Warning lights

Great first day. Up early for the quality Quality Inn breakfast. Then it was off to pick up the car. Couldn't resist a little upgrade to a nice mid-size hyundai, and then short drive on to Boulder. Got the iPod going in the car so Kenneth could get into a bit of hillbilly blues. Finally worked out that the warning light was something to do with air in the tires.

We're in a youth hostel in Boulder for 2 nights, right in the middle of all the fraternity houses. They have some nice places man, proudly displaying their Greek lettering on the front. Boulder seems made up of 2 main areas, 'the hill' which is the student town, and 'downtown' with one of the 'largest successful pedestrainised shopping areas' in the US. We wandered through the UC Boulder campus towards downtown to get a nice mexican lunch and then traipsed along the creek looking for somewhere to rent tubes so we could float down the river. It's bloody hot. Tubes not that easy to come by, and when we eventually discovered we had to buy them, it didn't seem so worth it. So we tried the next plan of renting a bike. Biking obviously big business around here. Popular though, and all the suitable bikes were all rented. So plan C. Back to the hostel and drive to the trailhead to hike up to the Flatirons. Was about 5pm by the time we actually headed off on the hike, but we were glad the midday sun was past, and we did a good 2 hours of walking, spotting chipmunks, and completely missing the snake that everyone else saw.

Lovely views of Boulder nestled under the mountain range, and the Flatirons are a spectular set of jutting rocks, that a lot of people freeclimb, or use as album cover backgrounds.





Not us. We got back to the bottom after a couple of hours, and headed in to the 'hill' for a famous steak at Sink's and a few bevvies. Boulder's pretty quiet and we'd decided we couldn't live there for more than a year. That was before Hoff discovered that one of his favourite bands, the Black Keys, was playing at the Fox Theatre. Sold Out. Really sold out. Couldn't even scalp tickets. So the Hoff was in a bit of a huff, and we were all pretty tired so headed home to get some rest. Up early this morning cos of the jetlag. Plan is biking and then off to Fort Collins. Speak soon.

Steve