Rocky Mountain High

We went to Marty and Mary's house, in Thorndon, just outside of Denver, a really nice house, it was so great to see them. Marty and my dad were very close friends, my dad died 12 years ago, and it was great to hang out and talk about dad. I hadn't realized that Marty and Dad were such heavy drinking buddies, mostly getting into trouble on the many trips to Puerto Vallarta. We then went to Marty's son's house, David, who I have not seen for probably 20 years. There was David, his wife Ellen, and their 2 sons, the oldest a high school senior starting the college application process. I must digress. My first car was a 68 Camero, Rally Green. It was beautiful, I hand waxed that car myself at least twice a month. I took the engine apart and put headers on it. Not sure why I sold it, but I sold it to David. For all these years, I thought David had painted it orange and then totaled it. So, I brought up that sore subject at dinner, and it turns out that David did paint it orange, with two black racing stripes down the middle, but he did not total it. In fact, he put in a cool 4 speed and raced it, and the car was happly sold to some new appreciative owner. That made my night.

We had a great night visiting, slept, then Marty and Mary treated us to a great breakfast out, and we left for Las Vegas. We drove Hwy 70 west through the rocky mountains, past Vale and Aspin, just beautiful. There were some fall colors, pictured here. We drove through this extremely long tunnel, I guess its famous.

Boulder Colorado is Where I Want to Live

So, we got breakfast in Limon, checked out, and left early for Colorado. We decided to go straight to Boulder . . . this was going to be the only gift I would buy myself on this long cross-country journey, a bicycle jersey. So, I googled on my phone bike shops in Boulder, and we drove straight to University Bicycles. On the way, we passed University of Colorado, Boulder, pictured here. Very nice campus, kids all around, looking very happy to be going to school in such a lovely place.

We made it to University Bicycles. Very cool shop, huge, all sorts of road, mountain, cross, city, hybred and even fixie bikes. I got a very cool jersey, blue with the bike shop logo on it. Dad was happy. Then, we moved onto Pearl street, just a beautiful strip with lots of shops, restaurants and people. After the bike shop, we found a small coffee shop (not Starbucks) with about 30 people in it, 28 of them were working on laptops. The other 2 were Annica and I, we left our laptops in the car. I had a wonderful Latte, then we headed out to walk around.

There were lots of billboards for "The Buffs" which is the nickname for the University of Colorado at Boulder sports teams. We had a nice mexican lunch at Juanita's. Then we decided before going to Marty and Mary's, we would go to a care repair shop to check out the "check engine" light (see below, a few blog posts ago). We found "Charlie's Excellent Toyota Repair", drove there, it was in a warehouse building, way in the back. Very cool place, the retired dad ran the front desk, I explained the problem, he had his son the mechanic, Jake, hook it up to his meter and he indicated there was a mis fire on 2 cylinders, not a big deal, he pulled the plugs to check, cleaned of a spot of oil, and cleared the check engine light. No charge. I left him a $25 tip, and we were off. Doodle (the car) seemed much happier. After Charlies, we went to the Boulder Dushanbe Teahouse, a really special place, built as a gift of Boulder's sister city, Tajikistan, with much of the structure, its hand carved and hand painted elements brought over from asia. I bought some tea for Pam. We then bought some fresh baked cookies for Marty and Mary, and headed out to their house.

Colarado at last

I am realizing it is difficult to write a blog, you have to organize your pictures, your thoughts and think back to what you have been doing. Errr, its difficult when you wait a few days that is. Anyway, I'll try to put together our trip, it might be a bit randomly layed out.

We drove, and drove, and drove, to make the push to get to our long time family friends, Marty and Mary who live just outside of Denver. We couldn't make it, it was too much driving for one day, about 10 hours. Kansas goes no forever, with pretty bland landscape. We wanted to at least make it to the Colorado border. Searching around on my "Tom Tom" navigational thingy, I found the town of Limon, about 90 minutes outside of Denver, and with my (coolest phone ever, Pam) i-pod I located another Comfort Inn and made an on line reservation. We drove, and drove. Good thing, when we got to Limon, the hotel had booked full. Lots of cowboys here, trucks with horse trailers, maybe it was a horse convention.

We had dinner at Oscars, an ok restaurant next to the hotel, with a movie theme, all the menu items were movie names. Yawn. We ate and went to sleep. Oh, the picture, we passed huge fields of sunflowers, I mean really large sunflowers, all grown in perfectly straight rows, to be harvested and delivered to the flower shop near you!!

Little Nothing on the Prairie

As noted below, Highway 70 West just goes on forever across Kansas, that was a stretch of 8 hours straight. Before reaching Colorado, we did find the Prairie Museum of Art and History. Sadly, we got there at 5:30 pm and the museum had closed at 5:00 pm. Oh Darn.

We had to stop in the city of Colby, since Annica's best friend is named Colby. Wow.

We're not in Kansas anymore . . .

Thank goodness, what a brutal state, Kansas. We got into Kansas City at 1am, we got up early, ate our Comfort Inn breakfast, then went to try to buy a thank you card for cousin Leon, what a yucky downtown, finally found a CVC Pharmacy, got a card and stamps, then we couldn't find a post office or mail box, finally found a huge building that was the post office, we were not sure it was even open.

We decided to get the heck out of Kansas City. We ran through to Toledo . . . Toledo, yes, the home of Brown v Board of Education, we made a stop, and the old brick school building where it all happened is now a National Park Site, the Ranger there gave a very complete history, and in the building was a really nice exhibit, along with photographs, and video stories.

After leaving Topeca, we just drove Hwy 70 West, which just goes on forever, long and as straight as far as you can see.

Check Engine Light

The drive to St. Louis was great, found the superman (see below), nice day, then suddenly, the "check engine" light went on. Bummer. I mean, this is a Toyota, its supposed to run forever without problems. So, we stopped, checked oil and all fluids, all good, nothing leaking, no loose wires . . . hmmm. We gogled the problem on my i-phone and it turns out this can be nothing, maybe just a sensor that mis-read.

We decided to continue driving, the car was not overheating, so we continued. I'm writing this blog a day later, at least 800 more miles, so all seems fine.

We made it to St Louis, I did another quick Google search to figure out an attraction to see before going to Six Flags, and decided on the St. Louis "Arch". Good decision, this is a National Park, there were several booths, and below the Arch itself there is a really well done interpretive center. The Arch is the Gateway to the West.

This is the entry to the underground interpretive center with all sorts of exhibits about the settlers and explorers going West. There was a young National Park Ranger guy near the entry of the exhibit, playing a guitar and strolling around, to give it that kind of western campfire feel.

Superman's Home

We got an early start out of Nashville, a nice drive across Tennessee and crossed into Illinois, that was a bit of surprise, but stopping at the Illinois welcome center, we see that this is a very long state, dropping all the way down to Tennessee. Nice welcome center, nice Lincoln magazine.

We saw signs for Metropolis, and stopped after seeing the sign announcing the "Giant Superman Statute". We pulled off the freeway, it was a bit of drive. We first passed a huge "Big John" statute in front of a super market. Then . . . Superman. Cool.

Right around the corner was the police deparment. How fitting. That really large woman is taking a picture in front of a superman cutout. Now that's super.

We didn't have a "six flags day"

So we made it through St Louis and were excited for our first Roller Coaster stop, at Six Flags St Louis, which is actually in Eureka, Missouri, about 15 minutes out of St Louis. We had pre-purchased tickets and a parking pass on line, and as we drove through the parking gate, the attendant told us to "have a six flags day". The first coaster was amazing, front row on the Batman ride, a thrilling, twisting, upside down fast ride that was a blast, that left us both wobbly on our feet as we walked away.

The second coaster was the "Screaming Eagle" ride, kind of an old fashioned, clackety, wood structure roller coaster, lots of fun with its crazy ups and downs. The third coaster was the "Ninja". As we were buckled into the front seats (we alway go to the front car, even if you have to wait a long time with the other front car enthusiasts), Annica told me she had a problem with the Ninga ride at other Six Flags parks, the pads did not hold you in well and you had to hold your head back so it didn't bang around too much.

Sure enough, when the ride ended, Annica said she had banged right on her good ear (she is completely deaf from birth in her left ear), and couldn't hear anything. Great. After walking around a bit, she could hear, but she said it sounded like she had swimmer's ear, all clogged up and it hurt. We sat and rested and decided we would go to the first aid station. After a long walk across the park, we got to the first aid, the paramedic had an ear scope and said there was no bleeding, no obvious redness and a ball of wax in there. We wanted to go to a hospital to have a doctor check it out, so we got directions to St Claire Hospital only about 12 minutes away.

The hospital was brand new, and beautiful, we got checked into the ER right away, they took all the info on their fancy new computers and shuffled us off to a ER room where we promptly waited 2 hours, no exaggeration. Finally, a young male doctor came in, looked in the deaf ear, looked into the right injured ear, then had me look in his scope, and at the very bottom of the ear drum you could see a tiny red dot. He said that was a ruptured ear drum. Not as bad as it sounds, he said they heal by themselves, but he wanted to put Annica on antibiotics, and he said we should see a regular ENT right away. I told him about my cousin Leon, an ENT at Stanford Hospital, actually the head of the ENT department there, and the doctor was willing to call cousin Leon. Fortunately, Leon was home, they did their doctor talk, and Leon recommended against the antibiotics, and based on the ER doctor's description, Leon said we did not need to see an ENT for 2 weeks, because we just needed to let the rupture heal and then see an ENT to be sure it healed okay.

That was a relief, but no more roller coasters the rest of our trip. No loud music, which means Annica will skip the concert she had bought tickets for the weekend after moving into the dorms.

We got in the car after about 4 hour at the hospital, got sandwiches and drove until 1am all the way to Kansas City, checked in and went to sleep.

Cross Country Trip Georgia to UC Santa Barbara - Day One, 9/12/2009

Day one. I took the red eye from San Francisco on Friday, September 11th, a great day to fly on an airplane across country. Called and wished Hailey a happy birthday, then had a miserable flight to Atlanta, just could not fall asleep. I took MARTA to North Point, creepy at 6:30 in the morning, but Annica was there right on time, picked me up at 8:30 am and we were on our way.



After an hour of driving, and after taking a nap, we stopped at a "QT", a gas station and food etc. market, loaded with all sorts of good stuff. They have red hot dogs, I mean, they are really red, supposed to be spicy, I may stop to try one before this trip ends. We got some coffee, vitamin water, some fruit and were on our way. Next stop was a Loves truck stop, outside the store was a very large parrot, I made friends and got a picture.

Along the road there were long stretches with these large sheer walls of rock on the side of the freeway. Also, lots of huge fireworks stands, at least near the border with Georgia, many come to Tenessee to buy fireworks, apparently legal here and not legal in Georgia.

First stop is Nashville, the Hotel was ok, Comfort Inn, right down the street from downtown Nashville, with the Grand Old Opre, lots of tourist spots, pretty nice cowboy boot and leather shops if you are into that kind of thing. Across the river is LT Stadium, home of the Tenessee Titans, nice.

After getting checked in, having lunch in downtown Nashville, I had a very long nap, and later we went over to the Vanderbilt University area, much nicer, and had a good dinner at a Japanese Restaurant, sat outside on a very nice evening, and across the street was an outdoor theater showing Mel Brooks' Young Frankenstein, that was fun. Found a Ben and Jerry's for dessert.

Annica's High School Graduation 2009

Annica graduated from Milton High School on Friday, May 22, 2009. This was a great graduation, everyone flew out for the event, had a party afterwards at Kim and Bobby's house.

Pictures from the party.

Annica got me a t-shirt for Father's Day, with her UCSB Gouchos theme.