One of my closest friends moved to Colorado after graduating high school and I haven't been able to visit him until this past Thanksgiving break. Colorado has always been at the top of my "states to visit" list (that doesn't actually exist) since it seems to have every outdoor sport known to man except surfing.
Day 1
As soon as I landed, the very first thing we did was get Raising Cane's and go to the flagship REI. It blows my mind how enormous and how popular the REI is there. We have one in Orlando but it's pretty small and only really popular among hikers, campers and climbers. But the one in Denver seemed to attract everyone as if it was something people visit ritually every Saturday morning.
Next up, we picked up some pads and made our way to Flagstaff to start bouldering. This was my very first time bouldering outdoors and was probably one of the most humbling experiences of my life. At the time, I could boulder about a V4, maybe a V5 indoors but the most I could manage in Flagstaff was a V2 T_T. The rock was sharp and cold as hell so it made climbing almost painful? On top of that, its much much scarier since the ground below you is usually uneven and the pads are just shy of being big enough to instill some sense of confidence in my climbing.
Day 2
We drove about two hours to Colorado Springs to visit the Garden of the Gods, one of the most beautiful parks I've ever visited (even after my trip to Japan!). It's fascinating to see trees surrounded by the earthy orange rocks and mountains. Definitely not something you'd see anywhere near Florida. That night, I finally got to have In-N-Out :D
Day 3
We went back to Flagstaff only for me to sit and watch Thomas go crazy on Valkyrie (or was it Valhalla?) with some random couple and their cute labrador. At this point, I messed up my wrist pretty bad while trying to mantle an arete and I couldn't really climb much more for the rest of the trip.
Later that evening, I was invited to Thomas' aunt's house for Thanksgiving dinner. It was there that I met Luke, a security software engineer turned machine learning/data science in the financial sphere (think crypto, markets, arbitrage). Meeting this guy ended up being one of my favorite parts of the trip since it was my first time meeting someone so deeply passionate about what he does. And coincidentally, the thing he does is the thing I want to do someday. He had such a great influence on me that I bought a Google Pixel 8 the following day for Black Friday simply because he had one (...and also because I had been eyeing for awhile and he was the tipping point).
Day 4
We traveled to Boulder, the city where Thomas goes to university, to check out what a college town in Colorado might look like. We visited the old town area whic