Our recent vacation to Colorado started with a simplistic window decal, I [HEART] CRACK WHORES.
I mean, who doesn’t love a good crack whore every once in a while? But to display this fetish on a vehicle seems a bit extreme to me. Maybe I’m being a bit too conservative by keeping my fetishes a secret. I mean, you don’t want to hear about my fascination for sassy mailboxes, do you?
The second we stepped foot onto our destined vacation spot, Colorado Springs, we were bombarded by eccentric activists. No, not PETA people or a Vegan Rooted Vegetable convention, Mormons or Witch Slayers, but hikers. Yes, hikers. I didn’t realize that traveling to and staying at 6000 elevation meant I was supposed to bring my hiking boots and head to the hills. Who does that? Exercise every day—that’s ridiculous.
Everywhere we turned—the hotel desk-person, You should go hiking. Here’s a map. My friends, Are you going hiking? The bartender, Have you gone hiking yet?
No People, I did not go hiking, nor do I plan to. Like a normal person on vacation, we drove to a pretty area, took a selfie as though we were hiking, then got back into the warm car and placed those pretty images on social media.
You know where else we didn’t hike? Pike’s Peak. Everyone said to go. It will be fun, they said. Why not? When we pulled up to the pay station, the cute retired booth worker asked, “Do you know how to drive in the mountains?” Of course. Duh! We lived in California and drove through the Sequoia’s with little breaking (you’re welcome, Kola). We traveled down the coastline on Route 1. And let’s not forget Yosemite, where we took selfies of Half Dome as though we climbed the mountain with ropes. This Pike Guy from a high Peak has nothing on us—except… it did.
The driving experience was like sitting in the first row of the world’s largest roller coaster. As the front car reaches the top, the only visibility is the sky and the adrenaline starts pumping. Instead of a Great America Coaster, we had front row seating in a Ford Explorer.
There were little to no guardrails, a bit of ice on nearly every 180-degree turn, and then there was that whole plummeting straight down thousands of feet situation always lingering in the back of the mind. The wife’s knuckles were white the whole ride and I took great pictures safely from the passenger seat.
At 14,000+ feet in the air, and my feet firmly planted on solid rock, I touched God’s toenail. My legs were shaking and not from the adrenaline rush from the ride up. I started to hyperventilate and nearly passed out until the wife made me focus and breathe a little calmer. And after all that adrenaline and altitude sickness, we still had to head back down.
Halfway down the hill and a formal brake check later, our rotors were raging at nearly 500 degrees. We were instructed to let the car rest for fifteen minutes before we headed back to the hotel to brag about our nature experience. Those same hotel workers, friends, bartenders, and Outdoor Nazis exclaimed, You’re crazy. Why didn’t you take the tram?