Gone, Way Long Gone: New friends, feasts, fires, and fixing computer frustrations

This morning I rode with Noah to Denver. He had a classical Indian music lesson scheduled with his guru Roshan. Roshan and his wife Aysha were interested in meeting us - Noah's parents - and had invited all of us to lunch. Rouse was involved in house repair projects so he declined the invitation, but I was eager to meet these folks. I had heard so much about them from Noah.

Today, Noah was playing his newest instrument, the sarangi, while Roshan played sitar. I sat in on the lesson and was amazed at Noah's ear skills. Roshan pushed him hard and told us lots of stories about his life experiences.

Meanwhile, spicy aromas wafted from the kitchen. Aysha was preparing a special lunch for us to enjoy after the lesson. On the menu was masala biryani (colorful, flavorful rice with chicken) along with a potato & pepper side dish, onion & tomato salad, chutney, and raita. So unlike me... I didn't think to take a picture of all that beautiful food! The meal and the company were quite pleasant, and Noah took home a lot of delicious home-cooked Indian food for later consumption.

In the afternoon, Noah convinced Rouse that he should get rid of the majority of his computer woes by simply purchasing a new computer. Ha ha! Why not?? Noah persuaded him to get on the Apple bandwagon, since all our other devices are Apple products. They visited the local Apple store website, created an order for the machine they wanted, and within two hours a courier had delivered it to the front door! We spent the rest of the afternoon setting up that computer and being schooled by Noah and Susanna in all kinds of helpful computer usage tips.

The sunset was magnificent as we headed out to dinner at Teocalli Cocina, old town Lafayette (yes, it's our second meal there during this visit). Unfortunately, the reason behind the dramatic cloudscape? All the fires burning across the state. In the last picture, you can actually see smoke billowing up at the horizon.