Fort Collins

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16th May

Not too eventful. I went to the gym, swam, read, watched a movie.

17th May

Went into ALAC again. I made 200 phone calls to past participants of the Country Club Classic event they held last year (blind beer tasting while dressed in golfing clobber) and tried to encourage them to sign up again this year. The English accent softened some of them into signing up. I dont like hassling people over the phone but after doing it and getting people's feedback. I can see the merit in it. I dont think it would work in the UK though. People are too bloody rude. I was also helopoing Joe prepare for a cocktail event for the charities high value donors. They were showing a documentary 'Revenge of the Electric Car' and then hosting a cocktail reception and dinner in a nice venue downtown.

18th May

Very overcast today, so after the gym, I spent some time doing spme grant writing for a charity back home and doing some chores (yes, chores!)

19th May

Snoopy's birthday!

Jon and I got up early and drove to Fort Collins (which is the most Northerly point of Colorado) as he had bought a camera on ebay and agreed to collect it.

After picking it up, I had found a few things for us to do in the area. It was (as every weekend has been) pouring with rain, which is really annoying, but I was determined to see something of Fort COllins while we were there.

We headed to Swetsville Zoo, which turned out to be amazing. It is a 'zoo' which is made up of scuplted animals and characters, made out of recycled material and scrap metal. The zoo was off the beaten track, in red neck country. The entrance was designed to look like a fairy tale castle and we realised that it was built around a load of people's houses and trailers.

I thought it was the best art I have ever seen - really clever, funny and brilliantly crafted. I will add some photos from it afterwards, as it deserves recognition. The zoo was free to go in, but I would have paid!

We then headed to Fort Collins town centre (which is a student town), where we had arranged to meet Evan - one of Jon's ex colleagues at Insight. He is such a lovely guy and we spent 3 hours in a micro brewery catchiong up and drinking (amongst other things) green chilli beer - Mike, you would have liked it! It was really refreshing! I really liked the town - it was very much a mixture of Boulder, Grand Junction Main Street and Denver downtown.

After leaving Evan, we headed to Horsetooth Reservoir, which was recommended by lots of people. Unfortunately, as the weather was so poor, we just stopped for a few token snapshots, but it did look beautiful.

We drove back to try food at Sahara - a Lebanese place near Jon. Lebanese is my new favourite food, but nothing lives up to Yalla Yalla in Leicester Square.

20th and 21st May

Spoke to Faye and mum on skype and saw her open my pressie. Other than that, they were lazy days.

22nd May

Had a brilliant day at ALAC. I was learning about Major Gifts, which is something new for me i.e. finding prospective high value donors and formularting a plan to engage them with the charity. These people are the sort that own $3 million houses, so they require special attention! I spent the day stalking rich peopleand finding out about their lives so we could start a dialogue with them. Cyber stalking ios my calling in life.

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