Hwy 93: Golden to Boulder

I didn't have much time to sightsee, but on my way up to Boulder to see Christina and Jeremy, I took some pictures from the car. The first is looking at the Rocky Mtns to the left. The picture below is looking at the Plains to the right. Wonderful edge to walk.

Bethany and I lived in Boulder for the year we were at the University of Colorado. Actually, Bethany was there for half the year, and I for the whole. We rode Hwy 93 back and forth all the time between home (or classes, in Boulder) and NREL (in Golden). The surroundings are beautiful. The road is great for driving, if nobody else is on it (which rarely happens). But, it can get scary when the weather's bad with driving side-winds. Christina reminded me that the other, scarier part is the road raging crowd on it. There are a certain few that feel it is a speedway and drive like nutcases. Happens everywhere, but takes some of the fun out of this drive at times.

Golden, Colorado

Who knew they had a statue of Guthrie and me in downtown Golden. :) Actually, Bethany usually starts making comments about having forgotten what my face looks like long before I can grow the beard out that long. Ergo, rarely, if ever, does my beard look like that.

Here are two more shots from downtown Golden. I used to come down here for lunch sometimes when I worked at the solar company and at NREL. There is a kayak course on part of Clear Creek, out of sight in the picture. Evidently, it's still a decent trout stream in town. I watched two guys flyfishing. I used to fish this stream up in the mountains further.

Longing for the far horizon

A couple of shots from my recent, short trip out to Colorado. These two are of Denver, where I lived for a year. I have dreams of the big open skies. I miss the West. Pittsburgh and SW Pennsylvania are gorgeous in their own right, but don't tug at my soul like the intersection of the Great Plains and the Rocky Mountains.

Southern sun

Here is a shot of the outside of Southern Sun in Boulder. It should have gone with the basil blue burger post...

Basil blue burger - nostalgia of young love

So, I happened to find myself in Colorado at the Southern Sun brewery on Sunday eating and drinking with Christina and her husband, Jeremy. It was nice to get to see them for a while during the short trip.

The Southern Sun and Mountain Sun brewery/pubs were instrumental to Bethany's and my sprouting relationship back when we were grad students in Boulder. Being the special masochistic idiots that we are, we were there only two people in our program to have signed up for a certain set of insane workload classes our first semester at the University of Colorado. Naturally, when two ueber-geeks find each other like that, they start hanging out. We had a 4-hour break between classes twice or three times a week. Our solution to passing this big block of time was to frequent the brewery, drink great beer and eat basil blue cheeseburgers and fries. Bethany and this burger were my vector back into eating meat, as I had been a meta-vegatarian at the time (maybe pesco-vegatarian is the correct term, as I was occasionally eating fish). From their menu:

BASIL BLUE CHEESEBURGER
blue cheese crumbles and basil blended into a dressing, then poured on the burger and garnished with a fresh basil leaf.

We did eventually leave the program at CU, but we're happy and still together, and still like to get burgers with bleu cheese and basil.