In the throes of the pandemic, we met during the summer of 2020. Our first date, lockdown style, was hiking South Table Mountain in Golden. We quickly bonded over a shared love of the outdoors and an incredibly similar taste in music. It didn’t take long for us to realize how much we had in common, and by the summer of 2021 we moved into a condo in Littleton while Naima finished her B.A. at University of Denver and Ben finished his B.S. at the Colorado School of Mines.
Nearing graduation and at the end of our lease in Littleton, we searched the front range for a good next home, but ultimately decided to pack everything up and move to Ben’s childhood cottage in Salida Colorado. For our first year Ben commuted back and forth from Salida to Golden while finishing his in person requirements for his PhD in computer science at Mines. Naima stayed in Salida full-time while establishing deeper roots in the community.
Currently Naima is a full-time horse trainer, helping manage barns, training young horses, giving lessons, and competing in cutting competitions around Colorado with her horse Rusty when her schedule allows.
Ben is working on finishing his PhD at Mines, which he can luckily complete remotely from Salida. He continues to study computer science with an emphasis on AI and computer systems. His current projects revolve around large language models for education.