You either get a fever or you're neurologically diseased: Colorado and Kansas trip day 4

Our morning started out with heading to Walmart to get a notebook, some tweezers, and some sugar free syrup for me, then off we headed to Third Space Coffee. It was cute, if not aggressively white. 

It is VERY Colorado. Which. Like. Aggressively white. While Carson definitely brings diversity to the area, it's so washed out by ALL THE FUCKING WHITE. 

I had initially wanted a hot coffee drink, but being mercurial, I ordered a cold brew when we got there. 

I got a cold brew with coconut milk and sugar free vanilla syrup, Derek got an espresso with coconut milk. His was better. 

The coffee shop is right down the road from where Allen and I had our first grown up apartment together. Just us and Alex. I took a picture of the outside...it hasn't changed...so I could show it to Rhyann and Alex. 

We made our way back to the hotel, mostly because once I drink caffeine, I'm on a non-stop train to poop town. And I really struggle to poop in public. It has happened, but I am never a fan. I didn't want to be caught on the road during a poop storm, but as we drove back to the hotel and I swirled and lightly sipped on my iced coffee, I found myself upset about not being able to enjoy my iced coffee while being driven around GoG, chatting about nothing important. Something about that combination of things was magical.

Except I have a stupid butt. 

It took a few hours for us to get going again, but we had wanted to do some hiking and we had a very  narrow window of time to hike in. It was supposed to start raining at 1, and my dumb dumb colon took until about noon to poo. We drove through GoG first to do something like The Twins hike, but I was deeply irritated by the number of people in the park, so I suggested we drive to Rainbow Falls. 

Well. I guess not. 

We thought we had maybe an hour or two to do a hike, so we drove BACK up to where we were staying to do Chimney Rock. 

Well. I guess not again.

The sky looked terribly foreboding, so I suggested Derek grab himself some Mollica's (which was my favorite sandwich shop when I lived in the Springs). I have been aching for him to try it the entire time we've been together (11 years this year), he finally acquiesced, so off we went. And right up the road from it, we were met with quite the storm. 

As quickly as it came, it left. In its wake it graced us with a gorgeous sky and incredible clouds. Mollica's ended up being closed, so I made Derek a pick up order at Boriello Brothers, as he had also never eaten one of their calzones. I asked him to take the GoG way through to downtown, because...like...look:

And look some more:

And then check out the hail of it all:

Like a snow storm, but not nearly as pretty after the fact. We drove through the park and got stopped by another massive downpour. We camped up at the top of the second turn off, waited out the storm, and then headed back out. Obviously I was taking billions of videos, hoping to get a good lightning strike. 

All adjectives are subjective. 

Subjectively, there are relatively few prettier views than this. 

We left GoG and headed to Boriello Brothers. I was super nervous about Derek trying Boriello Brothers, because he has a long standing hatred of their pizza. Anytime I brought up Boriello Brothers, both when we lived in the Springs and any other time, he would roll his eyes and complain about how shit their pizza was. 

But I wasn't taking him there for pizza. No I wasn't. I was taking him there for calzones. 

Hooray! Hooray for Boriello Brothers!!

Daily lunch specials???? YES! Made in the USA? Those signs always give me the ick. Well. Point one down for Boriello Brothers. 

THE MYTHICAL BLACK AND WHITE. GASP.

In my travel to Ithaca blog, I wrote about Home Dairy and having Half Moon cookies, or Black and Whites. It's one of those things that I can't explain why eating them is a core memory for me, it just is. So I get so excited when I see black and whites served anywhere. The first time I went to Boriello Brothers maybe 15 years ago, I saw that they had Black and Whites and I freaked the fuck out so hard that the guy behind the counter went, "You're a New Yorker, aren't you?" and I was like, "FUCK YEAH I AM!" and we chatted a bit, I talked about Home Dairy, he talked about the city (the experiences of half moons and black and whites vary vastly from NY region to NY region), and I ended up getting my cookie for free. 

There would be no free cookies this trip, but that's fine. 

You were free of charge for me once upon a time! Inflation gets us all in the end. 

I had placed Derek's order earlier, because it takes about 45 minutes for each calzone to be made. They both bake them AND fry them, so they are extra delicious. 

Disrobe yourself, sir!

Ooooooooooooooooooh. As sexy as I remember. 

It's rare that I covet the foods people eat. I've been vegetarian/vegan since 2017, keto since 2018. I eat really well, but sometimes...SOMETIMES....I just want to eat bread, god dammit. Fried bread full of cheese. 

Oh yeah. Yeah, that's the stuff. 

I know I described that as "laser hot" in the video above this one, but Derek was biting into it with reckless abandon and exclaiming that it wasn't hot. I cry foul, but whatever. 

We didn't do much for the rest of the day. I asked Alex (I am writing this months after the fact, and Alex actually goes by Vivian now. I call her Vivi, so it will be Vivi from here on out) if she wanted to go do anything for dinner, and she said she didn't. So Derek and I kinda just...tooled around and did a whole lot of busy nothing. The sun was setting as we got back to the hotel, and there's something about parking lots that just like...amps up the beauty of sunsets. 

I miss Colorado so much. 

Even the view from the room, where we couldn't see the mountains, was pretty:

Ugh. Gorgeous. 

Here in the future, I have two PhD programs I'm applying to: One in Syracuse, and one in Denver. The one in Denver is the one I'm most excited about, and I don't know that it isn't in some small way because I'd be back in my beloved Colorado. 

I realized that I didn't have food to eat for dinner, so I asked Derek to take me to Little Nepal. On the way there, I had a full on meltdown about society:

Where you can see the cracks I kicked in the windshield from a rough moment of extreme dysregulation! Whoever tells you being autistic isn't super fun at all times was lying! It's the best!

We picked up my Little Nepal (pakora and saag, thank you for being a delightful treat!) and Derek and I were both like...we need and deserve a little treat. Plus we need mouthwash. So we stopped at Safeway, and I noticed something upsetting.

We drove back to the hotel for real, I got into my food:

and Derek and I cozied up in bed all night together, he designed a house and I read a book. I had the sinking feeling I was getting a cold, Rhyann had had a cold (turns out Rhyann had covid, we had to go get tested because Derek got REALLY sick where I only got irritatingly ill...you know how it is when your body is clearly sick but it won't get full blown sick? It stays in this sort of "I don't feel well" limbo but you also feel fine ENOUGH that you can still function? It's fucking annoying) before we left, and I could feel it creeping up on me. I didn't want to be sick during our trip because we had so much planned, but...well. You'll see.

Stay tuned as I check my cell phone photos for whatever it is we did the next day!