Recuperation

CWs: physical health, food, alcohol

I came down with a cold Monday night. Started with a sore throat, then I was very stuffy (well, stuffier than usual), and when I woke up Tuesday morning, I knew I wasn’t going to be working. So I called out. Rested up throughout the day, played a lot of videogames, drank water. Still not feeling great. Slept, fitfully, still a sore throat and stuffy. Woke up this morning (Wednesday) and well, I didn’t feel well enough to work again. I feel bad calling out, but I keep telling myself, this is what sick leave is for, and I am grateful to have it.

I’ve played a lot of videogames today too. More water. We had people come by and clean the gutters today (it was badly needed; we hadn’t done anything with them since we moved in). That went really well. Otherwise, I’ve been relaxing and recharging. I would listen to music but I’m not feeling it at the moment. My gamepad is charging currently; it is a little wonky, at least with some games, when hard-wired, so I am letting it do its thing.

I haven’t written much lately. Last weekend we took a trip to Colorado Springs. We wanted to get out of town, but we also had another reason to go. Earlier this year, we took a little trip to Cañon City. We stayed the night there in a lovely little mom-and-pop motel, very affordable and clean and nice. Did the Royal Gorge Bridge and walked around there. It was really nice. Loved it there and I’m glad we went. We also checked out a bug museum, and then headed over to Manitou Springs, where we would be staying the night. The plan the next morning was to take the Pikes Peak Cog Railway up to the summit of Pikes Peak. We were both super excited about it. However, we got up the next morning and were informed that the railway would only be able to go up maybe halfway, due to adverse weather conditions. That was a major bummer, of course, and they offered us either a credit or to reschedule for another time. We rescheduled to this last weekend, and built a little trip around it.

We stayed in Colorado Springs on Friday night, and spent the day there walking around and such, and we also went to the US Olympics & Paralympics Museum. My spouse really loves figure skating (we did the figure skating museum on the last trip!), and Olympics in general, so we had a nice time there. It’s not 100% my thing, but that’s OK, I still had a good time. My parents told me that when I was a baby, the Olympic Torch came by while they were standing along the street watching. This was in Eugene, OR. My parents confirmed it was the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics when I asked them a bit ago, and hey! we got to see the torch at the museum, so that was very cool.

Friday night we had a nice dinner at Atomic Cowboy/Fat Sully’s/Denver Biscuit Company. Yes, it really is 3 restaurants in one, depending on time of day. Fat Sully’s specializes in pizza, and Denver Biscuit Company in biscuits, naturally, and Atomic Cowboy in burgers. We had gone to another location awhile back for the biscuits, which were delicious, and thought this would be a fairly affordable dinner during our trip. I ended up getting a massive pizza slice, my spouse got a burger, and we split mozz sticks. I also got a delightful Caesar salad. So that was cool. I got a nice Mexican lager and my spouse got a mule of some kind (I think it was a strawberry rhubarb). Otherwise we just hung out in the hotel after that. We needed to get up earlyish to go to Manitou for the railway.

The Cog Railway actually happened! We got up there way too early after finding a parking place and taking the shuttle, but that’s OK. I would rather be early than late any day. So the railway is unlike anything I’ve ever done before. It’s a train going up the mountain, on a cog system (the track is very cool, you can see how the cogs fit in; it is the middle track and then there are two standard rails). At points the grade is 25%, which is apparently only possible due to the cog system. We got some really cool pictures on the way up (mostly). We went up from about 6800ft to 14,000ft at the summit. It took about an hour and a half to go up, then we had about 30 minutes at the summit. They have a little visitor center up there, with a food court and gift shop and bathrooms, and the food court serves donuts! 14er donuts! We got some and they were delicious, and I also had some delicious hot chocolate.

We didn’t have time for much up there, though, after doing that, but were able to take some pictures, both of ourselves as well as the amazing views on the summit, and then we needed to get back on the train. You can drive up to the summit, but they explained it has about ~150 hairpin turns, and no guardrails. Sounds like Trail Ridge Road in Rocky Mountain National Park, but on a much bigger scale! I would try it; as long as I went slow enough I think it would be fine. But that wouldn’t be an option for us getting back down, and if we missed our train we wouldn’t be able to board a different one; they were very adamant about that. So I was a little paranoid about getting back on time. We were fine.

The descent was much quicker, or at least felt that way, and soon enough we were back at a “normal” elevation. We thought about doing some stuff in Manitou before we left, but our parking was expiring, and I didn’t really want to re-up it, and we were both kinda tired. By this point it was almost 2pm, and we needed to drive home still. We also planned to go to IKEA on the way home, which worked out fine; we got another duvet insert for winter (well, it was an “all-season” one which is a little more modular) and some other stuff.

After getting home on Saturday evening, we really didn’t do much the rest of the weekend, and I did not want to go anywhere Sunday. It was a nice little trip, though, and I am glad we were able to do the Cog Railway. I really want to take my parents up there; I think my dad would love it, and he would ask the conductor tons of questions. Our conductor was super nice and was happy to field questions, so that would be just fine.

I figure I got the cold somehow on our trip, I’m not sure. We were around a lot of people on Saturday with the train. I took a COVID test yesterday morning to check, but it came back negative. I am going to take another one tomorrow morning and see how that shakes out. But it doesn’t feel like COVID did (I had COVID last June for the first time, and haven’t, to my knowledge, had it since). I think it’s just a gnarly cold.

I’m not sure what to do with myself for the rest of the day. My spouse will be home from work in a couple of hours, so I will probably play some more games in the meantime shortly. I hope y’all are as well as possible. We live in weird times and I wish y’all only the best. <3