During my last couple days in Boulder/Denver, I met up with a girl named Rachel who was also couch surfing for a couple nights at Dave’s house. As we shared our stories of our travels, she told me how she had been practicing Kundalini Yoga for a while in Florida… very cool, especially since it’s a form of yoga that is not well-known in the USA, and it’s the style of yoga that I’ve been doing my whole life. It turns out that she needed a ride west, and I was leaving in a couple days, so it worked out perfect that I would have a travel buddy for the next part of my journey.
As we were leaving Boulder and starting to head West, we stopped at a place just outside of Denver called Red Rocks Amphiteater (wiki, official website). The area has a large collection of massive boulders and rock formations. In particular, there is a natural amphitheater shape formed by two, three hundred-foot monoliths (Ship Rock and Creation Rock) that provide natural acoustic resonance making it a great place for concerts. Seats have been carved into the top of a low-lying rock between the pillars which fit up to 9,450 people. In addition to the amphitheater, the nearby rocks in the area also contain many dinosaur fossils which are viewable by nearby hiking trails and a museum.
Unfortunately my camera ran out after a few shots, so I wasn’t able to get any pictures of the amphitheater itself. But I did get some beautiful shots of the hiking trail in the surrounding area.
For more photos, there is a photo gallery on the Red Rocks website, and here’s a link to Flickr photos.
Here’s a few fun things I found in/around Boulder while I was there… 
- Pearl Street Mall, a pedestrian area in Downtown with tons of stores, restaurants, bars, etc.
- College area shops & hangouts at the University Hill
- Hiking in many places around Boulder including the Flatiron hills (e.g. Chautauqua trail), Boulder Creek Path, or up Boulder Canyon
- Boulder Farmer’s Market
- Boulder Public Library (free WiFi, nice place to chill)
- Live music at the Fox Theatre
- Tasty Tibetan food and tea at the Dushanbe Teahouse
- Best ever Indian restaurant called Tandoori Grill (few miles south of downtown)
Here’s a few other sources of things to see/do in Boulder.
Tags: Boulder
Just wanted to say something that you probably already knew… I rock.
I’ve now played Frisbee/Disc golf at 3 of the 5 active courses in Las Vegas. Looks like the first course that I learned to play the game on, Red Ridge Park, is actually one of the nicest courses around. All the fairways are beautifully outlined by gravel barriers. All tees (starting point for each hole) have concrete slabs from which to launch your frisbee, and there are well illustrated maps at each hole showing the birds eye view and par for the hole. Three times now I have driven 20 minutes across the city just to play at that park because it’s a whole lot nicer than the other two which are 5 and 10 minutes from where I’ve been staying. It’s worth it for such a nice course.
But back to why I rock… I’ve noticed that my average is about 2-4 points under par for the 9 holes. That means I’m throwing my discs farther than average, and I’m putting with accuracy at the baskets. I can also see clear rough spots in the grass where people tend to pick up their frisbee after each throw as they progress down the fairway, and my discs typically land 15-30 feet past these rough spots — indicating that I throw my discs fly farther than the average player. And I’m not even using a specialty distance disc, just the one that comes in a 3-disc starter kit. That’s a nice feeling.
I found a few new games recently which are great to keep you entertained and waste time.
In other news, Apple is coming out with a new device called the iPad — something like a larger version of the iPhone. Its features set is apparently quite disappointing to many people. Here’s a hilarious spoof on what Hitler thinks about it.
Probably my favorite sport to play is Ultimate Frisbee, a game very similar to rugby or American football where the object of the game is to pass a frisbee disc to your teammates 
from one end of the field down into the opposing end zone. Although there are many leagues where teams practice vigorously to compete, I prefer the more relaxed play of a “pickup” game where anyone can just show up and play for fun.
In the town of Española where I lived for the last 4.5 years, we played a pickup game every Sunday afternoon all year round. The game gets really fun when you have 6-8 people on each team, and on average about 10-15 people would show up to play, but sometimes we would have over 20! Ultimate became a regular activity in my life because it’s so much fun to play, and it challenges you to become skillful at throwing, catching, and coordinated play with your teammates. And you can do lots of running so it’s a great form of exercise.
Ultimate is definitely a love of my life for many reasons! So I’ve been kind of bummed in the last couple months because most cities that I have visited on this trip haven’t had any nearby pickup games. Enter the manifesting power of the universe — “ask and you shall receive”!
When visiting REI a couple weeks ago, I saw some Frisbee Golf discs for sale and I thought “what the hell, that looks like fun” and I grabbed a couple. After being cooped up inside doing too much work this week, I needed to get outdoors and get some exercise. That’s when I remembered the discs that were just sitting in my car. So I went online looked up Frisbee Golf courses in the area and I found one nearby and went to try it out.
Frisbee Golf is pretty similar to the game of Golf where you have tee-off areas, a big fairway (a long, narrow grass field), and a target at the end to get your frisbee into. But instead of clubs and a ball, you’re playing with frisbee discs which are smaller in size than a normal Ultimate/beach frisbee. The discs generally come in three types, a driver, a mid-range and a putter, and you can often buy them in a starter kit for the low price of $25-30. Each type of disc has a slightly different shape that can give you more distance or more control in your throws. The goal of the game is to continually chuck your frisbee down the fairway and eventually throw it into the basket to score. Scoring is generally done by keeping track of the number of throws for each hole and totaling all the throws at the end — the fewer throws the better. Well-built courses will have signs that tell you the “par” (average throws) for each hole. Most courses generally have 9 holes, though some of the nicer courses have up to 18.
Although the game certainly offers opportunity for competitive play by keeping track of your score or tournament competitions, many people just play for fun or to hang out with friends. Don’t worry if you don’t have anyone to play with… most times you can just show up at a course and either play by yourself or join up with other people who are already there.
I went out to play for a couple hours yesterday, and joined up with a few people of varying levels of experience who showed me the ropes and gave me some pointers. Because the goal of the game is to get the frisbee into the basket in as few throws as possible, it’s generally a good idea to chuck the disc as far as possible on each throw. Because my arm was out of practice for not having played Ultimate for a few months, the 2 hours of play yesterday left the muscles in my shoulder a bit sore. Still, I loved it so much that I had to play again today and so I went out for half an hour at lunch time. Ultimate Frisbee will always be a love of mine, but I now have a new best friend in my life, Frisbee Golf!
Went camping with my new friend Sandy out in a river canyon near Jamestown, about 20 minutes from Boulder. We drove out there with her couch surfer, Felicity (who is from New Zealand), and met two more of Sandy’s friends who were already at the campsite when we arrived. They had picked out a great spot for us on an island in the middle of the river. After hauling in our gear, the women started setting up the tent and preparing the campsite while myself and the other two guys went out to gather firewood.
We spent the evening around the fire, taking in the delicious warmth and dancing flames, sharing food and drink, and recounting some great stories. I particularly enjoyed Felicity’s stories about New Zealand, including the history of the Maori people and their connection with the earth. I love her accent!
About halfway through the night, we started working on putting together all the ingredients for a sweat lodge. We found about 15 large stones and placed them into the fire, and then started throwing very large logs onto the fire and to the point that the flames were almost licking the branches of the nearby trees. Apparently you need a lot of heat for a sweat lodge, so we let the stones cook for about two hours under the blazing logs. While one person manned the fire, we started work on digging a hole that was about 2 feet in diameter by 6 inches deep. The next step was to start chopping some of the dead Aspen trees into 6 foot poles and then start placing them around the hole in a tipi/teepee fashion. Once we had the wood frame constructed, we created walls by wrapping the poles in about 20 blankets. It’s important for the walls to be as airtight as possible to keep the heat in, but you also need to build a flap for the door that can be easily opened and sealed shut.
Once everything was ready, we stripped off our clothes and ran into the tent — it was about 35° that night, so we had to move very quickly! The person watching over the fire shoveled about half of the hot stones into the hole in the tipi, and then the door was sealed shut to keep the heat in. The room was now in total darkness, but you could see a faint shimmering from the stones as they radiated their inner heat. Water was poured onto the stones to create steam which rose up and filled the room with a damp, earthy heaviness. Even though our legs and bottoms were shivering from sitting on the cold dirt floor, our upper bodies were sweating heavily until almost a steady stream of water was dripping down us and creating pools on the floor or falling onto the hot rocks and turning back into steam.
Time seemed to slip away there in the darkness of the sweat. Our eyes were blind but our other senses were heightened — the sound of the crackling fire outside and the wind blowing through the trees around us, the sweltering heavy air that enveloped us like a cocoon, the raw earth that evaporated into the air with the steam and caked onto our bodies and into our nostrils with ancient smells. We talked, we laughed, we chanted and prayed. We gave thanks to all the beauty and prosperity in this world, and for the opportunity to share this rich experience with each other.
When the heat had done its cleansing job, we each climbed on hands and knees through the door out into the cold as if being birthed from the womb. We jumped into the freezing cold river and screamed and laughed as mother nature’s cleansing water washed away the sweat and dirt. We gathered around the fire, still naked but unaffected by the cold, feeling so natural and at peace with the world around us and basking in the afterglow of the experience.
We slept well that night cuddled up in a big pile together in one large tent. We awoke the next morning to a bright sunny day with deep blue skies and the occasional puffy cloud here and there. All the trees in the canyon were shimmering as they swayed back and forth from little droplets of frozen water that had collected on branches and frozen in the early morning dew. As we were breaking down camp, a mild wind blew through the canyon and showered the frozen dew down on us like little snow flurries. Once camp was packed up and our stuff was brought to the car, we went for a short hike up the side of the canyon and climbed rocks that looked out across the river and nearby hills. It was a perfect moment to take in the beauty of our surroundings one last time, and reflect on the vivid experiences of our magical night together.