Last days in Colorado- Rest & Recovery

We were up and out of the hotel by 8:00 this morning. Although we were tired from the race the day before, we were unable to sleep for some reason. Leaving the hotel in Manitou Springs, we headed into downtown Colorado Springs to visit the Olympic Training Center.

We pulled into the center before it opened (at 9:00), so we walked, or tried to walk, around the grounds and toured the sculpture gardens before going on the tour. The tour lasted about an hour. We saw a short video with snipits from past Olympics and then walked around the grounds. We looked at the area where gymnastics are performed, swimming, wrestling, shooting, and weight lifting. It was a very nice facility. It reminded Rolando of his days as a wrestler.

Next, we headed down to memorial park to see the velodrome. There was a gate, so we couldn’t see too much. We also walked around a Farmer’s market and smelled the fresh fruit and veggies. Mike and Karyn were inside the skating rink, so we met them inside and watched a little of an old man’s league of ice hockey. We were starving, so decided to grab lunch in downtown. Nothing exciting or really good, but it was food.

The next stop on our tour back to Golden was at the Airforce Academy. We stopped and toured the visitor’s center and then walked around to the cadet’s chapel. It was really impressive from the outside, but pretty plain from the inside.

We arrived into Golden around 3:00. We picked up the bike case, packed the bikes, and then dropped off the rack. We were on the road to Denver by 4:00. As we were approaching town, we began to run into rush hour traffic. Karyn wanted to go to the Hard Rock Café to get a t-shirt, so we went into downtown. We didn’t see much, just stayed in the car. Due to traffic, we didn’t get to the hotel until almost 6:00. Rolando was exhausted and decided to take a shower. We ordered some takeout and picked it up and ate in the room. We didn’t get to bed until 10:00 and were up at 6:00 on Tuesday to head to the airport to fly back to Austin.

It was a great trip, but we are tired and need a vacation from our vacation. Glad that we are arriving mid-afternoon so that we’ll have time to go to the grocery store and get some laundry done before heading to work on Wednesday. Thank goodness it is going to be a short workweek! Thanks for reading.

Until our next adventure,

Melinda & Rolando
August 2007