For the first time, the University of Cincinnati Bearcat football team has cracked the top 10 in the AP top 25. And I was there to watch the victory this past Saturday that propelled them up in the rankings. The 28-20 win moved their record to 4-0 and their #10 ranking in the AP poll as well as a record #11 in the USA Today poll.

Whiteout game – crowd in nearly all white.

It’s been awhile since I’ve watched a game on the ever evolving campus, though not a lot has changed inside the stadium. Yes, you can still buy beer, and they seem to have added Christian Moerlein to their selections. One thing that has changed is that the tickets are actually selling out now. That’s much different from when we could walk into the games while I was a student by just flashing our ID’s, no ticket required.

Catskeller bar inside the new TUC.

One of my favorite changes is that you can head inside the completely renovated Tangeman University Center during the game, including the Catskeller, an awesome new bar/restaurant. We headed that way during halftime to sample some of the wonderful micro-brews that are available for really affordable prices. Just take a look at this beer menu, which rivals some of the better beer bars that I’ve ever visited. Needless to say, the game was a blast!

My DVR is quickly filling itself up now that the fall TV lineup is back on.   So far we’ve watched our long time favorites How I Met Your Mother, Big Bang Theory, House, Survivor, and probably a few others I am already forgetting.   Plus another season of our all time favorite, Amazing Race, is about to begin on Sunday.   My question is simple, are there any new shows that are worth watching?   I’m such a slacker when it comes to finding new shows to watch, so hopefully I haven’t missed too many episodes if there is indeed something worth tuning into.

I’m glad that it’s football season, but before last weekend I wasn’t able to watch much of it.   We were in Alaska for much of the start of college football.   We were flying back from NYC two Sunday’s ago, the opening Sunday for the NFL.   It wasn’t until this past weekend that I was able to sit and watch some football on TV.   And that meant one thing, heading to Wyman’s for the Bengals game this past Sunday.   This used to be a great Bengals bar, with lots of black and orange on every game day, but recently it has been overcrowded with Bears fans.   However, this past week the Bears had a later game, so we decided to head up to Wyman’s for the game and some great pizza.   Turns out the game was great too, with the Bengals earning their first win of the season.

Unfortunately we will be traveling again this coming Sunday and will likely miss most of the football action.   However, I will be attending the undefeated (and 14th ranked) University of Cincinnati Bearcats game against Fresno State this coming Saturday. It is so exciting to watch my alma mater actually win at something. Our school was always a big time basketball school, but the roles have reversed recently, and everyone is way more excited for football than basketball. I can’t wait to see them play live.

No football post would be complete without a fantasy football update. Both teams in my money leagues lost this past week. I am now 0-2 in one and 1-1 in the other. I desperately need to start winning some more games. In my other fun league, I had a victory and moved to 1-1. In a college pick’em I have somehow moved up into second place out of 19, even after missing the first week while in Alaska. I’m still alive in my survivor league, where I picked Minnesota over Detroit. This week I am not going to pick Detroit’s opponent. Finally, I am still learning this salary cap game but I made a couple of trades this week that I’m hoping will boost my standings.

Last night Kim and I took part in the Uptown Sampler with a few of our friends.   For $20 each we gained entry to  fifteen different restaurants in the Uptown neighborhood of Denver where we could sample various food and drink items.   We all met at Jonesy’s EatBar where we had some delicious macaroni and cheese, along with Parmesan fries, various pizzas, and salad. Next we quickly stopped at the Horseshoe Lounge, but quickly left when we realized they had the same food as Jonesy’s. Our next stop was for a wine and beer tasting at a liquor store called Above the Rim.

After those stops we hoped on one of the complimentary buses and to Randolph’s inside the Warwick Hotel. There we had more french fries and chicken skewers, which were really good. I cannot find them on their menu though, so I’m not sure how the chicken was prepared. From there it was back on a bus. We decided to skip over Tavern Uptown, since everyone in our group had been there before. So next on our tour was the Avenue Grill. The only offering here was buffalo chili, which I actually tried, but I found it rather bland. From there it was a quick walk to Hamburger Mary’s, where I opted to skip the hamburgers and eat only the sweet potato fries, and Olivea, where I only tried the potato flat bread.

After those stops we waited for another bus, but after ten minutes or so decided to keep on walking down 17th Street. Our next stop was at Tastes Wine Bar where I only had the humus, but I’m told their meatballs were great. Next, we decided to skip over Las Margaritas and Pasquini’s as we were running out of time. We made a quick stop into Strings, which served my favorite dish of the night, pasta with chicken, mushrooms, and a wonderful spicy tomato cream sauce.

With just five minutes left in the event, we made it into Limon just in time to sample their yucca and plantain chips served with a tasty salsa. We had heard that there were free drinks here, but when we arrived our server told us that we had arrived too late. Though the waitress later stopped by to offer a couple of complimentary Peruvian drinks. We never made it to the Vine Street Pub, which I wanted to check out, but that’s okay as I’m sure we’ll head that way sometime soon. This event was a great way for us to see a ton of restaurants that we have never visited and I’m sure that we’ll be back soon for diner at some of our new favorites.

On our fourth full day in Alaska we sadly had to leave Denali National Park.   Looking back on our entire trip, this would likely be my favorite destination that we visited.   Fortunately, we didn’t have to leave the park without seeing Mt. McKinley in its full glory.   As we were driving out of the park, we were treated with great views of the mountain.   The skies continued to stay clear for our entire drive and we were able to see the mountain from a variety of viewpoints. We also spotted a coyote, which we first thought was a lone wolf. After looking at the photos closer, I can tell it is indeed a rare coyote inside of Denali.

After leaving the park, we drove south back towards Anchorage. Along the way there were many great views of McKinley that we took advantage of. Somehow we still made it back to Anchorage earlier than I had originally thought. My tentative itinerary had us stopping for the night in Anchorage, but we soon decided to continue driving all the way down to the small coastal town of Seward. Before leaving Anchorage we did stop for lunch at Humpy’s Great Alaskan Alehouse. Kim got her first fish fix of the trip, which she thoroughly enjoyed. My chicken sandwich was not so good, though the beers more than made up for it.

The drive down to Seward is incredible. It starts of by following the Turnagain Arm of the Cook Inlet. There are large mountains on the left side of the road and the sea is directly to the right. There are a number of pullouts along the highway where you can stop to see beluga whales, and possibly other wildlife. On our first stop we immediately spotted some belugas, and we continued to see them the entire length of the drive along the water.

We eventually made it down to Seward around sunset and found our way to the city campground which is right on the water and near the harbor where we would be heading the following morning. It was a long day of driving, but we had lots of great scenery along the drive and great weather throughout. I was also happy to have another day to add to the itinerary for the Kenai Peninsula.

Anchorage on Dwellable

Saturday night I headed to Red Rocks for likely the last time this summer.   Months ago I bought a couple of great seats in the 6th row for Jason Mraz’s performance, and the date finally arrived this past weekend.   Besides a short festival set last summer, this was the first time I’ve seen him headline in years, dating all the way back to 2003.   Since the show was Mraz’s first time playing the legendary venue, I figured we were in for a special treat.   Unfortunately, the show was a big disappointment, at least for myself.

I’ll be honest and admit that I haven’t listened to much of his recent material, besides the songs that are on the radio.   From what I’ve heard of the latest disc, We Sing. We Dance. We Steal Things., it is better than 2005’s Mr. A-Z.   However, I don’t think either come anywhere close to being as good as his 2002 major label debut, Waiting for My Rocket to Come.   With that said, obviously I was not a fan of the Red Rocks show that included only one song from that debut release.   In addition there were only a small handful of songs that I recognized at all.

Some friends of ours were also in attendance, and they loved the show.   So obviously opinions are wide spread on the new material, but I received many messages from other friends around the country stating that they thought the same thing as I did when they attended other recent shows.   Again most of these people have been long time fans, and share the opinion that his music peaked many years ago back when we first started seeing him live.

Having a great time touring Denali on our own the first day, we decided to go a ranger led Discovery Hike up Igloo Mountain on our second full day in the park. The rangers choose these hikes up to a week before the schedule date.   Since the hikes are limited to eleven people, the park service encourages   you to make advanced reservations one or two day ahead of time. Our hike was listed as strenuous, but that really only means elevation gain more than 1000 feet.

Our guide was originally from Colorado, so we had a lot to talk about throughout the hike. I was impressed to learn that he had climbed all of Colorado’s 14ers. He offered advice to us for future 14ers that should be on our list. All of the others on our hike were European, though nearly all spoke flawless English. Most of them had hiked in the Alps many times so it was cool to hear how Alaska’s scenery compared and contrasted. We hiked for most of the day, and though we didn’t summit any peaks, we had some amazing views throughout the day.

Healy on Dwellable

Last night I participated in my first ever Denver Cruisers ride. I would have definitely done one of these earlier, but I have been busy with hockey most Wednesday nights, as well as other travels recently. The Denver Cruisers is a group of 500+ people who ride their bike through downtown each Wednesday throughout the summer. They always start at the Gin Mill and leave in one large group around 8pm.

Starting the ride last night.

There is a new theme for the ride each week, and last night was Pirates, Vikings, and Sea Men. This gave me my second opportunity of the summer to wear my new sailor suit. Last night our first stop was in an old empty parking garage for the “Garage of Death.”   This was a pun on their weekly “Circle of Death” where large numbers of people ride around in a circle, while a few others go the opposite way.   Obviously you aren’t trying to run into anyone, but collisions do happen, which I guess is part of reason for the fun.   With the many bikers, this becomes quite a spectacle.

“Garage of Death”

Cardboard viking ship built around this guy’s bike.

High wheeler bike.

After the garage we made our way through the streets of downtown and to Theorie, which inhabits the former home of the Denver “Real World” cast. I don’t know if it’s planned to keep the bars empty before the cruisers arrive, but when we did the costumed partiers packed the bar. I expected high priced drinks, but bottled beers were only two or three dollars a piece. After an hour or so at the bar, everyone hopped on their bikes again and we made our way to Civic Center Park for the “Circle of Death.” The circle here was smaller than the garage from before, so it was much crazier inside the mayhem.

“Circle of Death”

At this point it was already approaching 11, much past my standard bedtime. I decided to leave from park and head home, despite there still being another bar on the itinerary. My first ride with the cruisers was a success and I hope to join one of the last rides in the next couple of weeks.

Everyone’s favorite time-waster is back, fantasy football.   I am in three different leagues (two for money) along with a few pick’ems, one survival, and one salary cap league.   I’ve played pick’ems before, so nothing new there, but both survival and salary cap are new to me.   Survival is pretty simple: pick one team to win and if they do you are still in the game.   The challenge becomes that you can’t pick the same winner more than once all season.   So far I picked New Orleans to beat Detroit.   That worked, so maybe I’ll keep picking Detroit’s opponents each week.   I really don’t know what I’m doing in the survival league, thought I’m trying to buy players when their stats are down, hoping that they will have a good week and their value will rise.   This will definitely be a learning experience.

In my standard head-to-head leagues, I won one game and lost two.   The one that I won was in one of the money leagues, though the jackpot isn’t as high as the league that I lost in.   I’m playing one league on Yahoo!, one on ESPN, and one on Fox Sports.   I still think I like Yahoo! the best.   They make it very easy to get all the statistics you need to manipulate your team easily.   And go figure, that was the one game I won.   Hopefully I can figure out the other two sites to get some winning teams going there.

On our second full day in Alaska we rode on a Denali Park shuttle bus for many hours throughout the park. As I mentioned in the day 1 recap, you are not allowed to drive throughout most of the park and you have to use the shuttle bus system to get around. With our camping reservation at Teklanika we were able to get a special bus pass that would allow us to have unlimited rides. Most of the time we were on a space available basis (which never was a problem), but we were able to make one guaranteed seat reservation for the first full day we had in the park. So on this day we caught our reserved shuttle around 7:15am for the ride all the way out to Wonder Lake.

We wouldn’t arrive at Wonder Lake until 12:30, meaning that we would be on this bus for over five hours. It isn’t that far of a drive, but the speed limit is 35 MPH and there are many planned an unplanned stops along the way. The unplanned stops happen when anyone on the bus spots some wildlife. These sightings and the beautiful scenery helped to pass the time very easily. In order of appearance, we saw a grizzly bear, dall sheep, caribou, a fox, and a pack of wolves. Also there were numbers of golden eagles, northern harrier, ptarmigan, and other birds.

In addition to all the wildlife, we also continued to see amazing colors throughout the park. Fall was really in full swing and the red, yellow, and orange colors were amazing. On top of it all, we got to see most of Mt. McKinley. The mountain, as it’s called inside the park, is often hidden in clouds.   But when we made it out to Stony Hill we had a nearly a cloud-free view. According to the bus driver 80% of the mountain was visible, which was good enough to count as a day when the mountain could be viewed.   He also said that the mountain is only visible 20% of the time, so we were pretty lucky.

By the time we made it out to Wonder Lake, more clouds had rolled in and hid much more of the mountain. I had planned to take a hike for good viewing of the mountain out near Wonder Lake, but since it was hidden we decided to continue on our original bus back to the Eielson Visitor Center for some hiking there. We hiked down to the McKinley River bed from the visitor center, which proved to offer some great views of the entire valley along with the Alaska Range. Once we were finished with the hike we caught another bus back to the campground to wind down the night.   It was an amazing day!

Alaska on Dwellable