Hello everyone and welcome back to Simplified Speech, the QLIPP series, which features clear, natural and easy to understand everyday English conversations.
Today I am joined by my co-host Indiana, and we're going to talk all about her recent trip to the state of Colorado.
Hey Indiana, how's it going?
Hey, Andrew.
I'm good.
A little bit slightly jet lagged because of that two hour time difference between here and Colorado, but not too bad.
How about you?
I'm doing good and I'm laughing, because it's really true that jet lag feeling can happen when you travel across North America.
I know I've had that happen to me before traveling between British Columbia, my home province, and Quebec and Montreal, where I used to live.
There's just a three-hour time difference, but it really threw me out of whack when I'd go from one time zone to the next.
Even though now, looking back, it seems like no big deal, because I live in Korea and the time difference between Korea and Canada is much bigger.
But yeah, it's true.
You can get just thrown off your daily routine with that kind of time change, right?
Definitely.
And, you know, I visited my brother in law in Colorado.
And he is kind of a night owl, whereas I'm a morning person.
So that also totally threw off my schedule.
And we were staying with him.
So yeah, I'm all out of whack as well.
All right.
Well, I'm excited to hear about your trip.
I have always wanted to visit Colorado, but I've never had the opportunity yet.
And I say yet because definitely sometime in the future, I would just love to visit.
So yeah, let's get into it and hear about how your trip went.
And I think you told us in a recent Q-Lips episode that you were going there for a wedding.
Do I have that information correct?
Did you? go to Colorado for a wedding.
That was like the main goal of the trip.
Yeah, that was the original reason for the trip.
But since my brother-in-law lives there as well, we kind of turned it into a trip to visit him and a friend of my husband's who lives outside of Denver as well.
So yes.
But the wedding was the main purpose of the trip.
And it was lovely.
It was a wedding for a family friend of my husband's.
What was really great about it, though, was the venue.
It was in the mountains.
It was in Golden, Colorado, which is outside of Denver as well.
And it was surrounded by...
Aspen trees, which they kind of look like birches, birch trees with that white bark, but they're just really beautiful.
It was a stunning backdrop to the wedding.
Could you paint a picture for us of what the landscape is like in Colorado with your words?
Maybe in the YouTube version of this episode, I can put some Colorado pictures up.
And I don't know, Indiana.
If you took some pictures maybe, of the landscape, you could send them to me and I'll put them in the video version.
But just for our listeners who are listening to the audio, what kind of landscape do you see in Colorado?
Colorado, well, Denver is very high elevation and it is near the Rockies or surrounded by mountains.
So compared to where I'm from in the Northeast, I'm from New York, right?
We have a lot of trees and trees will grow really, really easily.
Like if you just kind of left land to its own devices, it just left it on its own.
Eventually, a lot of trees would grow there.
That's the sort of environment that I'm surrounded by in New York.
But in Colorado, the trees are a different type of tree.
You see a lot more pine and aspen, like I mentioned, but they don't grow as densely, or they don't, they don't just grow as easily.
So there are these beautiful mountains that are sort of bare in some parts, but then you see these sparse patches of of trees like pine and Aspen, and So it's a very different sort of feeling with the trees surrounding you.
And yeah, it is a very, very mountainous landscape.
So you might have some flat areas, but then in the distance you're always seeing these beautiful mountains.
So in that way, I think that's how I would differentiate the Colorado landscape to my own in the Northeast.
Yeah.
Okay, yeah, awesome.
And you mentioned that it was really high, like a high city, high altitude.
I believe and correct me if I'm wrong or if you know this, but I think the nickname for Denver is it the Mile High City.
Is that what they call it?
Yeah, I think that's right. in a mile high city.
So it means it's like really high altitude wise, right?
And I know like I'm an ice hockey fan.
So whenever my favorite ice hockey team, the Vancouver Canucks, when they go to Colorado to play the Colorado Avalanche, they always say that the players have a difficult time adjusting to the altitude because there's less oxygen in the air and it's just harder to be athletic in that kind of situation.
Did you notice anything like that?
Did you feel like you were out of breath a little bit in such a high altitude?
Or did it not really affect you at all?
So just walking around, I didn't feel any difference.
But when I did a little jog, like I was doing my physical therapy running practice.
Some listeners may remember that I had surgery in December.
I'm finally getting back to like a little bit of running, baby steps there.
So when I took a quick run like 15 minutes really short, but a quick run in a park I was definitely winded.
Like it was noticeable with that elevation change.
And when I went on a hike, it was like also very clear.
I was thinking like, oh, I'm not this out of shape, am I?
It was really the elevation.
It does make it a lot, the air is thinner.
It makes it harder to breathe.
So get that oxygen that you need.
Yeah.
Wow.
Very interesting.
Okay.
Indiana.
I wanted to circle back to the wedding just for a moment, because you said that the wedding was for a family friend.
And I think that would be a good term to define and maybe talk about here for a moment for all of our listeners, because kind of is like I think if you were learning English and you heard family friend, you would be confused.
Is it a family member?
Is it a friend?
Yeah.
Who is it?
We also have this term, friend of the family.
So maybe we could talk about these two for a second.
What do you mean by family friend?
Yeah, so what I refer to as a family friend, that's usually somebody who maybe your parents or close members of your family.
They have a friend outside of the family right that you grew up seeing.
They're close, they've been friends for a long time.
And maybe they also have kids that are your age.
So you kind of spent a lot of time with those kids growing up.
And I think that's what I would call a family friend.
So maybe you didn't go out and make that friend yourself, but because there is this connection from this person you're not related to, to your close family, you're quite familiar with them and you've known them for a very long time.
Kind of funny.
Some of my family friends like really it's more like my parents friends, i guess, originally.
But you're right, like often, i think, when when you're growing up, when you're you're a family and you have kids, you are friends with other parents that have kids around a similar age right, you kind of grow up together right, your families grow up together.
And so I know that I have a lot of these family friends as well where our families would hang out and we would do this all the time growing up as kids and as we were teenagers.
But then after I graduated high school and I moved away, then I don't really see those family friends anymore, but my parents still do.
And so, as a result, I hear lots of stories about the kids growing, But I don't really stay in touch with them anymore.
But it's kind of fun.
And then if you do run into each other again, like this happened to me recently at Christmas actually, one of my family friends was the son from that family was in town and he had lived in a different place for a long time.
And then he was back in our hometown and my parents invited him over because he was around and I was reunited with him for the first time in like 20 years.
But it felt very comfortable because we grew up together, you know and you're like, And you hear lots of stories from each other.
So, yeah, I guess this is what the meaning of family friend is.
OK, anyways, let's continue with your trip.
So some of the highlights.
You said that you went for a hike and you are out of breath because of the thin air.
Anything else that you could tell us about the hike?
Like, let's get into that a little bit.
Yeah, so I don't really remember the name of the trail or the mountain we were on exactly, but we were visiting my husband's friend from college in this town called Georgetown, which sounds like it would be a northeast town, but it was this tiny mountain town outside of Denver, maybe an hour 15 away up in the mountains.
Yeah. in a little valley between some really, really big mountains.
So the elevation was even higher than in Denver.
And so we went on this beautiful hike that I would describe as perhaps, an Alpine hike, because there are these these, these pine trees all over the place.
And again, it was not like a thick forest, but you would see these patches of pine trees sparsely distributed on these beautiful mountains.
And there was a lot of snow actually because it was such high altitude, not like covering the whole ground, but in patches.
And I would love to add a photo to the study guide for this episode, because it is.
It was so beautiful stunning, absolutely stunning.
And the coolest thing I think about this hike was the wildlife.
We got to see a bighorn, which is I guess kind of like similar to a mountain goat.
And we saw a mountain goat and we had to wait for it to pass on the trail because it was feeding on some grass or some patches of shrubs.
And there was a really narrow trail.
We were waiting for it to pass.
We tried to sort of approach it a little bit to see if it would run off.
And then it stomped its back foot, like kind of aggressively, like, get away from me.
So we were like, okay, we should just let this goat do its thing and see when it leaves.
It took like 15, 20 minutes, but it was fine.
They're a little bit scary and I've seen them charge people before.
So I think you did the right thing.
Just let it, let it eat and move on.
Exactly.
I didn't want to get gored that day by the goat.
But it was very cool to see.
Very shaggy fur.
Yeah.
And one other cool bit of wildlife on this hike was we saw there were lots of sort of There was rubble or rocks, like a lot of rocks, where maybe little creatures, little animals, could hide in.
And we saw these little, you know, at first I was like, are these gophers?
Or what kind of animal is this tiny sort of squirrel-like, chipmunk-like creature, little mammal on the rocks?
They were so cute, and I could hear them squeaking, and there was a bunch of them on these rocks.
They were really adorable.
I looked them up later and they were pikas and I think that's the inspiration for the Pokemon, if everybody remembers the 90s.
The Pokemon Pikachu.
Wow.
Yeah.
And they were just, I encourage everybody to look up a picture of Pikas.
They are so adorable.
I was thrilled to see them.
Did they make a little pika pika sound like Pikachu?
I wish.
More like a squeak, but that would have been mind blowing.
Wow, that's awesome.
And what about the bighorn sheep?
Did it have the curled horn, like that classic curved horn?
Yeah, it did.
There was sort of a group of them.
I suppose you could call them a herd if it's sheep, a herd of them.
And yeah, that was actually on the drive, on the way up to the start of the hike.
They were kind of in the road passing.
That was really great to see.
Wow.
Sounds amazing.
Okay.
I love it.
And now you mentioned also in our previous episode that you wanted to check out some of the craft breweries in in Denver and in Colorado, because I think we'll probably.
I was going to say like, Colorado is pretty famous for craft breweries.
And I think that's true.
But I think a lot of places are famous for good craft breweries these days.
Like it's kind of all over the place in North America, but maybe one of the OG the original like hotspots for good craft beer was in Colorado and probably still is.
So did you manage to check out any of the craft breweries?
I did.
I kind of wish we had had time to go to a couple more, but we went to two.
Yeah, one was called Knotted Root, and I tried a few different kinds of beer there.
One of them was an IPA, but the really incredible one was a Berliner Weiss.
So I suppose that's sort of a...
A sour beer, not as sour as you might get if you ordered something that was listed as a sour.
Maybe a little gentler taste, a little less intense sour flavor.
But it was wonderful.
It was kind of like creamy and a little bit thick.
Yeah, Berliner Weiss from Knotted Root was really, really good.
And we also went to one called Avery, which I think was in Boulder.
So that's about like 45, 50 minutes away from Denver.
And that was a brewery I had been to like eight years ago, the last time I went to Colorado.
So I was really excited to go back because I remember it was so good.
So yeah, we tried flights.
So flights are when you get a little taster of several different kinds of beer, maybe like five or six ounces each.
So we had some flights of many different kinds of beer there.
And it was amazing.
It was great.
Nice.
Yeah, I like the sampler, the flights.
That's a cool idea.
Was there anything else that you wanted to talk about, about your trip?
Any other highlights or points of interest that you think our listeners might find interesting?
Perhaps the last thing that was pretty interesting would be, there is an art installation.
I'm not sure.
I know that there are, it's called Meow Wolf.
Meow Wolf.
Okay.
Yeah. meow, like the sound a cat makes, and then wolf, like the animal.
It's hard to say even meow wolf.
There's many different locations.
And I think what my brother-in-law told me was that each location has a different theme or story or art inside.
But it's kind of like this massive building that has this huge art installation.
That is kind of like.
So the one that I went to in Denver.
It was a huge facility.
I think I read that it was 90,000 square feet.
And there's all these different rooms that are filled with art and sort of stuffed creatures or instruments playing on the walls that are meant to be.
It's kind of like you're entering, you go into the elevator, you go up to the next floor and it's supposed to be like you're entering an alien world.
And there's all this text on the walls.
And if anybody who's listening has seen the movie Total Recall with Arnold Schwarzenegger from I guess it was probably the 80s or maybe the 90s.
It was just like the alien landscape when he goes to the moon in that movie.
It's really surreal, really crazy, kind of like sensory overload, with all of the visuals and the sounds.
And you just explore this giant art installation space and kind of learn about the lore, like the story behind this imagined world, this alien world.
There's lots of different rooms with different styles.
Like one is very swampy.
One is like a city.
It's very cool.
It was a lot to take in though.
Like I was already really exhausted from the week and I could only spend like a couple hours in there because it was constant sensory overload.
But I would it was really cool.
Like if anybody goes to Denver or another city that has a Meow Wolf, I think there are several.
It's definitely an experience I've never been to an art installation that was quite like that.
It sounds a little bit scary, like almost like I'm thinking almost like a haunted house kind of thing, where you're like walking through this big area and it's like dark and desolate and like swampy.
I don't know.
Is it like frightening at all?
Some rooms because it's supposed to be this alien landscape and this story about an alien society or something like that.
Some of the rooms had these giant creatures or decorations on the wall like moving animatronic things.
Some of them were really genuinely creepy.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So some parts of it were haunted house.
Like other parts were a little less frightening and more just like interesting and engaging and like wow, this is kind of beautiful.
Cool.
Okay.
Meow Wolf.
I'm going to Google it after our chat here and check out if there's any in my neck of the woods.
I don't know if there will be any in Asia, but if there are, I'm going to add it to my to-do list because it sounds like a pretty interesting experience.
Well Indiana, I think you must be pretty tired because, like you said, about the time zone change and then a wedding which is always a little bit exhausting to go to and participate in.
And then also a hike, drinking some beer and going through this intense art exhibition as well.
It sounds like a very tiring trip.
So I think this is a good place to wrap things up.
We'll let you get some rest and readjust to your schedule back home.
But thanks for telling us all about your trip.
Absolutely.
Yeah.
It was fun to reflect on it.
You know I don't I don't keep a travel journal for most of my trips, but it's kind of a good idea because you get to really reflect on each thing that you did.
If you take the time to write out what happened.
I would recommend that for for anybody who tends to forget what they did on a nice trip or the highlights of where they visited.
I think that, or record a podcast about it.
Yeah.
Yeah, that's a good idea, too.
Awesome.
Well guys, we're going to keep the conversation about this episode going over on our Discord community.
So if you've ever visited Colorado and you have any memories that you'd like to share with everyone about your trip, that would be a good place to do it.
Or if you have any questions or comments about this episode, you could leave them there as well.
And we'll try our best to answer them.
And Indiana.
Maybe you could also share some of those photos from your trip in the Discord as well, just so our members over there can check them out.
Because I think it would be great to see some visuals to kind of yeah, just to see what it looks like in these landscapes that you are describing in this episode.
So guys go over to the discord.
It's free for everyone to join and we'll put the link to join the discord in the description for this episode.
And yeah, we'll continue the conversation over there, but as for now, that's it for us, everyone.
So please take care and we'll catch you guys in the next Q-Lips episode until then.
Bye-bye.
Have a good one, everyone.
