The "Mile High" City

Right, so this is the third and hopefully final chapter in a series of stories from my ill-fated road trip. Long story short I went on a cross-country road trip with a girl I liked. This was a make or break since a trip to Texas fell through a month prior in July and we also hadn’t seen each other for a couple of months to this point. This chapter takes us to the amazing city of Denver. I must say that the Rockies are beautiful. I almost shed a tear seeing it for the first time after driving eighteen hours from Ohio. Not only did I like her but I also experienced a few firsts with her. I went to my first concert ever with her, climbed a tree for the first time, and of course the aforementioned road trip. The lack of sleep didn’t help either. We were of course in Denver so what was our first stop? The Denver Art Museum of course. But then afterward we ran back to the hotel to change and then headed to a dispensary. We walked in and it looked like a doctor’s office except for the big steel door staring us in the face. Behind this door were so many ways to get THC into your body. After being initially overwhelmed we pick up a few things and decide to try our edible on the way to the mall to fix her cracked iPhone screen. We’re not feeling it by the time we get to the mall, so we decide to double up before we go in. After meandering around waiting for the repair to complete and me buying a great pair of Colorado socks. It’s still early so we decide to get something to eat while trying to squeeze in one more plan for the night and then it hits. We ended up getting donuts and sitting in the parking lot scarfing them down and just laughing uncontrollably. It felt like we were Cheech and Chong. Anyway, my idea was a “dark sky” park but unfortunately, the closest one was two hours away and there was no way we were making that trip in the current condition we were in. I was expected to plan the next step and be a “take charge” guy but I’m more of a laid-back go-with-the-flow guy. This would come up again throughout the trip. After no plan came to fruition, we packed up our remaining donuts and drove back to the hotel. I vividly remember clinging to the seat like a soaked cat. She’s a very aggressive driver while sober might add and I was the complete opposite which is a little problematic driving across the country in a metal box. We pulled up to the hotel and she almost hit a car pulling out of a parking spot I freaked and said, “I will park! just go upstairs”. I somehow parked and brought the bags upstairs but then forgot one of her bags so I trudged back down to retrieve it but picked up the wrong bag even after her very specific instructions on bag type and location in the car. We finished off the rest of the donuts and she knocked out, but my night was only just beginning. Despite being physically and mentally exhausted I could not get any sleep. I decided to sit on the floor next to the AC to cool off and it sounded like Coltrane blowing his sax. I get up and go to the bathroom to splash some water on my face and the running water sounded like Eric Clapton was performing a solo right next to me. Somebody’s phone was buzzing and it wasn’t mine or hers so I decided to get out of the room and take a walk to the 7/11 up the street to clear my head. Chalk it up to spending all our waking seconds together but I found myself annoyed at antics I used to think were “quirky” and I rolled my eyes and sighed in response to the biting sarcasm I would give right back in the past. This experience in Denver would be an unfortunate foreshadowing for the rest of the trip as our issues would become more unavoidable. It took me a while to figure out how to look back on this trip. I have come to the conclusion that it was simultaneously the best and worst thing to ever happen to me. Worst because I was left laying in a chalk outline for a week picking up the pieces. Best because that feeling served as inspiration for a story I did for the Washington Twp Public Library story slam where I met Marissa and was introduced to the wonderful community in High Bridge. I also created a website to put my writing on and hopefully expand that into other projects in the future. I needed to hit rock bottom to finally sign up for therapy that I had been avoiding for a couple of years. A few months after the trip I finally picked up all the pieces, completed the puzzle, and put it back on the shelf.