Author Archives: Britton

Greeley: The Exact Opposite of Hawaii

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We were watching South Park (the TV show) the other night.  It’s a pretty famous show and we were kind of surprised to see that Greeley had made it into one of the episodes!  It wasn’t in the best light, but nothing on that show is.  So just being included is an honor of sorts.  Here is a clip:

We kind of feel the same way, that Greeley is the exact opposite of a tropical island, which is why Puerto Rico came into the picture.  Granted PR isn’t Hawaii either, but it’s along the same lines of year round warm weather, surfing, palm trees and tropical living.  It gets pretty cold here in Greeley during the winter which is the opposite.  We are at 5,000 feet ASL and are land locked, etc.

Being the opposite isn’t all bad, in fact it is very pretty here when it snows and both Cassie and I have very fond memories of growing up here during the winter.  When it snows I get flooded with those memories like playing tackle football in the street after a good snow with neighborhood friends, sledding, building snow forts and having snow ball fights,etc.   It’s not all bad to be the opposite of Hawaii or Puerto Rico. But it is a lot colder!!

When I got up for work on Friday I was met with a sign from the universe.   On the back of my car I have one of those Rincon 413 Road to Happiness window stickers on my rear windshield (you see them often in Rincon).  It reminds me of our goals from time to time and has given me mental energy when I need it most.  Like when I am working on a rental after work and on weekends, it’s a reminder that I am doing all this extra work for a reason.  Well I think the universe gave me a sign that I am on the right path.  It was around 0 degrees Fahrenheit on this day.


Scraping Windows Occurs EVERY Morning These Days

Ahhh yes, the daily routine of getting out of a warm bed taking a HOT shower then getting into a freezing cold car.  Scrape the windows so you can see out, start it up and get it warmed up.  Once warm you can defrost the rest of the windows with the heater and the rear defroster.   Sometimes when you pull away from it’s parking spot you can feel the tires breaking their ice bond to the pavement.   At highway speeds sometimes the frost is hard to keep off even with the heater on high!  You always want to have a big coat, hat and gloves in your car too in case you break down.  Wouldn’t want to freeze to death.


Me and a 3ft long Icicle I found

I can’t imagine a lot of people scraping windows in Puerto Rico or Hawaii..lol.  Although the humidity when it rains might be considered the closest in comparison.  I’ve had the windows fog up in PR when it’s raining.

Speaking of heaters every house here has a large one, the furnace.  It’s most likely the most essential thing a house needs here.  Without it, you could freeze to death but your plumbing would definitely freeze and break.  In Puerto Rico it’s not uncommon to have un-buried water lines sitting right on top of the ground.   You’d NEVER do that here!

There are lots of things that make Greeley the exact opposite of tropical locations and that’s ok.  It’s just different and we want to try out the tropics for a while.

We thought it would be funny to take a picture by one of Greeley’s welcome signs. It looks a lot like the one they put in the show, except it doesn’t actually say, Greeley: The exact opposite of Hawaii.


Cassie and Cartman in Greeley

How to Repair Greenhouse Panels with a Riveter

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We get lots of wind.  Not only do we live on the plains in a desert, but we don’t have any houses behind us to block the wind.  So when it gets windy, we see the brunt of it.

The other day the wind picked up and broke a few panels on our greenhouse.  I wasn’t able to get a hold of the company that made it so I had to come up with my own solution to fixing it.  I tried small screws, I tried glue and a few adhesives but nothing was working to well.   The screws seemed to work about the best but it wasn’t a good fix.


Our Hobby Greenhouse

I figured I’d try a rivet tool.  I found one at the store for ~$10.  It worked great.  Just drill a hole, put the rivet in, squeeze the handles and bam.  Done!


Installed Rivets

I am not sure how much longer this greenhouse will survive, but I figure I can keep it together for at least a few more years.  It serves as a chicken home in the winter and a place to grow fun stuff in the summer.  I bet I can find all kinds of uses for this new tool too!  🙂


Rivet Tool

The Rum Diary and Coffee Shops

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We have been having what we call “vacation weekends” for the last few weeks.  This is where we do things we’d normally just do on vacation.  Like going to movies and visiting coffee shops.  That’s what we do when we are in Rincon and  Puerto Rico anyway.


Cassie Using the Computer at the new coffee shop Blue Mug in Greeley

Last weekend we went out to see the Rum Diary in the theater.  It is  based on a Hunter Thompson creation and takes place in Puerto Rico in the early 60’s.   It stars Johnny Depp too so we figured it was worth checking out. Cassie had read the book a few years ago and even then they were planning on making a movie.  It turned out pretty good.

But of course we are biased since it is a PR story! A lot of the scenes we knew exactly where they were filmed! I thought it did a good job of showing both the poverty and wealth of the island through the eyes of an outsider who attempts to uncover some of the news stories on the island in between Depp’s character’s drunken romps. It even went a little into the history of the US military bombing ranges on Vieques and Culebra and rampant corruption.

Depp’s character gets to drive a sweet 53 Corvette.

I’ve always thought it would be fun to take my Corvette down to PR but it’s not as cool as this 53 and it would be pretty expensive to ship it.   That and the sea air would most likely destroy the frame!

In other sort of related news, the offer we put in on the other house didn’t go thru otherwise we would most likely be working on weekends and nights.  It’s nice to have some downtime although it’s going to get really boring over the next few winter months until we get down to our place in Rincon. We are thinking January or early February depending on my work on-call schedule. With all of these ‘vacation weekends’ we are really geared up to get down there and get some work done on our house and property. But we’ll probably still take a few breaks at the Banana Dang and see a movie or two at Caribe Cinema for good measure. 🙂

A Rincon Treehouse Idea

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Cassie and I have been thinking about the place in Rincon a lot more lately since the weather in Colorado has turned cold and grey.   One of the decisions we have been tossing around is what to do with the wood house that is currently on the property.

We go back and forth between tearing it down and remodeling it.  It is a unique type of house for Puerto Rico seeings how it is made out of wood instead of concrete.  This creates some problems with bugs, rot and the chance of hurricane.  However it has a feeling to it that concrete doesn’t have.   A warmth if you will.

Well perhaps we can do both.  Tear it down AND remodel it.  We have 4 acres to work with so we figure we can move it from its current spot, which is the prime location for a house on the property, to a location down lower on the property where there is a palm tree oasis.


Me Among the Palms (where the ‘tree house’ would go)

We figure there is enough wood to make a sort of ‘tree house’ type of structure or a ‘Swiss family Robinson’ type place.   That is kind of what we have now, but then we would build a concrete villa where the wood house currently sits.

We can then rent out the wood house for people to stay at when they are on vacation.  The property has very little human created noise at night and the jungle really comes alive.  It sounds fantastic.

We both drew up an idea of what we were thinking for the ‘treehouse’.


Cassie’s Drawing


Britton’s Drawing

As you can see, we have similar ideas of what we would like. We also found this site about tree houses in Puerto Rico that are built on a single point. They call them “hooches”. We’d like to possibly talk with the owner of this one about their place. We have been toying around with this idea because it would allow us to keep the wood house AND build a more secure / substantial concrete villa.  We could connect the two places with a nice walking path.  This is one of the reasons we wanted to have a bit of land, so that we could let our imagination run a bit wild.

We like this idea because it “saves” the wooden house, gives us more room for the house of our dreams, and creates a pretty cool spot -a type of tropical tree house! That’s the type of option we really like -a win-win-win!