So far I haven’t done much with my free time in Kansas City. I’ve been working until six or later each day and from there I’ve headed out for a late dinner and then retired to my hotel room in an attempt to catch up on my sleep I missed over the last week and weekend. I guess it’s working so far, but I could probably use one more night of rest and I’ll be fully recovered. However I have tried my best to go out and get some good Kansas City related food, though no BBQ has been had yet. Here’s my list so far:

• Houlihan’s - dinner night one
• Planet Sub - lunch day two
• 54th Street - dinner night two

Lunch today doesn’t really count as some guys at work convinced me to try Panda Express. It wasn’t bad, but it wasn’t really that great either. Dinner for tonight is still up for grabs, any other places I need to hit?

Anyone thinking of hitting up the Great American Beer Festival with us this year? I believe that we’ll be heading to the evening session on Saturday October 10th 11th. Tickets went onsale today, and though I don’t think they sell out very quickly, they always do sell out before the actual weekend arrives. Even though the crowds can be pretty large, I still find the event totally worth the price and hassle associated with it. Three cheers for our third appearance at the fest!

Kim participated in a volleyball tournament yesterday, along with the rest of her team and hundreds of others. I went along to watch the action and cheer on her team. It all started at eight in the morning and the park was literally filled with nets, over fifty nets I’m sure. And though I don’t think it was the most organized event ever, they did provide free beer for everyone. And not just any beer, they had keg after keg of Breckenridge brews. One of the highlights was trying their new SummerBright Ale, which has elements of both a wheat style beer and a pale ale. It was a great treat on a hot summer day.

Since I was still confined to crutches over the weekend, we decided to make Friday a dinner and movie night. One of our favorite combinations in Denver involves food from the Hornet followed by a movie at the Mayan, which is right across the street. Nothing of note happened at dinner, the food was good per usual. We did sit on the back deck after dinner to enjoy a drink and the nice weather, despite it mostly being used by folks grabbing a quick smoke.

As far as the movie of choice, it was Bigger, Stronger, Faster a documentary about steroid use and abuse in America. The writer and director of the film followed the personal steroid use of his two brothers along with loads of others in professional sports and entertainment. It detailed the risks of abuse, but also unmasked some common myths of the performance enhancers. Though it wasn’t ever clear if he is for or against steroids, the movie was highly educational and well put together.

Something is really bugging me about my turkey sandwich from Subway that I’m currently eating. Where the heck are my tomatoes?!? I’ve always loved tomatoes, and this recent health scare has really been bothering me. I hope it all gets resolved soon or else I may have to start a garden out back or help the neighbors with theirs. Fortunately I heard that cherry tomatoes were 100% safe, so I used them in a grilling recipe last night that I found in a book called Patio Daddy-O at the Grill. The book was a recent wedding shower gift to Kim from her friend Amy, which translates to recipe books for me to use to cook for Kim. The results were so delicious! I wish I could find the recipe online, perhaps I’ll type it up later if I remember.

Saturday afternoon I headed downtown to meet up with a friend who was in town for the weekend. After some lunch, we decided to walk over to the Great Divide Brewery for their 14th birthday celebration. I first heard of the party when reading one of my most recent blog discoveries, Foam on the Range, toward the end of last week.

After paying $10 to get in, we were treated to unlimited beer samplings, food, and local music. One of my favorite offerings of the day was a Belgian IPA, which was completely gone before the event was over, so I must not have been the only one. In addition to the special brews, they also had every other beer of theirs available for tasting, so it was an incredible deal and to top it all off the proceeds went to an environmental charity.

When I read the above mentioned blog once again today, I was shocked to see myself in one of the pictures from their latest entry. That’s me in the green shirt and my buddy Hadgis in blue, follow the garage door in the background down toward the front of the image until you see us basking in the sun. The article also goes on to mention some new labels and packaging that will be going out in the next couple months. Things are looking good for one of my favorite breweries in town.

Saturday we went out for a little bike ride that eventually took up most of our day. We headed out around 11 with a quick stop for some breakfast/lunch at Einstein Brothers. From there it was my goal to make it out to the Cherry Creek Reservoir and State Park by following the Cherry Creek trail. Along the way there we made a couple of quick stops at the Cherry Creek farmer’s market and later at the bike shop so we could get our bikes looked at and adjusted for the first time since buying them a couple of months ago.

Around 3:30 or so we finally made it out to the reservoir. I’ve often seen the dam walls that create the reservoir, but I had never actually seen the water before. I was surprised to find a fairly large sized body of water complete with a beach area, and a marina that offers rentals of all sorts. Now that we know this is so close to our house, we’ll definitely be back to enjoy it more often.

Now that we made it all the way out it was time to make the trip back. I wanted to mix it up though and take a route different than what we used to get there. I consulted a local bike map that I have to route us back along a few different streets and the Highland Canal trail. We only made one wrong move which probably added a couple of miles, but overall this route was just as enjoyable as the way out.

We stopped for a couple of drinks and dinner as we got closer to home at a place called Reiver’s, which is just on the opposite side of Wash Park from where we live. The menu was full of many good looking sandwiches, and the two we tried were definitely tasty. I’m sure we will head back that way in the future after a long bike ride or possibly just a short ride across the park.

Kim estimated our distance at thirty-two miles, and after mapping it out online she wasn’t too far off! The route I drew out measures at thirty and a half miles, and I think I got most of it pretty much exactly as we followed. I guess that would help explain why I’m fairly sore in the legs today. And I also have some pretty good sunburn on my upper arms and the tops of my knees. It was all worth it though, at least I think so.

Sunday morning we found a new coffee shop that is walking distance from our house called Wash Perk at 853 East Ohio Ave. Both Kim and I had a big cup of their coffee of the day and we split a couple of croissants and a piece of coffee cake. We enjoyed all of this from the spacious outdoor patio with a large group of others gathered on neighboring tables. It was the perfect little start to our day, which soon included walking all around town for a total of seven miles. I guess Kim was a little jealous of the five mile hike I took the day before, and wanted to some walking of her own. It was a nice way to spend a Sunday though, that’s for sure.

I’m not sure why it took us so long to check out the Bull & Bush Brewery, but that’s where we headed for dinner and drinks on Friday. I was familiar with the brewery after trying a few of their brews at the Great American Beer Festival this past year. I’m not sure what those selections were, but now after visiting the brewery and restaurant I would highly recommend their “Man Beer” IPA, if you are a hop lover. I washed down my turkey sandwich with a couple of these beers on our visit. Kim had a chicken sandwich with a couple Hefeweizen’s that were equally as good. Overall we had a very good experience, minus a couple of loud fellas on the patio, but we will definitely be back soon.

Since we were traveling on my birthday we decided to head out for my birthday dinner last night. Having always been a big fan of Italian food, I wanted to try a place that I had often heard about but never visited (or driven by for that matter), Carmine’s on Penn. This family style restaurant serves giant dishes of food that can server up to four people and is consistently rated among the highest restaurants in Denver for this style. If you do visit the restaurant, I encourage you to read over the menu before going, as once you get there only the names are written on chalkboards. It is then the duty of your server to guide you through the menu to help you select the best dish to fit your needs.

Fortunately for us, I remembered a few things that I had read on the menu the day before. I asked about the Chicken Montana and was delighted to find out that it is actually one of the most popular dishes in the restaurant. It pairs rosemary chicken with sun dried tomatoes, asparagus and a gorgonzola cream sauce. Let me tell you that it tastes just as delicious as it sounds. And since the portions are so large, we still have over half of the dish in our fridge for tonights dinner as well. We also started with their house salad, which I was equally as impressed with. The entire meal was delicious!