Yes, that is my gauche shadow.

Two days ago it was nearly 30C/85F in Boulder. This morning I woke up to snow falling outside our windows (but it wasn't sticking because it was just above freezing where we live). It's now changed to rain, but as the picture above shows, at just slightly higher elevations the snow is sticking. The forecast says that within a week we'll be back near 30C. Living with four seasons is interesting!

Taken today on the bridge in the middle of this Google Map view.

Taken yesterday on the Betasso Link Trail to the Betasso Preserve above Boulder at about 2000m/6600ft. The CU Campus is visible in the gap at the bottom of the canyon. The horizontal color gradient is due to different exposures & white balances for the individual pictures that make up the panorama. I could probably fix it, but it's OK. As always, click above to enbiggen. Here's the GPS track of the ride.

I hope to post more from the same spot as the seasons change.

Taken approximately here, yesterday.

Today Melissa and I hiked in Chautauqua in Boulder up to two of the Flatirons. We didn't exactly plan to do it; we decided on our way up to simply take the steepest choice whenever trails intersected. According to the GPS (which had difficulty with accuracy due to the trees and the terrain) we climbed over total 1700 feet to above 7000 feet.

Part of the way up the trail was a large rock fall, pictured above. There is no doubt that it is left over from the process that created the Flatirons. The trail crossed the rock fall twice, and each time I found it very remarkable just how fluid-like it looked. Smaller rocks were piled up behind larger rocks, like water in a stream. The view down to Boulder was good, of course, but it was a bit hazy today.

From behind the Flatiron at the top we could see farther west into the Rockies, where the peaks are covered in snow. I'm not strong on the local peaks yet, but this photo was taken looking perhaps a bit North of West, if you'd like to take a stab at it.

We won't be having a white Christmas in Boulder, but I think being able to go for a hike like this on the Eve is a fair trade.

I don't often post twice in one day, but I had to show this:

Sunset was at 4:36pm (and the sun fell behind the mountains even before that), but as you can see above, it actually got warmer as the sun set. The wind also picked up at the same time, and the air pressure fell, indicating that the heat was due to the wind warming up as it blew down the mountains. Boulder weather is weird!

Here are some pictures I took on my mountain bike ride on Thursday, two days ago, from the Flatirons Vista Trails south of Boulder. The trails are decent single track that is just a bit more bumpy than I like (this kind of bumpy is not the same as technical, it's just annoying). If I had a full-suspension bike I would probably not find the bumpiness so grating. Indeed, most of the riders I saw on the trails had a full-suspension bike.

The weather lately has been dry and mild, as the photos show. The autumn precipitation so far in Boulder is well below seasonal averages. In contrast, apparently the high mountains have been dumped with snow all fall. I guess I brought some San Diego with me to Boulder.

Yesterday I hiked in Eldorado Canyon State Park with Melissa, Megan and Megan's significant other Chris. This park is just south of Boulder and like much of the front range offers spectacular views. This time of year the trees are well into changing color and dropping leaves. The occasion warranting a hike is that today is my birthday, and since I am all done with graduate school, I have free time to do this sort of thing.

It has been nearly a month a half since my last post about leaving San Diego, and we've finally made it to Boulder! Ok, actually it didn't take that long. It took us two days, with a stop overnight in Saint George, Utah. The long gap in posting is due to how busy I've been here in Boulder, which has been nearly entirely due to getting my thesis done, but also to a good deal of work getting the new apartment put together. Those things deserve their own posts, which may or may not happen.

What I would like to post here are some pictures I took on my bike ride yesterday. I am 99.7% done with the draft of my thesis which I'm sending to my advisors this weekend, so I figured I could take some time to ride my bike recreationally. This is a novelty for me recently. Come wintertime, I'm definitely going to miss the weather in San Diego, but right now, cycling here definitely beats San Diego. It takes less than ten minutes to get out of town onto roads like this:

or this:

or this where it feels like I can see all the way to Kansas over the plains:

I just wanted to share. Hopefully, now that the bulk of the thesis is done, I can enjoy this area a bit before winter hits!