A few years ago, my friend at work bought this kick-ass adventure van.  Sold his apartment and committed to hashtag vanlife.  This single piece of paper took months to execute.

There's a Whole Foods across from the office, and walking back from lunch, I had the idea to create a fake parking ticket.  I needed 3 things to pull this off:

• City and County of Denver logo.  Available from their website!
• A convincing font - something that a handheld parking enforcement printer would look like.  I chose something like this from DaFont.
• An official parking ticket envelope.

So, don't ever wish for a parking ticket.  I got the envelope I needed, but I had to pay a $75 expired tag fee.

Now it's time to get to work.
I waited until he was in a meeting, and ran out to the street to get his VIN and license plate number.  I wanted this to be a warning about the uniqueness of his vehicle, so I put two kinda real things, and something really absurd.  I printed it in color on plain office paper.  
The violations:

• Oversized height (>10ft).  I guessed on how tall this thing was.
• Toilet / Shower.  ​This I knew for a fact.
• Ladder > 4 Rungs.  I thought for sure he would know this was total bullshit.

​

The ticket was ready.  I went out at lunch and stuck it under his windshield wiper.  Note the closed shades.  I'll come back to that.

One thing to note is that my buddy is pretty social in the office.  He'd bounce around to all of our cubicles to tell stories about the weekend, office nonsense, etc.  So I figured he'd get this parking ticket, and would be bitching about it to everyone, and I'd let him vent for an hour or two then let him off the hook.

I didn't hear anything for 3 days.

So I wondered if he really sent in $75 to the City and County of Denver.

Here's where I need to tell the story.

In 2014, I was introduced to the online app Nextdoor.  If you are not familiar with Nextdoor, don't install it.  Essentially, it's a hyperlocal version of Facebook made up of your actual neighbors.  But like any social media, add in the minutia, the comments, the anger, the thinly veiled racism...

For additional reading and context I would suggest you view:

• ​Twitter's Best of Next Door. 
  
  • Read the Potato tweet.
• Cunningham's Internet Law
• Godwin's Internet Law

And now, on to Vin Diesel. 

In spring of 2014, the self-appointed mayor of our Nextdoor neighborhood posted that his newspaper had been stolen.  He was "pretty sure" that the roofers working in the area had taken it - it was there when he opened the windows first thing in the morning, and after he made coffee it was gone.   

A reasonable assumption, because when working on replacing shingles, one just wants to get caught up on world affairs. 

Mark the brown people square on your Nextdoor bingo card.  I let that one go.

​A few weeks later, he posted about a 'muscular, bald, darker skinned' man walking his dogs off-leash, and while the dogs were well-behaved, his wife and his dogs were very upset, and agitated by this and he felt menaced.  Now it's go time.

A few days later, I posted the following - in Crime & Safety...
​

He responded quickly.

One killjoy posted a Google reverse image search, and blew the gag that it was Vin Diesel.  Bummer.  

At this point, the post went 8 comments deep, and hit all the Nextdoor hot buttons: threatened lawsuits, fines, back and forth accusations, really classic stuff. 

​The next day, I posted this:

Guessing I had been muted or blocked by the original poster...

​There was one more post to go, and the payoff.

Yes - you read that right, the couple complaining about the dog off leash
- always walks with their dogs off leash. 

You can catch Vin Diesel next summer in Fast and Furious 9.  

For the past 5 years, we've done a New Year's Day ride.  We take the bike path along C470 and stop in to many of the breweries along the way.

In Colorado, January 1 can be 50 degrees and sunny or it can be a brutal winter day.  One year we made it about 25 miles and hit 6 breweries.  

1/1/19 was winter.  And one of the roughest.  New Year's Eve was frigid all day, 5 degrees and snowed all day and into the night.

We woke up to 11 degrees and about 4" of snow.  We were meeting at 10:30am for an 11am start to hit Halfpenny Brewing at noon.

I set out all the stuff I wore just to try to stay warm.

Upper Body

• Giro ski helmet
• Helmet liner
• Ski goggles
• Neck tube
• Ski balm on the cheeks and nose
• Thin baselayer turtleneck
• Thicker baselayer
• Longsleeve cycling jersey
• Thermal cycling jacket
• Warmfront Koselig
• Burton ski synthetic down vest on the outside
• Leather / down backcountry gloves I bought for $20 at a thrift shop

Lower Body

• Paceline Products Embro - on legs, arms and feet
• Heavyweight full-length winter cycling bibs
• Midweight ski socks
• Diadora winter cycling boots

​Feeling like Randy from a Christmas story.
​

I don't have a fatbike, and the ice ruled out the CX bike.  I decided to ride my mountain bike.  A BH Lynx 4.8.  Earlier this summer, I put Hutchinson Squale 2.35 tubeless tires on it, and figured that would be enough of a footprint.

One new addition to our casual rides has been the JBL Clip 2 speaker.  Having tunes makes things just a bit better.

Here's a link to our Spotify playlist that day.
​

​

The cold was absolutely punishing.  Never rose above 15 degrees.  The bike path was plowed and an easy ride, but any underpass / tunnel - and there were several - had thick ice on entry and exit.  We had a few crashes.  A flat tire killed most of our body heat.

Then, the sidewalks along Colorado were buried under the snowfall and the splash from the plows - wet, mashed tater snow - about 6 inches.  Just a slog.

I don't have any ride pictures - between not wanting to deglove and the dicey conditions - the phone stayed away.

The breweries we hit were:

• HalfPenny
• Blue Spruce - and we ordered every appetizer on the menu there
• Grist

We rolled out at 11am, and arrived back at Grist as the sun was going down over the Denver foothills - about 430pm.

As we sat at Grist, we felt like we had been skiing all day.  Just wiped.  But a great start to 2019.

This week's episode features Siobhan of Women's Kit, one of the best cycling feed on Instagram.  She takes us through starting her cycling life as an adult and growing her confidence and skills.  Just a great chat - enjoy.
​Listen here on Soundcloud! 

This week's podcast episode takes us to Durango Colorado, where we talk to Kristin Carpenter-Ogden from her company, Verde Strategy.  She takes us from being an outdoor and climbing journalist to starting her PR firm, and discusses in detail why and how brands need to truly connect and engage with their customers.

In this week's episode, we talk to Jonathan Dunsmoor of Dunsmoor Law and some of the legal things entrepreneurs need to be thinking about as they start and grow a business.  

soundcloud.com/burntheboatspodcast/burn-the-boats-dunsmoor-law

Our latest podcast episode features the owner of Mercury Wheels.  We talk about what led to starting a business, shutting down an apparently successful sales channel, and why you add rosemary to a gin and tonic.

Listen now on Soundcloud!

Our guest on the Burn The Boats podcast takes us to Australia, where we talk about turning his passion for travel and search for great outdoor gear into the Tyres and Soles website.

Listen here on Soundcloud!