Boulder and Chipotle

During my weekend in Colorado, I made a little excursion to Boulder (home of the University of Colorado) to meet up with my brother for the morning and get in some tourism. We walked around the Pearl Street Mall, sort of the main promenade of Boulder, and also walked up to CU to walk around the campus. The campus was SO gorgeous… it really made me wish I’d gone to school there! Boulder is in the foothills of the Rockies so the weather was a comfortable 80 degrees with a breeze. I’ve decided I could totally live in Boulder should the need arise.

On campus

We lunched at Chipotle that day where I had the absolute worst experience I’ve ever had at a Chipotle. And I’ve been to Chipotle a LOT. First of all, they had signs up promoting their new “spring mix” burrito filling, which was supposed to be a mix of veggies marinated in adobo sauce. Sounds good, right? Kind of like a fajita mix? Since I hadn’t heard about it before and I’m all about veggies, I thought I’d try it.

When I gave the cashier my order, she goes, “So… I don’t think the spring mix is very good.”
What do you even say to that? I just said, “Oh, yeah? Well I hadn’t heard about it before so I thought I’d try it out. How new is it?”

Her: “Pretty new, only one other Chipotle has it right now but they’re discontinuing it because I don’t think people like it.”

Me, now getting stubborn: “I think I’ll try it then since it’s being discontinued… what if I’m missing out?”

She told me it would be several minutes because they were still making a batch of the mix so we filled out a sheet (like if you were to fax in your order) with my preferences: burrito bowl, corn salsa, sour cream and cheese.

Regardless of my checkbox marked “burrito bowl,” the burrito came out fully clothed in a tortilla and foil. I noted this to my cashier and she said, “Oh… do you want me to put in a bowl for you?” You think?? Geez. So she did. Back at the table, I stirred it around and noticed that it looked like there was chicken in it… no “spring mix” in sight. I tried a piece of what looked like chicken but it was actually TOFU. It didn’t really taste bad, just different, and certainly not like what I was expecting. Nowhere in the spring mix description was tofu mentioned. Nothing against tofu but if I would’ve known that this “spring mix of veggies” was ONLY going to be tofu, I wouldn’t have ordered it. Then I noticed there were indeed some veggies: tomatoes from the pico de gallo. Pico de gallo, NOT the corn salsa I’d ordered. What is wrong with the Boulder Chipotle?? At that point though I figured I’d been high-maintenance enough so I didn’t ask for a salsa change. But I was pretty disappointed that their spring mix of veggies contained NO veggies. Weird, right? I guess one could make the case that tofu is a vegetable but pure tofu just can’t be advertised as veggies. Tofu doesn’t have THAT bad of a reputation, does it? To compensate for my lack of veggies, Richard kept giving me the fajita vegetables that they’d for some reason put into HIS burrito bowl unasked for. So I suppose I did get some veggies out of it.

Bachelorettes in Estes

Dang, this post has been sitting in my drafts since June 6. Where on earth did June go? I feel like I've been going and going like crazy and am just now coming up for air. Earlier in June I got to travel to Estes Park, Colorado with my best girlfriends! We were there to stand next to our friend Breanna, someone I’ve known since third grade, as she married the man of her dreams. It was a stellar weekend but I have to be honest: most of my pictures are un-publishable because things got a leeeeetle crazy. Just a heads up. ;) Thankfully we were in Estes Park early in June instead of now - there was a forest fire last weekend just four miles from the condo that the wedding party stayed in that destroyed 20+ homes! Hopefully rain comes to the area so those firefighters can have some relief.

I’ll start out with the bachelorette day. We wanted to start out the day with a hike in Rocky Mountain National Park but that was before we discovered there was a $20 fee per car to enter the state park. We were likely going to have to take two cars so no one was too keen on the idea of paying $40 for a two-hour or so hike, so we stayed around Estes Park instead and walked around the lake. Side note: I’ve been to Estes Park more times than I can count. Most of our church and school retreats were in Estes Park and as soon as I drove in and breathed that mountain air, I started having flashbacks of every retreat I’d ever been on! Talk about weird.

The plan for the bachelorette day was to follow this schedule: walk around and be outdoorsy, lunch, visit two wineries, make it to the nail appointments by 4, and be at our dinner reservations by 7:30. We allowed ourselves plenty of time for the wineries which ended up working our way, since we were stuck at one while a thunderstorm rolled in. I was so glad we’d already finished our outdoors lunch by the time the rain started! And let me tell you, rain in the Rockies is NOT like rain here. When it rains there, it pours buckets.

Bride in the middle! :)

We had dinner that night at Mary's Lake Lodge, where we knew a live band would be playing. The band was really the source of the craziness that was to follow. There was actually another bachelorette party (though her wedding wasn't until August... I guess they just wanted to party?) at the restaurant, so the band pitted the two groups against each other to see who could be the craziest. We gave the bride challenges to complete (like asking the cute guy at the bar to dance) and each bride kept one-upping the other in a night that spiraled into craziness. My text to Mark says it all (or not really?): "So... there may be lap dances, and I'm not involved!"

Yeah. So the pictures will forever stay on my computer and never see the light of day. But take my word for it, they are hilarious. And blackmail-worthy.