Spring Break

So since spring break is lasting an entire week, I figured what I would do is separate this single post into different sections depending on the day. Some may be purely pictures, some may only be text, and the remaining posts will be a combination of the two. This is about all I was planning for an intro, so please, read and enjoy.

Friday, March 2nd

So today is the day we left for my friend Levi's house in Grand Junction, Colorado. The day was relatively straight-forward, got up for International Relations with Christian and Dusty, managed to beat Sean in another game of ping-pong, had an awesome conversation with Wren over chicken fingers and a burrito bowl. Utterly failed at filling up Levi's truck for him.

Wait, what?

Okay, so here's what happened:
Levi came up at around 1:25ish about to leave for class. He asks me, "Ian, can I trust you with my life?" After some increasingly convoluted conversation, I agreed to fill up his truck for him while he was in class so we could get on the road a little faster. Having never really filled a tank before (shut up) Sean came along for the ride, and we set out for the Conoco across Federal. We pull up, and I do everything Sean tells me to, though, getting Levi's zip code for his card was a bit of a hassle but that is no big deal. So I put the nozzle in the tank, set it all up, nothing. No gas gets pumped. The pump starts to read "Thank You for Choosing Conoco-Phillips" and prints a receipt for zero dollars. What.

Upon trying to repeat at another pump, only to have it scream at me "SEE ATTENDANT" Sean says it might be best to go to the Sinclair down the road a bit. So we do. I do the exact same thing at the pump at Sinclair, after awkwardly waiting in a line, and again, nothing. So Sean gets out of the car, and messes with the nozzle, not placing it in as deep. It pumps. We leave, but the story gets better!

We're driving back to campus, and I'm realizing just how awful I am with Levi's truck's turn radius. I'm pulling into a parking space and I just can't seem to make it fit. To make matters worse, there's a white Mustang behind me, waiting for my parking job to be finished. Sean then pointed out that it was Dani, Olivia, Lucy, Lauren, and Jessica in the Mustang. They're laughing. On about the third time trying to pull into the spot Sean says, "Okay, want me to just do it for you?" Leaning my head on the steering wheel I agree, squeezing out of the front seat. He parks it with relative ease on the first shot. He laughs, girls laugh, heck, even I laugh at how ridiculous it was. Then I remembered I had laundry in the dryer, and booked it before someone dumped my clothes on the floor.

Anyways, that's besides the point. Around 2:45 we left campus for Grand Junction, and let me tell you, the drive was gorgeous.

Glenwood canyon looks phenomenal in the afternoon sun

Plus, riding down the highway blasting Levi's extensive "Ghetto" playlists is just hours of fun and excitement. Also; when we were looking for a map we stumbled on Levi's old learner's permit.

Yep, he's female.

We got a lot of laughs out of that.

So we got to his house around 6:30ish, and were treated to an incredible dinner of grilled salmon, garlic mashed potatoes, and salad. It was fantastic! We were all tired though, and wound down the night watching Borat, Semi-Pro, and Secondhand Lions. I fell asleep about halfway through Secondhand Lions, and when I woke up...

The Weekend

After waking up to a delicious home-made breakfast, we... didn't do a heck of a lot on Saturday. Levi, Matt, and I had to do essays for our Honors class  which, sadly, took up most of the day. Still, it was much more relaxing than being caught up in the hustle around campus. It bears repeating, though, that the food was incredible. Levi's parents are fantastic cooks. It is a very welcome change from the cafeteria food.

We did a lot more on Sunday, though, after having some breakfast we went out on a hike around the surrounding hills.

You can literally see for miles, at least until the mountains

I honestly had forgotten how much I loved hiking before Sunday. Open air, incredible vistas, I felt, risking a cliche, alive. It's just that feeling of being out in the middle of things surrounded by relative nothingness. Well, except for the golf course, the bed and breakfast, and the lights of the city in the distance. Still, I just loved walking around the trails in a sea of rolling hills and red rocks. Even with the urban in the distance I still felt this disconnect from all of that, if only for a few fleeting minutes.

Movie watched: Braveheart, Tropic Thunder, and Inception

Monday

For the next two days I, idiotically, forgot my camera. I always regret leaving it behind...

We all woke up relatively late, except for Levi still on his streak at getting up at 8. We lounged around in the TV room watching Scream and deciding on shower order. It was all relatively sedate, nothing much to note on.

We did, however, go down to Fruita, Colorado to meet Levi's mother for lunch. Fruita reminds me a lot of Copper Canyon back home. Really spread out, clusters of homes, large pieces of land, and fields consisting entirely of horse waste. As I remarked to Levi, "What, you don't like poop-fields?" So we stopped by his mother's elementary school where she's the principal, and rode into downtown Fruita at this small restaurant called "Munchies." This is where I regret not having my camera, I love the aesthetic of small, family-owned burger joints and I wish I could have gotten at least one picture of the dinosaur outside. It was incredibly delicious, and it was so very, very nice for Mrs. Kramer to buy our lunches for us. I am more than appreciative for the hospitality Levi's family has shown us. I've truly felt like I was right at home here, and I'm loving every second of it.

So from there we went past Levi's high school, and toured around for a while before heading back to his house. Nothing much else to note, except for the half-hour Matt spent trying to unclog the toilet. We managed to eke in about 4 games of pool before he finally emerged. We got a good laugh out of it. Not so much on his end though. Anywho, we couldn't think of too much to do so we headed down to West park to play some Frisbee Golf.

I have never personally played Frisbee Golf. Heck, I've never played many Frisbee games outside of Ultimate or just a game of catch. To say the least, I'm not the greatest. I can throw the Frisbee straight, sure, but I couldn't get much distance or accuracy on the throws. At least I managed some sort of consistency in getting one over par on every. stinking. hole. Oh well, it's better than going three or four over I guess. It bears repeating that I really regret not having my camera. There could have been some great shots.

From there, not much of note happened. Came back to the house and just relaxed; winding down the night. However, having to go to the bathroom in the middle of the movie, I got up a little too fast and my heart was racing.

Ensue freak out.

If you don't know me too well, I have a tendency to be a hypochondriac. My parents can confirm this, I once thought I had the bird flu. In this case I'm thinking "Oh sweet Jesus, I'm having a heart attack in the middle of The Other Guys." So I start freaking out, breathing hard and what-not, go to the bathroom and head back to the TV room. I start feeling nauseous, and get really squirmy. Okay, I'm still freaking out. Badly. So after some very uncomfortable minutes I rush back to the bathroom. I take some deep breaths, and splash some water on my face. As I'm writing this, I'm thinking of that scene at the beginning of Shutter Island where DiCaprio splashes water on his face and says "Pull yerself together Ted!" I digress. What's important here is that I drew two resolutions out of this freak-out.

One: I've got to take measures to stop being such a wound up ball of stress and an anxiety
Two: I've got to get some source of confidence. Somewhere, somehow, I need to be confident.

Seriously? I'm a rational, adult male. I shouldn't be freaking out over the most insignificant things. Not to mention in the days leading up to Spring Break I was more or less a sniveling fool without the simplest ounce of confidence. That's changed now. It has to change. Also; turns out I just had heart burn. Heart burn. Yep.

Movies watched: National Treasure 2, Scream, The Other Guys, part of Beerfest (too terrible to finish)

Tuesday

Why, why, why did I forget my camera when we went to downtown Grand Junction? So many opportunities for pictures of the town and of my friends. Granted, I got my crap together later and took some pictures in the evening but it just isn't the same...

So we started the day by getting lunch at this place called Pita Pit. Oh my. I had a chicken Caesar pita sandwich and it was delicious. I almost immediately searched Pita Pit on Google to see if there were any back in Texas. There's one in Denton.

Praise the Gods.

This is my face when I found that out. Not even lying here. It is so incredibly delicious. I can't even handle it. It's like if Subway were Greek... and actually good.

Okay, done, moving on. So we continued our tour of downtown by walking along some shops on Main Street.

First store we go in: An Antique Store. Okay, if you have had any history with me while on trips you know the absolute bane of my existence is the idea of an antique mall. My first words to my friend (noted as friend here because I can't remember for the life of me who I said that to) "Man, if I were here with family I'd already be bitching by now." Which is true, I cannot stand idling around old pieces of merchandise. They're antiques for a reason, if I wanted to preserve "historical artifacts" I'd go to a museum. Here's the thing, though, we didn't linger here. Levi looked at the baseball cards he wanted to look at, grabbed a book he wanted to buy, and we were out. We didn't stand at one booth for fifteen freakin' minutes looking at nothing. Definite positive: I read Calvin and Hobbes the whole time. I don't know why that's in an antique store.

Anyways, we also went into this record store that just reeked of weed. You know when you see people and they just look like they smoke weed all the time? That's what the guy at the counter looked like right down to his multicolored poncho. We didn't stay here too long, and decided to head back to the truck and then back to Levi's house. We didn't do too much aside from shooting some pool until Levi's dad got home from work. At that point, we went outside to hit some balls in Levi's batting cage.

I opted out, and instead took some pictures:

After that, we did some 3-on-3 basketball with some family friends of the Kramer's

Those little kids showed us up big time

We sat down, had some dinner, and waited for three of our friends to get here. Bri, Andre, and Matt were coming up, and we didn't have much to do before they got here. We thought they'd get here relatively early, but the things that have been happening to them would warrant a blog post in and of itself. Tire blow-outs, car sickness, getting pulled over, it just kept piling up for them. Actually, as I write this we're still waiting on them to get here. It's very odd to be writing this post in both the past and the present tense, as I've finally caught up to where I am in the Spring Break rather than looking back and writing about it. I'm going to go ahead and assume that not much else is going to happen tonight aside from the usual greetings, exhausted collapses on couches, and going to bed rather quickly.


Wednesday


Um... nothing really happened today. We drove down to "Big-O" Tires so Andre could get his rim and tire fixed, got some Coldstone Creamery while we were waiting, and explored Sportsman's Warehouse. I heard the story of how the tire blew out ad-nauseum as well. Big rock in the road, lady was hanging at the bumper in the other lane, couldn't avoid, hit rock, pull over, ride on spare to Grand Junction. Some of the variations of the story were funny, but repetition gets to me after a while.

Aside from that, nothing too special happened. Came back to the house, played some basketball, hit in the batting cage (I abstained from that again), and had a delicious burrito dinner.

Things I learned: I'm not the aggressive sports type. Well, I knew that already it's just more or less confirmed now. I am far too laid back for basketball, that much is certain. I also learned that moon-rises over the mountains is a very serene sight.

My camera was not made for this shot

I think I much prefer moon-rises to sunsets. Especially when the moon is that large. I love that feeling of smallness I get from looking up at the night sky. How everything is so far away, so infinitely more large than we are.

I don't know, I'm kind of in a funk today. Maybe I'm just a little tired, but I can't be sure. I keep thinking about other things I want to write for this blog, and it's kind of annoying that I have to put them off because I want to do this huge spring break chronicle. I may never do this type of blog again, it isn't preferable to me. We're just sitting downstairs right now, some of the guys are playing pool, I'm just reading on Cracked and elsewhere and writing this.

Movies watched: The Ringer

Thursday


Yet another day without my camera. Well, I had it, I just neglected to take any pictures. We started the day relatively early and went to Levi's old high school's baseball tournament. Fruita Monument High School beat Horizon High School 15-5. Horizon's pitcher was not having a good day by any stretch. I'd type more about the game, but let's face it, I'm not a sports writer. I got a pretty sufficient sunburn on my face, same with Levi. Christian, though, got the worst of it on his neck. Hildebrandt managed to eke away without any.

The weather was gorgeous in Grand Junction today. Hardly any wind, the only breeze helped out with cooling off the fields. We spent a ton of time out in Canyon View Park, playing Frisbee, basketball, and tennis. It was a ton of fun, and it was great not to have to wear a jacket. I'm still terrible at basketball.

Most notable thing, at least to me, was stargazing tonight. It was a full moon, so we couldn't necessarily see that many stars. I just really like how everything looks illuminated in moonlight. Things are different, I'm not going to dive into the philosophy of perception, I'll leave that to Tradition and Innovation, but what I see in the moonlight are different shades of the same things. During the day, we see things as they truly are, but at night under a different illumination what is it that we see?

I can't really think of any way to finish that train of thought. Maybe it's something I can revisit in a later post. Honestly, the more and more I write in this gigantic compilation post, the more and more I'm growing to dislike this compilation style. I thought this would be easier than a day-by-day post, but maybe I was wrong. This is just massively long at this point, and I've still got a few more days to go now that we aren't leaving until Sunday. We'll see. I hope this works out. It's only going to be larger once all the pictures are in.

I'm gonna go ahead and sign out for now.

An Amalgam of the Final Days

The last few days of my visit to Grand Junction consisted of Qdoba, baseball, movie marathons, and another hike. It was completely relaxing, sitting back in the bleachers with the warm sun and a cool breeze, munching on a completely delicious burrito, and taking in the spiraling madness of Shutter Island. Christian, Andre, Bri, and Matt left around 11 on Friday, but we'll be seeing them again on Sunday back at Regis. We originally were going to leave around the same time as them, but we're staying in order to give one of Levi's friends a ride back to Regis from Grand Junction. So we'll be leaving around 9-ish on Sunday, and if all goes well we'll be back on campus around 1. Today will probably be the last day I write, I don't see a need to write about the drive again as it's exactly the same, just in reverse.

We hiked Independence Rock today, though, and that's worth writing about. Actually, that's an understatement. This hike was incredible. The scenery just rises up around you and you're just surrounded by mountains and silence.

It's so isolated out here, even when passing by other hikers. Silence predominates, rocks jut out into the trail, your feet kick up the dust of the Redlands.

If I could re-do that hike a hundred times, I would. It was probably the best way to spend our final full day in Grand Junction.


I want to take a moment and write a special Thank You to the Kramer family. Thank you for letting us into your home for the past week, for cooking us incredible meals, and even offering to do our laundry towards the end. I have felt completely at home, and it was all thanks to your immense hospitality. Matt, Christian, Montoya, Andre, Bri, and myself cannot thank you enough for all you have done for us this week, and I wish I could find a better way to give my thanks than writing a paragraph. I don't think we could ever thank you enough for this week, and we all are grateful for everything.

So that just about wraps up my spring break. We'll be at campus at about one tomorrow, and I'll be adding pictures and posting then. It's kind of strange, writing about the future now when it'll be the past by the time this is all read. I won't dwell on that, instead I'll end this blog with a quick thought:

We started on the road, and our trip ends on the road. We wander throughout our existence, but the road is what shows us the path. It ties us together no matter the distance. They are the veins of travel's beating heart. Where does your road lead? Is it near? Far? Does it stretch out to the horizon, or does it curve through the hills? Regardless of the path, the road will persist. Even if the asphalt cracks, the destination is always waiting. Time is never an issue, as we will always arrive just as the road seems to lay endlessly before us. When we do finally arrive we realize that the journey was worth it, and that the road behind with all of its twists and turns, well, we wouldn't change an inch of that worn, cracked pavement. The road stretches onwards, though, for more journeys, more destinations to discover. It will always remain, as long as people are willing to find their way.

Until next time...

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