A Colorado Christmas: Iko Hits the Road
This year we are visiting Brian’s sister, Julie, and her family to celebrate a belated Christmas. The idea of spending time in Colorado with family sounds great. The idea of paying for 6 airline tickets, not so much. We decided to hit the road. You may know this about us: we are not unaccustomed to a road trip. However, this year we have a special guest—Iko, our exchange student from Japan. Iko has never driven more than about 5 hours in the car. So you can imagine his surprise that we were planning to drive 20 hours, and that 20 hours would only get us partway across the U.S.! And so it came to pass that this unsuspecting young man found himself trapped in a minivan with 5 other people, assorted bags and food supplies, and a ridiculous number of wrapped presents. Two of those 5 people had raging colds, turning our family bus into, as friend Jeff Smits termed it, a germ incubator. Plus, on this particular trip we had more items that could not be stashed under other things, an