Kim and I headed out to Red Rocks last night to see another one of my all time favorite bands, 311. I often forget about 311 when mentioning my favorite bands, but I still try to catch them anytime they play a show near me. I’m a big fan of their older music, and still know most of their newer material.

Last night started off a little rough with storms passing through the area as show time approached. Fortunately there were two opening bands, and we brought a cooler of beer, so we just sat in the parking lot and waited for the weather to clear up. And it did, just in time for 311 to play. We caught the end of Matisyahu’s set and even though I thought his show was great a couple of years ago, I think his moment of fame is up, at least for me.

311 played a great set full of tons of my favorites from back in the day. We watched this show from very close to the top of the amphitheater, and despite the strong winds it still sounded pretty good. Besides it was cool to see the show with a lightning storm going on in the distant background. I really enjoy the song “Creatures (For A While)” and was glad to hear it as the last song played of the night. Once the official setlist is posted I will update with a link to it.

After Sunday’s game, my men’s league hockey team went defeated for the season. That’s right, we didn’t win a single game! I guess the team usually plays in the B division, but during the summer there isn’t enough teams for separate A and B divisions. So every week we got waxed by teams that typically play in the A division. Our team definitely had it’s fair share of good players, including one guy who will be playing at DU next year, we just couldn’t put the puck in the net. My season started off really rough with lots of time off from the ice and my ankle injury that acted up for the first month or so. I finally started to get going toward the end of the season. I just hope the one goal I had was memorable enough to keep my spot on the team for next session. If not, it’s back to the minors, aka the C division.

Call off the search, we have found a great Mexican restaurant in Denver! With little going on this past Friday, Kim and I decided to head out for dinner after work. I consulted my 5280 magazine from July, which featured the Top Of The Town article, and decided to try the readers’ choice for best Mexican restaurant, Benny’s Restaurante y Tequila Bar (301 E 7th Ave).

I had a combination plate consisting of a cheese enchilada, smothered bean burrito, and a guacamole tostada. I think my favorite thing on the plate was the guacamole. I would highly recommend having their guacamole in some form or another. The rest of my food was delicious as well. Kim ordered a chicken rellenos, which she really seemed to enjoy. I did not try more than a little bite of it, since I had enough food of my own. We also split a liter of margaritas on the rocks, another thing that I would highly recommend. Overall, the food was great and we will definitely be back sometime in the near future.

Kim and I went hiking again this past weekend, once again inside of Rocky Mountain National Park. Our mission this time was to climb to the top of Flattop Mountain. This 4.4 mile hike starts at 9,475 feet near Bear Lake and the summit is at 12,324 feet, an elevation gain of 2,849 feet. All around this is a bigger hike than the week prior when we hiked the Twin Sisters Peaks.

We started in the morning once again, around 10:30 I believe. When we reached the summit at around 1pm we ate some lunch and took in the wonderful sights. After a half hour or so, we decided to keep hiking and go to the top of Hallett Peak, which is another half mile or so from the top of Flattop Mountain. This peak rises to 12,713 feet, an additional 389 feet from where we ate lunch. It was well worth the extra distance, as we walked very close to four elk, and then had an amazing view from the top.

After some time at the top of Hallett Peak we began our five mile descent back to Bear Lake. As we neared the end we decided to take a side trail over to Bierstadt Lake, where our car was actually parked. The sign said that it was only another 1.7 miles away. Unfortunately once we hiked that 1.7 we realized that the car was another 1.3 miles from the actual lake. We eventually made it to the car, but much later than we were originally thinking. In the end we hiked over thirteen miles! Trust me, my body is still feeling it today.

The weather was much clearer for this hike, so I think our pictures came out much brighter this time. And as an added bonus, I finally got the gallery on my site working again. So the photos from this journey can be viewed here at edpaffjr.com.

I finally have the swamp cooler working again! For those of you who aren’t familiar, a swamp cooler, or evaporative cooler, is a device to cool the air that is common in low humidity climates. So you wouldn’t use one in Cincinnati or Kansas City, and therefore I had never heard of such a thing until moving into our house in Denver. Instead of central air, we have this monster machine up on the roof that magically cools the air.

Well it was cooling the air fine at the beginning of the summer, but over the last couple of weeks it suddenly stopped being effective. It was blowing air, but the air was not cool. So instead of hiring someone to come in and take a look at it, I do what I often do and consulted the web for any information I could find. After some research I was convinced that the filter pads needed to be replaced. The pads are continuously sprayed with water and the evaporation there is what cools the air as it comes into the cooler.

First, I had to get a bigger ladder so we could get up there and see what the problem was. So I am now the proud owner of a twenty foot extension ladder. The fourteen or sixteen footer that I bought first wasn’t tall enough to reach the roof. Once we were finally able to get up on the roof, we removed the huge pads from all three sides of the cooler and immediately went over to the local hardware store to get some new ones. We put the new pads in on two sides, but before putting the last one in, I wanted to test the system.

So I turned the water pump on, which should soak the pads, but instead nothing happened. Crap! I didn’t even think to check the water pump before replacing the pads. Anyway the motor in the pump must have died because all it was doing was producing a light hum and no water was flowing. I later took the pump into the store and asked if they had anything to replace it. Fortunately swamp coolers are very popular in this area, so they had just what I needed. And finally, $30 later, the swamp cooler is working again and probably better than ever with some brand new pads too!

After our long hikes on Saturday we headed into Boulder to catch the Marc Broussard Soul Review show later that night at the Fox Theatre. This is a special tour to coincide with the release of his latest album S.O.S.: Save Our Soul, which is mostly a collection of covers of old soul tunes. Therefore the performance included many more cover songs that one would normally expect from a Broussard performance. And while I’m not the biggest fan of this latest release, I felt that the concert showcased the songs better than I had originally thought.

The show started with a couple of songs from Broussard himself, followed up with a duet with Toby Lightman. Once their performance of “If I Could Build My Whole World Around You” (Marvin Gaye), Broussard left the stage for Lightman to perform her own songs, along with a couple of covers of her own, with Broussard’s band. After her short set, Broussard came back on for another duet, this time they sang “Signed, Sealed, Delivered I’m Yours” (Stevie Wonder), which I felt was the highlight of the show. From there Broussard continued his full set with many various covers and a few originals of his own. If you would like to hear this unique performance in it’s entirety, I have uploaded it to archive.org, where you can stream the whole thing online. Enjoy!

On Friday we had planned to play a round of golf, but the weather forced us to make other plans. Instead we hit a ton of balls at a covered driving range and followed it up with dinner. It never really poured on us, but it was comforting to be under the safety of a roof. In fact it didn’t really rain hard for too long, but if we had been out playing it definitely would have poured on us. Better safe than sorry, right?

For dinner we headed to The Hornet. I often forget about this restaurant, even though it is fairly close to our house, and I’m not sure why. They have a good selection of beer and a simple but unique food menu. I had one of the better buffalo chicken sandwiches I had in awhile and Kim had Cubano Melt, which she also really enjoyed. Not to mention their chips and fries were both delicious! Add in a few New Castles and you have yourself one heck of a meal.

This past Saturday, Kim and I made our first mountain summit hike. You will often hear people around Denver talking about the 14ers that they’ve climbed, meaning the mountains over 14,000 feet in height. We didn’t want to rush into doing 14ers, but we wanted to start working our way towards them. So we decided to attempt hiking the Twin Sisters Peaks in Rocky Mountain National Park after finding it listed as a suggested hike on their website. This is rated as a moderate hike consisting of a 3.7 mile hike in each direction. The peaks reach the heights of 11,413 and 11,428 feet with an elevation gain of 2,338 feet from the trail head.

I’m happy to say that we were successful in our first hike! Despite the threat of rain and overcast skies for most of the day, it never really rained on us. We packed a couple of backpacks with lots of water, a couple of sandwiches, and other hiking supplies. We started the hike around 9:30 in the morning and reached the summit around 11:30. We then had lunch at the top of the mountain while we took in the surround view. The view of Longs Peak (14,256 feet) was amazing as well as the other mountains and even the plains off to the east. After lunch and climbing the rocks to the other peak, we began our descent which took around another two hours to get back to our car. As if that wasn’t enough, we also took a two mile hike to see Alberta Falls, after driving around the park for a little while. It was an exhausting but rewarding day.

With all of the clouds, the lighting wasn’t the best, but there are still some pretty good pictures here.

Last night we caught the final performance of Cirque du Soleil’s Corteo in Denver. I had never seen a Cirque du Soleil performance before, so I had no idea what to expect, but Kim was really excited for it since she had already seen a show before. I have to admit that the acrobatic elements of the show were pretty amazing. I think my favorite of acts were the Teeterboard and the Ladder (video of both posted below). I could have done without some of the more theatrical acts, but I guess those are necessary as the crew sets up for the next acrobatic act. The two hour show flew by, so that must be a good sign, and I would gladly go see another Cirque du Soleil in the future.

Toward the end of last year, I mentioned that Deer Creek Music Center (Verizon Wireless Music Center) went up for sale and could soon be turned into something else. Well it hasn’t happened yet, and I have finally ironed out my plans to head back to the famed amphitheater for two nights of the Dave Matthews Band. I haven’t been to Deer Creek since 2004, and I couldn’t be more excited to return there. As always we’ll be camping at Sleepy Bear for the weekend and probably sweating like there’s no tomorrow. Gotta love camping in the Midwest in the middle of the summer.