Got back from Colorado and promptly got sick. Lovely.
But the Centennial State treated me as well as it always does, filing away the speeding ticket from recent memory. A sports department comrade from the TV station accompanied me and was forced to adhere to my grueling schedule of weekend car travel to Colorado which I am apt to follow several times throughout the school year.
SIDEBAR: God damn it, Texas really is tiring the shit out of me! I made the decision to leave it again for good in 2005 but haven’t the diploma to act on it yet. That’s why these trips get me by. It’s like a teaser shot of heroin four times a year with a Final Destination: 1964 Lower East Side on the horizon.
So we left Thursday evening and made it into Lamar, CO as the sun was rising, stopping for donuts and thanking our stars the smell of cow shit hadn’t permeated the area like it typically does in this part of the world. Made it into Denver three hours after and got a quick nap before I was up and on the road again to Boulder. With a bit of pride I showed my travel partner the student-run sports TV show I used to work on (the equivalent of what I work on now at UT, though this show had moved to a newer and better-funded studio after my 2004 departure) and we marveled at the level of focus and professionalism their volunteers manage to keep. Some trade secret I never figured out and employed on my own volunteers, though I’ve never considered myself worth a damn in the “leader of peoples” category.
I went out alone Friday night to a music-bar in northeast downtown Denver and saw for the first time a band I had for three years just admired via the Myspace. Fissure Mystic was amazing and told me they may be coming to Austin in the future. I drove back to the hotel, which was directly east of downtown but a good five miles away. I took plenty of residential streets in this part of town as I do every trip to scout potential rent/buy options for post-graduation. The City Park and Park Hill neighborhoods are an interesting mix, made up of both large Tudors and the more modest mid-century brick ranches and bungalows. The area used to be one of the finest in Denver proper, although it may still be given the entire city’s demo shifts. White flight in the Fifties sparked several shifts in the character of the neighborhood and it stands today as one with a very fine line between pricey, established homes (generally south of 20th/Montview) and ones used in narcotic retail and targeted for gang shootings (again as a semifrequent visiting outsider making observations – north). My priority area for when I move, and I may sacrifice some theoretical peace of mind for affordability if I can find it.
Saturday was eventful, though nothing life-changing came because of it. Had breakfast with my cousin who lives in Fort Collins and tripped to Boulder with camera in tow. Had a tough time shooting a segment because CU students seem to prefer in-apartment pregaming to outdoor tailgating and therefore not many people comfortable enough to want to be on camera were around. The game wasn’t very exciting and the media got jammed for postgame interviews. We were forced to hang around in a dark corner of the stadium and let the players and coaches walk out to us. Such that it appeared as though townspeople (us) had cornered Mack Brown and were inching closer and closer to him with microphone-torches as his back was propped rigid against the brick wall of the fieldhouse.
Sunday was the long drive home, through the worst service ever at Amarillo’s Big Texan (not worth it… 1.25 hours there and no one attempting to take down a 72-ouncer) and through the worst thunderstorms I’ve ever done highway driving through… from Amarillo straight to Abilene and then some. But we got home safely, and I’m done road tripping for a while.
[And closing in on half a year until I can trip away from this state permanently.]
