Call me Fievel 'cause I went west.
If you don't get that reference, you're too young for this blog. Go to bed.
For the last week of July I headed to Denver to spend some time with my friend Chelsea. AKA-it was her "shift" because summer break is rough for extraverts like me and my NC support team was tapping out.
Chelsea is a travel nurse and let me tell you, everyone should invest in a friend who is a travel nurse. I first tried to snatch Chelsea up freshman year of college when we lived in the same dorm. A friend of a friend was suitemates with Chelsea and the rest is...a 3 year gap because Chelsea didn't accept my friendship until senior year. Eventually she became my friend the same way all of my other college friends did, dance marathon forced her to (except my Bible study friends & Sarah from J-School, love y'all).
Chelsea has worked stints in a lot of major American cities and when they are in states that never need a negative sign to report the temperature, I like to visit. In September Emily & I headed to Tampa to kayak with Chelsea and after my east coast version of Wild earlier this summer, I decided to fly out to Colorado.
I also decided to not tell my mother. Missy worries too much.
I knew it would be a fateful journey when NO ONE ELSE was seated in my row of the plane. That's when I knew I was God's favorite. I paid extra for an aisle seat because I am not accustomed to flights longer than 2 hours and also aisle seats are objectively the best do not @ me.
Things took a turn for the worse when I somehow managed to switch terminals while exiting the airport, but it all worked out. I want to recap some of the highlights of the trip. I won't cover everything and I won't include more pics because I have COVID and honestly I am exhausted. It's been a long day of checking my oxygen levels and messing up sudokus.
I suppose the first thing of note was when I got kicked out of a store in downtown Denver. When I travel I like to support the local economy, and by that I mean buy a ton of souvenirs that I don't need. I found a good mix of magnets and tchotchkes (passing over all the "mile high" jokes) at a shop downtown and went to check out while Chels waited outside. I had a running tally in my head and figured I would be coming in hot at just under $30. The cashier punched in all my prices one by one and told me my total was $36 (and something because Toto, we aren't in Delaware anymore). I did my quick math, glancing over the postcards for scrapbooking, keychain, and okay, 1 pot leaf pencil for my brother as a joke. No way did this equal $36.
I told the man that something wasn't right, this shouldn't be $36. (I had only been in the state for 3 hours! I couldn't be wasting $36 on magnets that will sooner or later end up under the fridge.) I was expecting him to look over the receipt, do his own quick math, IDK, something normal. Instead. This man YELLED AT ME. It was a quiet yell, but still. "You don't want to pay? Get out! I've been doing this 50 years!" I wanted to point out that a lot of people have long-term pursuits they are not good at. Look at most senators. Practice doesn't always make perfect bud. But instead I left, mouth slightly agape.
When I came out empty-handed Chelsea was shocked and I had to explain what had happened. For the remainder of the night every few minutes I had to say "what a jerk, right?" (and other, less PG variations of that) just to remind everyone that I had been wronged. We went to literally the next store and got the same stuff for less money. I wanted to circle back to store 1 (I wanna say the name was I Heart Denver but the sign said something else...will have to get the FBI on this) and have a Pretty Woman moment, but my medium size reusable bag didn't really have the cinematic effect I was going for.
Chelsea suggested we scooter back to her place and all of a sudden it was the 90s again but with richer parents. We rented electric scooters and I followed her for about 2 minutes before gaining the confidence to forge my own path. That is, I took a wrong turn when I should have gone straight. And I found myself playing a game of chicken with what I presume to be a homeless man. A game of chicken that I instantly knew he would win.
You see, this man had failed to hang onto the majority of his teeth and his pants were clearly going to be the next to jump ship. I was focused on not scooting into him AND him keeping his pants on because it was apparent he had no underwear. In the brief moment that our parallel paths reached their closest proximity, this man SWIPED AT ME. I don't know what his end game was, but I jumped off the scooter once I was out of the intersection. In retrospect, dismounting the scooter only made me slower and caused me to re-injure my favorite Crocs. I scanned the streets for Chelsea and soon saw that the pants were officially down. The man's, not Chelsea's. Luckily I could only see his butt from my side of the road, but as he continued on his way, yelling something, he also took a swipe at Chelsea! Only this time he managed to touch her! To try to knock her off the scooter. And we may never know why. But as Chelsea said later, there aren't enough showers in all the world.
Now the next point of interest came Tuesday when I wanted to visit Wyoming AND Nebraska because why not? No one else does, they were probably lonely. Honestly, had the census been a headcount on July 27th, we would have gotten them more congressional representation just by being in state lines.
Wyoming was pretty chill, we went to a bison ranch and then had bison burger! That's not a typo, Chelsea's a vegetarian. After that we toured the huge boot statues in downtown Cheyenne and got invited to Frontier Days by everyone we saw.
Now in Nebraska, what I wanted was to visit Panorama Point. This is the highest point in Nebraska. You can look down on Colorado, Wyoming and Nebraska literally and not just judgmentally. I had read on the internet that this place was hard to find and after 3 miles on a dirt road with nothing in sight but crops and windmills, it wasn't looking good. We weren't so much concerned that we wouldn't be able to find it as we were that it was all a hoax orchestrated by some small town cult to lure in unsuspecting tourists and use them as human scarecrows. As if I needed to leave North Carolina to find myself in some Children of the Corn shit. (sorry mom) (also I suppose it bears explaining that the second film was shot in NC)
But we eventually DID find it and it was, in a word, underwhelming. Okay one more picture. There's a notebook at the lookout for visitors to sign and as we were leaving our mark on Nebraska, we found a touching note.
After my near-death experiences out west, I pray that we all go home and tell our Edens that we love them.
(and also that that mean man's business fails, amen)
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