Hey friends! In this Q2 newsletter, you'll stumble across: a killer of a trail race, a pink octagon shaped house, the world's best carrot cake recipe, a surprise road trip, designing a custom suit, maybe a castle party, an insane update from my favorite app Google Maps and more. Figured I'd share some of the neat things I've been seeing.
🗽 New York: Breakneck Point Trail Marathon
This past November, Luke and I ran the NYC Marathon through my favorite nonprofit: the Chris Klug Foundation. This is the way to run the NYC Marathon. You have a very unlikely shot at getting in through their lottery system. It's a 2-3% acceptance rate. Instead, they issue a limited number of tickets to charity partners where you can join their team, raise money for a good cause and run what many people argue is the best big marathon's on the planet. Shoutout to our friend's, Kyle and Mike who also ran it!
Almost exactly 6 months later to the date, we took on a race that Luke had been wanting to do for quite a while: the Breakneck Point Trail Marathon. It features over 8,000ft of elevation gain and a little scrambling up big boulder. It was a beast. It kicked our ass. It was well organized, was a beautiful course and had well stocked aid stations. They had Mambas. I didn't have any but I couldn't remember the last time I saw them. They also had Huma gels. I don't like eating the gross chemical whatever gels and these are chia seed based and seem a little "better for you". I took handfuls of them at every aid station and have been using them on my long runs and bike rides since. They are my favorite gel now: delicious flavors and very smooth easy to get down. While they are a little pricey, I plan on buying them for future endurance endeavors.
Armour-Steiner Octagon House
On this same trip to New York, on the way up to little town of Beacon where the race was near, we stopped by the Armour-Steiner Octagon House. I subscribe to the Accidentally Wes Anderson email newsletter (it's a good one) and discovered this unique octagon shaped house an hour north of NYC. The owner, Joseph Lombardi, is an architect who has gone to great lengths to return the house back to it's original details. Worth a visit. I personally enjoyed the oddities room as well as the greenhouse outside. Very Wes Anderson-esque.
Has anyone else been to any of the Dia Museums? We also stopped to the Beacon location and it was incredible. An absolute must.
🚗 The Colorado Bro Trip
While my partner, Maddie was in Missouri for a bachelorette party, I organized a Colorado roadtrip with a few friends. And they let me plan the entire thing. Keeping it all mostly a secret from them until we were actually living it. When planning this, I had considered a few routes but ultimately engineered it around a list of activities that I thought would be most fun or unique. My goal was to pack in as many unique and adventurous experiences as possible, making the most of a long weekend roadtrip sprint. I shared packing lists with the friends and sent their partners the itineraries so they could be in the know and in case of emergency. The packing lists naturally revealed many of the activities for the weekend but not the specifics so I think it was still fun for them.
Here's what we did:
Thursday:
- Drove from Denver to Westcliffe, a Dark Sky town
Friday:
- Willow Winds Alpaca Farm: An alpaca farm with an incredible Airbnb with the largest houseplants I had ever seen. We stayed here Thursday night. The owner, Annie, is a blast and showed us all around the farm the next morning and taught us about alpacas. Would highly recommend both a stay at the Airbnb and a tour of the farm.
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Bishop Castle: Alright this one's interesting. It had been on my list for a while. The place is as you'd think based on photos. It's weird. Unique. Fun to explore. Basically, this guy who owned this place was a crazy tinkerer and built this castle with all sorts of bizarre and truly sketchy features. The guy who built it had signage all over the place with some realllly hot takes which took away from the experience. Glad we saw it; don't need to go back.
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Royal Gorge Class IV/V Rafting: Had been whitewater rafting a few times in Colorado and it's been a blast each time. Had never rafted the Royal Gorge. It's iconic to Colorado and is home to some of the wildest rapids. We went through River Runners. They were great. We saw a river otter, a mountain goat and had a really freakin' fun time rafting. It seems like mid-late May is the time to go for best water levels & conditions.
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Paddleboarding on Twin Lakes: This was ambitious. It was cold. Real cold. We were all hesitant but figured: we're here. We have the paddleboards. It's beautiful. Let's just go for it, even for a little bit. We did. It was worth it. Twin Lakes is a cool little town near Leadville and the lakes are backdropped by incredible mountains. It's scenic. We ended the day with pizza from Mountain High Pies and a unique stay at FREIGHT.
Saturday:
- I had planned for us to take on Quandary Peak. One of the shorter and less technical 14ers in Colorado. I was fighting a nasty cold and it wasn't in the cards. Instead, we picked an easier hike near Leadville and slept in.
- After the hike, we stopped back in Leadville, got a bite to eat and then took off to Breckenridge where we had planned to be with the 14er and where we'd be staying that night.
- Breckenridge Troll: We went and saw the Breckenridge Troll. I wasn't sure about this but saw it on the map and had heard about it and figured why not. I was wrong. This manmade troll is incredible. And what's more incredible is that there are like 150 of them. You can find their website and see a map of all of them and even check them off. I freakin' love this!
- Everyone was exhausted from Friday and then the hike so after the troll, we chilled out and played cards at a brewery. We thrifted for fun outfits for the next day where we'd be Spring skiing at Arapahoe Basin.
Sunday:
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Gay Basin: It was Gay Basin! Pride weekend at A-Basin. We skied a few laps and then joined in for the skiing parade. Everyone's first! This was real fun.
🇹🇭 Bangkok: Custom Suit & Delicious Fruit
A few thoughts & nuggets after a trip to Thailand, including three days in Bangkok. We did a food tour on our first full day in Bangkok and it was really fun. We got taxi'd around in a tuk tuk where we also discovered that many of the tuk tuk's let you connect to their own Bluetooth speakers so you can DJ. We tried some classic Thai dishes, learned about Thai culture, Bangkok and more. It also showed us a few neighborhoods that we ended up going back to later to explore more of. One neighborhood that we went back to later was the Charoenkrung district. It's very artsy, has lots of art galleries, and some good restaurants.
If you wanted to have like the most fun day ever, find a tuk tuk and pre negotiate a price to have them drive you around town for like 2 hours at night and just DJ with your friends. This would be a blast.
Grab is Thailand's version of Uber. Use it. It's cheap and usually pretty quick to get one. You can also call a motorcycle. We did this a few times. Definitely super dangerous however Bangkok has some insane traffic and if you're in a hurry or want a thrill, it could be worth trying once or twice.
Custom tailoring: My friend, Jack went to Vietnam recently and got a custom pea coat made. How fun! This inspired me to look into the same, but for a custom suit in Thailand. There are a million tailors here. In Bangkok and Chiang Mai, they are all over the place. We went to AMBFA Bespoke Tailor. Overall, I am very happy with the suit. I went in with a very specific color in mind and after looking through a ton of different fabrics, they were able to find the exact one. You do an initial fitting, followed by another fitting a day or two later and then usually they'll have it ready to go for one more final fitting. There were a few hiccups but by the final fitting, they had the suit exactly how I had hoped. After negotiating, I paid about $400. I'm very happy with it!
Fruit markets: Thailand has some incredible fruit. Mango everywhere. Rambutan. Dragon fruit. Jackfruit. Longan. And the famous stinky durian. There are markets all over the place, many of which have fruit stands where you can get any of these. They are fun to try. While less exotic that the others, mango is my clear favorite. I bought 3 lbs of dried mango to bring home.
LiverMan 100
LiverMan 100 was gnarly. Insane. Preposterous. What is LiverMan 100? It's a 100 mile triathlon that myself and a few friends dreamed up two years ago. Last year was the inaugural event. This was the 2nd go around, with a new and improved course. Here's what went down.
Friday, 6/20: Threw a welcome party at my place. It was great to see so many friends all together and meeting new people. Maddie made spaghetti and meatballs. For like 28 people. It was delicious. She's amazing. We did a quick briefing for the next day.
Saturday, 6/21: 7am start at Chatfield had us up early. We had to blow up a few SUPs and get a few things in order and ready to go. Went in traditional triathlon order with a 1 mile swim. Then, an 83 mile bike ride. And finished it all off with the Boulder Skyline Traverse. 5 out of 6 solo challengers completed the full LiverMan 100. Our last group finished at 11:56pm.
Sunday, 6/22: After not much sleep, we hosted a breakfast sendoff to recap & celebrate the day. It's fun to see everyone after raging for 17 hours. Then we had a pool party!
Big thank you to all of our brand partners: Magic Mind, BAR U EAT, Goodwipes, Newton Running, Ride with GPS, Chamois Butt'r, Grillo's Pickles AND Best Day Brewing!
🎬 Piece by Piece Documentary
On my flight to Thailand, I watched Pharrell Williams's documentary twice. It takes place in a LEGO universe. It's called "Piece by Piece." I liked Pharrell before watching the documentary but the LEGO element had me going in with low expectations. I enjoyed the movie. I like Pharrell a lot. I also had no idea how many hits he had produced. It's worth a watch.
🌳 Mile High Tree Tour
This was the 2nd iteration of a tree tour that I have hosted. Last year we did one on bikes; it was nice because we could cover more ground. It did mean a little more coordination to keep us all together. Out of simplicity and because a few of the trees I wanted to highlight were in the Denver Botanic Gardens, I led this tour as a walking tour this year.
I tried to incorporate activities along the way to jazz it up a bit. We tried grounding in Cheesman Park. We also drew our dream treehouses. One of my favorite spots on the tour was in the Botanic Gardens where all the tiny trees are. These trees have been grafted and grow incredibly slowly which means you'll see Giant Sequoias that don't look like Giant Sequoias at all. I find it fascinating.
🏰 Anyone want to go to a castle party?
I found a castle in Pennsylvania on Airbnb. It claims to be the largest Airbnb. I wanna book this thing and try to fill it up for a long weekend. It has a drawbridge. Basketball courts. Secret passageways. I think it holds like 90 people. Who wants to do this?
🥕 The Perfect Carrot Cake Recipe
And it can be made dairy free (dairy free cream cheese & dairy free yogurt). Alison Roman has hands down the best carrot cake recipe of all time. Maddie has made it a few times now. I like it a lot.
📍 Google Maps: My Favorite App
Google Maps is my favorite app. They released an update a while back which allows you to add emojis to your saved lists. It makes it really easy to see all the different categories and lists that you have on Maps. I have lists for smoothie spots, nice gardens that I see, restaurants, cool trees, music venues that I like or want to see a show at. If you want any of these lists, I'm constantly adding to them and I'd be happy to share them with you.
Recently though, Google came out with another update that I love. They have a saved list for 'Screenshots'. It will now scan your photos for screenshots and it will give you the option to save them under that list. You can screenshot a photo someone shared on Instagram and it will likely be able to identify it on Maps. I tried it with a photo someone shared of Stonehenge and it picked it up instantly. I haven't tried it with more obscure locations yet. You could screenshot an article that lists out cool things to do in a city that you're traveling to or a list of your cities best restaurants and quickly save them all. The only downside is that it saves them all under the Screenshots saved list which means you don't get any of your personal categorization. Cool feature though!
🚦NYC Traffic Cam Photobooth
Stumbled across this fun website that lets you take a photo from a traffic cam. It's in NYC. And some other cities too I think. Maddie and I tried it. Next time, I want to get a little closer and do it with a group of friends.
🥤 Smoothie Roundup
I have been drinking my fair share of smoothies lately. Here are some of my favorites:
- Mystical Blends Cafe: The best smoothies in Denver that I have tried. There are few others that could be contenders that are on my list. But for now, Mystical Blends holds the top spot.
- Khun Kae's Juice Bar: Chiang Mai, Thailand. The smoothies are 50THB which equates to like $1.50. I had 1 if not 2 every single day while I was there. They have many options (almost too many) as well as fresh juices and smoothie bowls. They were very quick and the smoothies were refreshing.
- Green Giraffe Bar: Also in Denver. A smoothie truck. They were at the City Park Farmer's Market. I had the Ape Shake. It was blue. I had never seen a smoothie this color and I was a little unsure but my curiosity got the best of me. It ended up being really tasty and I would have another. I linked the Google Business Profile, however, because they are a food truck you will want to check their socials to see where they're actually at.
- Healthy in Color: In Beacon, New York. This is where the Breckneck Marathon was held. It's a cute town and they have this nice little smoothie shop. We came here the day after the marathon. The owners are very nice and make great smoothies and food. I also had a waffle. All natural, organic, healthy ingredients. I will get a smoothie from them if I am ever in Beacon again.
That's it from me. I hope you found something interesting in this Q2 newsletter! Send me an email or message me IG:@theianpauley with any comments or thoughts.