Colorado 14ers: Mount Shavano

The Deal After a very successful climb of Mount Oxford, I decided it was time to try something ambitious: a whole week of climbing Fourteeners. As I knew, there are several clusters of them: the Front Range and Sawatch ones were easy to climb from Denver; the Elk Mountain ones were all too hard for me at this point; a cluster in the South comprised the Sangre de Cristo Range; and the final cluster were the San Juan Fourteeners, some of the most beautiful landscapes on Earth. Continue reading

Colorado 14ers: Mount Oxford

Fourth time is the charm! I had been ‘dreaming’ of hitting the third 14er in the group since summiting Mount Belford a few years prior. But it never worked out. Would I have it in me to make it happen on this beautiful occasion? Continue reading

An Easy Version of English

You probably know by now that I know and love Esperanto. There is a lot to love about it: the fascinating history with its plot twists, the way I managed to survive my first Esperanto meeting after three weeks of learning, the travels I did with Esperantists all over Europe, and the amazing people that learn Esperanto - quirky, funny, and often able to converse in a dozen languages. But lately, I have been concerned. Continue reading

4 Days of Driving for 4 Days of Snowboarding Mt Bachelor

Last year’s Great Canada Snowboarding Adventure was the last great trip I had planned linking ski resorts together in a chain. It was by far the most resorts, the longest drive, and the most fun I’ve had on all snowboarding winter adventures, so far, but it also marked an end. There just weren’t that many resorts left I hadn’t visited, and the lost one were isolated, far, and not on any pass system. Continue reading

Porting a Template from WordPress to Hugo

Static Site Generators (SSG) are all the rage and are quickly becoming viable alternative to heavier Content Management Systems (CMS) like WordPress. I switched sites from WordPress to Hugo, one of the leadings SSG sites, but wanted to keep the site look and feel the same. To do so, I needed to port the theme I had used on WordPress. This article shows how to go about it if you want to do the same. Continue reading

The End of Capitalism: The Creativity Conundrum

Alright: you suffered through two articles on this already. One about the way the Productivity Paradox killed middle America in the demise of blue collar jobs. Another one predicting a similar demise in white collar jobs due to more automation. But surely the arts are the exclusive domain of humans! How could computers possibly create things full of passion, of desire, of humor, of innovation? How could HAL outshine Van Halen? Continue reading

Your First Mountain Biking Experience

Some people get into mountain biking because they have a death wish; some others because it’s cool. For me, it was oddly that road biking had become too unsafe after I moved to Colorado. I had been road biking for decades, in one year racking up over 7000 miles on my bike. Then I moved to San Diego and car culture became synonymous with road rage, but I had surfing as a distraction from cycling. Continue reading

The End of Capitalism: The Academic Delusion

For blue collar workers, the root of all evils was the 1980s. While the world was listening to Madonna and Michael Jackson, wearing giant shoulder pads and holding giant boomboxes over your head, a series of developments crushed into the American Dream like Jaws into a fishing boat. The result was a deep and lasting depression into the heart of America, one that made life outside of large cities precarious and poverty and disillusionment widespread. Continue reading

Climbing Your First Colorado 14er

So you are visiting Colorado or just decided to try climbing one of Colorado’s 53 mountains above 14,000 feet. Should you? Could you? What do you need to know before you go? Continue reading

The End of Capitalism: The Productivity Paradox

It was in the ancient days of the early 70s that I saw and read this book. It was large, thin, and in thick cardboard pages. It was trying to tell us kids how much better the future would be and invoked a word: productivity. It claimed that productivity was growing rapidly, and that we would soon have twice the productivity of a generation before. What that meant was that we could do the same things in half the time, which meant that everybody would be able to work, say, only 20 hours a week and we’d get the same output. Continue reading