Ladder 49

If you're here because of my social media posts, and you're expecting to read about a gay experience, you might want to look somewhere else for that. I mean, don't do that. Read my blog. For the love of God, read my blog.

So, here’s the thing. I was going to write 5 blogs for each of the 5 states I saw, but after reflecting on my time in Arizona, Utah, and Idaho, I realized how uneventful my time was. That doesn’t mean that I didn’t enjoy it because I did, but I don’t think you would enjoy it. So here’s a brief synopsis of my time there.

In Arizona, I was sick pretty much the whole time, so I didn’t really get to see Phoenix at all. However, I did get to drive up to the Grand Canyon, which is incredible. Yeah, some people say it’s just a big hole, but The Great Wall is just a long wall and the pyramids are just some 3 dimensional triangles made of stone. It doesn’t mean that it’s not incredible. 

In Utah, I went to Zion National Park and Salt Lake City. Zion National Park is mind-blowing. Out of the 5 national parks that I’ve been to, I would say that Zion and Yosemite are neck and neck for my favorite. Zion is full of mountains made of desert stone and you can see some wildlife there. When I was done at Zion, I drove to Salt Lake City. Salt Lake City is really cool, really friendly, and really Mormon.

I drove up to Idaho for a half-day trip to see the Shoshone Waterfalls. They’re neat.

In Colorado, I finally met up with one of my friends, Trav. If you’ve been reading my blogs, I’ve mentioned him in a couple before. But finally, I had friends. I will say, it’s really not so bad to travel by yourself, but it is much better to be with people, for obvious reasons. However, I do recommend going somewhere by yourself. It’s nice and necessary to have solitude. It doesn’t have to be extravagant, but just do something by yourself.

Anyways, I met up with Trav, then we met up with his lifelong friends…which were CHICKS. Yeah sure, one of the chicks was married and the other had a serious boyfriend, making both of them about as unavailable as possible, but that’s not the point. They were chicks and we looked cool when we went places. 

One night, we went to a bar/saloon/place where you line danced in Colorado Springs called Cowboys. This was my first line dancing experience. I thought that it would be like a club just with a cowboy vibe. Like there would be more songs with Alan Jackson, but you still go where the music takes you. Oh how wrong I was. A song would come on, a crew of about 15 or 20 would form, and an organized dance would take place. I didn’t hate it; I just felt left out. At least give me a day or 2, so I can join. My advice: either practice for about a week before you go line dancing or just drink a lot before to give yourself the false perception that you know how to line dance.

We did go skiing one day at Keystone Resort. To be completely honest, I’m not much into extreme sports, and you probably know that because I called extreme sports, extreme sports. I mean I know the basic terms, “shredding the gnar,” “yard sale,” “bruuuuuhhhhh,” etc. I was pretty nervous, since I hadn’t skied in a couple of years. Even at that, I’ve only skied a couple of times before going to one of the best ski resorts in the United States. Since we went on a Tuesday, I was hoping there wouldn’t be any kids there because nothing is more humiliating than when you “yard sale” and a little 7 year old girl passes you with a smile on her face. To my dismay, there were quite a bit of kids there. All of the kids that passed me on the slopes, I had to kindly remind them that it’s not a race.

From Keystone, Trav and I went to Fort Collins to meet up with one of my friends from high school. We used an Airbnb up there; one that I will never forget. Just to give you some background, Trav had been obsessing over fireplaces while we were there. Wherever we went, he always asked if there was going to be a fireplace. It was strange, but we found that pyromaniac a fireplace pretty much every night that we were in Colorado to keep him satisfied. When I booked the room in Fort Collins, I got a text from the owner, Dave, right away that said, “Excited to have you guys here. I’ll get the fire started.” I immediately started to pray that this wasn’t some sort of metaphor; that there was an actual fireplace. Once we got there he showed us to our room, which was like a guest house in this guy’s backyard. He opened the door to our room, and thank Jesus, there was a fireplace right next to our bed, and not only that. there was a fire going. My mind was at ease. Trav, on the other hand, was in heaven. 

Dave was trying to figure out Trav and I. We WERE just 2 guys traveling Colorado. I think his way of trying to figure us out was by saying things like, “So here’s your bed, but we, also, have an air mattress under the bed you guys could use…” There was a brief silence as he awaited our response. We were clueless as to what he was trying to do, so we both said, “Nah man, the bed will be just fine.” We probably just solidified every suspicion that he had.

Dave explained to us, and by us I mean Trav, how to get the fire going again once it burnt out. I was actually showering while all of this happened. So, we went to dinner, and when we got back, the fire was out, just as expected. Trav, immediately, put logs in the fireplace and tried to start it up again. I told Trav that he needs lighter fluid or newspapers, or something else to get the fire started. We saw that there was an egg carton there, and each of the 12 slots were soaked in lighter fluid. One of them had already been used to get the initial fire started. Just ONE of them. Trav threw in all of the logs in the basket and one slot of lighter fluid in the fireplace. He became impatient, and threw in 3 more. He was determined to get this fire going, as I was determined to sleep. I woke up about 2 hours into my sleep, drenched in sweat, to a blazing fire going out of control. I looked over at the fireplace and saw Trav, with this terrified look on his face trying to tame the fire, say to me, “I’m not going out like this man.” Meanwhile, I’m assuming Dave was looking creepily through the peep hole in our room saying, “Oh my God what is he going to do next?” I had gone to bed in a flannel and sweatpants and woke up in just my boxers. I do recommend this place, however, I don’t recommend having Travis Shirkman being your fireman.

P.S. I’ve had people ask me about doing more short fictional stories. And no, not just my parents. My sister has been begging me to write more. Ugh. But anyways, I’m going to work on those more and send those out soon :)