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Published: July 12th 2011
Boulder has to be one of the most amazing towns/cities I have ever seen in my whole life, anywhere in the world. Firmly on the hippy trail, 'The Republic of Boulder' is one of the thinnest, healthiest, greenest place in the USA. Apparently bike usage is 18x higher than the US average; when it snows they clear the cycle lanes before the roads.
Our host Rosie was BCBC captain in the 1990s and a pathfinder herself, falling in love with Colorado ad now back here again working as a climatologist at the National Centre for Atmospheric Research (NCAR). She seems to have the perfect life - mountain biking, running in the mountains, relaxed job. This morning we went with her to work and had a little peek around (they had a tornado in the reception lobby - this place is awesome) and then Alice and I trekked back to the house along the feet of the nearby Rockies. The Mesa trail showed incredible views over the area, taking us to the beautiful Chautauqua meadow. Everyone we passed was really friendly - truly a utopian town.
After a lunch at home we borrowed Rosie and Andy's bikes and headed downtown
t explore. Boulder has one of the few pedestrianised streets in the USA and lots of yuppy/new age shops. Unfortunately it started to rain/thunder quite heavily (as it does every afternoon in the summer) so we dived into Ben&Jerry's and wrote some postcards. We decided not to brave the cycle to the canyon after all.
This evening we all went to a lovely Italian restaurant and I realised it was the first meal I had actually liked the taste of since being here. Om nom nom. Lots of fun reminiscing about Balliol. Rosie has some fairly interesting friends: one invented Crazy Tuesdays, whilst another was the guy at the foreign office who sent the scandalous email about the pope's visit!
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Tot: 0.058s; Tpl: 0.01s; cc: 13; qc: 27; dbt: 0.0287s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 2;
; mem: 1mb
University bike shop
