Friday I flew in, got my rental car, and drove to my uncle's ridiculously amazing house. It is on an acre overlooking a 180 degree view of the rockies. They turned the entire acre into flower beds for my aunt who LOVES to garden. She has already transplanted 800 plants from her old house to her new one. It is still under construction and due to be completed in February.
--Here is the view of the mountains, overlooking the backyard--
--View of the back of the house--
--Another view of the mountains--The house is about 8000 sq ft. My uncle has done VERY well with various inventions and should retire in the next few years. He helped design and install a solar array that will provide enough electricity for the entire house. The surplus will actually be sold back to the city. His house also has the ability to be entirely heated and cooled by water. So he will never have any utility bill aside from the water bill, completely eco friendly. There are many fun gadgets like 4 LCD panels, placed throughout the house, that will control anything from temperature to the sprinklers, 6 electronic hubs that control all of the outlets in the house, a 90x60 piece of glass that will display the rear projector/high def television, sensors that monitor you walking into bathrooms so that the hot water will be at the faucet by the time you get there, framing for an elevator, sound absorbing walls, remote control windows and blinds, and $14,000 mahogany front entry. I can't wait to see it when it is done!
--Solar array, will power their entire house--
--This is just the cooling system (Gary in the pic for scale)--
--One of the command centers....they stopped counting the miles of cable that are in the house--
--The pipes that feed the radiator that heats the entire house with water--We spent a few hours going over the ins and outs of the house along with his office. He built a 19,000 sq ft office about 3 miles from his home. It was designed using a raised concrete method - very interesting! Was amazing to see the growth that has happened in just the two years since I had been to Denver.
That night we went to a really amazing restaurant (5 star.) I had seafood risotto and some really tasty wine. We had some fancy appetizers and 3 tastes of creme brule for dessert. Yum!
Saturday Tracie and Troy drove to Gary's house to have a look for themselves. Then we drove downtown on the search for broncos gear and long underwear for the game. It was 75 degrees saturday, but was supposed to get down into the 20s on sunday! Troy had to get to a sports bar to watch the Indians play (huge sports fan.) He had already purchased tickets to fly back to Denver the following weekend to go to the world series, in the event the Indians won. Too bad they didn't....Troy was grumpy the rest of the trip.
--Troy and Tracie - notice that it is warm enough for tank tops on Saturday--We did see Kevin Nealon that night at a comedy club. He was pretty hilarious:
We had some drinks after and chatted - then I headed back to Westminster.
Sunday was the day of the big game. It was snowing. There was about 2 inches on the ground when I left Westminster to head downtown. We walked around downtown for a bit hitting a home improvement trade show at the convention center. Then we met Eli (another old friend who happened to be going to the game as well) for a drink at a bar near the stadium. We drove around forever to try and find parking. $40 later we parked pretty close. We headed in and put on our broncos tatoos.
--Bear at the convention center - note the snow, and the coolness of a bear next to a building!--
--Troy and Eli at the pre game bar--
--We got to the field early - was a nice day, except for the temperature--
--Waiting for the game to start--
--Tracie and I sporting our tattoos--
--Cheerleaders (a future career for Tali?) --
--I wish I could have taken pictures of the all the crazy people we saw dressed up. Here are some of the more famous fans--
--Beer Barrel Guy--Thanks Tracie for planning such a great weekend!!!
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