A Saturday of Sun, Sand, Strawberries, and Steak

Today was a good Saturday. When I left work on Friday I never imagined I would have a good Saturday as I thought I was going to have work all weekend. We started off the day by sleeping in until 9am and then watching some cartoons with Daniel when we had a suprise visit from my mother and father in law from Floyd, VA! They had just bought them a new car and wanted to test it coming down the mountain. We let Daniel play outside with my sisters for awhile while me and George caught up with things that had been going on.

We then went to get strawberries, a new tank for the grill, and some hamburgers. We all eat and played until about 1pm when the mountain folk had to go. Daniel was very sad afterword… Until we informed him that he would be spending the rest of the afternoon playing with his cousin Zach.

We went to my Mom’s where I had a ton of son duties to perform as Jess, my mom, and sister prepaired the house for her baby shower next weekend. We all had a great time and the boys got super nasty playing in the sand. We had steaks and salad followed by icecream. It was an awesome Saturday.

Thanks for reading
David Bates

My Trip to Denver, CO

Earlier this week you may have noticed that I did not post much or tweet a whole lot. This is because I was actually in Denver, CO touring RFMD’s Broomfield facility. I was accompanied by my Colleague

I started my journey on Tuesday at 4am and flew to Atlanta we stayed in ATL just long enough to huff it across the terminal and catch our flight to Denver. The flight to Denver was over 3 hours long and we flew over 500MPH. The coolest part of the trip was watching the GPS while we flew. Cities flew by as though they were street names, it was very cool. We landed at about 11 our time and we grabbed our rental car and headed for the hotel.

It is about a 20 minute drive from the Airport in Denver to the hotel in Broomfield. While driving to the Hotel we both noticed that there where no mountains. In fact we both looked at each other and said “Where are the friggin Mountains?” There was not a single mountain in site for the entire drive and me and Kim both were disappointed that we would not see any. So we got to the hotel and checked in.

Pictures of trip to Denver from Airplaine:

Once we got settled at the hotel we then drove to work. We were told before we left that there would be a cookout at the facility at 2:00 so we rushed over so not to miss it. We got there at the perfect time I went straight through the line being sure to meet the people that was supposed to show us around. The menu was hamburgers and sausages… yes sausages and they were delicious. They even had put Jalapeño’s on the line. While I was stuffing the sausage into my mouth we met the main guy we came to see, he asked how our trip was and if we liked Broomfield. I said the food was great but that we were disappointed because we couldn’t see the rockies. Surprised he exclaimed… What do you mean you can’t see the mountains? I then asked if he had a place close by that we could go to see them and he said sure just turn left out of the parking lot. Now I gave him a strange look because I had just drove from that way and I figured that if there had been a mountain there I would have seen it… Right? So I agreed to follow his direction once we got out of the office. We spent several hours then touring the facility and video taping several areas of the building. The office had a meeting at 4:00 though and after that all of the workers were dismissed so me and Kim took off to find some mountains, and mountains we did find.
This is the view just to the left of the parking lot for RFMD Broomfield:

It turned out that it was just foggy when we drove in and the mountains were covered. I guess it was God’s way of giving the mountains a majestic reveal.

That night we had the most amazing dinner at Carraba’s and I went back to the hotel and got in the Jacuzzi… Wonderful

Day 2:
On day 2 we got up and drove quite a ways to the nearest IHOP and as we were telling each other that we had traveled to far we noticed this great spot to film the mountains from… take a look below and see if you agree:

we then ate at IHOP and went in to work. we filmed until about 2 and then headed for the airport.
This time we were routed through Cincinnati to get back to Greensboro but it was a fun flight.
A Pic of the flight back:

All in all it was a great trip and I had a great time.

Thanks for reading:
David Bates