Wow, what a whirlwind of a weekend! From Thursday morning until yesterday morning, my days have been nonstop. Then today, I train and teach starting at 5:00a, and then am off on a jet plane to Illinois for a week!

I’m definitely going to miss my mountains while I’m gone, but I’m really looking forward to seeing family and friends.

But let’s rewind back to this weekend. So this weekend was the Great American Beer Fest.

Although I didn’t get a ticket to the actual event (they sell out in 20 minutes!!) I was able to attend, because I was working at it for KIND.

I was there for it for Thursday’s session (5:00-10:00) and Saturday’s sessions (12-4:00 and then 5:00-10:00) and I’ve never seen anything like this in my life. I’ve been to brewery (<—throwback to 2010 right there!)festivals (<—and just over a year ago) before, but this is the mac daddy of all beer fests.

They even have a procession of bagpipes that play and walk all through the convention center at the start of each session.

From the website:

Each year, GABF represents the largest collection of U.S. beer ever served, in a public tasting event plus a private competition. GABF brings together the brewers and diverse beers that make the U.S. the world’s greatest brewing nation

GABF was founded in 1982 by the Home Brewers Association (here in our own Boulder, CO) and consists of just six people! I thought that was pretty crazy.

Although the majority of the time, it was all about business for me, I did get to go and enjoy the festivities every now and then. Plus, I had my partner in crime with me for one of the sessions!

There was some fun to be had, but all in all, it was pretty much business while working, and was pretty exhausting. Standing for hours and hours, talking and being super friendly to people (who are drinking a good amount) drains me a bit.

Luckily, I had Friday off to recuperate. I had this huge plan of doing nothing but relaxing, but instead, I trained three early morning clients, met up with this chick to hike, and then spent the night playing Rock Band with friends. Yes, I probably should have taken it easy, but I have one really good big excuse: like I said, I’m leaving for Illinois today for a week!

That means 7 days away from this gorgeousness:

and a whole 7 days not seeing my colo friends. Seize the moment and all that jazz, right?

Saturday was the longest day ( a 13 hour day!) working at GABF, but it was still pretty cool to be amongst all of the excitement, and then hang out with these awesome girls at the end of the night.

I didn’t end up getting home until 12:30am that night, which is considered wee hours by this old lady in a 28 year old’s body. I promptly face-planted into bed and proceeded to dream about KIND. Seriously. Problems <—I has them.

Then because I had a free Sunday ahead of me, I grabbed Shane and we headed over to Chautauqua for one last hike before I left for Illinois. We were going to do my favorite hike in Boulder: the 1st and 2nd Flatiron. It’s a challenging hike, but is only a round trip of about 2 hours (used to be 3…we talked about how we were getting faster at hiking!)

As always, I bee-lined it for a quick potty trip before the hike, and, like we planned it, ran into none else, but Lauren and Greg in line for the bathroom.

So weird that we both got to the park at the same time without even planning on it! Naturally, we all hiked together because the universe apparently doesn’t like me to hike without Lauren (and because we love her and Greg) and savored the views at the top for a good 10 minutes, where I had a moment with the mountains (see second picture in this post.)

The rest of the day was fairly relaxing, with a few errands and last minute packing, and ended with Friday Night Lights and Thai food take out.

Have a great Monday, everyone!

What’s the largest festival you’ve been to?