friday, I sort of had a hard time leaving the apartment. it was a truly warm day and Major Tom was being super cute. I eventually mustered the inclination to explore city park. I rode all around it, witnessed a lovely outdoor wedding, almost destroyed the par of some guys on the golf course. I circled around to the big grassy expanse, found a shady area and, if you can believe it, fell asleep! suji's phone call woke me up. but this was the night she was going to show me downtown Denver.
turns out that everything she'd said was true: there's nothing awesome in the evening in downtown Denver. we ended up at a new bar she'd heard about but that we'd both grown afraid of due to the reviews: the tilted kilt. supposedly slutty-looking girls were posted out front as the welcoming committee or something. but we were out of ideas on how to spend the evening. well, the whole staff actually wore kilts! and the girls weren't as scary as we'd feared, so we decided to stay for a drink. after catching our breath from the interaction with the incredibly cute bartender, we found ourselves in conversation with him. and imagine my shriek when he told me that he was the winner of the yearly New Belgium event where the grand prize is a new cruiser bike! we chatted about bikes for a minute but then he mentioned something about a street artist or two. suji's love of graffiti flared and they were lost in conversation for seemingly hours.
on Saturday we set our alarms so that I could experience breakfast at pete's cafe - super yums. we hopped on a bus (or two) and arrived early for suji's appointment to get her tattoo finished. now, I'm not a tattoo hog, but I do know a little bit and 4.5 hours is too long! after what felt like a YEAR we were finally on the bus home. sadly, neither of us expected to go home afterwards but we were so wiped and hungry that there was no other choice.
after some rejuvenation she tried to take me to some different places. unfortunately a lot of the bars had a weird, pretentious vibe. we decided to hit up her old faithful, the park. imagine my surprise when i saw a New Belgium cruiser bike parked out front! we never did scour the place to try to see if he was really there, but when i went outside to take kalman's phone call i noticed that the bike wasn't there anymore. some rude kids who don't know the basic rules to bar pool stole suji's table. so we sat at the bar and enjoyed our favorite pasttime, talking about boys. she had to cover my tab on her card because I hadn't had enough to meet the minimum. but I was horrified to realize not until we got home that the bartender never gave me my card back! it turned out to be an awesome excuse for a 1.30am bike ride - after I reclaimed my card I decided to finally track down an ATM
so I wouldn't be so pathetically cash-less anymore.
Sunday was a delicious brunch with kevin and his girlfriend kate at lucille's creole cafe. it was really great to sit down and catch up with Kevin. we'd visited for a second about three years ago when they were in the city, but I'm sure it'd been at least four since he and I had actually had a conversation. anyhow, the four of us had a great time and it was nice to see that the two of them are making a little life together. given that, I forgot to get a picture of us! I can't believe it! I've been trying so hard to keep this trip well documented. arg.
anyhow, suji and i digested brunch and rested, then i packed up my things and went on my way to union station. (for the record, I love that nearly every city calls their train hub "union station", does anyone know why that is?)
after a nice, if sweaty, ride across town, i was told that the train was running over an hour and a half behind schedule! suji, lamely, didn't have the energy to come out and keep me company though.
then i discovered that baggage claim didn't even have the bike box I had stored. so the guy, thankfully a different guy, gave me a new one. I had a HELL of a time getting the left pedal off - somehow the inner threads got stripped.
after i finally got scott all nestled in his box and my carry-on bags temporarily held, I went across the street to the wynkoop brewery across the street and very much enjoyed their mile hi.p.a.
when I returned to the station I was almost immediately made friends with by a guy named Alex who like my little (by comparison) blue bag that has the picture of a bicycle on it. I confessed that I'm a bit of a dork when it comes to bikes and we discovered that we were both on Big Trips, though he was rapidly approaching the end of his. we kept each other company as we waited for the train to arrived. originally we'd been told the delay took our departure back to 9.30 but we sat, chatted, and watched as 10pm came by. finally we were filing onto the platform and I accepted as we were asked if we wanted to sit next to each other. I've invested this much into conversational comfort, might as well go with it.
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