Golden intermission

I have some free time at the moment, and I have these photos that were taken when I went tubing on Clear Creek in Golden a month ago. They were taken with a waterproof disposable camera. I won't include all of the pictures... I am assuming that pictures of, say, Jess's feet mostly of interest only to Jess, and she already knows what her own feet look like... but I will put up the ones of me, for my adoring family.


I was wearing my "swim shirt" (or "rash guard" if I want to sound like a surfer), which I put on so that I wouldn't have to use so much sunscreen, but perhaps it also has some insulating value as I was able to tolerate the cold water of the river much better than my companions, who are my Denver friend Jess (leg on right) and her friend Jeremy (leg on left).


Jess is not so much smiling in this picture as grimacing through the icy cold. I suppose it was not much colder than the ocean off Connecticut in the summer, but we were mostly sitting, not swimming, and the clouds were over the sun more often than not.


A shot of the many people enjoying the river on this weekend day at the end of August. And my white legs.


Jeremy and Jess rescue a flip flop. Also, my thumb, which I managed to insert into the picture after warning the other two that it was easy to get their thumbs in the picture. The camera came with a sort of recessed lens that just invited you to put your thumb over it.


Me with one of Golden's 10,000 bronze statues. Someone had put a polo shirt on this statue of a little boy playing baseball, both of his arms through one arm of the shirt, and it looked bizarre. And we needed to use up photos on the camera.

Tubing was a tremendous amount of fun... the river was quite low, so that I ended up with a couple of huge purple bruises on my butt from hitting rocks. But most of it was still tubable... what a great word... and there were several rapids to go over. You would dip down over a smooth slide of water, and then gasp with cold as the wave at the bottom splashed up over the tube and onto your previously dry torso. We went down one and a half times until certain people in the group got too cold. They exhorted me to go down again by myself if I liked it so gosh darned much, but I refused. Half the fun was trying to keep hold of their feet and elbows as we went down.

Well, today Katie and I went antique shopping in Denver. Tomorrow we leave. I am exhausted and have nothing else left to say.