Colorado!

Welcome, well travelled reader, as this week I give you the low-down on Colorado through our adopted Californian eyes.

The first thing you notice about Colorado is that it does actually rain here. Unlike back in the Bay Area, we've seen relatively heavy rain 2 or 3 times now, including 2 rather impressive thunderstorms on successive Saturdays. Boulder lives in the shadow of the mountains, and a fairly consistent pattern is that it's hot in the morning, then clouds over and rains a bit in the afternoon. Having been here just a week, we're still at the stage where we run outside and do a little dance every time that happens.

The second thing you notice is that almost everyone drives a Subaru. As my friend who lives here puts it, "You don't ask someone what they're driving, you ask them which Subaru they've got", and it really does seem that way. Of course, I massively approve of Japanese engineering, and it just so happens that the no-nonsense off-road pedigree of the Subaru makes it the ideal vehicle in a place that gets a lot of snow in the winter.

The next thing you notice is that folks on motorbikes just don't bother with helmets here. For a place that's nominally pretty liberal (very cycling and walking-friendly, lots of public transport, very tolerant of all kinds of lifestyles) this seems a bit out of place, but it's a fairly consistent pattern.

Admittedly, it's very difficult not to gush about how great Boulder is. It feels very calm and very safe here; even Palo Alto feels like it's running at double the speed of this place. It's a very walkable town: there are pretty footpaths and trails through the parks and alongside the creeks here, and it's clearly much less beholden to the car than the Bay Area. There are decent buses that run frequently and people actually use; there's a good University (it's not Stanford but we're clearly spoiled in that regard), and a great little pedestrianised downtown area.

And that's before I even get to talking about the striking natural beauty in these parts. As Helen put it, "it's not bad when every time you walk West you end up looking at that", referring to the Flatirons formation on the side of Green Mountain, which towers above the town. The foothills of those mountains are very close here - they're basically at the end of the street we're staying on - and here, those hills are green, not "golden" (ahem).

We've done a bunch of walking, and also gone to the Denver Art Museum, which was an unexpectedly good gallery (despite feeling the need to have a display to explain to its patrons "What is Europe?").

Of course, it's not all good - Helen's been spoiled so much by Palo Alto that she was indignant about having to walk 20 minutes to a good restaurant. Life feels a lot more normal, and dare I say European here, but it's likely that Boulder is simply a bubble within Colorado, given that Lauren Boebert is a congressional representative elsewhere in the state. Anyway, another week in Colorado, then Amtrak will whisk us back to California for our 25th wedding anniversary. We should get back to Palo Alto roughly 12 hours before the start of that anniversary day, with an 18 hour stopover in Sacramento intentionally added as a buffer... even Amtrak can't be later than that, now can it? Challenge accepted!