Traveling to new places is something I love to do. Over the years I keep trying to increase the amount of travel I do. The past five days were spent in Denver, Colorado with my friend Doug.
Neither of us have been to Colorado before, so we were both stoked to check it out. Both of us have a flexible schedule and we don’t have too many friends that can just pack a bag and travel. So we both just picked a place, booked the travel arrangements, and off we went.
Friday
I’m real good at putting things off til the last minute (also known as procrastination), so I was working on a lot of things late into Thursday night. I didn’t get everything done, but I threw it all on my Dropbox so I could finish it up from my laptop on the road.
Next thing I knew, it was 3am Friday morning and I had to drive about two hours to Indianapolis. We met at a friend’s house nearby and he dropped us off at the airport. Nothing better than showing up in a bagged car!
The TSA people went through my bag as my microphones apparently look like guns. After that mixup, we jumped on our Southwest direct flight to Denver. This was also the first time I’ve flown Southwest and I will always try to use them if the price is right.
A couple hours of sleep later, we landed, picked up our rental car, and checked into our hotel. Before the dropping our bags off at the Holiday Inn, we made a quick pit stop at a local dispensary. I had never seen anything like it.
So many places selling marijuana in the state, but I was surprised that people weren’t just walking around smoking it everywhere we went. In fact, I think the only person blatantly getting high was a homeless man in an alley next to a shelter.
I think the majority of people who have never been to Colorado picture it as a bunch of drug addicts just stumbling around everywhere. Denver just seemed like a regular, normal, everyday city.
Once we were settled in, we hit up a local Mexican restaurant. If you don’t know much about us, we are taco addicts. They messed our order up slightly, but we didn’t care. Good food is good food.
Right after that, we cruised out to Golden and rented a couple of mountain bikes.
For the next five hours, we rode up North Table Mountain.
I haven’t rode a bike in a long time, and I wasn’t prepared for this grueling activity. But when we made it to the top, the view was totally worth it. Insane scenery.
We made our way down, dropped the bikes back off, and it was time for food again. Yup, you guessed it, tacos. We had Torchy’s Tacos in Houston a couple months ago and we found one in Denver, so we had to stop by. Some of the best tacos out there for sure.
The bikes and the tacos wore us out, not to mention the lack of sleep the night before, and the jet lag, so we called it a night shortly after.
Saturday
A good night’s sleep out of town means only one thing… pancakes. I remember hearing a friend talk about a place called Snooze, and when I Yelp’d breakfast spots, I noticed Denver had two locations. This was the easiest food decision I’ve ever been a part of.
Before that, I hopped on my laptop in the room and made a website job go live that I built right before I took this trip. One thing I love about most of the businesses I’ve built is that I can do my work from just about anywhere.
We drove downtown and put our name on the list. Our rental car was parked in a lot nearby, so we walked around the city taking photos while we waited for the restaurant.
The rental looked badass with the wall of artwork behind it!
Back to the food, the pancakes were amazing. Thanks Talor!
Next up on the agenda, we decided to meet up with our friend Nick at his shop out in the Fort Collins area. It’s always cool to talk with like-minded people online, but getting to visit their shop, or garage, or studio, or wherever the magic happens takes it to another level.
I guess we are growing boys because all we were doing was eating. Nick recommended a burger place in the area called Stuft, so that’s where we headed. A couple of massive burgers later and we were definitely stuffed.
Later on, we stopped at a bar and met a couple other minitruck friends. It seems that no matter where us minituckers travel, we can always find others that share our passion for low trucks. They mentioned that they were gonna hang out at a car show on Sunday, so we said we’d be down to join them.
Doug has been on a Starbucks kick lately, so we stopped in one of the million locations on the way back to the hotel. I’m not a coffee fan at all, but I think this is where I picked up my S’mores Bar addiction. Spoiler alert: I ordered another one on Monday. This day was full of driving all over the place, so back to the hotel we went.
Sunday
It took us awhile to get motivated this morning, actually I think it was just me being lazy as hell. Once we got ready and left our room, we grabbed some pizza and hit up the lowrider show downtown. It’s not exactly our type of show but it was still a good time.
A few hours after walking around, it started raining a bit. Which reminds me, it was about 80 degrees on Friday, but the rest of the time it was in the 50s-60s and overcast or rainy. So we were ready for some more indoor fun.
Sunday night indoor fun equals tacos and go karts. The hostess at Snooze mentioned Pinche was one of her favorite taco joints, so we took her up on that recommendation.
When we got there, we realized they changed the name from Pinche to Tacos Tequila Whiskey.
I also have to mention a musician that he played on his Spotify throughout this trip. The guy’s name is Richard Cheese. Hell of a name, and an even better sound. He takes popular songs and does a cover of them in an old school jazz style. And his band is called Lounge Against The Machine. You need to check it out. One word: hilarious.
Our last stop for Sunday was Dave & Buster’s. Some good food (any sandwich with mac-n-cheese on it always wins), some drinks, and some games. More good times. And just in case you were wondering, yes, you still need to spend hundreds of dollars to get enough tickets to win a prize worth about $10. Haha
Monday
First thing I did when I woke up Monday was crack open the laptop again. I was trying to post a new podcast episode before I left my house last Thursday. I ran out of time (I procrastinated) so I planned on finishing it when I had some downtime on this trip. For the first couple hours, I finished editing the whole podcast episode, then we took our computers to a local Starbucks and got some more work done.
I posted the podcast to iTunes and sent out an email to my email list, as well as posted on social media. Click here to listen to it now! My work was done and it was back to vacation time.
After a few beer samplings, we went on the tour (safety glasses first) and got a history of the company and checked out some of the process involved in the creating of beer, from the ingredients to the bottle. Pretty cool. I tried the Colette Farmhouse Ale and the Orabelle Belgian-Style Tripel and both were really good!
As with any drinking adventure, food needs to be involved at some point. I’ll give you one guess as to what we ate. Yup, tacos. After not eating much this day, and having a few random alcoholic beverages, I was feeling terrible, and I passed out in the car. We had an early flight the next morning, so we packed everything up once we got back to the hotel. Zzzzzzzz…
Tuesday
Our alarms were set for 6am and we surprisingly woke right up. We checked out, dropped the rental car off, and waited forever in the security check at the airport. I grabbed some Chinese food to eat on the plane (which I’m sure the strangers on both sides of me enjoyed smelling the whole flight), and off we went.
Back in Indy, the weather was great. Warmer than Denver for sure. Our friend’s wife picked us up and took us back to their house to get our cars. Just like all good times, they fly by. I’m already excited for the next trip. I have no idea where that’s gonna be, but I think I’m ready for the beach again. One day I will live within walking distance to a beach, mark my word!