On the road again
I am in Salida, Colorado. Joy and I are safely ensconced at a Comfort Inn, which I have always found to be clean and this one is thankfully no exception.
The flight to Denver and the wedding all went off as planned. Joy's friend Vivien is Taiwanese and her parents flew in from Taipei for the wedding, so I had several opportunities to attempt Chinese conversations which I seized. I'd give myself a C+ on my performance but I was at least understood. Everyone in the groom's (also Dan) family was very nice. Friday evening there was a rehearsal dinner at a place which I believe was called the Crazy Asian Bistro or something to that effect. There were about 40 people in attendance and the drinking really got out of hand very quickly. I hadn't really planned on drinking all that much, but Vivien's father apparently had other plans in mind. The way to toast in Chinese is with the words "gan bei" which means "drain your glass" and it is not just figurative. There was a bigger bottle of Jagermeister than I'd ever seen before, but the real disaster was the rather large glasses of wine he would pour for each person as he moved around the table. Of course it's a tremendous insult to not drink. All things considered, I escaped pretty easy, but the room was definitely spinning by the time I got back there. Don't ask how her dad ended up, but you can probably guess. The food was good, since it is a Chinese restaurant there were plenty of vegetarian things for me to eat, including a really good sweet and spicy tofu and some mixed vegetables. Earlier in the day we'd gone to a vegetarian place in Denver called Watercourse Foods which I'd been to once before on Sarah's US tour and I knew to be good. I had the same thing as last summer, vegan biscuits and gravy with mashed potatoes. It was really great. It's the kind of place that for some reason we don't really have in NYC. Places like it sure, but maybe just because it is Denver it feels much larger and in some way more relaxed. I'm sorry I didn't have room for dessert, they had these insane looking vegan cupcakes but maybe next time.
There were various additional excursions over the weekend. We have a rental car so getting around was easy, though there were shuttle buses from the hotel to the wedding events which was probably a good idea for the above-mentioned reasons. We went to a few different malls pre and post wedding, the latter today with Vivien so she and Joy had some time to hang out before we left. They have known each other since high school and are really funny together, though I'd say I'm only following maybe 50% of the rapid-fire Mandarin. At least I can tell when they are talking about me now. We also went to a Taiwanese bubble tea place afterwards. For lunch we ate at another vegetarian place in Denver called Wholly Tomato which had a really vegan-friendly menu but also serves meat. I had Indian food on Saturday for lunch which was also great. This is the most time I've spent in Denver and I was kind of pleasantly surprised at how multi-cultural it is. I guess I shouldn't be, but my view of the true midwest kind of helped me forget that Denver is a really big and diverse place.
So we finally got out of Denver today around 3:30 or so and I wasn't sure how far we'd make it, but we did really well. We took the interstate down to Colorado Springs and then leaped off onto US-24, a really scenic road west through the Rockies. With some twists and turns and a few hours of driving, we made it here to Salida, one of the larger towns in the area. It was a beautiful drive though I didn't take many pictures. There is a tendency when on these types of roadtrips to want to snap a zillion pictures, but rarely do they capture the feeling of being out in these places that are the polar opposite of somewhere like New York. Tomorrow should be very beautiful and I'll try to take a few more to give some idea of the scenery. The plan for tomorrow is to stick to the local roads and two-lane highways and get as close to the north rim of the Grand Canyon as possible so we can visit that the next morning. I'm excited for a full day of mountain and then desert driving. The cities in the US are great of course, but I have always felt the vast areas between are even more amazing and decidedly under-appreciated and under-visited.
I hope all of you are well. I will be in touch soon.
The flight to Denver and the wedding all went off as planned. Joy's friend Vivien is Taiwanese and her parents flew in from Taipei for the wedding, so I had several opportunities to attempt Chinese conversations which I seized. I'd give myself a C+ on my performance but I was at least understood. Everyone in the groom's (also Dan) family was very nice. Friday evening there was a rehearsal dinner at a place which I believe was called the Crazy Asian Bistro or something to that effect. There were about 40 people in attendance and the drinking really got out of hand very quickly. I hadn't really planned on drinking all that much, but Vivien's father apparently had other plans in mind. The way to toast in Chinese is with the words "gan bei" which means "drain your glass" and it is not just figurative. There was a bigger bottle of Jagermeister than I'd ever seen before, but the real disaster was the rather large glasses of wine he would pour for each person as he moved around the table. Of course it's a tremendous insult to not drink. All things considered, I escaped pretty easy, but the room was definitely spinning by the time I got back there. Don't ask how her dad ended up, but you can probably guess. The food was good, since it is a Chinese restaurant there were plenty of vegetarian things for me to eat, including a really good sweet and spicy tofu and some mixed vegetables. Earlier in the day we'd gone to a vegetarian place in Denver called Watercourse Foods which I'd been to once before on Sarah's US tour and I knew to be good. I had the same thing as last summer, vegan biscuits and gravy with mashed potatoes. It was really great. It's the kind of place that for some reason we don't really have in NYC. Places like it sure, but maybe just because it is Denver it feels much larger and in some way more relaxed. I'm sorry I didn't have room for dessert, they had these insane looking vegan cupcakes but maybe next time.
There were various additional excursions over the weekend. We have a rental car so getting around was easy, though there were shuttle buses from the hotel to the wedding events which was probably a good idea for the above-mentioned reasons. We went to a few different malls pre and post wedding, the latter today with Vivien so she and Joy had some time to hang out before we left. They have known each other since high school and are really funny together, though I'd say I'm only following maybe 50% of the rapid-fire Mandarin. At least I can tell when they are talking about me now. We also went to a Taiwanese bubble tea place afterwards. For lunch we ate at another vegetarian place in Denver called Wholly Tomato which had a really vegan-friendly menu but also serves meat. I had Indian food on Saturday for lunch which was also great. This is the most time I've spent in Denver and I was kind of pleasantly surprised at how multi-cultural it is. I guess I shouldn't be, but my view of the true midwest kind of helped me forget that Denver is a really big and diverse place.
So we finally got out of Denver today around 3:30 or so and I wasn't sure how far we'd make it, but we did really well. We took the interstate down to Colorado Springs and then leaped off onto US-24, a really scenic road west through the Rockies. With some twists and turns and a few hours of driving, we made it here to Salida, one of the larger towns in the area. It was a beautiful drive though I didn't take many pictures. There is a tendency when on these types of roadtrips to want to snap a zillion pictures, but rarely do they capture the feeling of being out in these places that are the polar opposite of somewhere like New York. Tomorrow should be very beautiful and I'll try to take a few more to give some idea of the scenery. The plan for tomorrow is to stick to the local roads and two-lane highways and get as close to the north rim of the Grand Canyon as possible so we can visit that the next morning. I'm excited for a full day of mountain and then desert driving. The cities in the US are great of course, but I have always felt the vast areas between are even more amazing and decidedly under-appreciated and under-visited.
I hope all of you are well. I will be in touch soon.
posted by Dan at 9:26 PM
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