Springtime in Colorado!

It's springtime in Colorado and that means time to get back out on the bike and training for Ride the Rockies, right? WRONG! Springtime in Colorado means unpredictable weather. This weekend it meant over two feet of snow in Castle Rock!

I flew home from Dallas yesterday afternoon and when we landed in Denver it had just started to snow at DIA. By the time I reached Castle Rock (a little over an hour and 1,200 feet of elevation gain later) there was about a foot of heavy, wet snow on the ground that made great material for snowballs (above: the girls wage a snow ball fight across the driveway).

We woke this morning to another six or so inches on the drive and it snowed all day until about 5:00. The girls and I spent the better part of the afternoon building up our snow forts -- so much so that we never got around to resuming the snowball fight!

Haley and Natalie (our neighbor) also created a handsome snowman (at left). Throughout the day avalanches of snow rumbled down from our roof onto our front and back porch and driveway but there's still a lot of very heavy snow hanging overhead!

Leslie finally got to try out the snow shoes I got her for Christmas last year (07!). We haven't had this much snow since the day we moved into our house in December 06 -- the Blizzard of '06 (more than four feet of snow in 48 hours). Frankly, I've been a little disappointed in the past two winters. Snowshoeing on the ridge behind out house is a lot of fun and great exercise.

I was just outside and think the temperature is actually rising (we're supposed to hit 60 tomorrow and 70 on Monday!). I hope the snow doesn't all melt before we have a chance to get back out on the ridge in our snowshoes tomorrow...but I hope this is the last snow of the season. I'm ready to get my bike back out on the road. Less than two months until Ride the Rockies 2009.

Ride on!

Daren