Pour Me A Story, Vol. 28
vaccinations, vacations and very high places
greetings pals, and welcome back to this week’s edition of Pour Me A Story. I hope all’s been well since we last saw each other.
remember a couple months ago when I mentioned I had had a bad brain day and had subsequently written the newsletter “live” at like 4:30 a.m. to get it out on time? well, yesterday was nothing like that, but as I crawled into bed last night I realized that it was not, in fact, Friday and that I had overlooked a significant regularly scheduled part of my Thursday.
my brain is thrown off calendar-wise by the fact that I took today off work for Alex’s birthday, so to set the scene: I’m sitting on the couch in the dark at 5:17 a.m. after snoozing three much earlier alarms, trying to get this edition out the door before the baby wakes up.
some housekeeping: thank you to everyone who filled out the Reader Survey earlier in the week. I haven’t had the opportunity to read all the responses yet but I appreciate the candid nature of the ones I’ve seen so far. if you haven’t filled it out yet, I sure would be grateful if you did.
on another note, you’re stuck with me and me alone this week. my planned special guest needed a little more time to get the interview in the bag, so we’ll hear from her next week.
anyway it’s time for the Pour Me A Story speed round. let’s do it!
The Parent Un-trap
sometime last week it dawned on Alex and I that the next, like, six weekends were pretty jammed up, between her birthday, the baby’s birthday, Mother’s Day, our anniversary, a trip out of town for her, and then a potential Major Life Event that I’ll detail further in this space once it’s concrete and out in the open.
but we had one that was not packed with some sort of plans, and that was last Saturday-Sunday. so we elected, in the spirit of each getting some precious “me-time,” to take one weekend day each to do whatever it is we wanted to do, mostly parenting-obligation-free.
I was torn on what to do with my Sunday. on one hand, ever since I moved to Denver I’ve been fascinated with the idea that Cheyenne, Wyoming, is just a 90-minute drive north, a straight shot up I-25. now I don’t have any clue what’s IN Cheyenne, or whether there would be enough to entertain me there longer than the drive time, but I’d always wondered about it, so that was an option.
I also briefly considered going and checking out Central City and Blackhawk, two mountain towns that play home to most of Colorado’s casinos. since I’m heading to Las Vegas for a couple nights early next month (more on that later), I figured it’d kill two birds with one stone — I could brush up on casino etiquette I haven’t had the opportunity to practice since 2018, and I could check out another couple towns I’d never seen before.
ultimately though, as it so often has during my almost-eight years in the U.S., the weather had the final say. it was due to be 50 and sunny in Denver, so I figured why not go for a hike? more specifically, why not retrace 2013 Adrian’s steps and re-take the first Colorado hike he ever tackled?
so Sunday morning came around and I loaded up a bag with snacks, grabbed a jacket, my hiking shoes and spikes (anticipating that the mountains got more snow through the week than we did in the city) and set off for the Chief Mountain trailhead out past Idaho Springs.
all was smooth until I hit Squaw Pass Road, which became invisible fast under a thick layer of snow. hmmm. the nerves crept into my stomach a little — I don’t love driving in the mountains to begin with, so adding snow to the mix doesn’t help — but I soldiered on, all the while wondering what the trail was going to look like if this is how the road conditions were.
eventually I parked the car along the roadside and sure enough I found the start of the trail, looking similar to how it was in my memories of 2013, albeit absolutely buried in the white stuff. I headed out, probably too hard too fast, given the altitude was twice what I live at, and there were a shameful number of stops for a breather along the way.
the trail was clearly marked though, and while some parts were slippery or a tough slog, it was manageable even for an old creaky dude like me. there were a handful of other people out there hiking it as well, but once we got 100 feet or so from each other, the sounds of their voices and footfalls fell away to nothingness and I was left, once again, in the most pure version of silence you can imagine. if you ever want a couple hours of being able to hear nothing in the world but your own breathing and the crunching of packed snow under your feet, go for a spring hike in Colorado.
I hit the summit after about an hour, and was treated to some beautiful views of Mt. Evans, one of the state’s many 14,000-foot peaks. it was absolutely fuckin’ freezing up there though, so I didn’t linger for longer than it took to refuel with a banana and take a couple selfies to prove I’d made it. because if you don’t have photographic evidence of something in 2021, you definitely did not do it.
coming down Chief Mountain was mad treacherous given the conditions, and I took a couple of full-body falls into the snow, but luckily there was like three feet of fresh powder to “catch” me.
having successfully navigated my way back to the trailhead and the relative safety of the car, I decided I’d earned a big meal, so I hit Idaho Springs for brunch before caving to the little voice in the back of my head and checking out the casinos in Blackhawk on my way back to Denver.
I’ve always enjoyed hiking but I’ve never been the Full Colorado Man who has to tackle a peak every weekend or whatever. not having owned a car for my first three years here didn’t help my ability to get out of town and do it, either. but it certainly felt cool to wind back the clock a little and check out a spot from my previous stint in Denver.
Let The Chips Fall Where They May
remember I mentioned above how Alex and I decided to divide up the weekend for some self-care and a break from parental responsibility last weekend? well I think one of the things I’ve been most proud of in our first year of parenting has been our individual ability to cover for the other so that we can each get some “us time.”
welcoming a child into the world absolutely throws everything you know about yourself and your previous life upside down at 100 miles an hour, and I don’t know about the rest of you parents out there, but I found it to be a pretty strange adjustment. having a global pandemic helped in the sense that the things I would usually do in my free time in 2019 could potentially kill me in 2020, so there wasn’t as much yearning to take myself to the movies or to get a beer. instead I became a runner, for Chrissakes.
ANYWAY. since we were fortunate enough to get our first round of vaccinations in March, the idea of being able to Do Some Things in a safe way became very appealing to the both of us. knowing that the jab timeframes would have us at “fully vaccinated” status by early May, and with the walls of our 1,000sqf apartment closing in on us at a rapid rate, we decided that this year would be the year for solo vacations, a chance to unwind a little bit without working bottles and nap schedules and The Wheels on the Bus into the daily routines.
Alex hit up her best friend and began to plan a mid-May trip to New Orleans. meanwhile I was torn about what I wanted to do. as with much of my best introspection, I explored the thought process on Twitter.
I had a significant internal struggle with, for a bunch of reasons. as I said in the second tweet, it’s been more than a year since I’ve seen the vast majority of my friends around the country. but as I’ve explored both in my own brain and out loud over the past 12 months, I feel like it’s going to take me a while to return to full strength when it comes to social skills.
on top of that, while Alex is a much more socially driven creature, I decompress best alone. it dawned on me a couple weeks ago (with some reminding from my therapist) that the past year has taken away a lot of the decompression time I used to have, be it in the gym or on the commute to and from the office every day, or even just at home while Alex was at work. none of those things exist anymore. I’m fortunate enough to get a little more baby-free alone time than Alex does, but parenting also changes that “disconnect” dynamic.
so with that in mind, and with my better half’s blessing, I gave work the heads-up that I’d be out of office the first week of May, and booked myself a little Vegas vacation. I’ve been a handful of times in the past, three before I moved out here for good and once since, and they’ve almost inevitably been utter shitshows partying with friends. the difference this time, though, is that I’m almost 36 and have a child, which means my body clock runs from 5:30 a.m. to 10:30 p.m. and no further.
it’s gonna be a couple days of lazy daytime beers, a little of the sightseeing that I’ve never managed to accomplish in the aforementioned shitshow trips (think: The Neon Museum), a couple of nice meals and a little low-rolling blackjack in the evenings. nothing to see here.
I got my second shot this week, so rest assured I’ll be fully vaccinated by that point, according to CDC guidelines, and I’m not gonna rush back out there hugging strangers or licking bathroom door handles or some shit. the mask stays on indoors, all that good stuff that’s kept me out of harm’s way for the past year. I also snagged some rapid test kits from the state health department, which makes me feel even better about the whole thing.
I never anticipated, even in like February, that by May I’d feel safe about the idea of flying (!) to Vegas (!!), but here we are. consider me about as impressed with a government’s efforts to help as I’ve ever been.
Worthy Consumables
this week’s shoutout is twofold. the worthiest consumable I partook in this week was Moderna No. 2 (in my opinion much better but less catchy than Mambo No. 5). it seems like more and more states are offering the jabs to the general public now, so I implore you all to go out and get it done if you haven’t already. maybe you’re undecided on vaccines in general, or have had the bug already, or figure you’re safe without it.
but lemme propose this scenario: getting the vaccine isn’t about you as much as it is about everybody else. the more people who are vaccinated, the more people who are protected, and the less opportunity there is for community transmission. we all want to get back out there and get back to some semblance of normal life, and it’s our responsibility to protect the folks around us. want to sit at a bar? think of the bartender, who might not have been able to get the shot yet. same goes for servers, grocery store staff, whoever. getting out of the house is exciting, but we owe it to ourselves to think of everyone we cross paths with.
anyway, I’m off the soapbox. the second-worthiest consumable of the week is the 7-Eleven brand Pedialyte and rapid-release Tylenol, both of which spared me from the worst of the second-shot blues this week. I got some body aches and the arm still smarts a little bit, but I’m over the hump and feeling pretty good. just in time.
Parting Note
this week the song choice is on me, so apologies in advance. I’ve actually had this tune stuck in my head for a few days and it reminds me of the annual event I helped run in the Before Times, one which will hopefully be back at something resembling full strength this September.
Lawrence, the band formerly known as Clyde Lawrence, played our Rhode Island Seafood Festival in its early days when the members were still college kids at Brown. they’ve become a little bigger since then, but I listened to their debut album on repeat during the summer of 2013. this is the title track, and it makes me long for India Point Park in Providence.
thanks again for hanging this week, pals. looking forward to doing it all over again next Friday
— adrian ✌️