It was a busy day today. I started the day off in my normal fashion, got up, dogs out, dogs given morning snacks, and then sat down with coffee and my email to see if anything additionally bad had happened overnight. I was pleasantly surprised, my email was not overwhelmed at all. Maybe all of our advance messaging on the app updates at work helped a little.
Doing this out of order, but a little later in the day I did finish my release testing and found a few minor problems and one major one on the iOS app. The Android is fine, I didn’t find anything wrong. I used to have the attitude that I liked Apple products because they just work. My recent experience has been different and I have grown to appreciate the Android product line more and more. Even the apps developed for Android are just better apps. Anyways, got that done and submitted my testing findings to my manager and it looks like the development team was watching the document as well.
Jumping back to this morning, I had my Physical Therapist appointment this morning over at UC Health for my left shoulder. I am now a little more positive about getting ready for the Mountain Swim Series in June. My PT wants me to get back into the pool and start swimming again. He thinks that it may actually help the area in my shoulder that is hurting. He says that I carry my left shoulder in a tighter fashion than my right one, and that is causing pain on my trapezius muscle and he could feel a knot in that muscle that is hard to get rid of. I got 20 minutes of massage and then we did some mild weight work, I think I will be able to follow that in the gym with a few dumbbells. Anyways, he wants to see me again next Saturday at the same time after I swim for the week. I will probably do 4-5 swims between now and then. I am taking one day and going hiking at Red Rocks and that will not be a swim day.
After the appointment I decided to check out a new trail (well new to me) that I have ridden light rail next to many times but keep saying I need to make time to check this out, and this is the first time I have been able to do so. It’s really neat. The paved trail goes North from the Fitzimins R Line station and first goes through the Cotton Wood Discovery Center. I found a few interesting things there but the most interesting one was a series of “Bee Hotels” that are designed for “solitary bees”, I never knew it was a thing, but look it up sometime, it’s really. There are bees that are not honeybees and are not part of hives, but they are still pollinators. These hives, or Bee Hotels were built for those bees.
At the Cotton Wood discovery center there was also a few areas to learn about the cottonwood trees and some of the history behind them.
Leaving the Cotton Wood Discovery center and heading West (I think) we leave Aurora and cross into Denver along the Sand Creek Greenway. There was a beaver that has been busy on one of the trees along the trail.
From there I had a bit of a climb, and finally got to a spot overlooking the creek and had a beautiful view of the mountains. There should be much more snow at a much lower elevation. We are going to have water and fire issues this year.
I finally reached the Bluff Lake Nature center which looks like it is brand new, or has just been rebuilt. I never knew this existed. It’s a trail and visitor center, as well as several learning areas for local school groups around Bluff Lake. Seems also to be a bird watching paradise because there were several bird photographers around with extremely expensive equipment trying to capture the perfect photo. I think I do pretty well with my Samsung Galaxy A24 Ultra Android phone.
I was able to get a few pretty neat 360 degree panoramic views as well. Click into it and look around! See if you can spot the dude with the extremely expensive equipment on one of the banks. Actually he was a pretty friendly guy, was pleasant when I walked by and I think I may have accidentally messed up his shot when the bird took off.
They also had some really neat waterfalls and little rapids in the stream as it went by. I think a few school groups may visit here because they have a locked up area for nets and river shoes.
I took the time to walk all of the trails that are open, there were some areas that are closed and are still under development, it was time to head back. I headed back to the parking lot staying on the Sand Creek Green way, following the creek back in the direction of Toll Gate Park. One of my future plans will be to walk that last 3 miles of Sand Creek Green way where it connects to Toll Gate Trail (which I have done all of). When I had completed all of this I was surprised that I was just over 6 miles walking. I thought it was a bit longer than that given that I had crossed over into Denver.
Max elevation: 5351 ft
Min elevation: 5289 ft
Total climbing: 397 ft
Total descent: -384 ft
Average speed: 4.08 mi/h
Average cadence:
Average heart rate: 106
Average temperature: 31.5
Total time: 01:33:10
When I got home I saw the Jesse had gotten the front flower bed under the garage window ready for planting. We have held off on doing anything with this because we really wanted to see if anything was going to grow in it on it’s own. When you move into a house you never know what you are going to find. Well, last year all that grew was weeds. We need to see what Jesse has planned to put in here. I think he wants to go with Colorado Native Perennials that are water wise (we really have to conserve water here).
For the afternoon Jesse and I made some needed changes to my VHF antenna on the roof. It needed to be lifted up a little higher, it still needs another 5ft of pole, but I don’t want to do that until after the house is painted and we have it secured better to the gable over Jesse’s office. I also need to run some grounding wires as if it goes any higher it is going to be a lightning attraction issue. Once that project was done Jesse started putting seeds in the seed trays so that we will have our veggies for the Summer growing season which looks like it is going to be longer than normal.
I went and started laying out the changes to the irrigation system that I am going to make this year. We really do not understand why the prior owners watered all of the rock along with the little gardens and lawn. To us this is a major waster of water and money. So, I am going to use drip and micro-spray irrigation in the gardens that are spread through the rock. The other part of this is that the piping that is in the ground is old and is starting to decay. We have 3-4 major leaks that I have already abandoned parts of the system in the last year alone. That project will be ongoing and but I want to get the main part of it done before I put water into the system, which I know I am going to have to do sometime in the next month or so.
To round out the evening we took the dogs for a short walk, it was a little warm for them outside today and with the temperature swings we have been having I do not want to push it with them too much on temperatures. Then it was rest time until dinner. We had hot dogs and potato salad, Climber and Res had their mix of chicken/veggies/rice with kibble. Everyone was happy.
I think this is where I call it a day. It was a positive day, nothing to complain about, and I am grateful every day that we moved out of Florida, that Jesse is here, that we have Res and Climber, and that we are slowly making progress on the things that matter to us most with the house. See you tomorrow!
