in minnesota, we call these rock gardens...

here (hall's ranch) they have another term for them, they just call it "trail."

estes park riverwalk

hey, look, an elk

we, truly, stumbled across this guy on our walk to the restaurant.

visitor in the lab

our QA was missing his former manager, today.

the UHC train at the front of the pack

went to the nature valley grand prix final stage in stillwater on sunday. i got significantly fewer good photos than i had hoped. :-(  the best of the rest will be posted later, but i decided to do a little processing with this pic of the UHC team pulling back in the break to get rory sutherland positioned for his eventual stage win.

and here it is after a little work in gimp (the gnu image processor, which is free... and really good, and... did i say free?)

kind of fun. it did help that i was desaturating the background and much of that was the street, which was already gray!

june snow in minnesota?

i don't have a studded tire mounted!

oh, nevermind, it's just the freakin' cottonwood trees.

b's new bike

b grew out of her little 24" wheeled bike over the winter so we put a road bike together for her this year. the frame is a dumpster find from quite a few years back and the parts are a mix of new stuff combined wit parts i had lying around and some parts off her old bike. i had to do a whole lot of crazy things to get it all to fit together. it's only a 7speed (no front derailleur), but that should be good enough to get her around town.

eeeeerie plants!

mmmmwwwaaaahahahaha

got any marshmallows?

time for smores! the backyard fire's ready.

gonna leave these two together...

gonna leave these two "kids" together, tonight. hopefully when i get up in the morning, there'll be a new member of the family. anyone know what the estimated gestation period is for bicycles?

the smart bunny rabbits in my yard

ok... look at the photo, can you see what's happening? there are a couple of bunnies toward the right who are staying just out of reach of the rottweiler. he has an invisible fence, and i'm convinced they know it.

here, i'll fill in some of the details for you. the bunnies are just across my property line, but sitting in plain view of the dog.

the bunnies were so nonchalant that they allowed me to get within 15 feet of them to snap this photo (yes, the camera is crappy, it's on my phone). i'm sure they know the dog can't get them from this spot.

funny stuff...

my new bamboo bottle

i ordered a bamboo bottle from (http://www.bamboobottleco.com) around christmas but forgot about it because they were backordered. i got my shipping notice the other day and, bam, it arrived today. here it is in all its glory! sweet!

shadows of the morning commute