http://denver.yourhub.comThe latest blog posts in The Denver Newspaper Agency YourHub.comen-usnews@yourhub.com(c) 2009, YourHub.com5It's morning. The sun ascends in the east as you step out your door. The shadows in the streets shrink slowly and birds sing the morning gossip to one another. Dew from rain the night before evaporates in the warming air. You breathe deeply. Your muscles loosen with each stride along the sidewalk...http://denver.yourhub.com/CastleRock/Blogs/Archive/Outdoors/Blog~519629.aspx9/10/2008 5:58:01 PMJames Freeman Picture a salt-of-the earth man with dark skin, big eyes, a mustache, and slicked down hair sitting on a stool in a bar with plank floors and chipped walls. He's wearing a pressed white shirt and a bow tie. The inward curve of a steel guitar rests on his leg. The fingers of his right hand strum u...http://denver.yourhub.com/CastleRock/Blogs/Archive/Outdoors/Blog~512134.aspx8/23/2008 10:16:48 AMJames Freeman Regular unleaded gas costs almost four dollars a gallon these days. Think back to ten years ago. What would you have done if you knew fuel prices would put a vice grip on your activities within a decade? How would you have changed your life to compensate? Then again, maybe you're too rich or apat...http://denver.yourhub.com/CastleRock/Blogs/Archive/Blog~505209.aspx8/6/2008 2:12:59 PMJames Freeman My wife Loni poked her head out of our half-open apartment door into the burning July morning sun and looked around. Then she turned toward our guest Terry Van Best, standing next to me a few feet away and said, "No one's out there. Leave before me and Jim so the other tenants won't see us with y...http://denver.yourhub.com/CastleRock/Blogs/Archive/Blog~502784.aspx8/1/2008 6:31:37 AMJames Freeman I meandered up a steep hill on 6th street at midnight in my waterproof hunting boots. My clothes were protected from the wet blizzard snow falling like bombs by a hand-me-down-rain suit that would later take a pair of vice grips and a surgical knife to remove. I'd had a few that night (Even peopl...http://denver.yourhub.com/CastleRock/Blogs/Archive/Outdoors/Blog~500507.aspx7/27/2008 10:44:09 AMJames Freeman Exercising outdoors can help your mental and physical health, but its only part of the fitness equation. If you want to improve your quality of life, you have to eat better. Cars work more efficiently if you give them clean fuel and regular maintenance. Your body functions the same. Some peop...http://denver.yourhub.com/CastleRock/Blogs/Archive/Outdoors/Blog~495986.aspx7/15/2008 12:04:32 PMJames Freeman Everyone knows about the Castle Rock. It's one of the most recognizable features in Colorado. Authors and historians have featured it in their works. Rising out of the landscape like a gnawed-on carrot cake atop a mound of broccoli, hungry highway travelers look at it with longing. Very few p...http://denver.yourhub.com/CastleRock/Blogs/Archive/Outdoors/Blog~488069.aspx6/24/2008 1:27:45 PMJames Freeman The suburbs make me grind my teeth. Look out your window. It doesn't matter if you're rich or poor (the middle class is fast dissolving with the aging baby boomers). Unless you live on the edges of town near the llama farms or ranches owned by people rich enough to burn their money on horses,...http://denver.yourhub.com/CastleRock/Blogs/Archive/Outdoors/Blog~483983.aspx6/14/2008 9:17:01 AMJames Freeman A couple years ago, I was fat. Yeah. Fat. Let's not glaze it over with sweet euphemisms. Of course, I didn't see myself that way at the time. The guy looking back at me was 'strong and a little overweight.' That's the kind of line I fed myself, along with six meals of junk and snacks every day....http://denver.yourhub.com/CastleRock/Blogs/Archive/Outdoors/Blog~482977.aspx6/12/2008 7:32:47 AMJames Freeman