Uraling to a farm and meeting a "big toys" kind of guy.

On the 19th of June, I had agreed to meet a co-worker friend of mine at the home of one of his friends.  Oscar's friend was named Tony and the picture painted for me by Oscar of  Tony's penchant for "big boy toys" had me intrigued.  Oscar was also going to show me about welding at the same time and since that's a skill I need to learn with Ural ownership......

On the way to Boulder, I meandered through southern Denver and passed through it's "Designer District".  One of the stops I like to make is the "Articulated Wall" that is on display there:

Natasha at the "Articulated Wall" in Denver's Designer Center

After these shots I took the more sedate route to Boulder, using CO93 instead of the super slabs.  On the way, I shot this rocky ridge formation near the town of Leyden which always catches one's eye:

On CO93, near Leyden exit.

We all met at Tony's place, a designated "historic" farm near Boulder on the far eastern outskirts of the city.  The place is quite old but not bad in shape.  Due to its historic designation, Tony (who's renting the place), is not allowed to modify the exterior of the farm house and outlying barns and sheds but the owner can pretty much do what he wants with the insides.  What it boils down to is lots of storage space for all Tony's stuff.

Tony's rental home

As you can see above, a rustic looking barn on a farm.  Natasha was parked under the cool shade of one of the many trees on the property.  You can see a large trailer on the left further on, it was the main reason Oscar and crew was assembling at this farm.

You see, Tony is building himself a monster rock-crawler.  As part of the process, he'd bought five army-surplus truck axles.  These were the kind of axles the army uses on its biggest trucks and Tony hopes to use them to navigate the rough terrain endemic of the rock-crawling avocation.

Future Rock-Crawler axles, former Army-surplus gear.

Tony is not a man to think in normal small measures.  Each of the axles above, and he bought five of them, weighs over 2500 lbs each!  Can you image the beast of a machine he's got in mind?  I can't, but am sure I'll be seeing it sometime in the future.

The axles weighed so much that a small forklift was rented by Tony to offload them and store them in one of the sheds dotting the farm.

Here's Tony offloading the cases containing the axles

Tony was actually quite masterful in his handling of the forklift, he ended up putting all five shipping crates inside this one shed.
Quite impressive.

The rest of the day was spent helping Tony re-organize all the stuff he'd moved up here from Arizona.  It was a lot of stuff and I am told there's two more large truckloads to come!  The man sure has lots of "big boy toys", to include apparently a boat capable of holding 14 people.  I left shortly after Oscar started welding a couple of welding tables together for Tony and before the really hard work of offloading a hot tub from another trailer was started.

 Natasha resting in the shade while we moved stuff around

Best part of the day?  Giving Oscar's infant son Stevie a ride in the sidecar rig, safe in his mother's arms and Natasha rolling at less than 2 mph at most throughout the grassy areas comprising Tony's farmhouse rental property:

Here Stevie seems to be giving me a questioning look:

"what are you doing there and what am I doing here?"

This was shot after a couple of circuits of the grassy areas around the multiple sheds/barns on the property.

As you can see, Stevie took it all in stride.