Tag Archives: Denver

An Englishman’s Blog from America – Happy Holidays & Breakages that Occur to Old Men

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Happy Holidays.
One thing I can never get used to in America is their strange aversion to calling Christmas by its real name. Happy Christmas.

Xmas Decorations - very Ironic

Xmas Decorations – very Ironic

As I have commented on before, the incidence of church going in this fine country is enormously different to the UK. There are more Christian churches within 3 miles of our house than in the whole of most counties in England. One of these days I am going to do a survey of churches in the area, but I still haven’t summoned up enough courage to blog on that subject yet.
My very knowledgeable son tells me this strange behavior is due to “the separation of church from state”. Apparently the constitution mandates that there is no governmental acknowledgment that we have just celebrated a day on which the majority of the population think that their God’s son was born.
Most people in the US don’t say Merry Xmas, and there is no Boxing Day holiday the day after. Strange though it might seem, in America there is no celebration of the day when the upper classes in England used to give their servants their annual present. Somehow, that tradition got lost during the American Revolution.

We started our holiday with a trip into the mountains. One of the key benefits of living in Denver is that the trip from our house to the car park by the ski lifts at Breckenridge took less than two hours. The other benefit, particularly to a poor skier like me, is that the slopes are wonderful. The pistes are wide, the snow is lovely, and there is no ice to scare me to death.
I mean that there is no ice on the slopes, obviously there is always far too much ice in the drinks.

Expert Skiers

Expert Skiers

As a very poor skier, this is the place to practice falling over. When this happens in the Alps, the snow boarders spray snow in your face, and the kids use you as a ski jump. In America, when the inevitable happens to me the whole slope stops, and several people try and help you up. And they don’t even push in at the lifts.

However, the highlight of my Xmas was not my visit to the Emergency Ward.
Now let’s be clear, arriving at ER at 5 past midnight on Xmas morning in the UK would be an exercise in painful patience, as one waited for 3 or 4 hours for the drunks to be processed. I was processed and in a bed within 10 minutes.
I will skate over the procedure to return my arm into the proper configuration, but put it this way, I was a lot more sober than my wife by the time they got my shoulder back in one piece. The only delay, was waiting for them to wheel over the portable x-ray device over, and develop the pictures. Twice, without even moving me. The whole process took two hours, and everyone was very pleasant, and extremely professional.
The only problem was finding dear Heather as she wandered around the hospital, so she could pay for our part of the costs. We have an excellent insurance policy, one of the best money can buy, but we still had to process a credit card charge for $250 before they would let me out. The insurance company will have paid over $2,000.
My feelings about this issue are a bit complicated, who would wish they had waited 4 hours instead of 10 minutes? But with the issue of “Obama care” in the news every day, I keep asking the same question….what happens to the 44 million Americans who don’t have health insurance cover?

An Old Man

An Old Man

But I have an admission to make. I didn’t injure myself on the ski slopes, I fell over in my neighbours’ garden while staggering home from a few drinks.
I have promised not to sue the neighbours, that probably proves I have little chance of turning into an American.

However, I did fall off the first ski lift we got on.

Happy holidays. Despite being an old man with only one working arm, I had a great Xmas with family and friends.

We are all looking forward to our second calendar year in the America, it is a fascinating country, with lovely people, but really quite different.

The Road Trip – an American Institution

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When I think of road trips, I drift back to National Lampoon’s Vacation.
We weren’t going to Disney (they called it Walleyworld), and we certainly didn’t have a dead grannie. We didn’t even have a dog tied to the back fender (bumper), and Ben refused to lie still when we tried to tie him to the roof.
Last week it was Spring Break. If you are following my love affair about this fine country, you will know that I have a thing about the American obsession with religion. I have always been taught that Easter was the biggest Christian festival, but everyone worked on Good Friday.
Good Friday?
And we didn’t do an Easter holiday, we had a Spring Break.
We had a pair of lovely friends over from the UK, so we borrowed a car with 3 rows of seats, and got out on a Road Trip to New Mexico. Yep, three rows of seats, this was a real road trip.IMG_1273
Unfortunately, my memories at this point go back to my youth. Camping in Europe was not common in those days, but that’s what my parents made me do. We would drive to obscure European countries, and camp. I know a lot of my friends don’t believe it, but yes, we camped.
And the following morning we would pack up, and put the whole thing on top of our Austin Cambridge. But on one occasion my Dad got it wrong, and once we were doing a fine lick on the autobahn, it all shot off the back. No deaths, but a lot of tears.
There is a reason I don’t do camping any more, and it isn’t just that I found that there are things called Hotels.
So, off we went, and there were strict instructions on the packing, one small bag each. This is a bit of a problem for Ben who can get through two pairs of dodgy coloured trousers in a day, but I explained he had a choice. He chose the seat in doors that his bag would have occupied, which made it easier; as I said, I never feel happy strapping things to the roof.
Santa Fe is 400 miles due south from us, not a difficult route, the interstate freeway is a mile from our house, and once on the I25, unlike the M25 in England, you are moving at a good rate. And it is straight, on occasions it is dead straight for 20 miles, and it goes all the way to Santa Fe.IMG_1280
So, 6 hours later we are in the coolest, most laid back part of America. These guys can’t be bothered to go to California, where us Brits think the mother of cool sits, they stay in New Mexico and they really chill. The only thing that stops the chill is the prices in the shops, jeans for $300, “native Indian” sweaters for $400, this place is where rich cool people go. The lady in the shop in the old jail building told me Julia Roberts lived up the street, and “don’t miss the café next door where they filmed a Clint Eastwood movie”.
We visited rocks, we walked around a lot, and then we got to the Indian cliff dwellings. I loved this bit, a genuine Indian guide, and jewelry even I could afford.
The best thing was wandering around the caves the Indians lived in 500 years ago, and then we got to the cave paintings. Now I can’t lie, this story isn’t mine. Our dear friends Denise and Tucker went there with their bright 13 year old, and the guide got everyone very excited by the fine drawings of hands on the walls. Abi then pronounced her profound dismay that whist Michelangelo was painting the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, the Americans were drawing “turkey hands”.
My family complain on these trips, not about the distances, but about the picture stops, but there was one stop I had to make. In every country they have warnings about the animals that are going to charge across and ruin your car (apart from the deer that got me in Oxfordshire). So as we drove on the roads around Taos in Northern New Mexico, there were arguments. I did agree that the pictures of cows crossing did look peculiar, what was that strange thing over their heads?
Not a sombrero as Heather suggested, but instead a flying saucer – the locals are peddling a story that aliens are coming down and abusing their cattle. Forget crop circles, these guys have a conspiracy theory that has some action going on, and presumably it all helps with the tourism, bearing in mind Roswell is just down the road.
So we headed back through the mountains at 85mph without any police interference, and I do have to admit that this still gives me a strange thrill. In 1978 I was driving in New England, when I got pulled over by a policeman for doing something absurd like 70 in a 65 limit. I still remember the fear I felt as he strode up to my hire car with his gun vibrating in his holster. And then he gave me a ticket, and the bizarre thing in those times, he trusted me to go down to County Hall and pay it. Ha, the fools.
However, I paid a high price for my crime, spending nervous hours worrying as I stood in the huge queues at JFK, wondering which jail they were going to put me in.
Road trips, fantastic, but only in America. You can get to a different land in 6 hours, in the UK, you are still on the M25. Please try it, they are something very special.

Blog – Staying Healthy and Playing with a Bishop

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The good news is that the Doctor said I was fairly healthy, the bad news is that he said I had the “English Disease”.

No, not that disease, my new American doctor says we English all have a vitamin D deficiency.

My first introduction to the US Health system started a month ago.  If you are not aware, the American nation spends twice as much per person on Healthcare as the UK, or France, Germany or Sweden.  But the system in the US is very different to the UK, with the majority of cover here being private, as opposed to being funded out of taxes in the UK.  There is a complex set of partial “safety nets”, but it is estimated that 16% of the population have no cover at all.

Male life expectancy on average in the US is 4 years less than in the rest of the high income countries in the Western World.  A combination of bad lifestyle, and a huge gap in the availability of proper health care to the poor.  Most observers reckon that the US is now the only “developed” nation that doesn’t offer universal healthcare, and there certainly isn’t a majority interest in fixing this problem as Mr Obama has discovered.

But I guess I have to be happy that we have taken out a top of the range health care policy.  Dr Igor has a lovely bedside manner, and a strong Czech accent.  We swapped Prague drinking stories, and he told me my liver was fine, great news, I will have to drink to that later.  Off to a fake Irish pub to celebrate St Patricks Day, something they obsess about around here.

Dr Igor asked when I had last had a health check, the answer of course was “never, we just don’t do that in the UK”.  He then gave a thorough examination, including checking my prostate.  Ummm.  And then he told me what he was going to do for me….8 blood tests, a scan of my kidneys and bladder, and a colonoscopy.  Back a month later, and he decided my cholesterol levels were high, and with absolutely no discussion of my diet, I have magic statin pills.

My blood pressure was slightly raised, I tried to explain it might have something to do with the internal examination he had just done.  But, hey, another pill for my blood pressure.

So what does all of that tell me?

I am obviously delighted to have been put through such a thorough check up.  And I loved the good doctor, great sense of humour, even with his finger inserted in sensitive areas.  But how much of this is necessary, and the cost of it all is unbelievable.  We have the best of schemes, but we still co-pay, up to a maximum of $2k per annum.  Each prescription cost me between $10 and $70, there is a charge for everything, mostly covered by the insurance, but every price to my mind is over inflated.

Vrinder and Mandeep, our dear colleagues had their lovely baby out here, the charge to the insurance company was over $20k.

The American nation is a great and prosperous place.  We love most aspects of our life here, but the population are being ripped off big time by the Health sector, paying twice as much per head, and yet not, as a nation, getting the proper return.  The well off do pretty well in the system, but bad exercise and diet for large swathes of the nation, and a huge underclass who can’t afford to be sick, paint a bad picture.

And to prove I am healthy, I have been playing tennis twice a week.  Unfortunately the only people who will play with me on a regular basis are the old age pensioners, an interesting bunch.  This week I was partnering the Bishop of Denver who has his eye on me, he wants to convert me to the ways of  the Lord.  I would have been more co-operative, but his belief didn’t save us from being embarrassed by a bloke who took his heart pills between games, and an 81 year old.

The Bishop then told me he had used me as an example in his sermon at Denver Cathedral last Sunday.  I was the English non believer, part of the 95% of Brits who walk on the dark side.  He says he will give me the CD when it is available this week.

A strange week, with lots of bashing from a doctor and a bishop.  Only in America.

Accents and other Things that are Different

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I have a bad habit I need to confess to.

Well all right, I only have time for one today, but I need to get it off my chest.  I think my problem became very clear to Heather, my lovely wife, some 20 years ago when we went to meet with one of our clients, up in the North of England.  In Rochdale to be exact.

After lunch, the boss man took Heather to one side and said (I won’t do the accent), “if Mike continues to take the micky out of me, I am going to knock his block off”.  But I wasn’t taking the micky, it was just the first example Heather had experienced of my terrible problem.

When speaking to anyone with an accent, within minutes I will be attempting (but badly) to speak in the same lingo.  I wonder if there is some kind of 7 steps process that can help me.

To be serious for a moment, the key difference between the UK and the good old US of A is the attitude to guns.  Like most Europeans, I find the amount of gun deaths in America to be very disturbing.  The quoted figures of less than 50 in the UK, to over 11,000 in the US has to indicate that this is a key problem.  But, no matter how many times I try and discuss the issue with sane and grown up Americans, I simply don’t understand the huge commitment the majority have to owning a gun.  I am still working hard, but it is something deeply cultural.

If you haven’t seen it, go to YouTube and view some of the Piers Morgan interviews of the last few weeks.  Piers is a man that few us in Britain liked, and most were happy to see leave for the US to take up a nightly TV interview slot on CNN.  But he is has really come to life in my view, although not in the minds of most Americans, who have started a petition to have him deported.

On a show last week Piers interviewed a Larry Pratt, who looked perfectly normal, argued quite sanely, but when Morgan put the gun death numbers in front of him, he suddenly announced that the UK figures were rigged, and really there were 790 gun deaths a year in the UK.  The problem is that people believe these things.

Earlier in the week Piers interviewed an Alex Jones from the NRA (National Rifle Association), who foamed at the mouth, and with bulging eyes told Piers that he needed the guns to ensure that the UK didn’t invade again, invoking the American War of Independence.  Bizarre in the extreme to an outsider, but lots of people see him as a hero, people keep telling me they need more guns, not less.

Some of the differences about living in Colorado are a bit weird.  When Heather came to give me a kiss earlier, she gave me a shock.  I mean an electric shock.

Denver is a mile above sea level, and despite freezing cold temperatures on occasions, it is very dry.  The sun shines for over 300 days a year, and it has only rained once in 3 months, both of which make the freezing temperatures more palatable.  But the climate, and the wall to wall nylon carpets, creates static electricity like I have never seen before.

The lack of air also means my tennis is hopeless, the balls fly out, and even a short rally leaves me lying on the floor gasping for breath.  At the Broncos game this afternoon, some of the opposition footballers were given oxygen on the side lines to enable them to cope.

I needed a bit more than oxygen to cope, football is a great game, but after it went to extra time it took 4 ¼ hours for 1 ¼ hours of action.  Unreal, particularly at – 12 degrees C, 75,000 fans created a fantastic atmosphere, but they don’t have a roof.  It snowed.  And they lost in extra time.

And there were opposition fans in front of us who everyone chatted with, and they even survived the home team managing to lose a game they were 100 – 1 to win at one point.

Earlier in the day we took the boys to have some jabs, they have to have a huge number in order to be allowed to be in school.  The fire station where they were giving the inoculations was in a suburb called Aurora, much more of a mixed community than the enclave that is Greenwood Village.

Walking in to the temporary clinic, a couple of the locals greet me, calling out in support of my Broncos shirt, Go Broncos.

As I say, I have this terrible habit of copying the way people speak, honestly, I don’t mean to do it.

And now I can add Jive Talking to my failings, and my family thinks I am a rude and dangerous person.

Anyone know of a cure?

Two Countries (maybe three)

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There are many things that are much better now we are living in America, and to be personal for a moment, my favourite is that my wife no longer snores.

I can’t put my finger on why my night’s sleep is no longer interrupted by Vesuvius.  Certainly, Denver is a mile about sea level, and the atmosphere up here is very different.  It is so dry, and I do feel ashamed to admit this, but I have had to resort to the use of moisturising face cream.  Yes, things are really changing in the Ward household.   Sorry, men.

There are so many things that are different, we assume that because we speak the same language and use the same words, that we are very similar.

This week’s big laugh has centred on that lovely piece of food that one has after the main course, made from pastry, with things such as fruit on top.  Yes, a flan.

But our lovely Izzy calls it a FLON, in fact every American calls it a FLON.  Laugh, we all corpsed.

When we moved, I had to have a good talk to myself, there are certain subjects that I can never discuss with any American, certainly no-one I meet through work or in this middle class enclave.  As they say at sales school, never discuss religion, politics, or sex.

And this week it has all gone completely pear shaped, but the good news is the worst error was Heather’s.  Buying a turkey baster this afternoon, she actually told the shop assistant, in the poshest, most lovely kitchen shop you have ever seen…….that the device was phallic.

If you haven’t spent much time in middle America, you will be amazed at the relationship they have with sex.  It really just doesn’t exist, and this poor posh shop assistant didn’t even know what the word meant.  But she laughed when she worked it out, which I think was a 50:50, the 50% of the population that I can’t discuss religion with would have thrown us out.  The problem is you can’t tell which camp they are in.

Before I describe my big error, a moment of serious diversion.  I will blog on it at some point fairly soon, but I think I am waiting for some kind of moment of revelation on the attitude of America to guns.  I hate guns, and let’s face it, none of us are happy with 5 year old kids getting killed.  But I now have a Twitter exchange going on with a grown up man, who describes himself as a lawyer, who tweeted direct to me “return to the UK and live in fear of the armed criminals….why do you think more UK police being armed”.

There is such a bizarre lack of reality and logic in the American approach to guns.  There are 41 gun deaths a year in the UK, 10,000 in the US.  But they just don’t get it.  It is very upsetting still to think about this subject, and it comes back to all 4 of us almost every day, but I must move on.

So we went to a local party last weekend, my first, something I really needed and I really enjoyed it.  Really enjoyed it.

In my defence I was on drugs, a quick ridiculous trip to the UK had wiped me out, and left me with a bad cold.  Not that it is a cold over here, they don’t have colds, they have flu, but hey, give me drugs.

A few days in Calgary, in the very oil (and money) rich part of Canada, at 10 degress below didn’t help.  I could give you another diatribe on the difference between US and Canada, but….I digress.

So several 007 cocktails later, beers, wine….yes, I was flying, I was indestructible.

And I broke rule 1.

Yes, I lectured my lovely new American neighbour on the inevitability of taxation, the deferred price to be paid for the US induced recession.  I would like to say that my argument was very logical and I was not trying to be party political, I just know there is a price to pay, and in Europe  every tax payer is paying this price.  But in the US they have deferred the economic medicine, and the “fiscal cliff” approaches.  They deferred the tax rises 4 years ago, and government spend has increased, yes, there is a price to be paid.

The US political system is now very polarised, and the problems in achieving compromise is very difficult, and the middle classes are very unhappy.

Yes, he told Heather I was “left wing”.  I just hope he will talk to me again, I certainly can’t go in that kitchen shop again, and I continue to think of the phantom flan flinger.  I don’t think Chris Tarrant would have got a laugh out of a FLON flinger.  But maybe after so many good nights sleep I have lost it, and for once in my life, I could be wrong.