Monthly Archives: June 2011

Greeley Freight Station Museum

We think Britton has West Nile Virus. He’s had a headache, fever and body aches for a couple of days. He decided to stay home sick and work from home Friday. He’s been feeling a little better but still kind of strange he says. Anyway, since he was in Greeley I asked if he would meet up with me and my co-workers down at Lincoln Park for a free BBQ meal the Greeley Stampede was putting on. I don’t know if it was to butter us up because of last year’s new policy to charge admission, but I’m always up for free food. Some people said they may not charge admission this year (2011), but according to their website they are still planning on it.  In any case, it was actually pretty good for a bbq and fun to see all sorts of people from Greeley come out! We even ran into one of the people who used to rent the basement bedroom from us, our friend Bob!


With some of my co-workers -Andrew, Marjorie, Kelly and me

Since we were downtown we thought about and  decided that Saturday morning we should ride our bikes down to the Farmers Market since we hadn’t been yet this summer. So we did! There really wasn’t too much in the way of local produce yet, but we picked up some tamales and a pretzel. Then I thought we should swing over and visit with my friend Michelle who works at the Greeley Freight Station Museum! Britton’s grandpa used to have a huge set in his basement, so I thought Britton might get a kick out of it.


The Building for the Train Museum

It is located right next to the Farmers Market Square, or the old Train Depot (680 10th Street). The museum building looks like an old warehouse or something, but inside it houses 20.5 scale miles of miniature railroad track and lots of mini trains that are set in a scene in Oregon in the mid 1970s. There are a total of 2,000 train cars!


In this part you can see logging and an old Greeley Monfort Feed Lot Train Car

For the set, the attention to detail is unreal and must have taken the staff and volunteers a ton of time to put together. In addition to all the mini trains, there’s also a full size caboose that you can climb in and check out. From what I understand a lot of this was the private property of the former owner of the Greeley Tribune (Greeley’s newspaper). When he sold the paper and a few other newspapers, he ramped up his train set. Eventually he decided this was something that the public should see and started a museum. It is set up to eventually become a Greeley public museum when he dies.

We had a lot of fun and thank Michelle for letting us visit it and her!


This is the city scene…down the street you can see my face in the mirror like a billboard -lol


Me at the Greeley Freight Station Museum


Britton in the train museum

 

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Rinse and Repeat

Writing a blog about your life is kind of funny when your life is pretty stable/comfortable. Everything comes and goes and comes again, just like seasons. I was asking Britton if I should post some pictures of our beautiful sunset that we had the other evening. Or of the nice flower bouquet I made from our garden flowers. Or about our chickens. Or a video of a concert we went to. But it seems like we’ve already posted all of those. We are in a loop. We are in a rut. We are rinsing and repeating. (When does it stop!?) I imagine our readers (you all!) thinking -they just do the same things over and over again.


Orchids and sunsets- some favorite blog topics

Which makes it all the more important that we now have Puerto Rico in our pockets ready to go. It’s something that is completely different from our usual routine. It is uncomfortable. We don’t know what to expect. We are excited. It is definitely not just rinse and repeat- at least not yet.

Of course coming home from Puerto Rico to our “normal” here in Greeley is nice. I love my warm showers with strong water pressure and the cool air when I walk out of the bathroom. I love how courteous Colorado drivers are. I love how long and straight and virtually traffic-less our roads are. I love how quiet it can be. I love the pastel more subtle beauty here. Especially in the summer when everything wakes up to life for a few months. I love speaking English and knowing exactly the nuance and slang of what someone else says to me. I even (sometimes) love our winter nights curled on the couch with our fireplace on watching a movie with a cup of hot cocoa or chili in my hands. The numbing comfort and sterility of it all…

But BAM! I want to experience life! And sometimes to really awaken to that, sometimes you have to do the exact opposite of what you are used to. You have to get a little dirty. You have to be a little uncomfortable at first. So I want to see what it’s like to take cool showers and walk into warm air! I want to see what it’s like to drive however you damn well please as if you were walking around a crowded mall. I want to hear the bugs and frogs and birds who are happy to be living outside year round. I want to see in-your-face, loud colors. All year round! I want to become so fluent at Spanish again that I dream in it. That I learn the Puerto Rican slang. I want to know what it’s like to never be cold.

I think it’s important that people get out there and try. Yah, you might fail. You might initially regret it. You might feel scared, insecure or not confident. But I think dreaming big (or even little) is part of what life is all about. Once you have your basic needs met -like food, water, shelter, love and companionship- I think dreams are just as important. They keep you going; they keep you striving to get better. If a tree didn’t seek new heights, was it a tree? And even if we fall, even in failure we learn! Maybe even more so! We learn every step of the way.

Sometimes I think my ideas and dreams are too big for my reality. Like when you are so hungry at an all-you-can-eat place that you fill your plate to the brim only to realize your stomach is just not big enough to hold it all. Britton and I are a good complement to each other in that way. Sometimes he is the brakes to my otherwise overfull plate of crazy “Lucy you have some ‘splainin to do” half cooked ideas, and other times he’s all in with me -as hungry for life as ever. He helps me moderate our risks, and I help him to be less afraid.

In the end, this is all a journey to writing our own story. The conflicts in the story are what makes it interesting! We have to remember that as we go along. It is never so bad that we can’t start again. Even in losing my dad I think I have gained a better understanding of this. Death is there to teach us how to live! To help us remember we are only in this form for so long. So if you feel a calling to something -to your dreams- however weird they are- go for it! It may change or evolve over time, but that’s just as well in a good story.

And of course we do need a little of the normalcy to balance us out just as I need Britton and he needs me.  And that is what these calm Colorado days are all about. Just remember to get a little dirty every now and then before you go back to rinse and repeat.

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I Love Summertime!

Summertime in Colorado is the best. It is warm, everyone is outside enjoying the weather, and the days are much longer. There are bbq’s and get togethers, concerts, bike riding, gardening. Everything is green and flowering. The chickens are laying lots of eggs. Everything is alive! It reminds me a lot of how Puerto Rico is every day.


We eat lots of fresh food like strawberries and lettuce from the garden


We go to concerts: Britton in downtown Greeley at the Blues Jam


Cassie outside the gates to Greeley


We ride our bikes everywhere


Chickens give us lots of food: Henrietta on an egg

Hooray for summer!

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What Now? The Plan for the Puerto Rico Property

After all the build up to buying our place in Rincon, Puerto Rico, it felt a little like the day after Christmas or your birthday…all this anticipation left us thinking “Now what?!” We decided pretty early on in the trip that we would consciously NOT do any major changes to the property…this trip was for celebrating our accomplishment of our major goal!

However, now that we are back, all I can do is start thinking about what we can do to make it a dream house. We’ve pretty much determined that the main wood house will be coming down at some point in the future, although we’re not going to do that too soon.Whenever I start dreaming of how the property will look, I like to draw rudimentary floor plans and exterior drawings.

So since I think our first focus will be on the studio concrete cabana, I figured we’d start there to make it nice and livable. Currently, it looks like this:


A good starting place!

And when I get done with it, hopefully it will look like this, or it might have a front porch as well:


Future of cabana?

As for the main house, here are a few BEFORE pictures…which won’t matter too much if we plan on taking it down, but for posterity here you go:


Wooden house from top of cabana


This is the house from another neighborhood


Upper bedroom


The small structure to the left is the outdoor shower and only bathroom on the main floor


Britton looking out to the deck next to the scary hammock

While I kind of like the Hawaii-esque culture style of the house, wood just isn’t very practical. We saw this first hand with the bees. The bee guys also said there are bats living in the bee room. The deck is rotting out and the roof is rusting away. But all of that could be rectified if we felt it was floor plan or house worth saving…which I’m leaning towards no because it only has 2 bedrooms, and only one shower that happens to be on the deck!!

So instead, I am thinking of a Spanish mission style theme to the house with an open breeze way through the whole house:


Spanish mission-style villa with lower-level mother-in-law apt and large deck

We’d also like to build a couple more cabanas like the concrete one that we could rent out to tourists or locals who live in Rincon. We might even want a pool…

So, I think this answers the What Now? question…Now, we go on to step 2…and that is to save up for our dream house. Of course all of this is going to take money which means more work and saving. Which we are ok with…but it would be nice to be able to get there a little sooner. So even though I really don’t like gambling except as an occasional form of entertainment, Britton bought a powerball ticket just in case…lol.

And if not…there’s always Las Vegas Letsgo2.com. But more realistically Step 2 probably just means hard work and saving. That seems to be the winning plan for us so far 🙂 At least, as Britton says, this should occupy my mind for a while…until the next “What now?”

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