So I had a work thing to go to on Tuesday in Boulder, CO. So what do you think Igor and I decided to do...well duhHh we decided to spend the weekend in Boulder!!
We got to the airport via my new favorite mod of transport, uber (fyi haven't tried lyft yet but I will one of these days ). They board the plane, as is the way the Southwest A's first (I had an A, Igor had a B). So I got on the plane find us a spot save a seat for Igor and wait for him to get on. After what seemed like a long time I noticed no one else was getting on the plane. I thought "that can't be right, they have only boarded the A group." I wasn't wrong. Eventually one of the flight attendants gets on the horn and says there is bad weather in Denver and they aren't letting anyone land. So off the plane we all get and there is Igor coding away in one of the seats in the boarding area.
2 hours later they finally lift the weather ban and we get to go to Denver. We arrived in Denver at almost 9 PM and since I had booked us an apartment to stay in via airbnb.com we went in search of a whole foods or something of the like to get some grub to eat when we got there. As an aside part of the benefit of renting an apartment was that there would be a kitchen so we wouldn't have to eat out the whole time. Also, our airbnb place for 4 nights was the same price as one night in a hotel in Boulder, so I would say we definitely got the better end of the deal.
Anyway, we pick up the car and I put into the GPS "wholefoods" click on the one that looks the closest. We drive for a bit and then get to the exit make a couple of turns and realize... yep, this the wrong place. What happened? The closest whole foods to the airport is in Aurora and it's not a whole foods its the Whole Foods distribution center. So yeah, oopse.
Since all the other Whole foods closed at 9:30 PM which it was just about by this time, we had to come up with something else. We found that there are a bunch of Safeway's there so figured that would work and found one just outside Boulder in Westminster.
Then off we went with our car full of stuff to our airbnb place in a little town called Nederlands, just 30 minutes west of Boulder, population 1,550 (or something like that). We got there by 11 but then we had the lovely task of trying to find the house that our apartment was attached to in pitch black (there are no street lights outside the main street in Nederlands). I got out of the car and started to look around. When I couldn't find it Igor got out and started knocking on people doors to ask where #3 was. Eventually I found it up a hill and very difficult to see, just as Igor found someone to ask.
As we say every time weird things happen to us on vacation: "ADVENTURE!"
So we did find our place to sleep and quickly and quietly got all our stuff inside. In case you are wondering, the owners live upstairs, this is their basement that they have turned into an apartment (which is awesome) and they had left the door unlocked for us and the keys inside so we wouldn't need to come up and wake them when we got in, though the woman (Kim) was up anyway and came and said hi and made sure that we got in, ok.
Igor made us a quick dinner we turned on the Olympics and watch some of that while we ate. Igor went and took a shower, which seems to make a lot of noise and one of the house rules for the place (visa-vi the owner guidelines) was no noise after 9 PM. But when we checked with them in the morning (mostly because I was being paranoid) they said they didn't hear anything so, ok, cool.
So that was Friday and then Saturday woke up and the cold that had been brewing in me since Thursday finally kicked in. All sniffily, runny nose goodness, was mine to enjoy. lol We got out into the town of what the locals call "Ned", walked around the lake (reservoir, whatever) tried to find a trail around the whole thing (doesn't exist by the way) but had a great walk all the same. Talked to some local people on the road about the area, found the grocery store, a bunch of local coffee shops (most importantly) and then the visitors center where Igor had a lovely conversation with the guy in charge about where he should go running the next day. They settled on a 12 mile run that was "mostly down hill" and Igor set his heart on doing.
We took the rest of the morning to go back to our apartment, sit and chat with the owner (mike) and his wife (kim) a little bit. They were super nice people and invited us to use their BBQ and back yard area as much as we wanted.
A little after noon we headed out to get Igor on the road for his run. I was the wheels he was the legs and I drove ahead to meet him at the bottom of the hill and then take him either home or to Boulder, whichever. Of course since I was going to be a lot faster than him and just because in general I stopped many times along the way to get some of these great photos:
Igor and I had agreed that it would probably take him 1.5 hours to make the run so I made it down the hill in 45 minutes and waited at the bottom with the car next to a very nice little creek. I waited and waited and started to think about how the road on the way down the last couple of miles didn't really have a shoulder or a path for Igor to run on. Not that that had ever stopped him before, believe me if you saw where he ran in Costa Rica you would think him all the crazier :) Anyhow I decided I better try to catch him before he made it all the way down just to warn him. So I drove up the hill a ways and found a nice turn out spot where I had a fantastic view of the valley and enough room to hang out for a bit a wait for Igor. And so I waited.
It was almost to the 1.5 hour mark (2:45PM being the meet time at it was 2:30PM) and I still hadn't seen Igor. I knew I couldn't have missed him on the road. It's too narrow to miss a runner in little running shorts and a bright red muscle tee (believe me no one misses it. It's like a beacon of bizarre runner gear), but the seeds of doubt were starting to set in. I was just about to get in the car and drive to find him (his right knee has been a little bit of an issue for him in recent weeks after he tweaked it indoor rock climbing doing one of these types of moves:
it's called a drop knee (Igor has that same pretty green harness though this guys name is Adam Ondra and he is a professional, but Igor will kick his butt some day :p ).
Anyway, as I was saying before I so rudely distracted myself with fun climbing .gif files, I was just about to get in the car when I see the mix of red, shorty running shorts and tan skin jogging down the hill towards me. He smiled waved and when I yelled there wasn't much room on the road he waved me forward and said just a little further. I said ok fine. (somewhat disbelievingly). Nonetheless I drove on a bit further down the road and waited again. When next i saw him I told him this is where the hill gets really steep down hill and there wasn't a shoulder to run on. His response "two more miles! Just two more miles."
I said ok fine again and drove to the bottom of the hill to wait it out. I will say that every time I saw a car go up the hill I hope that they would see him and not turn him into a belarusian pancake. Where that sounds delicious it probably wouldn't have looked too good (most russian food doesn't look too good - but it usually is amazing).
Just so we are clear he made it just fine. :)
We had a change of clothes for him in the car. It wasn't too hot out and there was the creek that he went in rinsed in. We got him all sorted out and headed in to Boulder to walk around for a bit before heading back to Ned.
By the way Boulder is beautiful. More on that in the next post. For now pictures:
We got to the airport via my new favorite mod of transport, uber (fyi haven't tried lyft yet but I will one of these days ). They board the plane, as is the way the Southwest A's first (I had an A, Igor had a B). So I got on the plane find us a spot save a seat for Igor and wait for him to get on. After what seemed like a long time I noticed no one else was getting on the plane. I thought "that can't be right, they have only boarded the A group." I wasn't wrong. Eventually one of the flight attendants gets on the horn and says there is bad weather in Denver and they aren't letting anyone land. So off the plane we all get and there is Igor coding away in one of the seats in the boarding area.
2 hours later they finally lift the weather ban and we get to go to Denver. We arrived in Denver at almost 9 PM and since I had booked us an apartment to stay in via airbnb.com we went in search of a whole foods or something of the like to get some grub to eat when we got there. As an aside part of the benefit of renting an apartment was that there would be a kitchen so we wouldn't have to eat out the whole time. Also, our airbnb place for 4 nights was the same price as one night in a hotel in Boulder, so I would say we definitely got the better end of the deal.
Anyway, we pick up the car and I put into the GPS "wholefoods" click on the one that looks the closest. We drive for a bit and then get to the exit make a couple of turns and realize... yep, this the wrong place. What happened? The closest whole foods to the airport is in Aurora and it's not a whole foods its the Whole Foods distribution center. So yeah, oopse.
Since all the other Whole foods closed at 9:30 PM which it was just about by this time, we had to come up with something else. We found that there are a bunch of Safeway's there so figured that would work and found one just outside Boulder in Westminster.
Then off we went with our car full of stuff to our airbnb place in a little town called Nederlands, just 30 minutes west of Boulder, population 1,550 (or something like that). We got there by 11 but then we had the lovely task of trying to find the house that our apartment was attached to in pitch black (there are no street lights outside the main street in Nederlands). I got out of the car and started to look around. When I couldn't find it Igor got out and started knocking on people doors to ask where #3 was. Eventually I found it up a hill and very difficult to see, just as Igor found someone to ask.
As we say every time weird things happen to us on vacation: "ADVENTURE!"
So we did find our place to sleep and quickly and quietly got all our stuff inside. In case you are wondering, the owners live upstairs, this is their basement that they have turned into an apartment (which is awesome) and they had left the door unlocked for us and the keys inside so we wouldn't need to come up and wake them when we got in, though the woman (Kim) was up anyway and came and said hi and made sure that we got in, ok.
Igor made us a quick dinner we turned on the Olympics and watch some of that while we ate. Igor went and took a shower, which seems to make a lot of noise and one of the house rules for the place (visa-vi the owner guidelines) was no noise after 9 PM. But when we checked with them in the morning (mostly because I was being paranoid) they said they didn't hear anything so, ok, cool.
So that was Friday and then Saturday woke up and the cold that had been brewing in me since Thursday finally kicked in. All sniffily, runny nose goodness, was mine to enjoy. lol We got out into the town of what the locals call "Ned", walked around the lake (reservoir, whatever) tried to find a trail around the whole thing (doesn't exist by the way) but had a great walk all the same. Talked to some local people on the road about the area, found the grocery store, a bunch of local coffee shops (most importantly) and then the visitors center where Igor had a lovely conversation with the guy in charge about where he should go running the next day. They settled on a 12 mile run that was "mostly down hill" and Igor set his heart on doing.
We took the rest of the morning to go back to our apartment, sit and chat with the owner (mike) and his wife (kim) a little bit. They were super nice people and invited us to use their BBQ and back yard area as much as we wanted.
A little after noon we headed out to get Igor on the road for his run. I was the wheels he was the legs and I drove ahead to meet him at the bottom of the hill and then take him either home or to Boulder, whichever. Of course since I was going to be a lot faster than him and just because in general I stopped many times along the way to get some of these great photos:
Igor and I had agreed that it would probably take him 1.5 hours to make the run so I made it down the hill in 45 minutes and waited at the bottom with the car next to a very nice little creek. I waited and waited and started to think about how the road on the way down the last couple of miles didn't really have a shoulder or a path for Igor to run on. Not that that had ever stopped him before, believe me if you saw where he ran in Costa Rica you would think him all the crazier :) Anyhow I decided I better try to catch him before he made it all the way down just to warn him. So I drove up the hill a ways and found a nice turn out spot where I had a fantastic view of the valley and enough room to hang out for a bit a wait for Igor. And so I waited.
It was almost to the 1.5 hour mark (2:45PM being the meet time at it was 2:30PM) and I still hadn't seen Igor. I knew I couldn't have missed him on the road. It's too narrow to miss a runner in little running shorts and a bright red muscle tee (believe me no one misses it. It's like a beacon of bizarre runner gear), but the seeds of doubt were starting to set in. I was just about to get in the car and drive to find him (his right knee has been a little bit of an issue for him in recent weeks after he tweaked it indoor rock climbing doing one of these types of moves:
it's called a drop knee (Igor has that same pretty green harness though this guys name is Adam Ondra and he is a professional, but Igor will kick his butt some day :p ).
Anyway, as I was saying before I so rudely distracted myself with fun climbing .gif files, I was just about to get in the car when I see the mix of red, shorty running shorts and tan skin jogging down the hill towards me. He smiled waved and when I yelled there wasn't much room on the road he waved me forward and said just a little further. I said ok fine. (somewhat disbelievingly). Nonetheless I drove on a bit further down the road and waited again. When next i saw him I told him this is where the hill gets really steep down hill and there wasn't a shoulder to run on. His response "two more miles! Just two more miles."
I said ok fine again and drove to the bottom of the hill to wait it out. I will say that every time I saw a car go up the hill I hope that they would see him and not turn him into a belarusian pancake. Where that sounds delicious it probably wouldn't have looked too good (most russian food doesn't look too good - but it usually is amazing).
Just so we are clear he made it just fine. :)
We had a change of clothes for him in the car. It wasn't too hot out and there was the creek that he went in rinsed in. We got him all sorted out and headed in to Boulder to walk around for a bit before heading back to Ned.
By the way Boulder is beautiful. More on that in the next post. For now pictures:
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