Back in December my sister forwarded an airline promotion email between Denver and San Francisco so I bought a flight to visit her and her family for a week in February. The intent was to inject some state-side adventure and family time as a way of self-training appreciation for what America has to offer me. It worked well in Kansas City for Christmas, Breckenridge in January; could such an ongoing strategy of regular, domestic adventures be the key to avoiding American stagnation? Is this the mode that can allow for me to live a conventional life somewhere in the USA without getting stuck in the sort of time hole that makes five or ten years of my life disappear in the blink of an eye? It’s a coping mechanism I’ve been aggressively testing in 2018. So I flew out for a week in early February to live the life my San Fran Fam lives — and it was great. My nieces and nephews are rockstars and being able to hang out with them was the highlight of my week. My sister’s family lives on the West Side of the San Francisco bay in Marin County which is really posh and […]
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This past autumn I knew that I would be living in Colorado for a few months while I recalibrated my direction for 2018. In order to reduce the risk of state-side suicide I plotted with my friend Sam to spend three weeks skiing and working from the small ski town of Breckenridge, Colorado. We really lucked out because Sam’s friend happened to be renting out her very comfortable Breckenridge condo, 4 blocks from Main street. We booked it and Sam flew out from New York at the beginning of January for the month. The condo we lived in is located two blocks from the free Breckenridge shuttle bus that drives to the lifts. We would ski either in the morning or afternoon and in the evenings we worked, slow-cooked pot roast, watched ski movies, watched the NFL playoffs and enjoyed the Summit county, Colorado lifestyle: the USA equivalent to last year’s Swiss Lifestyle. A friend asked how the two compare — I told him that the people are more friendly in Colorado but the lift tickets more expensive. The second weekend I drove north two hours to Steamboat Springs, Colorado (two hours north from Breckenridge) to stay and ski with […]
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I have been anticipating spending Thanksgiving with my relatives in Georgia for years and was finally able make it happen en route back to Denver, Colorado. Special thanks to April and her boyfriend Vince for hosting me for a weekend of sight-seeing and barbeque eating in Kirkwood — a neighborhood of Atlanta very reminiscent of my home back on the outskirts of Denver. Both are industrial, warehouse districts with train tracks crossing them that have undergone gentrification over the past several years as new cool cafes and restaurants spring up. A personal highlight of the weekend was eating pecans fallen from the backyard tree. I created a monstrosity of a coffee by creating a grinded coconut milk infusion for my morning coffee. After that I headed about an hour south of the city to Brooks, Georgia, a very small town where my father’s first cousin lives with his wife. I spent twelve days here working from my computer on their kitchen table, eating a lot of Andy and Susan’s food and disrupting the organization and serving of breakfast, lunch and dinner. In addition to helping with that, I was perhaps the most dull houseguest they have ever had the pleasure […]
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I met my brother and dad in Cody, Wyoming for a three day road trip, fishing three rivers through central Wyoming. We fished the Shoshone, Yellowstone and Greybull – with the intent of catching Yellowstone Cutthroat – one of the four native species of Cutthroat trout native to Wyoming. My father was in the midst of completing the CuttSlam and needed a Yellowstone Cutthroat to complete the #cuttslam challenge. It was easier than we anticipated and I had a lot of fun practicing my low light picture taking at dusk. We continued on to our family ranch in Carbon County, in the family for 150 years, where I remained and spent some time working and enjoying my favorite place in the world. Though my official mailing address, apartment and cars reside in Denver, this part of Wyoming has always been my home. Though no family permanently resides here (we use it as a vacation residence in the summer) through my young years within a divorced family split across cities and states, two high schools, and college back east, for me it has always invoked that emotion that people ascribe to home. Re-entry to the comfortable can be dangerous when you are in the midst of exploring the world. Why re-introduce discomforts […]
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I lived in Kansas City for twelve formative years of young adult life. In retrospect I can attribute base attributes of my personality to that Midwestern culture within which I was raised: kindness, consideration for others, love of barbeque beef along with the desire to eat more food than is prudent. My mother and stepfather still live in Kansas City and my brother and his family do as well. I made a quick three day trip to visit, eat and see some of my old grade school friends after living internationally for 15 months. I’ve been dreading experiences the comforts and accordance of state-sidelife back in the states. How can I return to 2nd and 3rd world adventures after driving to Whole Foods, eating home style comfort food and speaking English? Some initial reactions upon USA re-entry: air conditioning is uncomfortable. Kansas City is charming and completely underrated (especially by me). Americans aren’t so bad out here. I think I should look at the real estate market downtown these lofts look really cool. If I lived here I would be obese. I remember the sounds of the cicadas from when I was a kid. I visited the Central Library, Nelson Atkins Museum of Art, The Blue […]
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I was unexpectedly alerted by my HOA that my bathroom was leaking water onto the adjacent, downstairs unit of my apartment building. Estimated costs on repair were high and it seemed like a very good probability of me getting fleeced were I not present to facilitate repairs. I returned back to Denver on short notice to remedy the situation and take care of other loose ends that had been unresolved in my hurried preparation to abandon home two months prior. I ended up not only repairing the bathroom but having it refinished — apparently improvements I make while it’s a rental property are tax deductible; in addition to learning that I’m also learning the pain of locating bathroom fixtures (what did people do before Google image search??). While I was back in the states I popped up to Wyoming and had some good Peryam Ranch times with the family and dog.
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