Colorado

The truth is, nothing terribly eventful is going on in our house. We have the daily, bi-daily, sometimes tri-daily toddler meltdown. We clean the bathrooms. We occasionally pull some weeds. The past few days just haven't been particularly noteworthy. So I thought that I might get back to posting on the states I've been to, since it's been a good three months. I'm going in alphabetical order and with Arizona and California being published already, it's time to move on to Colorado.

It's strange but, as a teenager, I always kind of wanted to move to Colorado one day. We went when I was eleven and I remember a horrendous windstorm nearly blowing my brother and me straight into Kansas while my dad tried to pitch our tent. I remember the University of Colorado at Boulder and how I decided that I would most likely go there for college. Because, after all, one should figure these things out when they are getting ready to enter middle school. I remember that the airport in Colorado Springs wasn't scary at all but when we tried to make our connecting flight in Denver we were sprinting from one end of Gigantic Airport to the other. I've since taken an international flight out of O'Hare so maneuvering DEN might not be as big of a deal, but as a little eleven year old it was large and I was not and it made me feel like whoever penned It's A Small World was maybe smoking ganja.

More than anything though, I remember the Olympic Training Center. We went to Colorado at the height of my obsession with being an Olympic swimmer. Every single set at every single practice had my two friends and me racing against each other to see who took gold, silver and bronze. I knew, beyond the shadow of a doubt, that I was going to swim in the 2000 Olympics at Sydney. Maybe, just maybe, I would be good enough for Atlanta. It's important to mention that although these dreams obviously did not come true, I wasn't just one of those kids who swam for six months and had delusions of grandeur. I trained 45 minutes from home four-five days a week for five years straight (that's not counting the other five years I swam exclusively in Ramona) and sometimes, in the summers and during my freshman year of high school, I did doubles. Back in the early 90's, when I visited the Olympic Training Center, I was consistently finishing ahead of Staciana Stitts and she got a gold medal in Sydney. It could have happened. That's all I'm saying. I mean, it didn't. But. It. Could. Have. Ask my brother. He lived in the car and at swim meets for, like, half of his childhood. What a trooper. Um let's get this rabbit off it's trail. My point being, the Olympic Training Center had a big, huge, giant impact on me and it's in Colorado so Colorado must be good.

I love Colorado. I've never been there in the winter and even my summer experiences are minimal but it's a beautiful state full of rivers and camping and hiking and mountains and the Continental Divide. But most of all, now that I live in Utah, I love it for keeping me one state away from *Kansas.

There are a few states I've been to that I wouldn't consider moving to unless God bashed me on the head with a frying pan or wrote it in the sky or put it up on the Jumbotron at a football game. Colorado isn't one of them. If I were looking to move (please God, no. Not even out of my rental. Please please please no. I do not like putting all my earthly possessions in a giant van!) I wouldn't hesitate. I'd explore the options in the Centennial State.

*As I've said before, I'm sure that those of you who live in Kansas find it quite lovely. My time there did not endear me to it's plains and biting winds and general, uh, vastness. If you'd all like to move I would gladly petition Congress to turn it into a giant lake or wildlife preserve.