Less than thirty hours left!

My last Saturday in Denver was spent at a book club meeting with the "Y So Early" swimmers at Mike and Kellun's house. I didn't actually read the book, The Man Who Walked Through Time, by Colin Fletcher. It's relegated to the "after Turkey" pile along with The Basque History of the World, borrowed from Andres, and Arkadiy Averchenko, borrowed from Noskov. I'm glad to have finished Crescent and Star before leaving.

The Man Who Walked Through Time definitely sounds like a good read. It's a first-person story by a hiker who walked through the Grand Canyon in 1963, and how that experience changed him.

Kellun is a English teacher to immigrants, and two of her students, Behan and Mehmet, are Turks from Bandirma, across the Sea of Marmara from Istanbul.

This morning I had the chance to spend more time with the Turks visiting Denver for the month of April. They addressed the Rotary District Conference in Colorado Springs, which my teammates Steve, Lisa and I attended. Our Turkish counterparts are adamant that we spend as much time as possible in Istanbul. Sinan Atmaca of the imbound Turkey team said, "My life will be shortened by 2 years if you do not visit Istanbul!" Sinan is a doctor, so he must know what he's talking about with that lifespan estimate. We'd better visit Istanbul!

The Turks' impression of Colorado's weather is hilarious. Bekir Turgut, a geologist who is part of the visiting team, said, "Your weather is like the woman. It cannot make up her mind. One day it is snowing, the next it is hot and sunny."