haute ville

We've made a full circle of the island and we're back in Bastia for 1 night before heading back to the mainland. We ended up having some great sun and great food! There will be many photos later.

Au revoir!

We're here

We're on Corsica (in Corte to be exact). If it wasn't raining so much, we probably wouldn't have stopped in a cyber cafe to check email. Oh well, the food is good. :)

New bike

Another one of those pesky motorcycles followed me home today and parked itself in my garage.



Fortunately we can keep it because it's a Christine-sized Kawasaki Ninja 250


She looks a little more comfortable on that than she did on my bike


I had been looking around for a smaller bike lately because I knew Christine wanted to be able to ride, but my bike was too big for her to feel confident riding. I found this used 2004 with only 2400 miles on it and it seemed like the right bike for her. I drove it up from Denver at lunch and parked it in the garage for her to find when she got home. I think she likes it. :)

iStockphoto

Why is it that all new technologies have to have an "i" in front of their name? *shakes fist at Apple*

But I digress...

I saw this website today and thought of the great photos people post on LJ. iStockphoto is a place where people can upload their photos and other people can buy them as "stock" photos. The photographer gets 20%, which isn't that much but if you don't mind people using your photos, it's like free money.

I saw the site listed in a Business Week article about "crowdsourcing". Apparently that's the new buzzword for companies going to consumer generated content for their ideas.

Wedding photo albums

I'm trying two photo albums: Picasa, and the Web Album Generator. Picasa's web albums are cool, but they're space limited until you pay. The Web Album Generator is plain, but simple and free. Free is good. Let me know if one album is significantly better/more useful than the other.
Picasa:
Wedding Ceremony
Wedding Picnic and Hike
Wedding Reception

Web Album Generator:
http://www.bikeandclimb.com/temp_wedding_album/

Web Photo Albums

I'm looking for a utility to create a web ready photo album of a bunch of pictures. I just want to feed it a bunch of pictures and have it create thumbnails and web pages for easy navigation. I see the Livia has used Web Album Generator, but I'm curious to know if anyone has tried other ones. Ideally, it would be great if my image viewer (usually ACDSee) would do this for me. Maybe it already does and I don't realize it. I honestly haven't messed with too many photo album programs on my computer.

The goal here is to put up our wedding photos quickly for our friends and family to view. Eventually we'll sort through them and add titles and comments before reposting the pictures.

Whew!

It's finally over. With a little (okay a lot) of help from our friends, the big day is history, and it went off in spectacular fashion.

Things were a little worrisome at the rehearsal Friday when it seemed to rain the whole time at the wedding site. We were asked several times "What do you plan to do if it rains?" Our answer: "Get wet". We really wanted to get married outside and if it was going to rain, we were fully prepared to get wet. There's no plan B.

The weather looked like a tossup on Saturday morning. It was gray out, but there were breaks in the clouds, so I was hopeful. By the time we stopped in Lyons for gas, there was even some sunshine and I thought to myself "hey, this might just work out." I really enjoyed the drive through Lefthand Canyon up to the Colorado Mountain Ranch. It was a nice crisp morning, and I swear the trees had turned more yellow overnight. Since Kuzca was riding with me, I drove a little more conservatively and enjoyed the sites.

The pre-wedding activities at the ranch are kind of a blur. The arch was decorated, assembled, and moved into place. Nat set up his cello and started rocking out. My brother directed parking. Christine and I changed into our wedding clothes. I had seen Christine in her wedding dress a while ago, but she looked even more amazing in it on our wedding day with her halo of flowers. Even my dog got in on the action with a collar of flowers that matched Christine.

Just in time for the ceremony, the clouds broke and the sun shined brightly. It was amazing. As I stood at the front of the amphitheater I had to squint as I looked out on the crowd of our friends and family. Even with all the people, when Christine's father put her hands in mine I felt like there was nobody else around. It was great to stand up there with her while our officiant read the ceremony we put together, all the while cracking jokes to each other. Before I knew it, the deal was done and I was signing paperwork. There's no turning back now. I'm married.

We stuck around to clean up our mess a bit and it started to rain again just as I left to drive down to the Chautauqua hike. The clouds also started to roll in, and the road down Sunshine Canyon was thick with fog. It put a damper on what I had hoped was going to be "spirited" drive down in the R32, but not as much of a damper as a slow driver a little further down the hill. I was stuck behind a line of a half dozen cars going extremely slow. Unacceptable on such a fun road. When we got to the pavement there was a short straight section and I passed everyone. It was smooth sailing from there on, and I had fun cruising down to Boulder.

The rain kept up at the park and we all huddled under the porch at the ranger station while we waited for lunch to arrive. Lunch consisted of sandwiches (from Tastebuds in Fort Collins), IZZE sparkling fruit juice, and some homemade cookies from Christine's mom. By the time lunch arrived, the rain was just about finished and we were able to enjoy our tasty lunch in the sun before heading off for a hike in the park. I've never hiked at Chautauqua, and it was fun to do a hike at the base of the Flatirons.

Later in the evening we arrived at the Rembrandt Yard to help coordinate table setup and decoration. We helped a little, but really the bulk of the work was done by friends and family. It was really great to have that help so Christine and I could head off for a quick bite at Leaf (which, by the way was delicious). The rest of the evening went by rather quickly. There were dance lessons. We had our first dance. We danced with our mom and dad. We ate good food. We had some cake. It was all quite fun, but it was over before I knew it. I only had two drinks the entire night because I was trying to chat with people.

Everyone seemed to have a good time, and I hope they did. We sure enjoyed seeing everyone and throwing a fun party.

The whole day couldn't have been a success without the help of a lot of people. Here are a few:
Jamie - Thank you for being our photographer. I've only just started to go through all the great photos.
John and Annette - Thank you for entertaining the guests with some great music and introducing some of them to swing dancing.
Nat - Your cello playing was outstanding.
Adam - Directing traffic and handling the dog aren't normal best man duties. Thanks for handling the odd jobs.
Christine's bridesmaids and friends - Thank you for help out with a the little details and helping keep Christine calm(ish)
Our families - Thank you for your help leading up the big day and beyond.
Shannon - I don't know what we would have done without your help. Your help in a countless number of details was priceless.

And of course my beautiful and amazing bride Christine - Clearly you did the lion's share of the planning, and you did an amazing job. Thank you for choosing to spend the rest of your life with me. I win! You mean the world to me and I can't wait to grow old with you (as long as we don't have to grow up too).

Race season is over

My last race of the year was last weekend in Grand Junction. The short story - I got dropped early. It was an 85 mile course with a lot of climbing and I just haven't been feeling that well lately. I finished 20th out of a field of probably about 30. Not my most stellar performance, but I was glad to have done it.

Accidental proximity

One of my cycling teammates and I were uncomfortably close to an accident over the weekend. Not once, but twice.