THE ST Kilda faithful never fail to amaze me, no matter where in the world I am.

We were warming up for our training session in the Colorado University Bubble facility when all of a sudden, one by one a whole bunch of Saints fans wandered in.

They were all people who are living in the United States who came to get their much-needed football fix and they seemed pretty thrilled to see us.

There were parents with their children, elderly married couples and people in their 20s who all came along draped in red, white and black.

We’re used to seeing a few of the Saints fans watch us train when we’re at Seaford but to see it happen when we’re in Boulder, Colorado is pretty unbelievable.

I made sure I went up and introduced myself to a few of the fans and it was pretty interesting to hear their stories. One guy I spoke to had driven for more than nine hours from Kansas City to Boulder just to watch us train.

Now that’s dedication.

Today was a fairly full-on session lasting about three hours. We’re only days away from our trip coming to an end and the boys are pretty much used to the high altitude now and the benefits are sure to flow.

As for me, I’m adapting to the cooler weather by going the wild and woolly look. I’ve been growing a beard these past couple of weeks but it’s coming off as soon as I get back home because I’ve got a wedding to go to the next day.

I honestly think we’ll get plenty out of this trip, both physically and culturally.

Tonight we had a bit of social outing with the boys getting together at the local ten-pin bowling alley. What started out as a bit of fun, naturally turned into a pretty spirited contest - which is kind of always going to happen when you get so many competitive people in the same place together.

For the record, I bowled the best game out of all the players with a 190 but I had some good competition from guys like Nick Dal Santo, Cam Shenton and Adam Schneider.

Soon enough we were back at the hotel and back in bed after a solid day’s training.

There’s every chance we’re going to see our first snow for the trip tomorrow. We’ve been relatively lucky with the weather so far and it was actually fairly balmy the other day.

But at the moment it looks like it’s not going to get above 0 degrees celcius tomorrow so I might have to throw on a couple of extra layers. I might need more than the beard to keep me warm.