Hockey

One thing I can now scratch off my bucket list is seeing an NHL game live. A co-worker was nice enough to give me two tickets for free since she couldn't go. The game was Colorado Avalanche vs Anaheim Ducks, both teams that are fighting hard to reach the playoffs so it was a very important game for them both.

The Pepsi Center

The game was particularly interesting for us since in the Ducks there are four Finns including Teemu Selänne, probably our biggest star.

The Avs play in the Pepsi Center in Denver which has a capacity of around 18,000 for hockey games. There were quite a few empty seats but the attendance was still over 15,000. I was a bit surprised how narrow and uncomfortable the seats were, or at least high up where we were.

Downtown Denver

The game itself was a bit of a letdown since the Ducks were not in good form and there weren't a lot of penalties and only two goals in the first two periods. The Finns on the away team didn't do jack while of course the one Swede in the home team got two assists. Boo! There was also one very loud guy sitting behind us who kept yelling "Selänne you suck" whenever he touched the puck. People around here don't seem to like him very much since he had played poorly for the one season he played for the Avs.

Players warming up

In the beginning of the third period the Avs scored twice and the game was pretty much over. But at least all the five goals in the game were scored to the goal in our end.

Overall it was an interesting experience but I don't think I'll be going to another game anytime soon. I'll have to check out some basketball (NBA) and baseball (MLB) games though. (American) football would be interesting too but the next season doesn't start until September.

Louisville CO, the Windy City

People tell me that around here it's very unusual for the snow to stay on the ground for very long. However, it's been close to three weeks now since that big storm hit and there's still some white on the ground, or at least there was yesterday. Today has been a really warm and sunny day (14 degrees C / 57 F) so it looks like the rest will disappear shortly.

It's bloody windy though! It started on Monday and when I drove northwards close to the mountains the visibility was horrendous as the gusts coming from my left side lifted up the snow from the ground and you couldn't see almost anything. I've never experienced gusts like this in Finland and it felt like the car was pushed sideways on the road. I turned back home as soon as possible but there were quite a few cars who had driven off the road along the way.

Today in Boulder the gusts were reported 88 mph which is roughly 40 m/s. The office took some damage as well since "one of the air conditioner covers just blew off the south building roof and landed in the parking lot. One of the light stanchion covers is also dislodged and flapping in the wind" as was written by one of our technicians just before I left for home.

I tried taking some videos outside but just standing still in the open was almost impossible so the shaking of the camera was too much. Here's two shorts clips that don't really show you the real force but at least it's something.

Stop twitching you stupid stop sign! 

Garden of the Gods

On Saturday it was time to head down to Colorado Springs which is about 90 miles / 145km to the south. On Monday it's the Presidents Day, a federal holiday in honor of George Washington and therefore the roads were quite packed with people heading out to spend the long weekend somewhere.

Our destination was the Garden of the Gods, a public park with some pretty fancy rock formations. As we got closer it was pretty noticeable how much less snow there was on the ground compared to Louisville until at some point the ground was almost completely bare.

I actually really wanted to go to the adjacent Pike's Peak which is perhaps the most famous of the 54 Colorado "fourteeners", i.e. mountains higher than 14,000 feet (4,267 m). When we got closer to our destination we noticed that unfortunately that area was covered by a cloud even though otherwise it was clear and sunny. It would've been really cold up there as well so I'll have to try that again during the spring of the summer. That mountain is famous mostly because you can actually drive all the way to the top or take a nice cog railway if you just want to relax.

Pike's Peak is hidden somewhere around there

...or there

 

Ari Vatanen driving to the top of Pike's Peak in 1988

The Garden of the Gods? I'll just let these pictures tell the story. Click to enlarge.

This is actually from Wikipedia. We drove past it and I couldn't take a pic since I was behind the wheel

After that we had a surprisingly cheap lunch at the famous hotel Broadmoor where of course there were valets who parked and picked up your car for you.

After the return trip it was time to actually walk around a bit at the little town centre of Louisville which seems to be quite a nice place to live.

Cars and stuff

On Thursday there was this monster greeting us in the parking area between the two office buildings.

There's some weird things in the front and back

A rumour has it that they got pulled over by the police during a test drive because of this thing in the back

This seems to be a big topic of conversation around here. This "beauty" will travel across America for weeks and weeks and do some data collection about the local road conditions along the way. You can track their progress at http://mobiletour.vaisala.com/

Cake!

After the first couple of days of relying on other people to give me a ride to work (public transport? Bah humbug) I received my own car on Tuesday afternoon. It was a nice, although somewhat ugly Nissan Versa. However, after the weekend I received a note saying that "Nissan has recalled your vehicle" and that it needed to be changed to another one. No idea what the problem was but I got an even nicer Chevrolet Cruze in return so can't complain! After driving it home I had to spend some time reading the manual since I had no idea what some of the buttons on e.g. the steering wheel or the rear-view mirror were supposed to do. I had tried pressing one of the buttons just to see what happens and it had started calling the OnStar service. Abort, cancel, eject, stop!

Car #1

Car #2

Denver zoo (and Superbowl I guess)

During the first proper weekend I drove twice to Denver. The first one was just to go have a quick look around the city and to do my first longer-than-10km trip with the car that I had been given.

On Sunday I noticed that it was a free day at the Denver Zoo so that was a good excuse to get there again. Most of the roads were now clear of any snow but there was still plenty on the ground. It was kind of weird seeing zebras, lions, kangaroos and cheetahs trying to make their way across the snowy ground. Some of the areas are closed during the winter but it still was worth every penny for sure.

There are actually two arctic foxes in this picture

Lunch, so close but yet so far away

I can haz snow?

What's going on around here?

 

Plus bears, gorillas, cheetahs, leopards, snow leopards, hyenas, mongoose, tapirs, bats, camels, orangutans, penguins, a hippo, foxes, wolves, lots and lots of snakes and various birds etc.

In the evening there was this thing called the Super Bowl which seems to be kind of a big deal around here. Not really sure what the fuss is about though. One of the two teams ended up winning and I think it was supposed to be quite exciting. I watched more of the commercials than the actual game although much of them were very disappointing.

Just kidding of course. The locals didn't seem too thrilled about the whole thing though since their beloved Broncos and their superstar Tim Tebow (even I had heard about him!) had been defeated by the New England Patriots a couple of weeks prior.

Snow? Eeeeeeeek!

Thursday was an absolutely beautiful day. One of my coworkers took me out for a lunch where I had another one of those heart-attack burgers (really got to limit myself to one per week or my weight will double during this trip!) and outside it was sunny and warm with no sign whatsoever of any storm approaching. It turned out to be just the calm before the storm.

I've heard that the weather around here can change really quickly and true enough, it started snowing maybe five hours later and didn't stop until around noon the next day and after a short break it continued quite a while. After I got home on Thursday, I closed the curtains and sang kumbaya the whole evening. The next morning I was greeted by this view:

The first time I ever saw any snow in my life

Luckily my boss had told us that we could stay at home if it got ugly. At first I felt really bad but I certainly wasn't the only one playing it safe and many of my colleagues were also working from home that day.

Colorado is a state that is used to snow but this was quite a heavy storm by anyone's standards. Some facts about the storm as reported by the local CBS station:

- The amount of snowfall mostly ranged from around 10 inches (25cm) to a whopping 51 inches (130cm) Pinecliffe up in the mountains just west to the Eldorado Canyon trail where we went hiking on Sunday. The nearby Boulder city reported 18 inches (45cm) on Saturday morning. Then again Greeley which is some 50km/30miles to the north only got a couple of inches.

- The DIA (Denver International Airport) got its biggest recorded February snowfall ever and the number of cancelled flights got up to around 600 which was about one third of the total number of the scheduled flights that day.

- Most of the public schools as well as e.g. the University of Colorado at Boulder were closed

- Most shopping malls and some town centres were operating at limited capacity during the day and most, including the nearby Flatiron Crossing Mall closed up at 5 or 6pm

- One of the most important highways up here, the Interstate 70 was totally closed from the E470 (close to the Denver Airport) to all the way up to the state of Kansas.

A local snowplow

Apparently the mayor of Denver had spent a huge amount of resources (and money) trying to get the streets cleared of the snow as soon as possible. In the past some of his predecessors have got the boot for not taking enough precautions in similar situations. Also around here the property owners are forced to clear the snow from their sidewalks within 24 hours or face some hefty fines. There were quite a few snow blowers out in the streets on Friday.