Boulder
I actually have some posts in the pressure-cooker of my brain right now, but since Boulder has taken over the news in the past week, I feel like I'd be an enormous jackass to hit publish on a half marathon post without acknowledging what has been happening in my home.
We've lived here less than a year, but I'm fairly confident that we will live here for the rest of our lives (and now that I've said it in print, I'm sure the universe will conk me on the head with change at some point). We are in love with Boulder. We are in love with Longmont, in love with our little house that we are gradually painting blue instead of the yellow walls it came with, in love with these mountains and these roads. In love with our lives here, in a way that we never experienced in DC. And I'm almost ashamed to say that, in this disaster, we got lucky. Very lucky. The neighborhood next to us is one that you see in some of the aerial pictures that are being passed around online, showing flooding over front porches and halfway up garage doors. Roads less than two miles away have been closed, I have friends with homes that have been destroyed, friends that are temporarily trapped in their homes because there is literally no way out.
It hurts my heart to look at photos attached to online news, and I know I shouldn't look, but I can't look away. Just like hundreds of other athletes that live here, I spent all spring and summer riding up and down mountains and all over the counties surrounding Boulder, I've refilled my bottles at the corner store that no longer exists, I've ground up the many miles to mountains town that have been washed away, I've planned long Saturday adventures on two wheels that I won't be able to ride again for a long time, if ever.
And our house stands. Dry. All of our grass will probably die and the backyard smells pretty funky, but we have been incredibly lucky. I won't stop saying it. Lucky. Fortunate. We are grateful. We're going to do what we can to help with the aftermath of the storms, but I wanted to take a moment. To pause. To recognize what is going on, what has happened, and to be thankful that we are able to extend our hands to help others instead of be asking for help of our own, this time around.
We've lived here less than a year, but I'm fairly confident that we will live here for the rest of our lives (and now that I've said it in print, I'm sure the universe will conk me on the head with change at some point). We are in love with Boulder. We are in love with Longmont, in love with our little house that we are gradually painting blue instead of the yellow walls it came with, in love with these mountains and these roads. In love with our lives here, in a way that we never experienced in DC. And I'm almost ashamed to say that, in this disaster, we got lucky. Very lucky. The neighborhood next to us is one that you see in some of the aerial pictures that are being passed around online, showing flooding over front porches and halfway up garage doors. Roads less than two miles away have been closed, I have friends with homes that have been destroyed, friends that are temporarily trapped in their homes because there is literally no way out.
It hurts my heart to look at photos attached to online news, and I know I shouldn't look, but I can't look away. Just like hundreds of other athletes that live here, I spent all spring and summer riding up and down mountains and all over the counties surrounding Boulder, I've refilled my bottles at the corner store that no longer exists, I've ground up the many miles to mountains town that have been washed away, I've planned long Saturday adventures on two wheels that I won't be able to ride again for a long time, if ever.
And our house stands. Dry. All of our grass will probably die and the backyard smells pretty funky, but we have been incredibly lucky. I won't stop saying it. Lucky. Fortunate. We are grateful. We're going to do what we can to help with the aftermath of the storms, but I wanted to take a moment. To pause. To recognize what is going on, what has happened, and to be thankful that we are able to extend our hands to help others instead of be asking for help of our own, this time around.