Spent a very pleasant couple of hours this afternoon meeting up with bunches of my cousins on my fathers side for a small family reunion. We all met here in Denver at Observatory Park around noon for a pot luck lunch and some time to sit down and chat. Some of these cousins are ones that I haven't seen for 10 or more years, so it was certainly fun to catch up a bit with them. Then of course there were their children and children's children along also, many of whom I had never met before. So we sat around and did what we Klock's seem to do best, which is eat, and then we chatted each other up for a couple more hours after that. Got some good information that I can now add to my own family tree, as well as some really cool old photo's that some of my cousins had. The plan is to have a low key bar-b-q tomorrow afternoon in Fort Collins at one of my cousins home. It should be even better as far as having more time to chat with everyone.

     Went and had a nice meal over at El Tejado after we all split, with one of my friends here in Denver. Joe and I go back a long, long time and it was fun to catch up with his news from the last few months. I tried to get him to go on to the local contra dance with me afterwards, but he's still being obstinate about going back to it, even though he once seemed to enjoy dancing, and was actually pretty good at it. Ah well... it's his loss.

    Tonight was the once a month 'Zesty', or advance dance contra dance, out at Berkley Park. Wondered at one point if I was actually going to make it out there, as it was raining like crazy when I started out from south Denver. Lot's of big puddles on the highway and full gutters that slowed traffic down but never stopped it completely. Made it there in good time and had a wonderful 3 hours of dancing in all. Really fun to see and dance with all these people that I haven't really seen for the last 10-11 months. The music was good and the calling was certainly more than adequate, so a bit better than the dance last night. I was a little worried that the altitude might get to me tonight as these dances are usually a little more vigorous and faster than the ones done last night. I felt myself breathing a little heavier than just a walking pace would produce tonight, but certainly nothing that I couldn't handle. So maybe all that dancing and hiking over the past year has helped.

    With all of that being said though I still wish that I could of been at the three day dance in Coshocton Ohio this weekend. 'River Rendezvous' just sounds like it would of been a wonderful dance, plus I miss dancing and seeing some of the people that I know are there without me. At least I got to talk to one of them tonight, that was a very nice treat.

    Time for bed though. I'm meeting up with friends tomorrow about our river trip to Montana in a couple of weeks. I would imagine that we will do a bit of paddling and then figure out gear and meals over lunch somewhere. Looking forward to seeing all of these friends again also. It has been way to long for most of them.