Rocktober

Around here, Rocktober is the term that refers to the Colorado Rockies when they're in the playoffs and everyone's getting excited about it.

Since the Rockies aren't anywhere near being postseason contenders, I'm hijacking the term for my own uses. I'm going to use it in reference to the fact that the month of October absolutely ROCKS.

For someone who LOVES two sports -- Major League Baseball and NFL football -- no time of year is better. The baseball playoffs start on Wednesday. The NFL season is really getting into the regular season grind.

The weather is perfect in October. Temperatures are usually between about 50 and 70 degrees. Cool and damp is how I like it. October usually brings a good chunk of clouds and some rain (but not too much). The leaves on the trees are turning. Scenery is beautiful, and almost every day feels like you can put on a sweatshirt and either go outside to play some football, or sit by a window and read while it rains outside. It's just gorgeous.

The sports.
The scenery.
The weather.

ROCKtober is the greatest month ever.

Happy 4th (kinda long... sorry)

We think we kind of have a little tradition-type thingy on Independence Day. For two years in a row now we've hung out with our friend Alisa to celebrate the 4th (and also, for two years in a row now we've had plans in the evening that make it impossible for us to watch 4th of July fireworks with her... so our hanging out tradition is apparently limited to the daylight). So yesterday, the 4th of July, we drove up to Alisa and Alex (her husband)'s place. We basically just hung out and chatted with them and with Leah (who, as you know because you read my last post, was visiting from Chicago) and had a fabulous time. Alisa and Alex have a dog named Asher who's just wonderful. He's fun to play with and he's oh-so cute.

We were having so much fun with our friends that we truly didn't want to leave, but we sorta had to for a really weird reason.

We had tickets to a Major League Soccer game.

Neither Elizabeth nor I know anything about soccer, but a month ago we were given free tickets to a Colorado Rapids soccer game for the 4th of July. The main reason we were going was because we had heard that the fireworks show following the game was one of the best in the state. So, we reluctantly left our wonderful friends and headed home to get ready for our night at the soccer stadium. It was supposed to rain, so we tried to dress for it. Elizabeth did a better job. She wore a coat. I put on a sweatshirt. I figured that it might rain, but it's been 90+ degrees here for over three weeks, so I wasn't terribly worried about the temperature.

We pulled into the stadium parking lot, which isn't a lot so much as a grass and dirt field that appears to stretch for at least 50 miles in every direction (the stadium is seriously in the middle of nowhere). We brought our little umbrella in with us, just in case.

We got to our seats (really good seats!) about 15 minutes into the game. It didn't take us long to realize that watching soccer live at the stadium is about 1000% better than trying to watch it on tv. We had only been there a couple of minutes when the home team scored a goal right in front of our seats. It was pretty exciting for a few minutes.

At halftime Elizabeth and I were chatting, and realizing that we were enjoying the game more than we had anticipated, and then I looked up and saw it. The Big Black Cloud of Certain Death. The cloud that was rolling in (very quickly, by the way) overhead was not dark blue or dark gray. It didn't look like any actual cloud I'd ever seen before. It looked like a cross between the Smoke Monster from Lost and The Nothing from The Never Ending Story. It was big, it was black, and it looked like it was carrying certain death (hence its name).

A few minutes before the game was set to resume that cloud placed itself right over the stadium and blew itself open. It poured on us. We headed up to the concourse, which was roofed, to get ourselves out of the rain a little bit (our cheap little umbrella did what it could, but it couldn't do much). Everyone else at the game had the same idea we did. We watched the first 15 minutes of the second half jam-packed in a huge crowd of people huddled under the only roof at the stadium.

Soon the rain started to die down a little. It kept raining, but it wasn't pouring anymore. At some point when the Big Black Cloud of Certain Death descended on us, the temperature had apparently gone from the 75-80 range to the 35-40 range. It was COLD.

We made it through the rest of the game, but we were very wet. I was soaked to the bone, pretty much. Elizabeth was probably doing a little better, because her coat was better than my sweatshirt, but her jeans were soaked, so it wasn't comfortable at all. After the game ended the announcer reassured everyone that the fireworks would go on as planned despite the rain. They opened up the field to spectators because there are a lot of seats in the stadium where you can't see the fireworks very well. Ours, we were told, were some of them. So we headed down to the field. It was still raining, and our umbrella was still not great at its job, so we figured we could probably find some empty seats high enough that they were under part of the overhang, but where the fireworks could still be seen. We asked one of the stadium workers where the fireworks would be launched from. She told us, and we headed up and found some great seats that weren't being rained on because they were under the stadium's overhang.

We sat there, feeling good about our choice... but then the wind shifted and we were being rained on again. Shortly thereafter the fireworks began, but they weren't being launched from where we were told they would be. So the roof was in our way and we couldn't see. So we got up and headed down to the field so we could see them. The wind was apparently blowing directly from the fireworks to our faces, because there was no possible way to position the umbrella to stop the rain AND for us to see the fireworks. The rain was coming straight out of the fireworks. So we watched most of the show before we realized that we were kind of miserable. We headed out of the stadium and toward the car, keeping an eye on the fireworks show. As we were walking to the car we stopped for the fireworks finale. The smoke was so thick from so many fireworks that you couldn't even see some of the big ones exploding. It was crazy. It would have been an awesome show if we weren't freezing and wet.

Then we remembered that the parking lot, which used to be grass and dirt, was now a swamp of mud. Getting back to our car was an adventure in itself, and trying not to get stuck in the mud as we drove out of the parking lot was another one.

In the end we decided three things:
1. The game would have been really fun if it hadn't rained.
2. The fireworks would have been really fun if it hadn't rained.
3. We should have blown off the game and hung out with our friends all night long.

Frustrating

What's frustrating about Denver weather is that you can ALWAYS count on a major huge snowstorm in March. What's more frustrating is that this year's is choosing to come on the very day my family is supposed to be traveling through town on their way back home to California. It's going to be a 24-hour storm that just might re-route my family and make it so that I don't get to see them tomorrow night.

The "H" word

I've been trying to hold the "H" word in for quite some time, but I can't take it anymore, so I'm going to say it. I HATE snow.

I'm responsible for making sure all the sidewalks around our church are shoveled, snow-blown, or whatever else I have to do so that people won't slip and fall. It's snowed every Sunday morning so far this month. I'm asking for ONE February Sunday free of snow-blowing responsibilities. It's additionally irritating because I'm in the midst of leading a Sunday morning class.

I don't know how many of the last few Mondays it's snowed too, but when it snows on Mondays it makes my already-too-full-and-too-frustrating Mondays even worse.

Sundays and Mondays are the only days of the week I REALLY don't want it to snow... and I'm pretty sure those are the only days it's snowed for the past month.

That's me complaining. I'm done now. It's off my chest.

Weather

So here's the weird/slightly frustrating thing about weather in Colorado: A simple five-day forecast kind of look isn't enough. You have to watch a detailed forecast on the news or check out the hour-by-hour on weather.com

In Iowa, if it's going to be 65 degrees today, you can count on it being pretty cool in the morning and warming up gradually throughout the day, hitting it's hottest point around 3 or 4 in the afternoon and then slowly getting cooler throughout the evening.

In Santa Maria, if it's going to be 70 degrees today (and it is, because it always is), you can count on it being slightly cool in the morning and hitting 70 about 11am and staying 70 until about midnight (it's kind of disgusting, really).

In Denver our little five-day thing this morning said it's going to be 65 and snowy. Yeah. Those things don't go together. But in Denver when cold fronts move through, they're serious about it. So on any given day if a high is 65 that could mean that it's pretty warm out right now in the morning and it'll be 65 by about 9, and then the cold front hits and it's 30 degrees by noon with snow. OR, it could mean it's about 20 degrees right now and the snow is moving in, but then around 2 this afternoon the sun will come out and it will go from 30 degrees to 65 degrees in about 45 minutes. So, in order to really find out the situation you have to check out the details of the forecast. And it frustrates how you dress and which coat you wear too.

That's all.

Estes Park: An Adventure

Denver's had its mildest winter in forever. It's been in the 60s and 70s it seems for about 2.5 months straight. It's been sunny and dry and wonderful. So a couple of weeks ago Elizabeth and I decided that we were going to get out of town over Spring Break for a bit to relax. We scrounged up enough cash to get us a hotel room in Estes Park for a night, and set aside all day Thursday and Friday for the trip up (a 1.5-hour trip). We planned to check out Rocky Mountain National Park (RMNP), visit some Estes shops, eat a nice dinner, and spend some time doing NOTHING.

As the week wore on we found out that a humongous blizzard was on its way into Colorado, and it was supposed to strike... Thursday. No big deal. Maybe the trip will take us 2 hours instead of 1.5, but we're leaving at 9 a.m. and we can't even check in until 4, so we were hoping to take our time on the drive a little bit anyway.

Thursday came. The snow was falling. We got out of the house on time. We had lots of warm stuff and some food in our car. We were set. For about 20 minutes everything was okay. We were heading north on I-25, getting ready to exit onto highway 36 West (which connects Denver with Boulder and eventually takes you right into Estes Park). As we got on the ramp to 36 we hit stand-still traffic. Just as we passed our last chance point where we could have changed our minds and gotten back onto 25, we heard over the radio, "Do NOT take 36! Between Boulder and Denver it's complete gridlock. There are accidents everywhere, cars in the ditch, and traffic's not moving." Fantastic. So, we figured, no big deal. Within about a mile there will be an exit off of 36 and we can make our way back to 25 and choose ourselves a different route. Well, that mile took us 2 hours. We spent about an hour and 15 minutes sitting still in one spot. And that whole 2 hours was the calmest weather of the day... so by the time we exited and got back to I-25, we were in a white-out blizzard. Couldn't see more than about 50 yards. I drove about 20 miles an hour on I-25. We eventually got to exit and take a different state highway to the west that pointed us toward Estes Park. The weather was getting better. Before long it stopped snowing (but not blowing), and I could drive 50 miles an hour. Visibility was still bad. We made it to Estes and checked into our hotel. As evening approached we headed downtown to walk around and find some good dinner. Turns out, on a Thursday evening in Estes Park after the biggest snowstorm of the year, nobody is open. We found a bookstore that was open, and a Rocky Mountain Chocolate Company that sold us some ridiculously priced candy. We had to look for about an hour for a restaurant to serve us. Thursday was a bit rough.

Friday was MUCH better. It was bright and sunny. We could see for miles (when you're in the mountains, it's only pretty if you're actually able to SEE the mountains). The roads were remarkably dry and clear. So we hung out at the hotel, took some pictures (see below), drove through RMNP for a few hours, and then took a longer scenic drive home (which was actually a faster trip than the drive up). We had a good time on Friday, and we did get to relax a little.

Our hotel was The Stanley Hotel, made famous as Stephen King's inspiration for his book The Shining. It's a gorgeous building, seen here:

Apparently King got many of his ideas for the book from walking the halls of this old hotel, and he even wrote the book while staying here. They didn't film any of the movie here, but they did film the miniseries (which came some 20 years later) here. The hotel regularly gives "ghost tours" of the property, because there are apparently ghosts all over the place. Here are some more pictures of the place.

I've never seen nor read The Shining but after reading synopses of it, I'm glad that I didn't read it or watch it this week... before we ended up staying in this almost empty hotel after a huge blizzard that threatened to snow us in for an extended period of time...

To see some more pictures, and a description of our trip from a different point of view, check out my wife's blog post on the topic.

Pizza and donuts -- heavenly

Yesterday Elizabeth and I helped a friend move. For hours. He moved from the second floor of one apartment complex to the third floor of another one about 40 minutes away. So, we spent all of Sunday afternoon carrying heavy things up and down stairs. Today we've felt aches and pains all day long because of it.

But, we were well compensated. We got to eat pizza and donuts and drink gatorade and soda. That's my kind of food.

On another note, I read a note a friend posted on facebook recently that was called "You know you're from Iowa if..." The only one that really made me laugh was, "You can name all five seasons: almost winter, winter, still winter, road construction, and DAMN HOT! I'd say that's pretty accurate. It's entirely possible that one day I'll be living in Iowa again, and if that's true, I'm well aware that my mild Denver winters are going to be sorely missed. I haven't worn anything heavier than a spring jacket in over a month. Weathermen call it "bone-chilling" when the temperature is 35 or below. Our average highs are in the 40s, and it must have been 65 today. I know that this is nothing to brag about to my California-based readers, but for a 4-season kind of place at the foot of the Rockies, I've just come to realize that the climate here is much milder than most people think.

weather

On our local forecast just now I learned that tomorrow in Denver the weather is described as "cloudy, foggy and cold with freezing drizzle and snow showers." Looks like it's gonna be a peach of a day!