Colorful Colorado!

COLORADO. I kid you not that I nearly wept tears of joy when we arrived at the (strangely plain-colored) “Welcome to Colorful Colorado” sign. I think my team was in general agreement. Wyoming had its moments, but it was long. So very long.

Our first stop was Fort Collins, where Colorado State is located. After stopping by the Colorado chapter house for a welcome lunch (which included a trip down “The Plunge” – the blowup waterslide in their front yard), we had a relatively low key friendship visit at lodging and then set out to explore the city. Fort Collins has the kind of authentic “college town” I didn’t really experience at Elon, and I was very impressed with everything. With a college town comes college activities, so we ended up visiting the New Belgium Brewery. In addition to making the famous “Fat Tire” brew, this place also lets you mail out signature postcards free of charge. Needless to say, many of you will be receiving them! The night ended (as so many do), with a quality karaoke party among brothers.

Since this was to be a week of leisure in JOH world, the next day was an easy 45 miler to Boulder. I instantly liked this town and when I came across the Boulder chapter house (a legitimate frat castle one might say... see below), I liked it even more. The students of Boulder had clearly been enjoying the Fourth of July all day, but rather than joining them right away many of us went downtown to get a feel for the city. My impression was that this was a clean and hip place to reside, with a large population of street performers thrown into the mix. I will forever regret not taking my camera out, because we came across the most flexible (Jamaican!) man I’ve ever seen in my life. He could fit himself inside this tiny little box and I was basically flabbergasted. Later that night we had a chance to hang out with a bunch of past/present Boulder students (so cool… I really like Colorado people) and see some quality fireworks at their stadium. It’s an understatement to say that we lucked out with our location to celebrate the holiday!