My first week in Colorado

After packing up the truck took longer than originally expected, my friend Brad and I set out from Columbus, OH at about 6:30 PM on April 29th heading towards our final destination of Denver, CO. We drove till about 3:30 AM and landed at the Travelodge in Columbia, MO. After about 5 hours of sleep, we set out once again and entered Kansas, all 424 miles of nothing, they call Kansas. The mileage we got was so awful, I don't even want to add up how much money I spent on gas. So we arrived in Denver shortly after 7:00 PM on April 30th, which was unfortunate because the office of the Inn-town Suites where I'm staying right now, closes at 7:00 PM. We saw the manager in the closed up office, and he was kind enough to let us check in late, so the crisis of having to shell out money for a single night hotel was averted. On May 1st, we unpacked the U-Haul into a storage unit that will hold everything until I get my aparment on May 26th. After unpacking, Brad and I headed up to Boulder to visit another one of our housemates from college, Brett. He also caught Rocky Mountain Fever and moved to Colorado. Once in Boulder, we ate dinner at the Lazy Dog restaurant, which was pretty fun, but not as fun as what was about to happen at the Walnut Street Brewery. During dinner, John C. McGinley Dr. Cox from Scrubs (you may know him as one of the Bobs from Office Space, the self proclaimed Michael Bolton fan) walked in with his new wife and sat down a table away from us. We were all star struck, but Brad was the only one brave enough to approach him in the middle of his chicken wings and say, "You're hilarious". Brad got the thumbs up from Dr. Cox, and we headed back to Denver. The following day we headed into downtown Denver and checked out where I'll be working. The human services office is right next to the capitol building, which is incredible. After tooling around the 16th Street Mall, we headed to the Real World house, Coors field, and the river front where there's an REI. Today, we played some tennis, and then drove out to the Red Rocks Ampitheatre. Wow! I had been there before, but I had forgotten how incredible it is to sit in the middle of the Red Rocks. After that, we still felt ambitious, so we drove over to Mt. Evans, the highest road in the U.S. I figured the road would be closed, since it's still really early to head up to 14,000 ft, which it was, but we still made it up to the frozen Echo Lake, which was surrounded by snow and views of snow capped peaks. It was another great day in Colorado. I guess I forgot to mention this, but the beer here is incredible. We've been to two breweries already, and both had great beer, plus there's Fat Tire:) Anyhow, tomorrow morning we head back to Columbus. Unfortunately, I'll be returning without Brad on Sunday.

Stay tuned,
Ryan