Maxwell Falls and Handywork

Having a 9-5 job certainly cuts down your available free time. However, I've rediscovered the glory of what it feels like to leave the workplace on a Friday afternoon. I had forgotten.

We'll start with my first weekend after a real Big Boy work week. I decided to make the most of it. Saturday morning began with a trip to the REI in downtown Denver. Now, I had been to an REI before in St. Louis and it made the list of top 5 stores to go to immediately. I love touring the aisles looking at how the engineers of these tents, backpacks, and all other gear ceaselessly manage to make things smaller, lighter, and more compact. It's quite impressive and, well, cool. I entered Denver's REI and was a kid at Disney World. I wanted to get to the hike I had planned so I didn't waste too much time around the store but I did manage to walk the entire first level (of 3) of the store and it alone was about 7 times the size of the St. Louis store. Had I not had an agenda I probably could have spent the entire day there. There was even a refrigerated room to test your sleeping bag in! This place was no joke!

Since I had the dog waiting in the car I purchased my new daypack (which is awesome) and the book,

Best Hikes with Dogs in Colorado (yep, a book specifically for that), and unfortunately had to leave. With my new gear ready to be tested I drove about an hour West of Denver to a place called Maxwell Falls, just outside Evergreen, CO. I picked Maxwell Falls based on the information I'd read about it being a good hike to take a dog on. After his first week of being home alone I figured I owed it to Frisbee. Now, online I had read that the Maxwell Falls hike allowed dogs off leash, however, the sign at the trail head said differently. In any case, all but one of the 20+ dogs I'd seen on the trail were off-leash and people seemed pretty understanding, if not supportive of this. So with my pooch assuming the exploratory lead we hiked, bouldered, and explored the Maxwell falls area and further to the cliffs above. For an hour's drive I can hardly do any complaining about the sites and general romp that I got outta the day trip. In fact, for a former resident of flat land, I saw it as pretty amazing.





After a solid 3 hour hike we made our way back home. Naturally, the dog had enough energy to want to keep playing, but I was beat. I swung by home depot on the way home to pick up some toggle bolts and some wall patch (for all the times I should have used toggle bolts) and had a couple beers accompany me in my most recent home improvement project, my LCD monitor arm.



Between the LCD arm and the doggy door I must say, I'm feeling alright about my handyman skills. With the Wi-Fi internet, Wireless keyboard/mouse combo, and floating 19 inch screen I'm pretty psyched about the space management in action for my desktop PC. The monitor arm is also a practice run for wall mounting the HDTV I hope to be purchasing in the next couple months.

After a productive weekend I returned for my second week of work. There's not too much to talk about as I'm still trying to get adjusted and understand just what is going on. Days have become pretty routine with waking up at 7 to walk the dog and get ready for work and then coming home at about 5:30 and going straight to the park to get the remaining pent up energy out of the animal. The reputation Frisbee has gained makes me laugh. The park at which I throw the disc with him has some lacrosse and soccer fields on it and after most practices he'll gather a small crowd that sticks around to watch him catch the disc. Last Friday he was approached by 4 little kids from the ages of about 2-4. Before I'd realized what was happening he'd managed to herd them all into a small group in the center of the field. Myself and the parents of the kids all found it pretty impressive.

This past weekend wasn't nearly as productive as the first, but nonetheless appreciated. With my first paycheck I purchased myself an Xbox 360 and spent some time on Xbox live with my brother in memphis playing Gears of War, holding us over for Halo 3, which drops in about… 2 hours now. Should be a good time.

-dp