Blame it on the A-A-A-Altitude

Today was so much fun! We had a day off from training and went into Boulder for hiking and then downtown to walk around and see the shops.

Hiking here is so much different than South Carolina.  I love going hiking with my friends at home, but the highest elevation in South Carolina is a little over 3500, which is nothing compared to Boulder.  The trail we hiked today was a little over 6000.  I only hiked about 1.2 miles and that was enough for me.  It was ridiculous how winded I was after hiking up the trail before looping back down.  Basically, I am blaming it on the altitude.  I felt so bad about how little I was able to hike today that I came back to campus and did interval running on the soccer field for half an hour.  It's been rough trying to get back into shape and acclimate at the same time, but hopefully by the time we have our baseline testing my run will be decent.

Downtown Boulder was fabulous.  It is a college town, so the downtown area was really developed and busy.  There were tons of shops and restaurants to look in, but the shops were mostly boutique type places that are relatively expensive.  It reminded me a lot of Asheville, NC as far as the atmosphere goes.  Everyone there was young and the older shop owners were hippies.  One thing I did notice while we were there were all of the homeless people peddling on the streets.  Obviously it is a popular and affluent area, so it would make sense that they would come to that area, but it made me curious as to the demographic.  I couldn't quickly find the demographic for Boulder, but I did find out that Denver is ranked 8th in the United States for its homelessness population.  When we stopped to get gas in Boulder, there were two homeless guys sitting in front of the store, and the store manager was kicking them off the property.  I had packed a lunch today, but didn't eat the sandwich and asked my team leader MG if it was ok for me to give them the sandwich to share.  She didn't see a problem with it so I just went up and told the guys I had an extra PB&J that I would like for them to have.  The one guy was visibly excited and thanked me for it, but him thanking me seemed so wrong.  Why should anyone have to thank another person for sharing something with them that every person has a right to have to begin with.  That guy gave me a lot to think about for the next few days, but I'm so glad that I was able to do that for him at that point in time.  It makes you wonder what it would be like for that to be you sitting on the sidewalk watching as people ignore you, look down on you, and pass you by just because you are a victim of circumstance.