Colorado Food

4/28/15 (Disclaimer: this is from ATL) Airport bagel. I woke up at 1am on the 28th and by 7am I was really hungry and knew that I couldn't wait it out until I got to Denver. I had to get some sustenance. So I picked the place with the coolest logo and bagels. Also, I purchased a subpar hot chocolate.

4/28/15 Biker Jim's! Pictured are my lovely Colorado companions for the week. None were aware of this picture. I got the wild boar dog(with apricot and cranberries) with The International(Wasabi aioli, caramelized apples and shaved lrich cddda) topping. This food & the atmosphere was really the best and really set the bar high for Colorado food.

4/28/15 This soda was available at Biker Jim's and Yellowbelly, which is exactly what I want for every restaurant. Cool sodas that taste flavor-y and handcrafted. 

4/28/15 The chicken from Yellowbelly was delish. There was this vinegar-y salsa water that went with and it was also delicious. I hoped for more from the macaroni pie, but it was still enjoyable.

4/29/15 On the morning of April 29th, KG graciously bought me a chicken taco biscuit from Taco Bell for breakfast, but I completely forgot to photograph it, even though as I was taking a shower I was deciding whether or not I would take pictures of food that also is available in Alabama & I decided that I would take a picture of all Colorado food. I just forgot.

It looked a lot like this: 

But more sloppy and misshapen.

4/29/15 I bought these in a gas station in order to be allowed to use the bathroom. No regrets. 

4/29/15 Suppertime interlude. I really think that presentation is everything and so I usually want to take a photo when food first reaches me, but again, I forgot. So now we have this massacre. It was good though. The restaurant had weird vibes, but it had a salsa bar that housed some brilliant salsa and a shit ton of cilantro that you could put on all your food like I did here. I also had no problem with the shrimp quesadilla, despite some hesitation from others in the group.

4/30/15 Blueberry mini bagels with cream cheese that I bought at King Sooper's. I'd really like to know the backstory behind this King Sooper because he spells his name funny and he is friends enough with Kroger to sell their products. Does King Sooper reign over Kroger? Probably.

 4/30/15 Things for the movie plus cough drops because I'm sickly. Not pictured: Orange chicken and noodle bowl from Panda Express.

 5/1/15 KG made pancakes! And fried eggs! And I had my own blueberry cream cheese bagels again. Those eggs were super local. I thought they tasted way better than eggland's best. Also featured is Watermelon Lime tea.

 5/1/15 This beautiful burger was from Big Daddy's Burger Bar and it was called Sam I Am. There was ham and pesto and a fried egg involved. Such a great combination. On the right are some bbq chicken nachos that featured a corn salsa and fresh pineapple. Yum.

 5/1/15 At Sweet Action ice cream, I went all out. Hey it was my vacation. I got a double scoop cup of cherry basil and butter pecan. They both tasted great, although I kinda wish I would've tried the ginger lemon cookie ice cream instead of the cherry basil. I also got a peanut butter and chocolate ice cream sandwich. As I was eating this ice cream cookie sandwich in the car, C said it smelled like a butterfinger.


 5/2/15 On my last morning in CO, KG made me a super delicious Eggs with the bread with the hole in the middle, or as they called it "Egg in the basket." I forgot to take a photo.

Day 5 in CO:

Saturday, 5/2/2015

Last day. :(

KG made breakfast again because she's just a perfect little suzy homemaker. I am very thankful because it was very delicious. I would have been thankful for the effort even if it wasn't, but it was.

We watched Bob's Burgers until it was time for me to leave. I said the briefest of goodbyes. I'm going to miss them. KG drove me to the Denver International Airport. I had no problem finding things.
When I got to the weird oval body x-ray machine, one of the security guys was like, "*shoulder shrug* It's a Friday." & I was like... "Hah *shoulder shrug*" but in my head I was thinking, 'wtf it's definitely not friday.' So that guy probably thought it was Friday for the rest of the day because I didn't correct him.

I found my gate easily. I almost fell a bunch of times on those moving sidewalks. There was a little bit of commotion while I was waiting. One of the emergency golf carts came to my gate while I was there. Lots of paramedics. It seems a little old lady had some problems on the flight before mine and had to be carried off on a stretcher.
My flight went pretty good.



I only had to use like 10 tissues the whole time. I would say that I felt bad for the person sitting next to me, but he moved at the beginning of the flight so I wasn't actually sitting next to anyone. That extra bit of space was really nice. So I kind of get the idea that fat people should have to buy two seats. The girl in my row told the flight attendant that it was the smoothest landing ever, so I guess that was good, too.
Rosh and Calub were already at the airport when I landed. I had to make them wait though because of my checked bag. From what I experienced, Denver baggage claim was way better than ATL baggage claim. It took me less than 5 minutes to get my luggage. In ATL, there were like 1000 people waiting by the carousel. What really annoyed me was that people were standing so close to the thing that if your bag came by you had to really weave through people to get it. If people just created like an empty moat surrounding the carousel then people could see their bag and jump in and grab it without hassle. Anyway, I finally got my bag. Then I traveled back to Alabama, with the help of Roshni and Caleb.

Sunset on 5/2/15

Day 4 in CO: "Saving children but not the British children"

Friday, 5/1/2015

This day was pretty leisurely. We did a lot of things, but at a casual pace. I forgot to take pictures of a lot of things.
I woke up with the snottiest of noses. I had to use about a million tissues through out the day. I was lovely to be around, I'm sure.
KG and I played with craft supplies while the boys went to Boulder. I discovered I am severely lacking in the paper punches department.
We then went to the Denver Art Museum. As everybody already knows, I love art. So of course I loved the art museum. We spent pretty much all day in the museum. The place was huge. I learned a lot about the West (Capital W). Each floor had tons of different things, but the cowboys and Indians and Native Americans really stand out in my mind. Also, the portraits. I'll have to go back to Colorado to go to the modern/contemporary art museums.
We met back up with the boys and some "friends" of theirs at Big Daddy's Burger Bar ("Aka pesto is what belongs on a burger bar" - KG). I got some great ideas for future meals from that place so I'm glad we went. I will def be putting pesto on some burgers. Also, why does pineapple and barbecue sauce taste so good together?
After that, we finally went to get some ice cream! Homemade ice cream is the best. No hyperbole. The best. Parking in Denver is very hectic.
We went back to the apartment and watched funny videos. It was good.

I love this kind of art. It's weird and it pleases me.

View of the Capitol building (the one with the gold top) from the DAM.

What made the DAM especially cool was the little studios they set up for the public. They had this one that allowed you to make your own postcards. KG and I had a great time with it. I sent postcards to everyone that I could remember the address of. This "I've never herd of buffalo" was an example of what kind of postcard you could make and it was just too perfect. There were about 12  or so stamps to choose from and then you could color them or add additions with colored pencils. I tend to like stamps on their own so I mostly just left them b&w. It was so fun though!

I think this was a postcard that someone put up on the wall of examples. I like its vaguely creepy overtones.

My new favorite thing is looking at artist's signatures and Norman Rockwell has a good one. One of my favorite pieces from the whole museum was this one of a heavenly toaster. I loved it very much.

Day 2 in CO: Bigfoot Crossing

Wednesday, 4/29/2015

KG, J & I went to Pike's Peak! It was gorgeous. We weren't allowed to drive to the top because it was still so covered in snow, but we got to go to around 12,000 feet and that still felt like a victory to me. 

Me, KG, & J

That's me on a pile of rocks that's pretty high.

J looking all all-powerful and stuff

Snow plow by the gift shop!

KG caught me #selfie

The guy in this picture is a random friend I made who took my picture when I was at a higher layer of this pile of rocks. I took a picture of him first so it was only fair. He was so sweet and gave me a restaurant recommendation that we totally ignored.

After this we all were famished so we found a very interesting mexican place to eat at. We went home and played Betrayal at House on the Hill. It was my first time playing and it went very well because I was on the winning side.

I completed this day feeling happy and a little bit sunburned.

Day 3 in CO: "It's an epidemic around here."

Thursday, 4/30/2015

As I'm typing this, my body thinks it's fending off some sort of debilitating virus, but probably my body just does not understand how to react to the thin air in Colorado. Nose running/stopped. Throat dry and scratchy. I'm going to be really whiny if this keeps up.

Today, we prepared for Age of Ultron by watching Thor 2 and Winter Soldier. I am super glad we watched Winter Soldier because I hadn't gotten around to watching that one yet. A+.

We met up with an old friend at the theater and I talked to her only the smallest amount. I really wish all theaters had that pick your seats feature because then we wouldn't have had to sit on the third row. It was okay though. I had decided within the first 10 minutes that I was definitely going to have to watch it again and I feel like I would've come to that conclusion anywhere we sat. J and C so graciously brought KG and I Panda Express that we then snuck into the theater to eat. I forgot to take a picture of it. Go to PE and get and orange chicken and noodle bowl. That's what it looked like.
The screen at the theater was curved, which was different. It was cool.

This looked like a cool graffiti to me, but I really don't think that's what it is.

So excite.

Age of Ultron was great and I can't wait to watch it again.


Oh my god I almost forgot! When KG came to wake me up this morning she hopped onto the very end of the air mattress and accidentally flipped off into the floor. Hilarity is the absolute best way to wake up.

Day 1 in CO: "How, in the name of Zeus's butthole, did you get out of your cell?"

Tuesday, 4/28/2015

I did it! I went through ATL airport by myself. If you remember from a previous post, Rosh was supposed to accompany me, but she bailed. Because med students are just the worst. Anyway, to begin the day, I woke up to Smells smacking me because my alarm was going off. 1am. I took a shower and then we began our trek to ATL. The drive to Atlanta is almost familiar to me now because we had just gone there on Saturday to see Walk the Moon. Its familiarity does not remove its suckyness. The traffic was minimal. The only frustration was finding the frontier departures sign. Thank baby jesus that I met up with KG's mom the day before and she told me about that. It's funny what people remember about the experience they have at the airport. I had asked most people I came in contact with about airport tips and there were a lot of overlap, but each person had at least one unique thing to say. It's very interesting what people find worth mentioning. So back to the frontier departures sign, Smells stopped by person that was in uniform and I hopped out and asked the grumpy airport worker where the illusive sign was. I made it to the frontier desk and talked to this nice, but uncompromising lady with glitter green eye shadow. She asked me if I was checking a bag and I said yes and placed it on the metal thing. She put a sticker on my luggage and then whisked it away. Then I went through security. I didn't have to take my shoes off and I didn't have to take my laptop out, but I did accidentally leave my cell phone in my pocket and held up the line. Despite my blunder, people were super nice. At this point I'm confused about my liquids. I didn't even have to do anything with my liquids... Later, KG tells me that they care significantly less about checked luggage than they do about carry-ons. I could've packed so much more liquid. I went to my gate and I was there crazy early. I watched the sunrise. I bought and ate a delicious bagel. I'll be posting about my food from this trip in one big post at the end so you'll hear about the bagel again. 

OOTD: Airport Bathroom Edition

I wore this outfit to the airport because there's no belt involved and there's slip on shoes. I also didn't want to look like a slob. I was told that airplanes would be chilly so I wore a jacket. That was not the case with the airplane I was on. I was too warm the whole time. 

Stereotypical window of airplane shot. I loved take off. It was absolutely the best part. The actual flying part was boring. I was also extremely sleepy, having woken up at 1am so I drifted in and out of sleep most of the flight. I remember waking up when the food cart came by and a stewardess asked if I wanted to purchase a beverage or food. (I didn't.) Then I woke up to the fasten seat belt ding because there was a teensy bit of turbulence. I fastened my seat belt back up (I had it unbuckled because it was way more comfortable to sleep.) and I resumed my nap. Next thing I remember is one of the flight attendant saying that we would land soon, but they were very preemptive because it was like 30 minutes later before we landed. One thing I wish people told me was where the seat numbers were located on the plane because I looked like a right idiot when I couldn't figure out where my seat was. I should've just stopped and asked the flight attendant from the beginning, but nobody else was so I thought it would be obvious. I walked way too far into the plane and I had to turn around and ask the lady behind me. She was a little judgy of my ignorance. I then had to hold up the line so that I could get to my seat at the front of the plane. The people I sat next to were Hispanic and we interacted only twice. Once when they had to get up and let me into my seat and again when I was sitting on the lady's seat belt. The seats were more than I expected. I was uncomfortable, sure. It just wasn't as bad as everybody made them seem.

This is the picture I posted on facebook to tell our family that I found KG. Aren't we just sooo cute?

One of my friends from college messaged me right before we were about to eat and asked me what my grade for GD history was. I didn't even know grades were out yet, but I checked anyway. I keep waiting for the grades to change or I'll get an email saying "JK, we pressed the wrong key. you actually got all B's!" Which would be fine. But I could hardly believe my eyes when I saw all those A's. I really did not deserve 3/4 of them. But hey, that's the beauty of JSU. I need to call my grandmother and tell her.

We didn't go to this museum, but I really like the boldness of this billboard. "THE ART WORLD WAS HIS ENEMY"

I have discovered very quickly that Colorado sucks all the moisture from your body. A stop at target for chapstick and water was necessary. The targets in Colorado look just like targets in Alabama. 

We also played trivia & it was super fun. We had a great lead for a while except the sports round totally obliterated us. Every good trivia team needs a sports guy. Now I must watch all the Nick Cage movies. I didn't take any pictures because my phone was very dead and I had forgotten the magical charger that Keith let me borrow. Now that I'm thinking about it though, I should've asked KG to let me use her phone to take some... I'll keep that in mind for future reference.