Denver-March, 2019

Thoughts and impressions.
• I had a great time and it will take a few more trips till I’m used to the masses of people, xpressways, and cars. I’m a little too used to my “suburban” surroundings. The culture shock should disappear after a few more visits. Gee, if only I had loved going to Chicago growing up. (Although Denver doesn’t have a very good mass transit system compared to other major metro places I’ve visited: DC, Boston, Chicago.)
• Everywhere we went we took highways and they always seemed to be crowded, even early weekend mornings. Rach said that people go to the mountains on the weekends beginning before 6:30 am and roads get packed fast. I will just have to get used to waiting in traffic and being patient. I’m also a nervous rider with anybody, even with my friend Linda here in EL. I think it’s because of the way I drive my Volt. First, I drive in low so I don’t have that feeling of power when driving. Second, I do a lot of coasting instead of using my brakes to stop, which is not the way normal car drivers drive. Everything just seems to go very fast when I’m riding in other cars.
• The airport is a ways out of town and north of Arvada where they live so you have to go through heavy traffic going through/by Denver no matter if morning or evening drive time. It did only take us about 35 minutes on Monday at 9 am when she dropped me off.
• Everywhere I looked there were tons of apartments and duplexes (oh, so many) and a good number of condo or retirement communities. There are abundant shopping venues/malls no matter where we went; so, having quick access to food, gas, etc. will not be a problem.
• Rachel reached out to her Wellesley community asking about gyms and retirement communities. I’ve got some really great leads on gyms, with the nearby YMCA offering a bunch of classes (although some may be at their other 4 locations) as well as a free 3 day trial membership that I hope to try next time.
• One of the Wellesley alums is a realtor and has offered to take me around to retirement communities. After some significant moaning on my part about being put out to pasture in a retirement community allowing me easy transition from independent living to assisted to nursing home, it seems R was just very concerned that I’d be extremely lonely and the social community would be nice. For the time being, I’m interested in looking at ranch type condos or townhouses or duplexes with a garage within about 10 -15 minutes of Nachel’s place WITHOUT using an expressway. If it’s a retirement community, that’s ok but I’m betting that’s more expensive. I’m going to look more during 1 of my upcoming visits.Read more