This will be, for once, a short and even photo-less entry! We took our time today getting out of the house, reading the Sunday news and hanging out until we left around 11 to drive to Boulder and do classic Boulder things: We walked up and down Pearl Street, with its fancy shops and restaurant, and had lunch on at a place that had outdoor seating and very healthy-sounding but ultimately somewhat blah choice–a salad for me with a little bit of goat cheese on it, and a burger with a smaller salad for Mark. Maybe we should have gone for the juices they were touting, but the two young women next to us who did have the juice sampler didn’t exactly sell them by describing one as tasting like “liquid salad.” We compensated by having ice cream at a street vendor’s, in a very fresh, crisp waffle cone, but Pearl Street wasn’t really exciting. None of the many street musicians and jugglers did anything particularly exciting, and a nearby crafts and stuff market in Boulder’s “Central Park” didn’t have anything exciting to offer too. You know it’s too hot outside if the most notable thing among the portable stands was that the bamboo bedsheet stands had a ventilator with a misting mechanism! Despite the heat, we managed to walk in the shade along Boulder creek to the big park (Eben Fine Park) at the very end, and that was fun people watching–big families and young couples, tourists and locals, a rather large proportion of homeless campsites on the banks of the creek, and many, many people with inner tubes to tube down the river, which has some white water and some very big rocks. We saw most people make it ok, but some tubes got flipped and one young woman clearly got really scared (although I do not think hurt) and was helped out of the water by her boyfriend, crying and shaking.
We also watched some people jump into the water from a rope swing, but the requirement was clearly to be in your mid-twenties to mid-thirties, male, and tattooed. 🙂 We went the very cautious route and just stuck our feet in the water for a few minutes, and then left as we heard thunder roll in the distance, and walked the 5 blocks back to our car before the rain started. We took a nap when we got home (I think I still had to catch up on yesterday’s missed sleep), later went out for groceries, now are just hanging out here after a bread-and-salad dinner and gearing up for the more active days that are coming up.