I'm Santa!

rich guy sees santas
Originally uploaded by pesoptimist

Who's in charge? Santa's in charge!!

I took part in Santacon this year, put on by the cacophany society - http://denver.cacophony.org/spg.html.

This photo was taken by pespoptimist (Valerie) at the debutante ball at the Brown Palace. Boy were they introduced to the wrong society.

F.T.W.

F.T.W.
Originally uploaded by gamp

This is the first photo I've sold. Last night it appeared in the "Wee" show at the Flash Gallery in Belmar, Littleton, Colorado. It sold for $65. It was matted in a 4x6 clipless frame and the image size was only about 1"x2"

Gears

Gears
Originally uploaded by gamp

I'm doing my first gallery show tomorrow night at the Flash Gallery in Belmar.

This is one of the pieces. The show is called "Wee"

Nov 16-Jan 6, 445 South Saulsbury St, Lakewood, CO

I'll be at the opening on the 16th from 6-9pm

Zombie Caver

Zombie Caver
Originally uploaded by gamp

After caving I put back on my caver outfit, some facepaint, and went to "the gog" for a burner rave. It was pretty much the rave I've always wanted to go to, but ended up being sort of invisible. I think people thought my costume was making fun of the some recent mining tragedies, which is perhaps more clever than my intention of the ryhme of zombie caver with zombie raver.

I was surprised to recognize only a few people at the party, and they apparently didn't recognize or want to talk with me. I was feeling a little anti-social anyway. Cool location though, lots of power outages, weird murder and orgy rooms, and some good dancing.

soda straws

soda straws
Originally uploaded by gamp

Took a trip to Fulford Cave. It's cold enough now that there is snow leading up the hill to the entrance, but that doesn't really change the internal temperature. Inside I'd guess it's about 40 degrees, and very very damp and wet. There's lots of places to slide around and fall off stuff, and weird looking walls and formations to shine your flashlights at. I think we didn't even make it through half of the cave, so I'll return at some point.

Confluence Park Fire Spinners

Stephiniti Illuminated
Originally uploaded by gamp

Every Sunday night at Confluence Park in Denver (behind the REI on the Platte River) fire spinners practice their stuff, and a drum circle beats out a rhythm. You can see people breath fire and spin poi, staffs, darts, and their own creations.

Here ~dragon~ spins his dragon's tail behind stephiniti

They even got on the news and on cnn video.

Here's my flickr photo set so far.
http://www.cnn.com/video/#/video/offbeat/2007/09/17/cole.co.fire.dancing.kusa

Sheik in the Dessert

Sheik in the Dessert
Originally uploaded by gamp

This is pretty much where my day at burning man started, at the moonshine lounge. From here I walked across the playa, viewing art and continuing to drink moonshine. I stopped by the black rock glacier - moved some steel for Ehron, was apparently the last person so see the sculpture before it was removed for unknown reasons, then was picked up by the double decker articulated bus - where I danced my way back to town. Lots of dancing, some washing at the carcass wash, then I passed out - way to dehydrated. Should have gone and gotten an IV - ended up being a bad night with a headache and other bad signs. Fun day though.

Skagway Power Plant Found!

Hydroelectric Turbine
Originally uploaded by gamp

Some of my friends have been trying to get to an old abandoned hydroelectric powerplant in out in the wilderness for years. This place was built in 1901 and was used until 1960something when flooding knocked if offline permanently. They have conducted about 14 trips looking for it, unsuccessfully. On recent trips they followed the penstock, the old wood and metal hoop water pipe, but could only get so far as sections of it were washed away and bridges were missing or unstable. This was my third trip, and second one when I had some idea where it was supposed to be. Last time I took a route on the canyon floor along the creek. There is a sort of "trail" here so it should be easy, but in many places the trail disappears and you're stuck between a fast flowing creek and a 600 foot high wall of rock. I've opted to climb over the rocks most times, and it was grueling. Last time I ended up getting stranded with thunderstorms, soaked, in the dark, and it took me six hours to get back to my motorcycle, where on the way home I ended up with hypothermia. This time similar things happened, but I was smarter and camped and took my new AWD vehicle which can handle the dirt roads that get near the location nicely. As it turned out it was right off the creek about 75 feet up and only 5 miles down the creek. Considering I still couldn't figure out how to hike along the creek without making severe climbing detours, it was by far the most grueling hike I've ever taken. Hazards included; slippery wet rocks and trees, a boulder that came loose and pushed me down a hill, temporarily pinning me against a tree, water way above my boots, trees across the creek, and apparently a christian fundamentalist camp somewhere. I made it though, battered, bruised, and tattered. Hooray! I don't think I'll be doing more hiking soon.

edit 9/23 I have now created a group on flickr if you've also been to or are looking for skaguay
http://www.flickr.com/groups/skaguay/

edit 7/7/08 The Colorado Springs Gazette wrote an article about a trip to Skaguay. It has a great slideshow and video documenting the trip, a previously unpublished memoir of life at the plant, and is overall a great article. It looks like they had a better and safer time making the journey then me too. http://www.gazette.com/articles/canyon_37887___article.html/skaguay_power.html

edit - 2nd trip to the plant http://redphone.blogspot.com/2008/08/skaguay-revisited.html

Things I accomplished this weekend

I've been feeling like I haven't accomplished much, so let's see what I did this weekend:
didn't take any photos though

did some shopping, bought new additions for herb garden
barbecued some burgers
something else I think
passed out too tired

planted herb garden on balcony
cleaned bbq grill and balcony a bit
worked on motorcyle - didn't fix much
sent out some ebay sales
helped BJ move
rode around downtown people - boring
watched Pan's Labyrinth - good underworld not really scare mystical movie with a fawn, fairies, and fascists

rode motorcycle in canyon up highway 74
paid back garth for helping me move by taking him to restaurant in evergreen
bought new gps - garmin etrex vista cx to replace etrex legend - has micro sd slot
watched the omen
edited some pictures for flickr of trip to st. elmo, anges vail falls, romley but need to use photoshop cs3 to hdr some other photos before I put them on flickr - picture
did laundry

Don't Pick up rocks in Boulder

So last month I'm with my buddies in an open space park in Boulder. They have long abandoned coal mines, some of which have been on fire for 50-100+ years underground. We find the old entrance of one of the Lewis mines, which is now just a sort of ditch thing, and walk down in there. There aren't any signs, nothing. In the ditch is a visible vein of coal, just a few inches high. We proceed to look at little pieces of it, removing them from the vein. Then there are some fossilized shells and stuff, not particularly recognizable or of any quality, but they look neat so we pick them up and examine them. After a while of doing this, we start to leave. No sooner are we at the top of the ridge than a ranger stands up, who apparently was hiding there for a while.

A month later now, we're picking up the sides of the roads near open space parks for trash, with 40 hours of community service to complete and $160 in court fees. Luckily we got a deferred something so the misdemeanor charge will go off the records in a year, as long as none of us get caught doing something similar. Whatever that would be.

It should also be noted that, well at least I've heard, it's legal in most of Colorado to pick up little fossils and stuff in parks like this. They aren't of any real value, and, well it's a coal mine!

I'm not sure what lesson I've learned from this experience other than to avoid Boulder.

Here's the Boulder open space rules if you're interested: http://www.co.boulder.co.us/openspace/recreating/public_parks/parks_pdfs/rules&regs2005_50.pdf

coal fired oven pizza

coal fired oven pizza
Originally uploaded by gamp.

The first stop on the New York pizza tour is Sac's Place in Astoria, Queens. The pizza is cooked with the heat of coal, bringing it up to 900 degrees. The crust was great, but the sauce seemed too raw and tomatoe tasting, kind of the only way I know how to make it actually. Not the best IMHO.

Encoding and Uploading

I'm sitting here encoding old videos my friends shot years ago from old slp vhs tapes. It's tedious, but its funny when people watch these things on youtube. I don't really understand them myself, but maybe you can.