On Saturday afternoon, I headed up to the small mountain town of Nederland, Colorado for their annual Frozen Dead Guy Days festival. This event is a celebration for the towns allegedly cryogenically frozen dead guy.  It costs $25 to go see “grandpa” so I cannot actually vouch for his existence. A group of six of us made the hour-long drive up to Nederland, and arrived just as the Parade of Hearses was taking place. We lucked into a couple of parking spots within a block or two of the main street, so we were able to catch most of the parade. After that was over, we explored the few little restaurants and bars in town, before heading down to a little pond for the Polar Plunge.  They had cut a small square out of the frozen surface of the pond, and people took turns jumping into the icy water.  Safety crews were on hand to assist when needed.

After the plunge was over, the Coffin Races began.  In this event, teams of seven people race through an obstacle course as quickly as possible.  Two teams race at a time, with six of the participants carrying a homemade coffin through the course, while another person rides in the coffin.  It was an exciting event to watch.  From there we stopped for some pizza and headed back to the main (perhaps only) street in town.  Here we stumbled upon Ice Turkey Bowling.  For $5 a person, you could take three turns launching an originally frozen turkey toward six bowling pins.  As this even went on it became increasingly disgusting.

Many in our group also attended last years trip to the ski joring event in Leadville.  So for us, this was just another of those crazy events that happen in the various little mountain towns of Colorado.  More information on the Frozen Dead Guy and the festival is available on Wikipedia, for those interested in learning more.  Below are some pictures I took while enjoying the festivities.

Once again we were back in Cincinnati this past weekend.  This time we were not there for a wedding, and were able to do things on our own time.  This helped to make one of the best weekends we’ve had with our families in a while.  We started off with the Run Like Hell, which is a costumed 5K run including part of a cemetery along its course.  Kim’s family help to put together a team for her cousin who has Cystic Fibrosis, “Running for Patrick.”  They ended up with 40 or 50 people participating in the race all with shirts on for our team.  Patrick was able to come down to watch the race and hang out with his family and friends during the before and after events.

As far as the race goes, it is a very hard course filled with hills, most of which are up-hills.  Kim and I started near the front of the pack with my dad, her brother Chris, and cousin Betsy.  We started off on a really fast pace, and by the time we had reached the graveyard we were already split into smaller groups.  Kim really was moving on the course, as she wanted to beat her younger brothers, and somehow my dad was able to keep up.  I couldn’t keep that pace and decided to run with Chris.  Betsy was just behind us and that was pretty much how we finished.  According to our timing chips, Kim and my dad finished at 26:15, while Chris and I finished at 26:54.  Kim managed to just squeak into the top 50 women runners and was rewarded with a very nice commemorative shirt.  It was a good run and a great thing to be a part of.

Below is a side-show of my mom’s pictures from the event.

Friday night Kim and I headed downtown with a group of about ten others to see a comedy show at Comedy Works. This was the first time we’d gone to a show here, though we had often thought about it before. A friend of ours had discounted tickets (only $10) for the show, but we were still required to buy two drink and/or food items. I guess this two item minimum is standard for the club.

The headline comedienne was Kathleen Madigan and opening up the show was a fella named Saleem. I thought Saleem was hilarious. He’s originally from Dayton, Ohio so some of his jokes were very easy for me to relate to. I would definitely go seem him again in the future. Kathleen took the stage after Saleem and started off a little slow. Eventually she had the room cracking up, but in the end I still thought that Saleem was more funny. I’m not sure that I’d see Kathleen again, though for $10 anything is possible.

I finally got my recording of MER and Noah Gabriel’s performance from this year’s Pig-Fest uploaded. Unfortunately I forgot to set the recorder to automatically record another track after the three hour limit, so we missed the end of the show including the Paff Family All-Stars rendition of Friends in Low Places. What I do have is nearly three hours of solid tape of the two musicians playing together, as well as some songs played on their own. There’s a fair amount of wind in the recording, but it’s still very listenable. Check it out here or by using the embedded player below.

And the weddings just keep on rolling. Kim and I were back in Cincinnati yet again this past weekend for the wedding of my cousin Gina. Her and Geoff have been dating for a number of years and they are for sure a good fit. The ceremony was down in an beautiful old church near the Ohio River called St. Rose. The ceremony was the first full Catholic ceremony I’ve been to that was less than an hour in length. Apparently the priest there is known for his speedy masses. Gotta love the dedication of us Catholics!

Their reception was held at The Grand in Covington, KY. This was my first time in this room and I was really impressed. Despite being next-door to a gentleman’s club, the inside is beautifully restored and renovated. I believe it’s a newer hall, but had it been open during the time of our wedding, I would have highly considered it. Needless to say, the party was great, the food was wonderful, and the drinks were flowing. It’s always great to see family and I look forward to another celebration in another month from now.

As always, my mom has tons of pictures on her flickr. A slide show is below:

We had another great weekend at my parents’ house for their annual pig roast, better known as Pig-Fest. This was the sixteenth year in a row for the party. It was a hot day, but fortunately we saw no rain. In typical fashion, my wiffleball team lost in the first round, but I was able to win the cornhole tournament! The nice thing is that the winners of the cornhole tournament take home the jackpot after each player throws $2 in the pot.

My friend MER came down from Chicago once again to entertain the crowd after the sun went down. He also brought another musician with him, Noah Gabriel, who I’m looking forward to seeing again in the future. Other events of the day included a pinata, volleyball, and of course some flip cup toward the end of the evening. My body is very sore from too much fun, but i can’t wait until we can do it all over again next summer.

Pictures are starting to show up on facebook, and I’m sure my mom will have tons on her flickr page soon. I’ll be sure to keep the Pig-Fest website updated with any photos I find.

You may recall a large flip cup tournament that we’ve participated in the past couple years. Well that event took place once again this past Saturday and we were there for the third year in a row. This time it was moved from our friends’ backyard and morphed into a block party outside of the Pub on Pearl. The organizers even launched a website to provide the growing crowd with all of the needed info.

This year we decided to go with a sailor theme, and named ourselves Down the Hatch. We were able to get some affordable gear from the surplus store a few miles down the road from our house to complete our costumes. The event started off great, though we lost our first match in the opening round to a team that wasn’t even dressed up. Before we could play our second match of the evening, the skies opened up to a nasty storm. The bar was quickly filled to capacity with people spilling out of both ends. It did clear enough for us to fit in another game in the losers bracket, and we won this time. But again the weather would not cooperate and the second storm forced the cancellation of the tournament when the 10pm curfew approached quickly.

Despite all of these troubles, and the fact that the bar couldn’t keep up with the large crowd, we managed to have a great time. Dozens of our friends were in attendance and it was great to see everyone in their most creative costumes. I took a few photos on my iPhone, which can be seen below. It was definitely another wild time!

Here are my photos from Ken and Becky’s wedding weekend which I wrote about yesterday. Actually I take that back, these are mostly Kim’s photos from the weekend. I think she did a pretty good job of capturing a little bit of everything. Such a fun wedding weekend. Best of luck to the newlyweds.

Over the weekend I helped celebrate the wedding of my good friend from high school, Ken Burns. Throughout high school Kenny always told us that he would one day get married in a kilt. Not only did he accomplish this, he also managed to get myself and a couple of other guys from high school in kilts as well. There was a bit of a kilt catastrophe as my order never showed up, but thankfully my mom helped to piece one together and the wedding went on without any other issues. Here’s a photo of me, Bryan Lutz, and Jon Riehle in our kilts.

The ceremony and reception both took place on the Ohio River at the Inn at Oneonta. It was a little hot during the day with our thick garments on, but it really cooled off at night and the party was a blast! There was a bagpiper, great acoustic tunes, and a big band to wind out the night. After that we were all having so much fun, we hooked up some DJ equipment and let the partying continue. Many of us decided to stay the night and camp in tents and cars. Here another photo of me in a kilt with Kim.

My mom has a ton of pictures up on her flickr page. I know I don’t have nearly as many on my camera, but I’ll work on getting those posted in the near future.

Earlier this week when writing about the Race for Dreams, I mentioned a party that Kim and I attended on Saturday night. The “Spring Fling” party was a benefit for the Boys & Girls Club of Metro Denver put on by the Denver Phoenix Club. For $30 we were treated to a great time with music, food, drinks, and prizes. We attended the same party last year, and knowing how much fun it was, invited some friends of ours to come along. Here’s a photo of us with our friends Erin and Nick: