What I did in June, summarized.
June 8 – Colorado Concours
The Colorado Concours is held every year on the grounds of Arapahoe Community College. It’s one of the biggest car shows in Colorado every year. I’ve entered the car half a dozen or so times. There’s a category for elite judging. I never subject myself to that. Elite judged cars often are like museum pieces: rare, historically significant, and pristine. My car is none of those. When I opt to get the car judged, it’s by the club. If we get more than a dozen cars to turn out for this show, it’s a good year. And not everybody chooses to be judged, so my chances of getting a ribbon are much greater. This year, I believe we had only four or five cars that wanted to be judged. We gave four winners ribbons out: first place, two that were just called “place”, and fan favorite. I got one of the “place” ribbons. With the odds I was up against, let’s just call it a “participation prize”.
June 13 – Forest Lakes
It’s still early in the hiking season. There is still quite a bit of snow above 10,000′. Most of the places I want to go are closer to 11,000′, so mid-June is still a bit early. For some reason, I’ve been hiking to Forest Lakes in James Peak Wilderness for an early hike. I don’t know what attracts me to this hike. It’s not particularly beautiful, I never make it past the first lake (there are two), and I always encounter snow right after the bridge over Arapaho Creek.
In early June, the creek runs quite high. So high, typically, that the creek overflows its banks such that the hiker must wade through a couple of yards of water to get to either end of the bridge. I’ve taken to calling it “Heartburn Bridge”.
Even though I’ve done this hike four or five times, when snow covers the ground, I still find navigation a bit challenging. Last year, I managed to end up at an unnamed pond rather than the lower lake. Still, it was fun. This time, I made it to the lower lake. Where I managed to step through some ice into water that overflowed my boot.
June 21 – Cruisin’ with the Saints
At the Colorado Concours, organizers of other car shows pass out flyers advertising their own shows. Since the car is looking as good as it has looked in the last decade or more, I reckon I should show it off at as many of these things as is convenient for me. This one was free to enter and I had nothing else planned, so what the heck?
I was pleasantly surprised. I didn’t get a car count, but I’d guess it was 60 or 80. Not only was it free, but the organizers also gave all the entrants a goody bag (including water, a couple of snacks, and a $10 gift card for In-N-Out Burger) and fed us lunch.
There was a wide variety of cars there. Each entrant received two ballots – one for voting for the best “classic” car (before 1974) and one ballot for “modern” cars.
Mine was the only Lotus there, and there were only a handful of other English marques. I voted for myself, which may be poor form. At the end of the day, they announced first and second place winners in the two categories, along with the Pastor’s Favorite (the show is put on by the St. Thomas More Catholic Church). I was pleasantly surprised to win second place. They gave me a big trophy and a $50 gift certificate. Nice!
June 22 – Colorado Trail Segment 1
I wrote that up here.
June 25 – Brian Greene
Brian Greene is one of the world’s leading string theorists. He gave a talk at Chautauqua. He didn’t go into string theory at all. His talk covered entropy, evolution, and eternity. At least, as those three things are applied to astrophysics. It was an interesting talk; he was able to relate some fairly complicated concepts in a way that the average person can understand.
