7 Things They Didn't Tell Me Before I Moved to Colorado

1. The Alaska/Hawaii Effect
The above picture is a good illustration of the kinds of things you learn only by living in a place. It's not something folks from Texas would even think about when buying a house. But it turns out that the direction your house faces up here matters a lot. North and west facing homes are stuck shoveling snow. South and east facers get enough sun to do the job for them. The little kids in elementary school will tell you, one side of the street is "Alaska" and the other is "Hawaii": snow piles directly across from grass yards, up and down every street you drive in the winter. We lucked out and bought on the right side of the street.

2. The Fizz/Boil Effect
You've seen the "high altitude" baking instructions on your packages, but this extends to the amount of soda fizz you will pour into your cup as well as melting things in the microwave. It takes me more than 10 minutes to make queso in the microwave here, almost twice the time it ran me in Texas. The fizz in soda goes down very slowly and typically will be about half of the glass. I'm guessing beer on tap has a similar reaction. Bartenders must be very patient.

3. Car Registration
Alright, everything in Colorado costs a fortune, but this one beats all. $55.00 in Texas for the annual car tags? Don't ever complain. It was more than $500 for my Honda. It's a sliding scale, so once you're vehicle is older than 10 years, you've got it made. But new? Forgetaboutit.

4. Snow Days
When we moved up here, we expected lots of snow days. In three years we've had exactly three and those came this October in a row in record snowfall. Students are like the mailmen, they go in anything. The best you get is an hour delay when a foot or more has fallen. And no, you don't use chains, ever. Giant semi's use them on the sloped Interstate in ice, but no one has them on regular cars. You just learn to take it easy, slide a bit, and brake long before you might need to. Life does not shut down when it snows here.

5. Football Stadiums
Ok, yes, Texas High School football is in a league of its own; we knew that. But what shocked us was that many of the high school fields here are one-sided. Both teams' spectators sit together, with no seats across the field. It's just weird. There's still some attempt at segregation, as typically each team's fans divide at the 50 yard line, but it's just not the same.

6. Birds
The crows up here will eat chihuahuas for dinner. They are stinking huge! Five times the size of the crows in Texas, at least. They are downright scary. And why in the heck are there lone seagulls zooming about? On the flip side, I do love the Canadian geese. They spread out by the hundreds on snowy fields and make such a lovely racket honking on the move.

7. Snow, yes. Rain, no.
It very rarely rains here. The air is too dry, so that when clouds drop their load, its absorbed into the dry air before it hits the ground. I miss the sound of rain terribly. We get serious thunder and lightening storms, the kind that shake the house like an earthquake, and you sometimes won't ever see a drop from them. I'll still take the trade off, though. The snow is still magical, the summers are amazing, the fall colors breathtaking. But I miss the rain.