EveryTrail - Find the best Hiking in Colorado
Time: 1 hour 45 minutes
Distance: 74 miles
I knew when I got to Denver that even spending almost 3 weeks in town I would still find myself in a rush at the end to see people, or to spend more time with people I had already seen. There are several people that I didn't get to see at all (I'm sorry it didn't work out!) and a few that I would have loved to spend more time with (well, just about everyone really), but I guess that's how it goes sometimes. It just means I have to come back and visit again!
On Tuesday I had a "wow the world is small" moment and met up with the sister of a fellow SMA alum who I met while visiting former teachers last week, who is now friends at CSU with someone I was friends with in high school. Confused? She and I got to talking and she told me that her sister wants to be a midwife and wants to go to Africa, so I asked if she would pass along my phone number and email to see if her sister would be interested in chatting about my time in West Africa working in a maternity. She got certified to teach ESL after high school and went to live in Colombia for a year, traveling around the region a bit and perfecting her Spanish. We met up for smoothies on 16th Street and prattled away for over an hour, I think we could have easily talked for half the day about living in other countries, learning new languages, different educational programs and pathways to entering midwifery, and the quirks of international bus travel (to name a few). Unexpected to find a bit of a kindred spirit through such a complex web of connections, but well worth the frustration of finding a parking spot downtown (I was proud that once I found a spot I managed to parallel park on the first try!)
I had to leave because I'd also promised to meet up with Bailey, a friend I met back when we were both in college. She works long hours and had been out of town and this was going to be our chance to finally see each other, so I said goodbye to Jubilee and drove down Broadway to meet her at Sweet Action. It was my second time in the week being in that part of town and I was happy for the excuse to wander around all the neat shops and restaurants that have popped up there. I guess I must not have driven south on Broadway often enough, because I know those stores didn't just appear in the past three years, but it did give off the impression of a neighborhood in the middle of a revitalization. An excellent way to spend the afternoon, catching up with friends in person and then on the phone as I sat and watched the dog walkers go by (French Bulldogs are apparently the "in" pet these days) If you ever go to Sweet Action, I highly recommend the peanut butter and jelly ice cream, don't let the "vegan" label stop you, it's delicious!
Yesterday I said goodbye to Denver and headed north to Ft. Collins. I managed to time it perfectly to hit rush hour traffic, construction, and pretty much every red light possible. It reminded me of why I love Tucson and the "traffic" there. We still have construction, bad drivers, and red lights, but in the summer when the spread out town is missing 1/3 of its residents, traffic is listening to the radio and hearing about a 3 minute delay on I-10 while you zip up Oracle instead. :p
I got to Cei and Jordan's apartment before they were home; I had in mind that I wanted to go on a little walk around the neighborhood after being stuck in my car for the past 2 hours, and then I discovered a huge park full of trails right across the street! So off I went for a nice walk, trying to refrain from dancing to my zumba music playing on my headphones, smiling at the assortment of bikers, joggers, dog walkers, and tennis players that I encountered. I did see a faded hopscotch outline on my way back and I *may* have turned around just to jump on it (and almost trip over my own feet).
Jordan had gotten home by the time I did, and I "helped" (watched) her start dinner while we chatted away a mile a minute - sometimes you just have that ability when you meet someone, I always like when it happens with the partner of a friend (we met briefly around New Year's but this was our first chance to really get to know each other) She's incredibly smart, very well informed on so many topics; I was happy to find that we not only have a lot in common but also a lot not in common that gave us a lot to talk about. She has this amazing ability to remember full names of people (besides the ones you have to memorize in school because they did something famous) and finds connections between topics that once she says them you kind of think "oh yeah, that was totally there this whole time!" but it didn't come into focus until she points it out. Recently I've started thinking about how interesting it would be to write biographies of people I know, everyone seems to have such compelling life stories even by the time they're in their 20's and 30's - from the little I know I suspect Jordan's life story has a fascinating book waiting to be written.
As we sat down to dinner I couldn't help but feel impressed by the passing of time. Cei and I met in elementary school, lost touch for a few years, and reconnected in high school. It's easy (and fun at times) to wander reminiscing paths of our childhood, but it's also nice to see that our present lives are so overwhelmingly different from those times. Cei and Jordan live in a beautiful little apartment that shocked me at how "adult" and real (vs. college dorm hodgepodge falling apart) it is - it's comfortable, full of furniture that may not be a matched set but go together in a cozy, lived-in way, with actual care and theme in the decorating that gives the clear impression of being well thought out and deliberate, and feels much more like a home than anything I would have thought to assemble together (so many good ideas!). They both seem well on their paths to where they want to be in life in terms of working and being in/applying to graduate programs, and seem to find a real joy and satisfaction in being exactly at the point in life that they're in. And here we were sitting down to an "adult" meal with more than one element (steak, green beans, rosemary mashed potatoes, and a delicious mushroom onion sauce), none of which had come out of a box and all of which had been successfully cooked by a trio of 20-somethings - it shouldn't be shocking, but I guess it just felt particularly impressive in that moment. It's not the life I'm leading right now as I give in to wander-lust and travel the country, but it's the kind of life I hope to have one day soon.
Photos!
Banana?
This is Ooofie, the sweetest fluffy old-man kitty
Watching morning cartoons and waiting for breakfast
Fluff!
Very friendly cat in a tree
This sounds crazy now, but when I first got to Burkina I suddenly had so much time to just sit and think and remember random things from my "America life" and one image that popped up a couple of times was the on-ramp from Sheridan to 6th avenue, I think Caitlin and I must have driven that route downtown a few times a week at least in the months before I moved to Tucson.
So I took pictures this time, although I wasn't too surprised when the memory didn't resonate like it used to
Happy trails!
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