Christmas Ketchup

So I haven't posted in a long while, so I got a few ketchup posts to make.

Before I left to go back to Kansas City for Christmas, my work group went and grabbed some lunch and beers to celebrate the holidays.

I flew back the Friday before Christmas and spent 9 days back in the Plains. On Saturday, my mom's side had a big Christmas blowout, including celebrating my uncle's 60th birthday. Lots of good food, drinks, and funny antics.

All of my 2nd cousins were crawling all over the house. Literally.

My pregnant cousin-in-law also indulged in the festivities. Tis the Irish Catholic way.

On Monday, I went all nerdy and drove past my flippin' sweet plate girder bridge in La Cygne. I won't lie. It is kind of a big deal.

As the great philosopher, Kriston Norton, once said: "The bigger the span, the bigger the man."

The proud papa.

Afterwards, I grabbed dinner and drinks with my buddies from Kdot. It was great seeing everyone again.

On Tuesday, I had dinner with my KU friends and watched some KU basketball. Good times.

Christmas was great as always. We opened gifts in the morning and headed to my grandparents for the afternoon. It was some great family time.

On Sunday, I drove back in my sister's car, since she is moving out here. It was great being back home, but I was excited to get back to the Rockies.

Winter Park

On Sunday, I hit the slopes with my work buddy Craig for some fresh powder skiing. The road to Winter Park and over Berthoud Pass was receiving snow.

The temperature was about 5 degrees so we had on plenty of layers to try and stay warm. Fingers and toes got cold regardless.

Me trying out a black run. Not quite comfortable with them yet.

Lots of fresh powder.

Can you tell I'm cold?

No time for ski breaks, Santy Claus. Get back to work!!

What a view!

Nothing better than skiing down fresh snow.

Lines were very short due to the cold weather.

Craig is a good skier.

On the way back, we saw some big horn sheep on the road. CDOT has a well-documented problem with the sheep creating potholes since they enjoy eating the warm pavement.

The DOT's collar the sheep herds so they know where to retrieve the digested asphalt and return it to the driving surface. This type of pavement is referred to as HMA, or hot mixed asphalt.

Here were some elk seen from I-70 on the drive back.

Finally, I saw some deer trotting around my neighborhood.

SKIING!!!!

We awoke early on Saturday morning to drive up to Copper Mountain for some early season skiing. I wasn't sure what the terrain would be like. The area got alot of snow throughout the week, but I still wasn't sure how it would compare with my typical Jan-Feb skiing.

Most of the high speed lifts were open, so the lines were never a problem. Quite a few of the runs were closed, so we had to be pretty strategic about which runs to take to which lifts.

Several of the runs had snowmaking machines blowing snow over bare spots. The machines were pretty noisy since they pump air through the line to vaporize the water.

Thankfully, the area received plenty of snow to have an enjoyable day skiing. Turning was never a problem...few icy spots. My skis grabbed some limbs extending through the snow, but I never wiped out or anything. Other than many of the runs being closed, I found the conditions to be great.

The guys I skied with were much more experienced than me. One had been skiing for 24 years and had raced while growing up. The other felt that regular skiing wasn't challenging enough and is a telemark skier. This type of skiing is much more strenuous since you have to duck your knee almost to the ground for every turn. It looks cool as he is going down the slope though.

Since there wasn't any black runs open, we were still able to ski alot together. I started out pretty rusty, but it came back pretty quickly. I enjoyed alot of green and blue runs. Thankfully, my legs never felt too bad. I felt good with my improvement throughout the day.

We grabbed a nice lunch and took in several more runs afterwards. We left a bit early to avoid I-70 traffic...and probably to avoid injury since we were all pretty wore out.

This enjoyable day of skiing was one of many fantastic reasons I moved to Colorado. It was so great knowing that I don't have to squeeze as much skiing as I can into just 2 or 3 days a year. I rented skis for the season and can go as often as I want. Come on out and join me! It is too much fun!

On Sunday, I went to church and did a bunch of Christmas shopping. The weather was fantastic...around 65 degrees, so I went mountain biking on South Table Mountain.

The trail overlooks the Coors plant in Golden.

It was pretty amazing to ski and mountain bike in ideal conditions on the same weekend. I love this place!

Sports Galore

After flying back to KC, enjoying Thanksgiving with my extended family in Topeka, and putting up Christmas lights on Friday, I enjoyed the annual MU-KU football at Arrowhead with my KU buddies Nathan and Kevin.


The weather was absolutely miserable. It was raining/sleeting/snowing with temperatures hovering around freezing.

The game went back and forth until the end. KU won with a 4th down touchdown. It was great to see all the upset MU fans filing out of the stadium. Rock Chalk, Jayhawk. K...U...

On Tuesday, I experienced my first NBA game while viewing the Denver Nuggets take on the Toronto Raptors. My friend from work got some cheap tickets on ebay and asked if I wanted to go.

The Nuggets won the game by 40, so it wasn't too exciting of a game. I have been spoiled after attending so many games at Allen Fieldhouse. The atmosphere was so much different...relaxed, a much longer game, few exciting full court plays. I won't be getting season tickets anytime soon.

On Thursday, a coworker sent an email to announce a drawing for some suite tickets to the Nuggets game against the San Antonio Spurs. The guy has an inside track with the Nuggets organization, so after the abundance of interest from workers at M&M, he scored another suite for everyone to attend the game. The weather was cold and snowy, but we drew 30 or so M&M employees to the suites to enjoy the game.

The suites were pretty sweet. The seats were leather, we had a dude to get us drinks (we still had to pay), and we had a good view. I felt pretty high class after showing my stub to a guard at the entrance to the suite boxes. No more sitting with the riffraff for me.

It was the first Nuggets game for alot of the M&M folks. I thought it was neat to see Tim Duncan, one of the best players all-time.

Rocky, the Nuggets mascot, is pretty entertaining. At Tuesday game, he attempted behind the back half-court shots during game breaks. He made one as time expired. On Thursday, he climbed this huge ladder and he attempted to make a half court shot off a bounce. No luck this time though.

Although the Nuggets lost by 20, at least the cheerleaders were entertaining.

Although the NBA isn't really my thing, I was glad to check it out.

Great Smoky Mountain Railroad

On Monday, I flew with two other M&M engineers to Atlanta in order to inspect the Great Smoky Mountain Railroad. The railroad is a standard gage, tourist railroad with some occasional freight traffic. The majority of the structures are in excess of 50 years old with some of the steel trusses being over 100. We drove 3 hours to Dillsboro, North Carolina and began inspecting on Tuesday morning. The first river crossing we looked at was a plate girder (roughly 9' tall) that crossed the Tuckasegee River.


The span leads into the 900' Cowee Tunnel, which is not in the greatest shape.

The scenery around the railroad was spectacular. Although the majority of the trees had lost their leaves, the hillsides were still very beautiful.

The weather was pretty cool, in the mid-30s, but there was no precipitation or wind. The region was much cleaner than I expected and I didn't notice any Deliverance-type behavior.

We inspected numerous timber trestles, which involves tapping the timber with a rod to listen for hollow sounds. Timber typically rots from the inside, so inspectors cannot readily detect defects in the wood. Our next big bridge was a steel truss crossing the Tuckasegee in Bryson City. We climbed to the top of the truss to inspect the top chords and to check for pin deterioration. We were lucky that a train happened to be crossing while we on top of the structure and were able to detect some pin wear.

The longest structure on the line is the Ela Trestle, which has over 32 bents. Inspecting all of the timber made my arm pretty sore from tapping, but it was worth it.

After a long day of inspection, we drove back to the railroad yard. In their yard, they had the remnants from the movie set from "The Fugitive," including two destroyed Illinois Department of Corrections buses and two wrecked locomotives.

My boss and I did our best to impersonate Harrison Ford.

On Wednesday we were all in for a treat. Many of the structures on this section of the line were more easily accessible by the railroad, rather than by vehicle, so we had our own locomotive and caboose to chauffeur us around. Having the locomotive with us allowed us to load test each structure to monitor the deflection of certain components. This was very valuable for our assessment.

The first two hours involved riding the train to our destination. It was pretty rough. :)

Here is a video of a load test of tipping bent that we were concerned with. The locomotive really strained the timber. You could hear the structure groaning and crunching under the engines tremendous weight. The first run I was under the structure and got totally freaked out after I heard all the racket eminating from the structure. The next time we ran away from the structure to get the train engineer nervous. The video does not do the deflection justice

After some more inspections and load test, we drove the train into Andrews and grabbed some lunch.

It seemed funny to me to drive a locomotive into town to grab a pizza buffet.

On the way back, we caught a few more timber trestles, including a very tall one crossing a small gully.
We got to ride on the front deck of the train on the return trip, which was one of the coolest things I have ever done. I tried to not act like I was on vacation, but it certainly was fun.

How about this seat?!?!

On Thursday, we finished off the rest of the structures. This time we rode in a hirail along the railroad.

The first structure of the day was the VERY tall Fontana trestle. The rail is roughly 100' off the water. The location was very picturesque that early in the morning and with some remaining autumn colors.

Climbing the truss was quite an exhilarating experience, especially when I watched my hammer slip from my holster and slowly fall into the water.

The small shadow at the top of the truss would be me walking along the top chord.

Here is a first person video of walking on top of the truss roughly 150' above the water. Yehaw!


Since I couldn't possibly articulate this amazing experience, I'll let pictures (too many, I know!) do the talking.

http://picasaweb.google.com/N.Marshall.80/GreatSmokyMountainRailroad#