Christmas in Denver

Despite at least two attempts on my life by my mother-in-law, I managed to enjoy the holidays in Denver (her preferred method is slow-acting bacteriological poison, so I’m not sure if I’m out of the woods yet). The highlight of the trip for me was our day of skiing at Keystone. I hadn’t skied for at least 10 years, but it turns out it’s like riding a bike - aside from quickly getting out-of-shape-guy-in-his-30s sore legs, it was just like I remember. Going down the kiddie slope with Kai was fun too.

There’s more about the things we did in the photo captions.

I liked Denver. It is a clean, pleasant city. What I didn’t like was the sprawl surrounding the city. I thought Tyson’s Corner (outside Washington DC) was bad, but this is worse. There’s approximately 30 miles between Denver and Boulder, and that space seems like it’s one giant mall. In one mall I saw a Lowe’s and a Home Depot, and 5 minutes of driving later, I saw another Lowe’s and another Home Depot. It was like the roadside images were spooling by on a short, endless loop tape. I’m told that 30 mile stretch was mostly ranchland not too long ago.

Favorite Kai quote from the trip: Kai watched me weigh myself on the scale in the bathroom. Later on, he watched my mother-in-law weigh herself; she had left the door open, so we all heard him exclaim “that’s the same as Daddy weighs!”