December ?

It's December here in Aspen (and probably somewhere else too) so what is one to do?  Why go golfing of course:

Yep, the flags and holes are still out for people to play.  And play they did ... plenty of people were out there today.  It's free to play by the way.  Has been for a couple of months now since it officially closed.  After the season, the golf pro shop turns into a nordic shop where they sell and tune cross country skis and the like.  Those ski guys are showing up to work every day, but I'm not sure what exactly they're doing in there.

I know today practically the whole country is having higher than normal temperatures, but as you can tell from the pic, we truly haven't even started winter here yet.  In fact, I even rode my bike up to Maroon Bells today.  My road bike.  On the 1st of DECEMBER!  That's just nuts kids.

Yesterday I rode my bike up to Aschcroft and on the way down I saw something I'd never seen before - an albino squirrel.  At first I thought it was a piece of paper blowing into the road, but then it stopped, saw me coming, turned tail and bolted back into the trees.  I was rapidly getting closer to it as I was going pretty fast, and no doubt about it, that there was an albino squirrel.  Got me to thinking about it too.  That poor squirrel is probably like the rest of the skiers in this town dying for some white stuff to fly from the sky.  Except in his case he wants it for camouflage.  I'll bet he's one tough cookie to spot in the winter all right.  And then I naturally thought about how he sticks out like a sore thumb right now and how that's got to be a big survival disadvantage.  But then it struck me ... if I thought he was a piece of paper, other critters probably mistake him for random stuff all of the time too.  Heck, let's say a falcon easily spotted him and started to swoop down for some eats, couldn't you just see the thought running through the back of the falcon's mind 'what the eff is that thing?  Maybe its got some disease or something.  I'm not that hungry man, I'm outta here.'  Or not.  Who knows.

Anyway, I'm still around, doing fine and reading lots as usual.  I would've thought by now that I might be getting tired of reading about nutrition and exercise, but I still dig it.  Just the other day I listened to Robb Wolf's podcast with guest John (DH) Kiefer.  I found it fascinating.  After digging around his site a bit and learning about what he calls Carb Backloading, I've decided to change the timing of my exercise (time of day) and when I eat certain nutrients.  My diet and exercise are pretty much going to remain the same, I'm just going to tinker with the timing.  And it's just to tinker really.  I've got no goals here other than to see if it affects how I look, feel and perform.  Maybe I'll expound on it in another post and report how it's going. 


PS  I just found this link to the Albino Squirrel Preservation Society .  Tell me right now you can't find everything on the internet.  Internet, I want to marry you.