i'm pretty sure this is why we don't live in wyoming, or colorado, or utah, or, and especially, montana.

one of the most often told origin stories of the marty/troy relationship deals with where we live. when people learn that i grew up in colorado, the first thing they ask is why we don't live in colorado now (versus st. louis).

of all the couples that live in st. louis, 90% of them fall into one of two buckets. bucket one holds couples who both grew up in st. louis. and bucket two holds couples where the girl grew up in st. louis and the boy was 'just passing through'.

i'm a second bucket guy. i graduated high school and came here for what i thought would be a few short years of college after which i expected to return to colorado. but along the way i got thunderbolted by marty (that is the italian term for love at first site). after we started dating seriously, the colorado-topic came up a few times. each time marty dismissed the subject, saying she would not be moving there. i remember turning to her the first time and ponderously asking 'what?' thinking she must be confused about the what was being discussed.

TROY
have you ever been to colorado?

MARTY
yes.

TROY
and you want to live in st. louis?

MARTY
yes.

TROY
(silent confusion)

MARTY
(silent conviction)

years later i can say, of course the person with the five siblings and two parents in town is going to win that battle, as they should, espcially when i no longer had a single relative in Colorado, or Utopia as it is know in this household. but if you have ever sampled an august day in st. louis, it is a testament of how spectacular marty walter is (or in the least how spectacular my love for the woman is) because i can't divine a single other thing that would make me trade the warm chinook winds of the colorado front range for the life-taking humidity that descends on this region every year.

on the good side, traffic is unsurprisingly not very bad in a city where no one wants to live. that's an extra big plus over denver's LA like traffic (and smog).