Sunday

As it was a sunny day my friends decided it would be a good time to teach me to play Ultimate Frisbee. It was all going well until my competitive streak came through and I dived to catch. I made the catch and landed with an incredible roll to make the touchdown. Unfortunately I broke the strap of my watch in the process, this watch has been through an awful lot (broken at haunted houses, broken playing ultimate Frisbee, broken when grappling with my brother).

Kevin seems to think he is an Indian Usain Bolt, after one too many jokes about how much of a limbering oaf I am I took him up on his challenge of a 100m race. I Beat Kevin, he argues that it wasn't exactly 100m but he's just being a sore loser. You may not think this trivial victory is newsworthy, but it is. Kevin was humiliated.

Monday

I'm on a bit of roll with my exam scores, I got 94% on my recent music test (not a massive achievement) and 97.5% on Molecular techniques midterm. Let's hope I can keep this going when it comes to end of year exams.

Tuesday

Cancer midterm went well (100%)

Saturday

After another game of Ultimate Frisbee, I have realised I am definitely more of a runner, I cannot throw the Frisbee and can barely catch. When I go to the park my Frisbee catching skills are made to look amateur in comparison to the dogs running around. I'm not phased though, I bet I could kick their ass at cancer biology.

Sunday

On a rainy day I considered doing work, but ended up not and modelled for Kevin's photography project instead. I am not particularly photogenic, but I thought this could only be a good thing as it gave Kevin a bit of a challenge.

Tuesday

It's spring weather here now, an aggravated girl on the next balcony felt compelled to yell "Stop raining" at the top of her voice. It did not, and I enjoyed watching her rage at what in the UK is a rather mundane and predictable event.

Wednesday

I tried bouldering again, after 5 minutes I remembered why I vowed never to pay $20 to do it ever again. I'm just not that good.
The onion predicted my horoscope which I think sums up my recent frustration with work. "Time and space are both illusions, making it even more frustrating that you're always in the wrong place at the wrong time"

Friday

The interesting thing about this night was that there was a remarkable change of pace going in the wrong direction. We started by playing ultimate Frisbee, then played some super smash bros on the N64 before being persuaded to play Tiger Woods PGA golf 2010. It was a good night.

Saturday

The day started off lazy with me waking up at noon and jamming with a few friends. After dinner me and some friends drove to the Arcade Fire gig. Upon arrival I realised that the crowd were different from the people I normally see at the gigs I go to. When you attend metal concerts like Karnivool, Ozzy, Guns N' Roses etc you forget that not all concert goers are hideous bearded drunkards with leather jackets. The downside with this relatively young and normal crowd there were a staggering amount of hipsters. In the line for the drinks I must have counted about 14 hipster glasses.

Tuesday

The stress of preparing for my cancer presentation and revising for final exams have made me feel rundown and ill. I've been drinking lemsip out of a glass with a 'lumpy dog lager' design on it. Something has gone wrong here. The only plus side of being sick is that I got to cheer myself up with my voucher for a free bowl of soup at the university restaurant. I was surprised by this generous offer from the university, this free soup for the sick...it's practically communism. Better not tell the Americans that though, they might riot in their own uni.

Wednesday

CU Boulder has been voted the nation's number 1 party school by playboy magazine...that's the most double edged complement ever.
I am too ill to handle this much work, the end of term seems so far away.

Saturday

We woke up early on a Saturday morning for our final snowboarding day of the season. After some scary driving conditions (I'm not exactly used to driving on the wrong side of the road and in snow) we arrived to a resort that had just got 6 inches of fresh snow. We had a few great runs before Kevin had a spectacular fall that locals would call a 'yard sale'. This is where a skier falls fast and hard and subsequently loses all their skis and poles. It was pretty hilarious.

Monday

I think I will miss the eccentricity of some Americans, at the gym I was using a weight machine someone else wanted to use. So when I finished my set the guy walked towards me and exclaimed "tag me in bro". One thing I won't miss however is the adverse effects of living at high altitudes. I managed to get a blood injury playing Halo, thank god I didn't try and play rugby while I was here.

Sunday

Bin Laden is dead, there is elation, Nate walked into the common room blasting "God bless USA" and it's all everyone is talking about. In years to come people will ask "where you when Bin Laden was killed?" and I will be able to say I was celebrating with Americans.

Thursday

I have finished exams! I am so happy to finally be done and now I can look forward to my road trip and east coast adventures.

Saturday

Today we went paintballing, it turns out Americans take paintball a little seriously than the few paintball birthday parties I've been to in the UK. A lot have their own customised guns and dress up in army jump suits looking like morons. After being annihilated in the first round I finally got my tactics straight and managed to take out a few people while playing the Alamo scenario. We played as the Texans and held out on the top floor of the building, when you're having 5 paintballs a second fired at the wall you're crouched behind it certainly gets the adrenaline going. It was well worth the $30.

And now begins the road trip out west.

Monday (Driving to Moab) - Day 1

After a long drive we set up the tent and collapsed for the night. Kevin is complaining that he isn't in a 4 poster bed.

Tuesday (Moab) - Day 2

Today we hiked to Delicate arch (the one that's on all the postcards of Utah). Kevin got some good pictures but did get his man card revoked for framing the picture with his hands like a moron. I'm now back in the tent, I have burnt badly on my legs and am creating a rather radical sock tan. Kevin is still complaining, much Tylenol PM is being consumed and the only thing keeping us sane is watching Arrested development on Netflix. It's great that we get Wifi in the tent, I checked the university website to find that I got 3 As and a B this semester. Not bad considering I also managed to get in 200,000ft of skiing!

Wednesday (Moab) - Day 3

It was a very long hike today, we saw every sodding arch in that park. After the first 5 they all became pretty similar. Some were downright disappointing. The 'primitive trail' we took back was about as primitive as it gets, scrambling over rocks looking for the next cairn to mark where the trail was. We went to milt's stop and eat where I got a BBQ bacon cheeseburger and a shake. It was a real old fashioned diner and I enjoyed looking at the pictures of the diner during the 50s. It hadn't changed a lot.

Thursday (Monument valley and Grand Canyon) - Day 4

Here we are at monument valley, an area controlled by the Navajo tribe. Some people would come here and take away many things from the experience. Maybe the beautiful canyons, the impressive rock formations or the heat of the desert. We take away the experience of bumpyness. Unsuprisingly the Navajo tribe do not take great pride in the maintenance of their roads. The GTI is taking a lot of punishment, we are looking rather out of place next to Toyota Tundras and huge range rovers.
We've also passed into a new time zone which has confused me slightly.
We went to the edge of the canyon at sunset and was in awe of the vastness of it, we got some good pictures and I can now say I've seen one of the natural wonders of the world.

Friday (Grand Canyon) - Day 5

There is no internet in holiday inn! It turns out one internet service provider provides the signal for the whole town of tusayan. Apparently someone was torrenting on it so the internet for the whole town was cut off. Seems a bit drastic to me. It doesn't look like I'll be able to post this blog anytime soon. We're planning to do a sunset hike to a more remote part of the canyon where we won't be fighting for position with the other mindless tourists.

Saturday (Driving from the grand canyon to Boulder via Mesa Verde) - Day 6

After checking out of holiday inn we drove for about 6 hours to get to Mesa Verde national park. In the park are the ruins of American Indian villages that they built into the rock nearly 1000 years ago. We got some great pictures and I got to walk through some of the cliff dwellings. It really is amazing how sturdy these structures are considering the limited resources the American Indians had.

The drive back has been incredibly tiring, it seems Colorado decided to do all its road work on one weekend to coincide with our mammoth journey home. We have run into so many road works and driven through an arctic storm. Well we're home safe now and I've uploaded pictures onto facebook. Stay tuned for New York next week.

Thanks for reading.