Wednesday Bits

A raven just chased Nedi into the apartment - then it turned around over my head and flew back out.  I'm very happy it didn't decide to drop a load while it was inside!  As you can tell, the local birds trust me, but they occasionally lose patience with the kits...   Not a whole lot going on right now.  The post position drawing for the Belmont Stakes is this afternoon - and I'll add that info when I get it.   Trainer D. Wayne Lukas, aged 74, is running Optimizer in the Belmont.  Yesterday, Lukas was walking in the barn, talking with a jockey's agent, when 6-year-old Hamazing Destiny reared up and struck the trainer on top of the head with a shod hoof.  Lukas said it wasn't something that he had wanted, especially with the Belmont on Saturday, but he went to the hospital, got stitches, declared himself fit, and went back to work at the barn.  ....  The second annual USA Pro Cycling Challenge will take place in Colorado from August 20 through the 26th.  The final leg of the tour is being hosted by Boulder. Boulder's stage takes place Aug. 25. Race participants will crank up Boulder Canyon, pedal across the Peak to Peak Highway, fly down South St. Vrain Canyon and wind -- not once but twice -- through downtown Boulder before hammering up the brutally steep Flagstaff Mountain to the finish line.

A cyclist on one of the hair pin turns going up Flagstaff Mountain.



Both wildfires in Larimer County are still burning - both the Stuart Hole fire and the Poudre Canyon blaze have fire fighters and air tankers at work, combating them.  The Stuart Hole fire was started by lightning, while the Poudre Canyon was started by an over-turned camp stove.  .....   After all the flap about Zoey Ripple being disappointed in being charged with felony trespass, after wandering in to a private residential home, the local police came up with some statistics.  There is a "drunken intruder" reported almost once a week to the Boulder PD.  They say that a lot more go unreported, especially in the areas around the college campus, because people don't want to "cause a fuss." A lot of residents in the University Hill area state that they have people urinating on their lawns and bushes at least once a week, during the weekends.  They also state there are numerous drunken intrusions year-round, and that since it's a college neighborhood, they just grin and bear it.  (I live across the street from married housing - and I do not grin and bear it.) But at least I don't live in the apartment complex where an extremely inebriated female college student was arrested because she was kicking every door in the hallways, and then going outside and kicking in the windows of the apartments.  After being arrested, she told police that she knew a friend of hers lived in that apartment complex, but she didn't know which apartment, so she was just kicking everything to find her friend.  (She had to get multiple stitches in her foot, but hadn't even realized that she had cut it on all the broken window glass.)