JesseParker.com

Too bad the harvesting's all done on the farm this year.. wait, I don't have a farm...

So I signed up for the beyond clothing gear sponsorship contest . Winners get two jackets, two pants, and some layering stuff to use, abuse, and are gear ambassadors... Beyond clothing makes custom fit clothing for various outdoorsy type things. (they also make clothes for the military now) This stuff is pretty spendy, but not too bad compared with the competition. John had a beyond fleece back when they were beyondfleece instead of beyond clothing and it was pretty nice. Since the waistline of all other clothing brands seems to be expanding (not as fast as mine) Some custom stuff would be sweet. So, wish me luck...

Another update, things are pretty good here. Same type of weather, slightly colder nights. It's been cloudy a total of maybe 1.5 days since I've been here. Did some Camping: Kara got to try out her new sleeping bag: Verdict: very warm Did some voulanteer trail work for the "friends of the peak". Nice group of people, ended up with a t-shirt and a free pass on the pikes peak toll road. I promise it was worse before! Made some excellent dinners: And even drank some little Dr. Peppers: Then Pete came through on his way to his new job in Seattle, so we went for a bike ride: Good ride, Pete went on to Fruita and Tahoe, soon he'll join the working class.. I took a bunch of other photos too:

So last night I set out to the local park to photo the sunset. Sunset's around here are pretty hit and miss. The mountains tend to block the sun out before anything cool happends. But when things work out right, they are quite unique and pretty dam cool. So this is what I was greeted with, pretty lame.... The sun started to fade so I took a picture of a fire hydrant And some migrating grackles... And started to walk home. Then I noticed things were getting brighter instead of darker, I looke over my head and the cloud above me was orange. The sun was setting on the other side of the mountain, and illuminating the clouds above me. It was pretty sweet...

I bet a nice streamlined company like SpaceX or scaled composites can do this for a sixteenth of the money and a quarter of the time than NASA.. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/6993373.stm

.. Has some nice trail. I rode up the Cheyenne Creek drainage and then down the Bear Creek drainage. The ride up was on a trail called "7 bridges" gee, I wonder why? The bridges were recently repaired, so they were all ridable. I guess things were a lot more sketchy a year or so ago. The trail itself was steep and technical, with about 30% hiking. Plus I got lost and ended up on some pretty exposed crappy "trail" I backtracked and got back on the real trail, which headed up along a reddish scree slope. The terrain here is like nothing I'd seen before. Decomposed reddish pink granite with pines and aspens. When I stopped to eat I looked over and saw an aspen that had some serious bear markings on it. Pretty cool if you ask me, I parked the bike in front for size comparison. They were pretty high up, but were also fairly old so I bet the bear wasn't really 10 feet tall. I even saw a touch of fall: Even though it's supposed to be 90 on Sunday..

It's amazing what you can buy these days. Bought end to end laminated pine boards, got some of them cut for 25 cents a pop, then screwed/glued it together. A coat of acrylic clearcoat and I was done. Behold, the one hour desk. Much better than particle board..

This lack of constant internet has gotten me lazy with blog updates. So here's what's been going on down south (or west, or whatever). Each picture links to a corresponding album too. Balloons, bikes, camping, and Vegas.. Two weekends ago there was a big hot air balloon festival going on. We managed to miss the launch both saturday and sunday morning (it was 6:45 AM, give us a break) but made it on Monday. It was really cool, never seen more than one hot air balloon from a distance before. I went right up next to the burner of a balloon being inflated. Pretty hot, those burners are. This weekend also contained a trip to rampart resevior for some biking. It was a really cool spot, with good trails and a weird huge boulder/decomposed granite landscape. After this, I went to Las Vegas for the IDETC Conference, my last bit of work for my Master's. Well almost last bit... Anyways, on a scale of 1-10 I give Vegas a 2 solely because the fountain at the Bellagio was pr...