I don’t know about you, but when I drive to the “Mile High City” of Denver, I have certain expectations. I expect there to be mountains, or at the very least hills. The reality, however, is just flat flat flat flat BAM! mountains. And the BAM doesn’t actually happen until the far side of Denver—apparently you get to the mile-high altitude very gradually throughout Kansas and the east side of Colorado. Weak.
Luckily, we are staying in Boulder, which is on the west side of Denver and a little more nestled into the foothills of the Rockies. Our host is our college friend Casey, who is working as an engineer and living with her aunt to save money. As we sit down to a few margaritas in the rooftop seating of a Mexican joint with a beautiful view of the mountains, she talks shop about dimensions of satellites and frustrations about thermodynamic thresholds. Steve and I are very impressed and have the all too familiar feeling that Industrial and Operations Engineers experience of not being real engineers. After dinner, she describes in impressive detail all the bars in the area and their strengths and weaknesses. She’s been keeping up her collegiate lifestyle well.
The next day Steve and I hit the Coors factory. I avoid the term “brewery” because to me a brewery is much less mechanical and much more experimental. Everything is industrialized, with mechanical assembly lines constantly outputting 30 packs and kegs at blazing speed. The free tour only takes us around about 2% of the gigantic campus of buildings, but it ended with 3 free beers. They know where our priorities lie. Afterward we meet Casey and a few of her Boulder friends for happy hour beer and tapas. They’re weird and fun, and they’re nerdy in ways that complement our nerdiness. When we figure we’ve offended the high class people around us with our crass and loud jokes, we head to Casey’s friend Scott’s apartment. His roommates are brewing beer, which is cool to watch, and we play drinking Chutes & Ladders. Why is it so great to bastardize all of our childhood activities by making drinking games out of them?
On our final day in Boulder we figure we should take advantage of the mountainous landscape and go on a hike. We decide to do the classic man thing of pretending that we’ve got experience and trying a tough hike, when in fact we each have more fingers than hiking experiences. We definitely feel the altitude—breathing gets tough before we even get into the foothills. Quickly we discover the strategy of taking frequent breaks to catch our breath and look at the view, and the hike is a great time from there on up. Afterward the park ranger tells us that we hiked about 1/3 of a mile towards the sun. We’re proud of ourselves. Back at Casey’s, we grill a few burgers and ears of corn while she bakes cookies. We hit the road with full bellies and two tupperware containers of deliciousness.
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