Denver Days

Another couple days have passed. We successfully reached Denver, where we stayed with Derek’s Mom and step Dad. His sis and nieces stopped by to visit and catch up over some fried chicken. It was a lovely evening. We decided to spend an extra day in Colorado to get a break from driving and from the dog. Derek’s friend Dustin, a wrestling buddy from high school who used to roll around in a unitard with him, drove us up to Fort Collins, home of Derek’s alma mater CSU, so he could get nostalgic and I could see all the places he talks about almost daily. We went to a Mex restaurant called Rio’s where Dr. Jeff Chang, Derek’s old boss from the CDC, and Brent, Derek’s good friend from working at the CDC, met us for lunch. We drank margaritas that had Everclear in them. It was very unnecessary for lunchtime. Dr. Chang grabbed Derek’s ass twice. Then Brent, who is a very bad influence, convinced us to go across the street to the Steakout Saloon and drink pitchers of beer. He also convinced Derek to go to Vegas with him in a month. I like Brent. I like Fort Collins. Derek’s dream is to eventually move back to Fort Collins someday, and I now concur.

Brent told a funny story about the CDC. He said they spent 13 million on building some new lab space, but mud swallows kept trying to build mud nests in the awnings. To prevent this from happening, the CDC hired Mexicans to run around on the roof swinging sticks with fake owls dangling from strings to scare the swallows. They also built water cannons to shoot the swallows. This is a perfect example of our tax dollars at work. It is also the dumbest story I have ever heard. Fortunately or unfortunately, someone reported them to the Environmental Protection Agency or something and they had to stop harassing the swallows. It is unclear if there are now mudnests on the building.

Dustin drove us back to Denver, and we picked up his wife Courtney from work. We went to a bar at the to of the Hyatt, which had a beautiful view of the city, then ate some sushi.

Dustin called us bad luck because right after he read our blog two days ago, his radiator blew up and he lost his wallet. He must have passed the bad luck back to us because we blew the fuse to the lighter as soon as we got in the car, which is our power source for everything. Without GPS, we cannot find our way! Without laptop, I cannot blog! Derek fixed it though.