Estes Park

Last weekend I found myself in Estes (rhymes with testes, giggity) Park, Colorado, for a mini vacation in the mountains. A trip to cool, Rocky Mountainy Colorado was quite the welcome respite after being in scorching, fiery-depths-of-hell Plano (which translates to flat in Spanish).

The first and most noticeable change for me was the altitude difference. The air was dry, each breath brought a smaller oxygen intake, and I became out of breath more quickly than usual (which is pretty quick to being with). But the views were amazing. I'd never seen the Rockies in the summertime, and it was a world's difference from the snowy, grey peaks of Banff and Jasper.

While hiking we spotted a lot of wildlife, including a couple of elk grazing just a few feet away. The animals paid us no mind as we gawked and pointed. I even got video footage of an elk peeing and it was way rad.

Fatty mcfat fat

Tubby mctubster

Wile E. Coyote

I've decided I love mountains more so than any other natural uh, thing (entity? establishment? wonder? distortion of land?). Seeing them, especially those preserved as well as the ones in Estes Park, makes me feel happy and inspired and lightheaded (although maybe the lightheadedness comes from the lack of O2). When I am older and decide to be sick of Chicago, I would definitely love to live somewhere close to a mountain range. Also I am pretty sure that like Snow White, I can domesticate woodland creatures if I just hang out in them mountains long enough and sing the song that Fiona does in Shrek. That way they could do my cooking and laundry while I happily tumble through the mountains and over the hills. 

the cascades

one of the many reasons i love fleet foxes so so so much is because in addition to writing beautiful lyrics, they also happen to make fantastic instrumental music.

one of my favorite tracks from their first album is entitled "heard them stirring". it's got flavors of winter and edward scissorhands and mystery. it's what i imagine what i'd hear if i ever got lost in an ancient magical wintry forest. 

"the cascades", off fleet foxes' second album helplessness blues is also entirely without words or lyrics, but brings to mind a very different flavor. the constant tickling and garbling of the background, with a simple minor melody layered over it, sounds to me like a song for fall harvest and the preparation of a long winter.

i think listening to their new album over and over again combined with the heavy doses of game of thrones i've been snorting has convinced my subconscious to live in denial of modern society/technology and instead to daydream all day of tumbling through the woods barefoot with a harp, strumming songs of olden times and weaving flowers in my hair. 

...

Allow me to share with you the weirdest and most revolting taxi experience I've ever had.

8:30 PM Central Time, Dallas Fort-Worth airport, Terminal E. I should've known I was stepping into a janky-ass cab when the trunk wouldn't close despite repeated forceful downward pushes. After about a minute of ill-executed karate chop-esque attempts at closing the trunk of his car, the cab driver retrieved a hammer out of his glove compartment, scurried to the back, pounded away at something, closed the trunk, and made a joke about it to me as he got back into the driver's seat and casually tossed the hammer into the passenger's seat.

An alarm bell may or may not have gone off at that point - "are cab drivers supposed to saunter around with hammers out in the open like that?" - but I figured I could outrun the guy if he decided he wanted to kill me with a blunt object, so I did my thing and kept my eye out for any weird signs during the car ride. There weren't any until I'd arrived at the Residence Inn and fished my wallet out of my backpack. The total came to $57-something. I told him to add $11 as I handed him my credit card.

A minute of fumbling around in the dark yielded the carbon copy paper on which to imprint my credit card information. Another two passed before he was able to find a new bag of ball point pens. With the assistance of his teeth, he was able to awkwardly rip it open and procure a writing utensil.

It took ten seconds after that for him to realize he'd lost my credit card.

I realized something was wrong as soon as I heard the nervous giggle. "...ahem...heh heh...ma'am...?" That's when I peered into the front seat and saw it. Saw it all, I should say; a discombobulation of napkins, broken glasses, water bottles, bandanas, wrappers, tissues, receipts, magazines, bottle caps, gloves, rubber bands, notepads, pen caps, books, and God knows what else. It was all junk, and it was piled in little heaps, an organized chaos that had Big-Banged itself in the front of this guy's taxi. And somewhere, in all of it, my gray little Chase United credit card had slipped out of view.

The taxi driver was taking his time. He searched all his pockets - pulling out wads of twenties, gum wrappers, coins, and more random slips of paper that tumbled to the ground - and then started picking things out of the car one by one and examining them like it was the first time he'd seen them, muttering madly to himself and occasionally giving me that nervous giggle. I wasn't sure whether or not I should interfere, so I remained quiet and let him search, but boy was it was pitiful to watch and then it grew painful as he started looking in places where the card was obviously not located, like in the car's glove compartment (???). Frustrated, I started making suggestions of places to look. When he seemed totally lost, I turned on my phone's flashlight feature and started pawing through the mess and looking too, which he didn't seem to mind. It felt weird and not at all sanitary to pick through this stranger's things, but I was intent on getting my credit card back. Eventually, I found the card wedged deep in the crack between the driver's seat and the middle island where the gear shifter knob was located. The driver offered offered one apology... and then had the gall to add the $11 tip despite having had his customer look for her credit card in his pigsty of a taxi for twenty minutes.

The experience was disgusting, pathetic, and left me totally grossed out. I'm no neat freak but I don't understand how people can live in that kind of filth either, especially when their job is to provide others the sort of service where basic sanitation and cleanliness are baseline expectations. I snapped a picture of the driver's seat that doesn't do the mess justice but you can start to see the chaos creeping in:

I guess the silver lining to this episode is that I'll know never to disrespect myself or my things to that level. I can be a total airhead sometimes about misplacing my things, but the day I let myself become that slovenly - especially when on the job - is the day when I renounce society, tattoo the lyrics to "Tik Tok" onto my face, and rampage off into the sun setting in the east.