came back to the car and said she thought we could get out the back, so we started making our way towards the back. In the process we had to explain, beg and plead with all the other stopped cars that we thought we had a way out, if they could just let us by maybe we could all get out right then. We must have been pretty convincing in our desperate state as we managed to get about 10 cars to back up and follow us. As we pulled to the back, we see the worker that I had flagged down opening the gate that Sarah had found.

Redemption.

We get out of the fairgrounds and worked our way north as quickly as possible, hit I-25 and off we went. We cut across 470 to I-70 and before we knew it we were in Idaho Springs, and with 20 minutes to spare. What a relief....

On to the rafting...

We were all a bit skeptical about how intense the rafting on Clear Creek would be, considering some of the life altering scary rafting we've done in the past. The trip was listed as "continuous Class III & IV rapids" so we figured at this point in the year with the high water levels we'd give it a shot. It was close to home and reasonably priced, so even if it wasn't uber impressive it still beat a mundane Sunday at the mall.

The 5 in our group got put in a raft with 2 other college girls from Wisconsin, who were interning in Denver for the summer. Jill & I were up front, with Sarah and Kim behind us and Scott and the two Wisconsin girls behind them. We had all gotten very hot standing around in the sun outfitted in wetsuits, water jackets with lifevest on top of them so hitting the water was a very welcome thing, or so we thought.

The water was frigid, even with the wetsuits. I heard the guides say the water was in the 45-50 deg range, but it was sure a wakeup call. As we started down the river, it was evident early that the high water would make for a fun, and fast trip down the river. We started out in some rolling dips, but being in the front of the raft Jill & I were taking the brunt of the punishment from the cold water insurges.

As we quickly traveled down river, the cold water shots to the face became pretty routine as adrenaline built as the rapids got bigger and bigger. I've always felt the class ratings on rapids to be very subjective. I've done 4 trips now with rapids from Class II to Class V+, and this trip was probably just slightly less difficult than the rafting we did in Denali National Park on the Nenanna River. Nonetheless, we did have some fairly large drops in quick succession that kept us on our toes.

The penultimate rapid of the day, Outer Limits, proved to be quite a rush. It was a fairly short rapid, but it consisted of a narrow chute that dropped about 5ft into a large crashing wave, then did several other slightly smaller drops and waves in rapid succession.

After The Outer Limits, the rapids calmed and as adrenaline wore off and the sun set, we all started getting rather cold. We made it back shortly, dried off and headed out to an Idaho Springs staple Tommyknocker's Brewery for some spirts and much needed food.

All in all a huge Sunday and a great weekend in all. I feel so much more alive when I can piece together an epic weekend like this one. Now I just have to make it through another week of the desk job so I can afford to do it all again next weekend.

We honeymooned next to a ghost...

Jill & I have been watching the Sci-Fi Channel Show Ghost Hunters for the last year or so. Basically these are a group of people who go to places that are claimed to be haunted and they do scientific type research to try and document or disprove the haunting. They have multiple video recorders, audio devices, thermal imaging and a team of investigators that stay overnight in these places and try to capture evidence. The thing I like about the show is they are always trying to disprove a place is haunted, instead of just jumping on the bandwagon.



Last night's episode was shot at the Stanley Hotel, where Jill and I got married way back in 2001. The Stanley has a storied past of hauntings, and it was where Steven King stayed while writing The Shining. For our honeymoon, we had rented out Suite 1301, which was a 3rd story room in the building just to the west of the main building. Last night on Ghost Hunters they were investigating multiple places including the room right next door to where we stayed, Room 1302.

During the show they captured a pretty cool event where a table and chairs moved forcefully while the crew was in the room. A pretty strange occurrence, in a place that can certainly feel pretty spooky. I spent the night before our wedding next door to that room alone, and while a violent storm came through I never got to see any ghosts or goblins. Nonetheless, Jill & I got a kick out of seeing that we had stayed right next door to Casper or one of his not so friendly relatives.