nothing bad ever happens to feet!
January 8th, 2026
In my november blog, I incorrectly predicted that there would not be a blog post for December, as I had arrived at my winter gig in Estes Park, Colorado, and was settling down at my eventless winter job in the YMCA craft shop, and would be doing very little except catching up on my Goodreads wishlist.
boy was I wrong.
I started the month out strong, by driving my car off a fucking cliff and crashing into a tree. Whelp.
Rest in peace 2006 Toyota Highlander. You were a real one. I learned to drive in this car, and since then it's been the only vehicle I've had for almost a decade. I took this car across the country on so many fun adventures. I built out the back, creating a hammock using static rope that I would camp out of on my many outdoor adventures. I ran it into a telephone pole. I covered the butt in obnoxious stickers. Even in its final moments, engine fully bare to the piling snow, my car drove itself out of the ditch and into the road to be towed to the junkyard. What a trooper! Obviously, getting into a car crash made my life suck for awhile. The entire rest of the month was horrible, really. I got whiplash during the crash, which soon resulted in constant searing migranes, full body soreness, and loosing the ability to hold any urine in my bladder. I'm a twenty five year old in diapers, holy fucking roll of the dice. Everything I owned started to reek of piss, and I went crazy being unable to leave the suffocating YMCA campus. As the weather got worse so did everything else, the day after my car accident my manager tried to fire me for making a tiny mistake with the cash register. I hadn't even gotten properly trained on the cash register, and I had only worked there for a week! It's annoying, because otherwise the craft shop would be a fine job. I get to read, paint, and make tie dye shirts for babies all day. Luckily for me, some other workers were also being treated pretty poorly and two quit right before the busy holiday season, so I was kept around. I would spend my days bracing the violent winds, snowstorms, and icy sidewalks to walk to the craft shop every morning, and by the time my shift was over, it would be pitch black and I would once again lean against the wind, to my bed, which at the very least was warm and cozy, although reeking of pee. Yeah, I was pretty freakin depressed.
Although it's hard to find any bright side to this whole ordeal, one very good thing did come out of this month of despair. For years I've been imagining myself pursuing full time vanlife, a fancy rig of my own to drive across the country and live out of. I've been watching van tours on Youtube even before I started rock climbing, and I've been admiring vintage volkswagons since I was a kid, seeing their empty rusting shells proudly displayed in front of diners and antique shops along dirt roads. At the Creek, I was inspired by all the cool desert dirtbags, with their awesome Sprinter set-ups, kitchens, showers, and comfy beds. I knew that the moment my car died, my next vehicle would also be a house. I thought it would be a year or two before I would make that big step, but perhaps it's a good thing this accident pushed me straight off the diving board and into the deep end. All I needed was a little push, or a big crash, to have me fully committed to the dirtbag lifestyle. That's the point of all this, isn't it? With 20k in savings, I started desperately, seriously searching Facebook Marketplace for my new home. I was lucky to be living in Colorado, as it seems half the people in this state live in Sprinters. There were a lot of sick vintage rigs, with mountain decals and off-roading wheels, but I decided to prioritize fuctionality over visual appeal. After hours of searching, I finally found my dream van. A funky thing it was, a 2015 Nissan NV2500, with high ceelings, a partial build out, a big bed and a roof hatch, and only 79k miles on the dash. I negotiated it down to 16k, and with a 6k insurance pay out on my old car, I was able to pay for it in full, taking only 10k out of my savings. Nice! Me and Maddie drove the perilous Highway 287, with high winds infamous for sending semi-trucks flying, crossing the state border from Fort Collins to Laramie, Wyoming. And I got my van!!! Signing the title, paying the insurance, registering it in my name: I felt like a real adult for the first time in my life. Somehow, I'm a homeowner. Well, sort of. If I get a partner, a dog, and move to the west coast to climb full-time, I'll pretty much have my dream fantasy life. Yeah my van still needs A LOT of work, but it's perfect. And things will be great sometime.
In other news, I somehow, fully willingly, revived my toxic delusion-ship from my freshmen year of university. Bummer. Did the car crash give me amnesia, or severe brain damage? It is not entirely unlikely. This whole thing started when I was browsing Tinder in a hostel in Denver, when I ran into a profile that looked a little too familiar. Fucking Jared! Enigmatic, charismastic, kind of a cult leader and kind of an asshole. We were in the same living community freshmen year of university, and ended up making out a few times. At this time, I was so into his 'dirtbag-ness'. He was a whitewater rafter, walked around barefoot, and smelt like pine. (Ironically, now I'm the outdoor vanlife dirtbag, and he works a corporate job in Denver.) I was obsessed with him, which was not mutual as it turns out Jared was also making out with a few more people in our hall, all while having a girlfriend back in Florida. After I snitched on his hoe-ing ways to his gf, she moved to Michigan and made him compleately cut off all his friends. The last I heard of him, he had messaged me on Discord- please never contact me again - and blocked me on everything. It's been five years since then.
Now he's another profile on my Tinder feed. Against my instincts, I swiped right. I still wonder why I decided to start things up with Jared again. Boredom? Delusion? No, it's for the PLOT. Whether it's the healthier desicion or not, I've decided to make important life choices based on how much interest and chaos they'll bring upon me, for better or for worse. Anyways, he drove up to Estes Park to visit me, and we went on a winter hike of the Emerald Lake Trail in Rocky Mountain National Park, taking us up through three frozen alpine lakes. The strong winds blew us around, scratching our faces with tiny frozen shards. I knelt to look deep into the dark blue layers of ice and water, white air bubbles pocketing beneath the surface like bubble wrap. As a winter hater, I have to admit it was beautiful. I started to see the appeal in living in this cold mountain town. Years after he had dominated my mind, it was weird hanging out with Jared again. He is different, healthier. He ran away from his previous bad relationship, and has a non-monogamous thingy with his new girlfriend. New friends, new hobbies, new life in Denver. Way too into jiu-jitsu. I had a stranger walking behind me, lying down on the frozen lake and slipping downhill in his snowboots. After the hike we predictably hooked up, and with that I re-ignighted the worst relationship of my life. Aah! The rest of the month I spent driving two hours down the mountain to visit him, we would work on my van ceeling or just sit in silence, always ending the night with sex in the back of my van, street parked in downtown Denver. Soon it was my 25th birthday, and we drove to Hot Sulphur Springs for my first hot springs experience. Hot Sulphur Springs is labelled as a 'historical' resort, which just means they haven't made a single maintainance repair since the 80's. The first review on Google Maps was an old lady ranting about falling into a hole, so I knew I was in for a good time. The place was run-down and crowded despite the multitude of tiny hot-tubs, each differing in size and temperature, all smelling and tasting like eggs. We sat awkwardly close to all the splashing kids and horny couples dry humping each other. After we got back to my van we hooked up again, stinking of sulphur. I still haven't gotten the smell out of my fleece. As far as my birthday's have gone, this one was pretty great. I guess pretending to be loved is better than being alone, and honestly I'm at a time in my life where I need to just be fully delusional. It's a survival thing. You know, the good thing about this horror-ship is I know it will end when I leave Colorado in a few months, and I'll never have to see this man again. I can find someone else who climbs and actually kind of likes me, what a concept. And I do think this interesting experience is better than leaving things how they were in university, with a lot of questions, pain, and unresolved threads. Am I going to get hurt again, yeah, but at least I get to close the book. I'm doing it for the plot!
One of the saving graces of living in Estes is that Maddie lives here too. Without her driving me to get my van, taking me thrifting in Fort Collins, inviting me to parties and raves, I think I would go crazy and eat someone. Shout out Maddie. The YMCA Rockies campus is isolating, especially without a car to take you the fuck out. Aside from swimming and roller blading, there's no gym on campus, not even a treadmill, and it's too cold to hike or climb outside. The only climbing gym in town is a moonboard in the back of a gear shop. So I've been pretty bored, driving down to Denver to see Jared every free day I get. Although there is one thing to do in Estes when it's cold: drinking. On new years eve, I went out for a bar hop with Maddie and a few aquaintances. Finally, after the most stressful month of my life, I could just go to a bar, drink, and get plastered. Yell random things at strangers, sprint down the street, kick-ass at the pool table. I could buy a van and drive anywhere I want, I could sleep with Jared or I could ghost him right back. I could feel love from my friends, I could self destruct into a million pieces, I could dance. As the ball dropped in some random packed brewhouse in Estes Park, Colorado, I remembered that I can dance.