Wednesday 18 June 2008

Family Ties

After the debauchery of Boulder, the thought of comfort and solace with my cousin Ronan and his clan was deeply appealing. I caught the complementary Greyhound bus, that was included in my Amtrak pass, to Vail also in Colorado where Ronan´s missus Chris collected me. Overall I spent three nice relaxed days with them and I was great to catch up with Ronan who I hadn´t seen in over 10 years. Ronan is my mums first cousin and he moved over to the States on a running scholarship from Dublin in 1982 and never went back. It was great also to meet Chris and my crazy little cousins Brogan and Bailey.

We had a really good time and he took good care of me. We trekked up to the simply named Hanging Lake which was a sight to behold not least because the water was at its fiercest due to the amount of meltwater after a seriously heavy winter snow fall. Colorado is truly a spectacular part of the country with wonderful canyons, rivers and hills. I can only imagine what its like in the winter with the world class skiing that it is reputed to have. That is something that i would definitely like to experience at some stage.

I had a bit of excitement on leaving the Murrays in Avon. Knowing that I was on the last of my 30 day Rail Pass I just had to make the only train of the day in Denver. The fucking Greyhound bus was over 2 hours late and i was begining to get very edgy so I felt obliged to put the call in to Ronan for a lift. I suggested that we give the bus another twenty minutes but he was having none of it. He drove me all of the 100 plus miles to Denver and we even had enough time to sneak in two pints before the train.

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