9/1/14 (Labor Day)
Aboard UA 671, En route DEN–LGA
As the summer of 2014 comes to its unofficial close, I can now reflect
on the past 3 months. I am running low on battery, so I’m not sure how much I can fit
in. Anyway, after the wonderful summer
of 2013, I knew with absolute certainty that I would never have a better summer
in my entire life. I was wrong. The summer of 2014 was better, not because of
the trips I took, the places I went, but rather because of the people who were on those trips and the people who were in my life. How could 18 days in Alaska be
better than 18 days in Europe? Do it
with your best friend. The trip itself
was nowhere near as good, but the memories will last a lot longer. The 2013 Maine trip was better than the 2014
Maine trip, but the 2013 version was done with my mother, so that just proves
the point. For Memorial Day, I went to
Japan in 2014, Mexico in 2013. The Japan
trip was much better. I suppose there
was no equivalent to the July 4th Wood Buffalo NP trip of 2013.
That leaves August. It started with a jaunt off to Washington and
BC with a friend and it ended in Colorado alone. In between, there was a weekend trip to
Oregon to visit my brother and his fiancée, and a wonderful weekend spent in NYC. In contrast, August
of 2013 also contained three trips.
Instead of being outdoors in Bryant Park with someone I love, as I did on the third Monday of August
2014, I was detained indoors for three hours and almost wound up in a Canadian prison on the third Monday of August
2013. Instead of flying across the
country with a friend that I tolerate rather well, as I did the first weekend of
August 2014, I went on a road trip with someone I can barely tolerate because
he kept begging to go on a road trip with me, and I didn’t have the heart to
tell him no, on the first weekend of August 2014. Instead of spending the
fourth weekend in with my brother and his fiancée, who has become as a sister
to me, two people who are definitely among the ten most important people in my
life, I spent the fourth weekend of August 2013 in Minnesota with the
aforementioned friend that I tolerate, but someone who means nothing in my
life.
That brings me to Labor Day
weekend. How could anything in Colorado
compare to the Northern Lights, Yellowknife, Nahanni NP&RoC, and the
Canadian North? Well, I suppose it
can’t. Absolutely nothing in the world I
have ever seen can ever compare to the Northern Lights, and Denver did not have
the charm of Yellowknife, but Black Canyon of the Gunnison NP is almost as
mamash as Nahanni NP&RoC. The Rocky
Mountains are almost as mamash as the Canadian North. On paper, the trip I took Labor Day weekend
2014 was almost as good as the trip I took Labor Day weekend 2013, but not
quite. In actuality, it was better, much
better.
At the end of the summer of
2014, I am in a much better place than I was in the summer of 2013. Even if I loved Teotihuacan more than Kyoto, Brussels
more than Juneau, North Dakota more than Citi Field, Minnesota more than
Oregon, and Yellowknife more than Denver, I love the people who were with me in
the summer of 2014 more than the ones who were there (or not there) in the summer of
2013. That is why, the summer of 2014
may very well have been the best summer of my life.
Okay, when I prepare my travel schedule, most people take one look at
and instantly balk. What they do not
realize is that, without such a schedule, you will miss flights, lots of them,
if you travel anywhere near the way I do.
It doesn’t really matter what the actually times of the intermediate
spots on the schedule. I have no problem
looking at a schedule while I’m at a site and saying, “I’d rather spend an
extra hour here and take it out of an hour there.” However, without such a schedule, you wind up
getting to your hotel very late. I had
plenty of time to kill at Colorado NM yesterday, but without my schedule, I
would have had no idea what time that extra hour would have meant for my
arrival at the hotel. I decided to stay
within 90 minutes of my schedule yesterday, since I knew that to go over that
would have meant arriving at my hotel past 10 PM, which I did not want to
do. Without my schedule, I would not
have known if I had time to stop for lunch or kill time at the North Rim
waiting around for the ranger. Today, I
had a schedule, and I pretty much stuck to it exactly. I knew that I wanted an hour at the Capitol
to write my “events” entry and then an hour at the airport to write the
reflective entry. I hit traffic and road closures, and that effed everything up. If I hadn’t planned out that time for the
entry writing, I would have missed my flight.
Once again, I didn’t set my alarm, waking up earlier than planned. My sleep machine is now completely shot, or
the tubing at least, but I slept surprisingly well without it. After packing, breakfasting, getting ready,
taking my time to do so, I was on the road with a 9 AM arrival at the VC, right
on schedule. There were five VCs in the
park. I was determined to hit all of
them. (#EveryStamp) The first one opened at 8 AM, but I figured
that the other ones down the road would serve as limiting reactants, so an 8 AM
arrival would have served nothing. I
think an 8:45 AM arrival would have been better, but I wasn’t fretting over
those 15 minutes. I got my brochure
stamped at the first VC, which was an NHL, and then continued on the second
one, one of two of the five that are officially inside the park. There were hiking trails nearby, so I lit up
my H. Upmann and started walking up it.
I had the pin, the t-shirt, the Cuban, the hike, and the stamped
brochure. I then made it official.
I walked back down, got in
the car, and headed to the third VC.
After that, there would be two more VCs, one inside the park, at the top
of the road, the other at the opposite end, outside the park. The best way to see the park was by the Trail
Ridge Road, which was about 40-50 miles, and would take 1.5-2 hours, plus stops,
with a peak elevation over 12,000 feet, higher than I think I had ever been. The whole whole drive took me about 2 hours,
including stops. I would have loved to do
what I had done in Yosemite or Wrangell, stopping at every vista, but there
simply wasn’t time. As it was, I almost
missed my flight, so I think I timed it well, stopping at plenty of scenic
vista.
I knew that I would want to take
a new profile picture without the water bottle, without the brochure, without
the cigar, as my father keeps suggesting.
Figuring he has been right about so much else recently, it seemed like a
good plan. There was no service the
whole drive, so I couldn’t send out the text I had been trying to send since I
took the picture from Moraine at 9:30 AM, nor could I post the picture I tried
to upload to Instagram at 11 AM.
Changing my profile picture from 12,000 feet would be just as
impossible. I finally got to the Alpine
VC, and I put the State Capitol until the GPS.
What’s this? I was 30 minutes
ahead of schedule? No, that wasn’t
possible. I was right. I was actually more like 10 minutes behind
schedule, but the GPS was having me doubling back, heading down the same way I
came in, which had have meant missing the last VC.
I got back in the car after getting my stamp,
and then I called an audible. There was
a trail that led up a peak that I knew would have a beautiful vista. I think I had even turned on the engine
before I basically said to myself, “Eff my foot, eff my lungs, I’m effing
climbing up that trail.” I lit up a My
Father cigar, and was on my way. I then
head someone say something about me “with a suit and stogie, like a boss.” It really is a stylish way to hike, and I
knew that I would be tweeting out that quote.
I got to the top, completely winded, took my pictures, and headed back
down, knowing that, other than the last VC for the last stamp, I would not stop
again until I got to the capitol. As I
was driving, I still didn’t have any service.
It wasn’t until 1 PM that I heard that chirp from my phone that
indicated I had gotten service back.
I
pulled over on the shoulder, pressed resend on the text, Instagram, and tweet that
were unable to be sent, and checked my Facebook notifications. The whole process took about two
minutes. Then I hit the traffic, so I
pulled up Google Maps, which indicated about 15 minutes of traffic. In truth, it was closer to 30 minutes. I wanted to light up my Padron, but I wasn’t
sure exactly how long the drive to the capitol would take, and I don’t take
pictures at State Capitols with cigars.
I also had just been driving for about an hour with the windows open to
air out the car, so I didn’t want to stink it up again. I figured that I would have the Padron as I
wrote my “events” entry outside the Capitol and then do the reflective entry en
route. Well, the traffic was really bad,
and I had forgotten I would need to gas up before I returned the car. On top of that, there was something called the
“Taste of Colorado,” basically Denver’s answer to the State Fair, less the
animals. It meant that most of the
streets around the capitol were closed, so I had a hard time navigating to find
a way to get there.
In the end, I did,
but there was no time to have a cigar or write any kind of entry. There was just enough time to take a picture
at the capitol and have a beer and hot dog at the fair before I started worrying about missing my flight. It was a close call. Fortunately, I breezed through security with
my TSA PreCheck, but the flight was already halfway done boarding by the time I
got to the gate. I then uploaded my new
profile picture, pleased how good the photo was, and proceeded to write this
entry as soon as we were airborne. I
will now close this entry (and the trip) so that I can publish it before my
battery dies. Next stop: Brooklyn,
followed by my birthday bash in Andorra.
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