Labor Day Shenanigans

I think the whole idea behind Labor Day is to relax because it’s a holiday, but that sounds boring so of course I went on a hike. What a gorgeous day for it too.

A few Gociety friends and I decided to trek up Grey Rock since well, that’s a classic Fort Collins hike.

It’s about 8 miles round trip, with roughly 2,000 feet elevation gain. But boy, is it worth it. My quads and knees are definitely aching a little bit today though.

We took the longer side of the loop (Meadows Loop) up, mainly because the view is spectacular. We started early, so the sun didn’t rise until maybe a mile or two into the hike.

You basically hike up the side of the mountain and come over the top and can just see mountains for miles.

Heaven.

You come over the final little hill, and that’s when you see it – Grey Rock in all of its majestic glory.

And a cute little Boxer.

From there, you hike down into a meadow valley. It’s a really lovely part of the hike. It’s basically downhill/flat for probably a mile, which is a relief to the muscles that hauled you up the first hill. Plus, it was an open space for the dogs to run around and they obviously didn’t enjoy that at all.

You hike up to the base of Grey Rock and hang out, drink some water, maybe eat a snack real quick as you prepare for the scramble up.

Joule and Mayson make funny faces.

You start the scramble up and you don’t even realize how high up your climbing because you’re just so focused on the climbing. My knees started to ache a little bit during this, but not too bad. I was actually relieved at how well my back and knees handled it all.

You reach the semi-top of Grey Rock, and there’s a full pond there! It’s one of the nice hidden treasures of this hike. We then climbed up the rocks you see behind me in the photo, and hung out at the summit for a while. But holy cow, it was pretty windy.

The view made it worth it, don’t you think? I’m not sure which 14er can be seen in the background.

It was a bit too windy though so after snacking a bit, drinking some water, and snapping some mandatory selfies, we began the descent back down.

Of course we had to stop so Joule and Mayson could run around in the water and begin to strengthen their hiking dog friendship bond they’ve been working at for a few weeks now.

From there, it was just a descent hike. We took the shorter part of the loop back, which ended up being a good/bad choice. The good part was that we heard the meadows side of the loop was just absolutely packed with people who are slackers late starters.

The bad part? A nasty rattle snake was on the trail down. For anyone who hasn’t encountered one of these satanic creatures – they are not nice animals. They’re very venomous snakes that are awesomely camouflaged to blend into the tan landscape that’s associated with Rocky Mountain hikes. Nice of them, right? The reason they’re named rattle snakes is because they have a rattle on the end of their tail that they shake when they’re angry. If you look just above his head in the picture below, you’ll see it.

We were really lucky. A human, not a dog, was leading our hiking expedition on the way down. Joule was tight on my leash, and the other dog was behind me. When we heard it rattle, we quickly moved backwards and basically hung out for a bit trying to figure out what  to do.

Someone found a huge stick and picked the snake up before tossing it into the tall grass away from the trail.

Overall, what an awesome trip. This was my first time hiking Grey Rock in two years, and it was nice to see that I’m in better hiking shape than I was last time. Joule and I are getting ready to climb our first 14er, Mt. Bierstadt, on Friday, so this was a solid way to prepare for that.

6 Month Reflection

I decided to start my own blog because well, why not. And out of all the days to start a blog, today was a good one.

Why?

Because I realized that within 6 months, your entire life can change. Now, that’s not necessarily a bad thing. It can be a good thing, trust me. Sometimes we need to change, sometimes we need to grow. But before we do that, sometimes we need to break.

“What was 6 months ago, Kylie?”

My anniversary was 6 months ago, that’s what. I was told a lot of lies that day. From someone who later admitted he had been thinking about moving out/ending things, he spent our anniversary telling me how he couldn’t wait for all the years to come, how he was going to marry me, have kids with me, how much he loved me.

Yeah, okay.

He made it 29 more days before he decided he didn’t want to be in a relationship with me anymore.

I fought so, so hard. I thought I could make it work. I was so set on “I’ll make these changes please” that I didn’t take the time to step back and see that it wasn’t me that needed to make the changes. I wasn’t perfect, but I hadn’t done anything wrong.

You shouldn’t have to try to convince someone to spend time with you, especially when you’ve been together awhile. You also shouldn’t have to put up with getting the ‘leftover’ time – The time where they don’t have anything better to do so they spend it with you.

Joule thought it was bullshit too.

During my soul-crushing heartbreak, I did give an amazing presentation on my research at a regional conference. After a blizzard, too. So at least I had that going for me.

Fast forward a couple weeks to when he lead me on post-breakup and held me accountable for it, for allowing my feelings for the person I loved and wanted to spend my life with become “too strong and serious.”

I was told that the week I moved home with my parents was one of the best weeks he’s had in a long time. I was told that he hadn’t wanted to kiss me lately, he was just doing it because that’s what he thought I wanted.

Fucked up, right?

It was at that exact moment that I said fuck it all, I’m done, I’m not fighting for this, I’m starting fresh.

I killed every single feeling I had for that man. All emotion, gone. That’s not easy to do, but I did it. I’d be lying if I said it didn’t still affect me. I think that’s why I struggle to connect with people lately – I’m still in shut down mode.

I buckled down and wrote the majority of my thesis paper in about 3 weeks. I prepared a full and successful thesis defense in just 3 days.

And I did that all while still living with this person who had become a passive aggressive asshat towards both me and the dog. So yeah, it shaped me a bit.

But then I left town, got the “heck out of Dodge”, as you could say. I took an amazing road trip with my bff around New Mexico.

I came back a new person. I saw how life should be experienced, and that I am naturally such a happy person. I had been so sad lately because of the people I surrounded myself with and the environment I had been stuck in.

But I was going to change that.

I had to deal with him a few more times after my return from my road trip, and they weren’t good encounters. Lots of yelling at me for not knowing what to do with his stuff, struggling to get the money he owed me, etc.

I became incredibly close to someone that I went to college with for 6 years. Yet, we never really hung out (beyond the occasional beer) until this summer. His name’s Ben, and he’s rad. He moved away for work recently and I miss him a lot.

I started hanging out at Snowbank Brewing a lot more, primarily because I needed some place to go that wasn’t my house. My entire Discussion chapter of my thesis was written while sitting in that brewery. It resulted in me becoming great friends with the people who work there. Now we go do pretty rad stuff together like hike mountains and run 5ks.

I even sometimes go on keg delivery adventures with Becki.

Then I joined Gociety and met WAY more people than I ever expected.

We basically just go climb mountains together. It’s pretty great, actually.

I even consider some of these creeps my friends.

I took the time to go on solo adventures with just the dog, and they ended up being pretty rad too. Incredibly relaxing, actually.

In the past 6 months, I have gone through probably the most heart breaking moment of my entire life. It shatters you when you see the life you thought you were going to have just ripped from you. I allowed myself to completely break, and at one point someone told me to just keep breaking. To break until there was nothing left to break. Because only then can you begin anew and build yourself up from the ground.

Oh boy, did I sure build myself up. While I did have that terrible moment within the past 6 months, I also had my greatest achievements happen, one of my happiest moments occur, and I’ve also brought more people into my life and now have more friends than I’ve had in my entire life.

I was ready to get married, I was ready to start planning when we could have a family. Now, I don’t want any of that. I don’t even want to date. I’m content by myself, and I’ve thought that maybe this is the Universe’s way of telling me that I’m not meant to be with anyone.

Maybe that will change, maybe it won’t.

But for now, I’m happy with where my life is. And I know that in the next 6 months, a lot more changes are going to happen and I’m excited to see where that takes me.

So here’s to my day of reflection.