Is it just me, or does it not even really feel like the Fourth of July?
I mean — it’s the 4th. Of July. Literally. But does it feel like a holiday? Probably not, if you’re not in the U.S. And probably not if, like me, you are in the U.S. but aren’t planning any grilling/feasting/playing-with-explosives-while-consuming-large-quantities-of-fermented-beverages activities.
Fireworks make me nervous.
They’ve always made me nervous. Even as a kid. So while I won’t hesitate to rappel waterfalls in Costa Rica or jump from a Cessna Caravan soaring high above the Hawaiian Islands, the thought of setting off Black Cats and Roman Candles and spinners and even “harmless” sparklers and those little popping sperm-like things you throw on the ground that explode with a mini-fierce CRACK that really probably aren’t harmless at all because seriously — what’s “harmless” about exploding sperm? — the thought of all that makes me twitchy and paranoid and inclined to repeatedly shout things like, “Be careful!” and, “Run!” and, “I once heard about a kid who lost his entire hand from an errant Black Cat — his hand!” and other general phrases that make people who are actually enjoying the dangerous, drunken festivities want to tie my leg to a rocket bomb and set it alight, just to see what happens.
Take my word for it — there’s nothing fun about exploding sperm.
Did you know that the song, “Build Me Up, Buttercup” always puts me in a good mood?
It doesn’t matter that my allergies have practically crudded my contact lenses to my eyelids and my husband’s in Afghanistan and the dogs have been waking me up at 5:30 every morning so they can drag me 2 miles around the neighborhood.
Ultimately, it’s The Foundations — not the sunrise over the lake or the smell of my morning coffee or any amount of caffeine — who put the spring back in my step.
Which only further proves that I was born in the wrong generation.
Technology makes me nervous, and I’m pretty sure that a poppy-seed from my bagel just got stuck inside my keyboard.
That wouldn’t have happened with a typewriter.
Of course, then this whole blog thing wouldn’t be happening either, and I’d probably be haphazardly wandering the streets of Fayetteville talking to anyone who will listen about the merits of Poo-Pourri while shoving photos of family vacations in their faces.
But instead, I get to shove them in your faces, which is much more gratifying.
So.
After our first day in Colorado was spent guzzling free alcoholic beverages at the Coors brewery, we decided we needed some culture in our lives. My mother, her boyfriend Ed, Justin and I hopped on a train that speedily dropped us in the heart of downtown Denver.
(Can I just say for a second how much I love public transportation? Seriously. My dream is to live in a city with clean, efficient public transportation — where I can jet from one place to the next without worrying where to park my car, how much it’s going to cost, or whether I might lose the drag race I just accepted with a 60-year-old man. True story.
I won.)
Just one of many modes of Denver mass transit.
Anyway.
Our first stop in the Mile High city was for food.
You know my priorities.
Justin, always the advocate for anything highlighted on the Food or Travel networks, opted for Biker Jim’s Gourmet Dogs. We were searching for their street cart at the specified location, but ended up walking several city blocks to the actual restaurant when we learned it was an off-day for the food cart. Turns out this was a wise decision, since I’m pretty sure they don’t sell beer from the food cart.
But I’ve been wrong before.
The decor is minimal and industrial, but their main food is hot dogs. What do you expect?
An interesting juxtaposition of good ol’ “Amurcan” cuisine, gourmet ingredients, and several oddities you’d be more likely to find dead on the side of the road than in Manhattan’s finest establishments make up the simple menu.
Tip: The larger the selection of food on a restaurant’s menu, the crappier it will likely be. Smaller, more selective menus are generally where you’ll find the best food.
I ordered the Weiner Wellington — an insanely delicious rib eye steak brat with mushroom duxelle and grainy Dijon cream wrapped in puff pastry and drizzled with Bordelaise. I don’t know what most of that is, but I do know this: It tasted like heaven wrapped in fluffy clouds dipped in gravy.
Now. I honestly can’t remember what Justin and Ed ordered. It may have been the southwest buffalo. It may have been the Wild Boar. Maybe the smoked bacon Bat Dog, with avocado puree, tomato cream cheese, caramelized onion, and bacon bits. And I know the idea of the rattlesnake and pheasant dogs were at least discussed.
I wouldn’t say I’m a beer snob, but if you stick a can of Coors Light in front of me, I’m not going to lie — I’ll ask you to bring me a glass of water instead because it tastes the same and has far fewer calories.
Unless it’s a hot summer day and I’m craving a cold light beer to get me through a project or a giant, juicy hamburger, I’m usually going to pick a darker, heavier beer.
So when Justin said he wanted to tour the Coors Brewery while we were in Colorado, I was intrigued because I hadn’t been since before I was of legal drinking age, but also secretly wishing we could have gone to some other brewery.
Turns out, though, that this one was worth the trip.
We arrived at the complex in Golden, Colorado, parked, and waited in line for about 20 minutes before getting on a tour bus. The folks at Coors run a smooth — and free — operation. My only complaint is that the outdoor waiting area wasn’t covered, hence my first high-altitude sunburn of the trip. Our tour guide was hilarious, taking us on a quick run through downtown Golden before dropping us off outside of the brewery.
Hey, red shirt guy. Get out of my shot.
Since the last time I was there, they turned the brewery part into a self-guided tour. The nice thing was that we could meander as we pleased, listening to our little self-guided tour speakers. Coors also had stations set up throughout the walk where employees could answer any questions we might have.
Of course, I don’t remember anything I heard through the speaker, so let’s just look at the pictures, shall we?
I have no idea who this woman is. But she wouldn’t move, so I took the picture anyway. She happens to be pointing to the label of what I’ve since discovered is a very awesome beer.
The infamous copper kettles. All I remember is that there were a lot of them, and you could determine the various purposes of each by looking at the size of the shaft. (Ha!) Also, the big red signs.
We’ll call this Mission Control. I’m pretty sure that guy was watching football. Or porn. Or both.
Hmm… how does one test the quality of beer?
By drinking it, I imagine.
About halfway through the tour we came upon the Fresh Beer Room, where we were able to sample exceedingly fresh Coors or Coors Light, straight from the source.
I’ll admit it was tasty, fresh as it was, but it was still just Coors.
One of the coolest parts was the packaging room. The maze of conveyor belts, gears, and complicated looking machinery had us mesmerized for several minutes. Waaaay up high in the back, we could see cans coming in. Then stuff would happen and suddenly they’d be in boxes.
Crazy.
By this point we were getting antsy and ready for the final stop of the tour — the bar.
The coolest part about the entire experience, aside from seeing that it’s actual people — not elves — who are responsible for putting beer in my fridge, was the fact that everything was free. Including 3 pints each of our choice at the end of the tour.
The Colorado Native was good, but the Batch 19 was phenomenal.
Couple of Batch 19s.
I asked the bartender how they manage to keep the locals from stopping in every day for some free beers, and he said that they don’t! Guests are limited to one visit per day, and he said there are students from the Colorado School of Mines who show up daily.
Unless you follow my Facebook page, in which case you know we hopped a plane to Denver a couple of days ago and haven’t been seen or heard from since.
Unless you frequent the Coors brewery in Golden, Colorado, which case you probably came to know me and my high altitude sunburn and my affinity for Batch 19, a pre-prohibition style lager quite well.
The trip wasn’t exactly spur-of-the-moment. But for some reason, it seemed really far away for a very long time, and then suddenly it was here, and I was throwing the majority of my clothes into a suitcase on the morning we left while Justin impatiently tapped his foot in the kitchen and gently reminded me that we still had an hour drive to the airport and would I please hurry up because it’s raining and we still have to go through security and GOOD GOD, WOMAN there’s no way this suitcase weighs less than 50 pounds.
And then we got to the airport, where our combined suitcase weighed exactly 49.5 pounds thankyouverymuch, and anyway it was free because he’s active duty military and oh, also our flight was delayed for 2 hours due to inclement weather between Raleigh and Dallas so sit back, relax, and have another cup of very expensive java.
These things always have a way of working themselves out.
Justin just doesn’t understand how I roll.
So now we’re here, in Colorado, partaking in the consumption of beer and mountain scenery and beer.
When we finally arrived after many delays and plane-sittings and plane farters and children who kick seats, I entered what can only be described as Mecca, otherwise known as the Denver Airport Ladies’ Restroom.
Obviously, I had a hard time capturing the true beauty with my iPhone. And I was a little nervous that the cleaning lady, who was already staring at me with bemused curiosity, might call security if I pulled out my DSLR.
It’s only the second time we’ve visited my mother in the 6 years she and Ed have lived here, so it’s amazing how we fall into a routine, like we only live a few hours away and do this every weekend. Wake up, fix coffee, stare at the display of distant mountains to see what kind of view they care to give today: mysterious haze, sharp lines and saturated contrasts, shimmering mirage. Always something new, sometimes slapped rolling and haphazard across the horizon with careless impressionist watercolor abandon — and other times sketched carefully with such detail and accented with dark oils that they actually look real.
Soon, Justin’s family will come wheeling into town (a couple of his aunts already live here, which is just sheer good fortune), and we’ll spend that overwhelming chaotic time together eating and laughing and drinking and my mom will feel, for the first time in a long time, what it’s like to have lots of family around at once.
We all want to spend some time with Justin before he goes to Afghanistan, and I suppose I’ve learned that I have to share.
It doesn’t hurt that his family is awesome.
But here’s the thing, in case you were wondering.
I know I’m domestiphobic.
I know this so well that I made up this whole word to describe my aversion to all things domestic and I think, on some level, that most of you can relate.
At least a little.
But that doesn’t mean that I won’t miss my husband.
All it means, in the end, is that I won’t miss his laundry.
If I could only use one word to describe the city of Philadelphia. I know exactly what I’d choose:
Surprising.
Really, almost everything I’d heard about Philly — aside from endless word about the deliciousness of its cheese steaks — alluded to its roughness.
Its edge.
Its subtly induced reputation for hard knocks and downed luck and overbearing, relentless strife.
From the obvious overtones of Bruce Springsteen’s “Streets of Philadelphia” to Will Smith’s epic fight on the basketball court during the opening credits of The Fresh Prince of Bel Air, the city was advertised as lonely and dangerous. With its gritty undertones of dreary streets and gray skies serving as cinematic backdrops for the trials of Sylvester Stallone and Tom Hanks in Rocky and Philadelphia, the city was portrayed bleak and hopeless.
Because of these things, Philadelphia just sat, dusty and neglected in the back of my mind, as this place I’d probably never care to see.
But then?
But then I saw it.
I really saw it.
I saw its richness in history, art, museums, green space, food, and culture.
And suddenly, I felt very, very misinformed.
I only had one day to explore, but now I know this: Philadelphia, I will be back.
The biggest challenge, I think, that most people have with traveling, is finding the ability to strike a healthy balance between squeezing in all of the high-energy sightseeing they can possibly manage and actually getting a little R&R.
If they’re not careful, their vacation can turn into work.
Me?
I don’t have that problem.
I know when I’m feeling energized, and I know when it’s time to stop, find a cafe with outdoor seating, and sip a glass of wine.
Striking this balance can be particularly difficult on a road trip when, if you’re spending extended periods of time in the car, it can feel like you’re resting because you’ve been sitting for several hours, but in reality you’ve been a highly concentrated ball of compact energy — shifting music whenever the mood strikes; passing, passing, passing on the left; belting out the lyrics you remember to Billy Joel’s “My Life;” almost peeing your pants when you pass a cop and realize how fast you were going; spending the next half hour daydreaming about living in Europe and doing nothing but driving the Autobahn for days on end; telling yourself you don’t need any more homemade trail mix; and matching your vibrations to those of the vehicle while guzzling your double-shot skinny mocha.
When I left Angie’s place in Virginia, I felt refreshed. Energized. Her perfect energy of physical labor combined with wine-laced porch-sitting was exactly what I needed to rev up for the second leg of my trip.
I knew Erin would still be at work when I arrived in Annapolis, so I took my time getting there, opting for back roads (Hwy 310, anyone? Highly recommended if you’re making a journey up or down the east coast.) over the congested interstates with never-ending repeats of McD’s, T-Bells, and Flying J truck stops.
My method for road trip food selection is simple: If I see a place I like the looks of, I stop. If I see a sign that catches my attention, I stop. If Urban Spoon happens to tell me there’s something along my relative route that’s worth stopping for, I stop.
When I arrived in Annapolis, I decided to stop at a Trader Joe’s for the first time ever to pick up some of their infamous “3-buck Chuck” wine to bring to my compadre’s place. I wandered the aisles, impressed-yet-refusing-to-be-sidetracked by the numerous offered delicacies. I finally asked a sample girl where a sister could find some booze on this lovely afternoon, and she looked at me with what can only be described as an expression of the sincerest empathy. “In Maryland,” she said, because clearly I was a foreigner, “grocery stores can’t sell alcohol.”
Say what?
Having lived in various states and counties south of the Mason-Dixon line for quite some time, I thought I’d already witnessed the gamut of restrictive alcohol sales. In Georgia I performed the grocery store walk of shame on more than one occasion — carrying my case from the registers back to the darkened shelves on a Sunday afternoon.
But this? This required people to make a whole other stop.
“But I just came from Virginia,” I whined.
She looked at me like I probably should’ve stayed there.
No matter. I stopped at an upscale winery and delicatessen where they wearily eyed my selection, poised to judge. “Hey!” The counter lady’s eyes lit-up. “This one’s a very popular choice!”
Apparently my skills are improving. Or rather, my luck was improving, since I randomly selected the bottle based on price and the label. But I smiled anyway, like I hear that all of the time, and went on my merry way.
Now let me just say this. Erin doesn’t actually live in Annapolis. She lives on an island just across the Chesapeake Bay, on the other side of one of the coolest bridges I’ve seen in my life. I’ll have a photo in another post, but hear me: If you have a chance to cross this 4-ish mile bridge in your life, do it.
That is all.
I arrived at her adorable house, ready to curl up on the sofa with a book and a beer I knew she’d left me in the fridge.
But then I saw it.
Her view.
I was shocked.
Not just by the generosity of the Red Stripe, but by the fact that she lives on an inlet that leads out to the Chesapeake Bay.
In fact, if I would’ve stolen her canoe and paddled out just past that last house you see on the left, I would’ve had a spectacular view of the Bay Bridge.
Then I probably would have drifted out to sea, never to be seen or heard from again since I have zero upper body strength, but at least I would’ve died happy.
Instead, I spent the rest of the afternoon curled up in a lawn chair alternating views of my book and the water.
Hey. Don’t judge.
I’d already had a long day driving and shopping for wine.
And that’s the thing — when you find yourself alone in a new place, or especially with people in a new place, it’s easy to run yourself ragged trying to do all there is to do and see all there is to see. At some point, you have to force yourself to accept the fact that you’re never going to do and see everything. That life is an ever-changing kaleidoscope of actions and reactions, mirage-like events that sometimes you see and sometimes you don’t. And sometimes you just have to sit back and enjoy the ride.
So to me, I wasn’t wasting time.
I was enjoying the moment.
As Billy would say,
I don’t need you to worry for me cause I’m alright —
I don’t want you to tell me it’s time to come home.
I don’t care what you say anymore, this is my life —
Go ahead with your own life, leave me alone.
Thanks, Mr. Joel. I’m glad someone gets me.
What’s your travel style? Would you have camped out with a beer and a book, taken the canoe, or hopped back in the car to explore the town? How do you strike a balance between work and play when you’re on the road?
So apparently my 2 year blogiversary — that’s the cutsey name blog people came up with for a blog anniversary — like TomCat or BradGelina — get it? — passed nearly a month ago without me even noticing.
And that, my friends, is why I’m a crappy girl.
It’s true.
When we first got together, it was Justin who reminded me about the anniversary of the day we first met. And not just the first year, but most subsequent years.
Combine that with the fact that I would never remember anyone’s birthday if it weren’t for Facebook and that my detachment from having any real “home” has caused me to be about as sentimental as Lord Voldemort on Ritalin, and we have one very crappy girl on our hands.
I mean, aren’t girls supposed to be good at remembering special dates? And aren’t girls supposed to buy special gifts for people “just because” and carry Hallmark discount cards and have wrapping paper stations?
I neither do nor have any of these things.
I still have a birthday card that I bought for my mom over 2 years ago.
I’ve never been good with calendars, or planners, or blackberries, or reminders. I can do lists, but I usually only make it 1/3 of the way through them before I get bored and move on. I have approximately 37 draft blog posts that I’ve started and never finished. The polish on my right big toenail has been chipped for 3 days.
I tell you these things not only so you can understand what we’re working with here, but so you can feel better about yourself if you’re better than me. Or good enough about yourself if you’re as bad as me.
Or something.
Because honestly, this is just me. And the fact that I let the exact date, 2 years later, that I started this blog roll by without even realizing it, only proves it.
And guess what?
The world didn’t end. The blog didn’t end. Wordpress hasn’t started writing me nasty letters because I missed a ubiquitous blogiversary post.
So really, I just forgot it, and I don’t feel bad.
And because I don’t feel bad, I don’t feel like a failure.
And because I don’t feel like a failure, I think that maybe mentally, I’ve made some improvements over the past year.
And if we’re going to bother measuring time, those are the things — self-improvement achievements, relationship communication milestones, number of stamps in my passport this year — that are worth remembering.
A date is just a date. A year is just a year.
It’s what we do with them that counts.
Annapolis, MD. April 4th, 2012. Taken with my iPhone.
The thing I love about road trips is their fluidity.
Remaining untethered to some airline’s asinine rules and sordid idea of an itinerary–
Since passengers who boarded before you carried all of their worldly possessions onto the plane in order to avoid paying our exorbitant checked baggage fees, we’re going to have to place your expensive and beloved DSLR camera in the hold…
We’re experiencing a delay either because of inclement weather in Denver OR because the flight crew is busy getting hammered in the employee lounge…
Flight 136 to Atlanta has been overbooked because we enjoy collecting your money for a service we never intended on providing. Please come to the desk if you are willing to reschedule.
— is a freeing feeling. One that can only be fully understood if you know what it’s like to throw your clothes into a suitcase or bag in your trunk, only to realize you’ve forgotten a great pair of shoes, your leather jacket, your tripod, and a bunch of CD’s you burned in the late 90’s, so you toss those into the backseat along with a cooler full of water, caffeinated beverages, homemade trail mix, and several haphazardly assembled chicken salad sandwiches and finally, unrestrictedly, hit the road.
You can pack what you want, as long as there’s still leg room and the windows can open.
(Okay. So the Tracker has limited leg room by default and only 3 of her electric windows still operate, but she’s in incredible working condition — especially considering we met back in 2002, just 3 years after her birth, and since then we’ve had the longest, closest, mutually caring, non-blood-related relationship of my life — with the exception of Alaina, who may as well be blood — and have traveled well over 150,000 miles together. We’re kind of in love. I’ve known her longer than my husband, and she’s never tried to start a fight with me via text message because she knows I hate that.
It’s almost like we’re soul mates.)
Even so, there are some”rules” for road-tripping that, while are certainly less restrictive than the spoken (no electronic devices during take-offs/landings, buckle your seatbelts while seated, don’t pack more than 50 pounds worth of crap) and unspoken (the passenger in the middle seat gets dibs on both armrests, hold all farts until you’ve exited the plane, feed fussy babies pre-flight cough medicine cocktails) rules of air travel, should be abided — or at least acknowledged — in order to guarantee an enjoyable trip for all involved.
Even if it’s just you.
1) Break it up, man. Sure, I could’ve driven directly to Philadelphia to meet up with Justin and his family in an easy, less-than-9-hour day trip. But really? Where’s the fun in that? I have people, you know. People I like to see whenever the mood strikes or when one of us feels like making the effort. And a couple of these people just happen to be living along the general path I had to take to reach Philly from North Carolina.
So I did what any plan-hating, inconsiderate domestiphobe would do — I messaged them on Facebook and told them to get their guest rooms/futons/air mattresses ready, because I’d likely be needing them either sometime the week before or the week after Easter.
Whichever turned out to be more convenient for me.
Or them.
Or mostly me.
This is not the exact path I ended up taking, because I’ve found over the years that U.S. interstates are grotesquely dangerous freaks of infrastructure overcrowded with semi trailers and minivans and repeating clusters of national and regional fast food chains that only serve to make you feel ghastly and bloated and pimply when you finally reach your destination.
Which brings me to:
2) Take the road less traveled. Cross the bridge uncrossed. For real. You see a fork. The left prong takes you on a whirlwind tour of rest stops, gas stations, and enough deep fry oil to sink the Titanic. The right prong takes you to sleepy towns, privately owned restaurants, and probably still enough deep fry oil to sink the Titanic.
But the food it fries, 9 times out of 10, is much, much better.
Let’s see McDonald’s bring you this.
The streets are emptier.
The roads have less potholes.
And the views are… well… they smell better than the back end of a truck stop.
3) Eat well. Seriously. Feed yourself. Feed yourself things you can’t/don’t/ wouldn’t dare cook at home. Discover new places. New dishes. New tastes.
After all, who says the vacation has to start when you’ve reached your destination?
4) Don’t pack light. I shouldn’t have to tell you this, but just in case I do, here goes: You’re in a car. You know, that mobile vehicle with wheels, massive in comparison to a single airline seat and quarter of an overhead compartment, so use it. What are you afraid of? That someone will judge you? Elbow you? Stare at you creepily while you try to absorb yourself in The Hunger Games because you’ve become completely obsessed even though it’s a heinous storyline semi-ripped off from or at least probably partially inspired by Richard Bachman’s (aka. Stephen King’s) little-known gem The Long Walk, and you didn’t even know this latest book craze existed until a few weeks ago when everyone started talking about the movie and murderous children and a Peeta that wasn’t a bread/sandwich (pita) but a character in this book that was supposedly so good or disturbing or mind-numbingly twisted that you wouldn’t be able to put it down so you bought it and didn’t actually put it down for 3 days not including sleep and socialization and pee breaks?
Are you afraid that will happen?
Well, I have news.
That only happens on airplanes.
In the safety of your car, no one judges. No one nudges. And no one stares except for when they pass and catch you singing along to Billy Joel’s greatest hits with more enthusiasm than Peeta would show if he were told he could finally have consensual sex with Katniss and she’d actually like it. (I’m only partway through Book 2, by the way, so if you ruin this for me I might have to hate you forever. Or at least for a couple of hours because I have a short attention span, but even so, spoiling plotlines would truly be an evil undertaking.)
The good news is, if you do forget anything, it’s not a big deal to stop somewhere along the line and buy it. But the more you pack, the more money you save, and the less guilty you feel for buying that completely-awesome-yet-unnecessary dreamcatcher from a Pueblo roadside gift shop in Nevada.
5) Bring good music. This is completely subjective, believe it or not. And while modern music is acceptable, anything that inspires nostalgia is better. Billy Joel? Go for it. Avett Brothers? Have at it. Toadies? Go ahead and send me a copy. Because no one judges. (See #4.) And if anyone who happens to be with you does, you can accidentally-on-purpose forget him at a truck stop off the side of I-95.
Or, if you’re nicer and have been paying attention, at a diner off the side of Highway 301 within walking distance of a riverside park and an all-you-can-eat Maryland crab shack and a sign for RedNex sporting goods.
6) Be flexible. Okay. So you want to avoid the interstates, especially around busy cities, but there’s this truly amazing sandcastle competition they hold every year in Cannon Beach, Oregon, and you know there’s no way you’ll make it in time if you completely avoid I-84. Not to mention the fact that sometimes the interstate is just safer, especially while traveling solo, in the way of providing the occasional modern convenience or (hopefully) friendly passerby in case you run into trouble.
So if the situation calls for it, take the interstate. If you have time to peruse a used book store in a quaint seaside village, do it.
Basically this rule means that there are no rules. Kind of like Fight Club, except we get to feel free without having the crap beat out of us.
Good deal, no?
7) Earn Your Keep. This has more to do with the stops between times on the road. When someone’s putting you up for a night (or two, or three, or however long you plan to leach from their generosity while enjoying their company), they’re doing more than providing a bed. They’re providing water, food, hygienic facilities, and a place far more comfortable than your car for stretching out with a good book.
Usually, they’re sharing their home. Knowledge of the place they live and love. Absorb it all, whatever they want to show you, and pay it forward. For our relatives in Philadelphia, I have a gift planned. To Erin, I brought olives and wine. And for Angie?
Well.
Angie opted for manual labor.
So on a sunny Sunday afternoon, we took her front lawn from this:
To this:
And while I may have taken the occasional break to sip water on her fabulous front porch and point out spots that could use improvement, (I was on vacation, after all), I also managed to help a little, and all-in-all felt pretty great about squeezing in some physical activity between wine and food samplings.
So there you have it. Seven rules for road tripping that are subject to change without notice as I become older, crotchetier, and take in more of what this world has to offer.
Can we pretend that I actually planned where I was headed with that post and somehow managed to successfully tie my Sweeney Todd date story in with how people in a relationship can be different, but that’s okay, as long as you both respect those differences?
Can we pretend that I didn’t flee the house, 10 minutes late for work, knowing that I could have written that better if I’d actually left myself some time?
Can we pretend that I did go back and fix it, and that blemish that will likely exist on my blog until the very end of time (along with many, many others) is just an illusion brought on by lack of sleep or drinking 3 cups of coffee before we’ve had anything to eat?
And while we’re at it, can we pretend I’m still here:
Formentera, Balearic Islands, Spain
Doing this:
Biking is the best way to get yourself around this island. It’s mostly flat. Mostly. And for the parts that aren’t… well… exercise is good for you.
And eating this:
We rented a small apartment just a half-mile bike ride from a tiny grocery store. This breakfast “frittata” is my sister-in-law’s genius concoction of our leftover garlicy pasta noodles, eggs, and whatever else we had left in the fridge.
With these people:
So this is the not-flat part of Formentera. We were exhausted. But it was nothing that a can of Pringles and a spectacular cliff side view couldn’t fix.
Yep.
I think, while assisting realtors in their extremely respected and important line of profession today, I’m going to be doing a lot of pretending.
