Since we have moved to our new house at the other end of town, my ride to campus is a bit different. In some ways I don't like it as much as my old route because it is next to Broadway for most of the way. Broadway is a very busy street, it's noisy and unpleasant. My old route did go for a short while on a busy street, but most of the time it was on roads in quiet neighborhoods or on bike paths.

Note that I wrote "next to Broadway" above. In fact, my new route is almost entirely on grade-separated bike paths/sidewalks (it's legal here for adults to ride on sidewalks some places) or frontage roads next to Broadway, and I actually never ride on Broadway. The big bonus on my new route is that the views are far superior. Above is a photo of the view looking over NIST towards the fog-enshrouded Flatirons. They are not often covered in clouds like this, but it had rained heavily the day before and the air was still humid. Also note that the grass in the foreground is brown. Before our heavy rains we had two weeks of record-setting heat. It's been a feast or famine summer in Boulder.

Taken just now from our driveway. It looks even better in 3D.

The recent snow is very moist and sticky, and since it's still fall, many trees still had their leaves. This caused lots of broken branches, including some that fell on our roof. We think none did any damage, but this one hanging over our front door presented another danger this morning - it hosted icicles directly over our front steps. You can see that our steps are iced over as well. Since I took the photo I have knocked down the icicles and scraped and salted the ice on the steps.

Heading west on my ride yesterday I saw this curtain of rain falling in the distance. As it happened, I was riding west and I did get rained on by this front a few minutes after taking this picture. It wasn't too bad, just enough to get my legs dirty from spray off my front wheel, mostly.

Seen today from Betasso Preserve on my bike ride. There was no rain or visible lightning, but there was some wind and thunder.

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!

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!

It's been really rainy and a bit cold here in San Diego so far this week. Here are some pictures I took today of the rain, and a couple of our xmas decorations.

Yes, that's a bike work stand in the foreground.

Today it rained nearly all day long. As the sun was setting I saw this rainbow over the Mesa Apartments. I looked for gold - no luck. So I'm staying in grad school.