Denver Colorado: Day 1
Hello, and welcome to the next installment of my travel entry series: I’m currently living in Denver, Colorado for one month for a Publishing Institute at the University of Denver.
My first day was a bit rocky (pun intended). I mean, it was more like the most stressful day of my entire life, but it ended just fine. And now I’m here on my second day, recovering heavily from the first day, and writing this for safe keeping.
So without further ado, let’s just get into it, shall we?
Saying goodbye to work was the easiest part, but saying goodbye to this guy was the worst part. I’ve never been away from my ESA for a month before, and I’ve had him for 3 and a half years now, so I knew this was going to be hard.
However, my two roommates have already started sending me videos of him chasing bugs and flashes of light from a phone, so Sootie OBVIOUSLY doesn’t have the same issue of missing me. I’m just thankful that he’s being treated well while I’m gone.
My day started at around 8:00am yesterday, trying to savor my last few hours of calm before my stressful day ensued. This was my first time flying alone (and getting a rental car), so I’d spent the past week trying to prepare.
I was watching “New Girls” on Netflix (my new comfort show), and reading before one of my friends (who spent the night on our couch just to drive me to the airport the next morning, whom I’m also grateful for!) drove me to the airport at 10.
We arrived at 10:30, and he walked me to the check-in line before heading home. And trust me, this was only the beginning of a whole day that was spent waiting, and waiting, and waiting, and waiting in lines, on planes, in shuttles, and in cars.
The BWI airport was pretty easy to navigate, and what I thought was going to be the most difficult areas (check-in, security, boarding, etc.) were actually the easiest parts of my day. All of that went quickly and efficiently. The next thing to tackle was the 3.5-hour plane ride itself.
It’s been a LONG time since I’d flown anywhere. I can’t even remember the last time I flew. And it definitely wasn’t by myself. So the take-off and the landing were rough, since I wasn’t used to how it felt anymore, and I had no idea if the shaking, twists, turns, and the feeling of my stomach falling out of my butt were all normal (they are, by the way.)
I was grateful once we landed, and it was very strange to take off at 12:30pm, then have almost four hours go by, only to land at 2:30pm all the way on the other side of the country.
However, the plane ride itself went well. I finally finished a book that I’ve been halfway through for about 2 years now. It’s called “The Darkest Corners” by Kara Thomas.
I recommend this book to ANYONE interested in mystery novels. I wish I had finished this book when I first started it, but life gets in the way and I forget about books that I start sometimes. And I’ll probably end up re-reading it again, honestly, because I probably missed things that I forgot about in the first half.
However, it’s an easy book to pick back up on if you get halfway through it, then forget about it. The main character is a girl named Tessa Lowell, who lives in Florida with her grandmother and is about to head off to college, but gets a call about her father dying in prison from cancer back in her childhood town.
Once she heads back to Fayette, PA, she ends up staying with her border-line alcoholic, estranged, childhood best friend, Callie, and her parents Maggie and Rick, while she visits the prison to retrieve the last of her father’s things. She had originally left PA because of an incident where a serial killer murdered Callie’s older cousin, Lori, during a sleepover. The police investigated, and manipulated Callie and Tessa, only mere children at the time, into putting an innocent man in prison for the crimes.
During Tessa’s present time in Fayette, they eventually discover that they put the wrong man in prison. The two girls re-open the investigation themselves when one of Callie’s friends, Ariel, gets murdered by someone in the same manner as Lori’s murder.
However, Tessa also opens up a secret side-investigation about her own family during the novel – her mother, Annette, and older sister, Joslin, disappeared after Lori’s murder, which led Tessa to live with her grandmother, Annette’s mother. Joslin had been best friends with Lori at the time of the murder, and abandoned Tessa to deal with the aftermath. Tessa never got to find out why her mother and sister left, until now.
It’s a real page-turner, and the language is extremely realistic, relatable to young adult women (and men, but it’s told from a woman’s perspective), and down-to-earth. The main reason I got into mystery is because of plot twists (Gillian Flynn’s my favorite author, but Kara Thomas is now a close second), and this book has a LOT of them, and they’re very well written.
The plot itself can be a little difficult to follow at times (it’s very complex) and I had to re-read a few pages here and there to make sure I was making the same connections Tessa seemed to be making, but overall, it was extremely well-written and edgy.
All in all, I loved it. A lot. You should read it!!
Anyways, here comes the most stressful and idiotic part of my day: the rental car situation.
After the plane landed, I entered the DI airport, and holy crap if it wasn’t the biggest airport I’ve ever seen.
I had a hard time finding the baggage claim area, and THEN I had a hard time finding the area in which the luggage from MY plane was being dropped off. The dry heat was hitting me pretty hard at that point and I was sweating pretty bad, trying to make sure I didn’t lose everything that I had brought with me.
Once I found it, I only had to wait a couple of minutes before my bag popped out. Once I had everything, I followed the signs that said “Car rental shuttles and ground transportation,” and it led me outside. There were five “islands,” (or lanes) where taxis, Ubers, cars, and shuttles were picking people up, and I had absolutely NO idea where to go.
Now, for some reason, my brain thought that the car rental place was going to be AT the airport, which, WHY would I think that? Of course it has to be more complicated than that! There were shuttles there with different car company names on them to take people to their specific car rental place. And OF COURSE, I didn’t remember the name of the car company that I paid to rent a car.
I tried to find my confirmation page on my email, but I couldn’t find it. I had been so fixated on making sure that I had my plane ticket, that I was on the right flight, that I had my boarding pass printed out, that my carry-on, personal item, and checked-in luggage were within the size and weight limits and were already paid for ahead of time, etc. that I completely forgot about what I was going to actually DO once I landed in Denver.
So, without the name of the company, all I could do was hop on a shuttle and drive to a rental place to see if they could help me.
Once I arrived at the first (yes, the first. OF COURSE it was the wrong one) car rental place, I waited in line for about 20 minutes before I was helped. They couldn’t find my reservation, but they eventually found an address and typed it into google for me. They told me the car company name and that I had to shuttle BACK to the airport and get on the right shuttle.
At this point, my bags were getting heavier and heavier, it was raining and storming outside, I was tired, my head was POUNDING, and my stomach was empty and upset. All I wanted was to go to bed.
Altitude sickness is real, people. And it SUCKS. You feel like you have the worst hangover on planet earth if you don’t drink lots of water beforehand, and if you’re stressed out to the point of constantly being on the verge of throwing up and crying, like I was, then that certainly doesn’t help the situation.
Once I arrived back at the airport, I had to wait for the shuttle that I needed to be on. It eventually arrived, and I hopped on with two other people. We drove to the RIGHT car rental place this time, and I had to wait in line for another 20 minutes.
Now I was starting to get hungry AND nauseous at the same time and I didn’t know how much longer I could wait for something without losing my mind.
Once I finally got to see someone, it was an older man who asked me: “How far do you plan on traveling within the state of Colorado?” and I’m like “Uh… to the University of Denver?”
I still don’t know why he needed to know that, or if that was just an icebreaker, or small talk. Anyway, he tried to look up the reservation and couldn’t find it under my name. I was trying to hold back tears again as I started searching my email, AGAIN, and eventually found the confirmation page.
I showed that to the guy, and he was like “OH, it’s Thrifty, not Dollar. But don’t worry, you’re still in the right place.”
And I’m literally swiping sweat off of my forehead, like: “Oh my God, thank you. Thank you so much.”
And THAT’S when this guy realized that I was 100% someone who was renting a car for the very first time.
He started up-selling me.
“How about I give you a Jeep Rangler for an extra $30 per day?” Like, no dude. I’m here for a MONTH. I just want the Chevrolet Impala I paid for.
“Are you sure you couldn’t do an extra $20 per day? How about an extra $10?” No, and no. I don’t have the money to pay extra. I’m 24. I don’t even have a 401K to invest in yet.
“How about car insurance, you know it’s extremely important to have car insurance. You can pay an extra $31 per day to have your car completely insured.”
At this point, I take out my phone and I call someone so that this guy knows I’m not f***ing around anymore. So, I call my mother and I’m like “We don’t need extra car insurance, right? My insurance covers it?” She told me yes, not to purchase more (like I already don’t know not to pay for more). So I hang up and tell this guy that I don’t need to pay for anything extra, and he FINALLY stops trying to up-sale.
For those of you who’ve never rented a car before and don’t already know, beware of this. Car places and people can smell fear and newbies – don’t let them bully you into buying what you don’t want or need. They want to ring as much money from you as possible.
(And I know, I’m not 25. They apparently allow you to rent a car if you’re the age of 21 or over, but there’s an underage fee of $29 per day if you’re under the age of 25. And OF COURSE, I didn’t find that out until I was actually handed the keys to my rental car.)
Yet, I was STILL charged extra for the car once I was there in person to pick it up, which is still confusing to me. I was charged for being underage (why I wasn’t already charged for that when I rented it online, I don’t know), and I was charged a concession fee and tax. I already paid $1,400 for this car online – why couldn’t I have paid for the whole thing online? I wouldn’t have chosen this car (or even rented a car at all) if I’d known it’d be an extra $1,000 once I went to pick it up, but either way, it left me confused and upset.
You don’t know how many times in my life I truly feel like a stereotypical dumb blonde. And its people like this who take advantage of young, anxious people who don’t fully know what they’re doing.
At the end of the day, I wanted to punch this guy in the throat. But in that moment, I didn’t care to argue. I told myself I’d do it later. I just needed the car now so that I could drive to the university, check-in to my apartment, and go to sleep.
So I took the receipt and the keys, then left the guy who was clearly still trying to butter me up by telling me that the gas was already paid for and that I didn’t need to fill up the tank when I dropped it off after the month was over.
I told him “okay” and “thanks,” then got in my new car and drove off. The lady who needed to check out the car as I was leaving the lot took one look at me and said:
“Is this your first time renting a car?” It took almost every muscle in my body to NOT roll my eyes.
“Yes, yes it is.”
“Oh, honey, you look it! You can’t look it, you’ve gotta be fierce, these guys take advantage of people like you.”
Oh, honey, I know.
She asked me to step out of the car and make sure there are no damages that I can get screwed-over with when I turn it back in. I do so, even though it’s still f***ing raining. And she gives me the low-down on not buying things for the car that I don’t need.
“Don’t let these people take advantage of you, honey.”
“I’m trying not to.”
Once I was FINALLY done with that situation, I had a 45-minute drive to the university, because it was 5:00pm now – rush hour.
I was able to connect the Bluetooth to my phone and blast music on the highway, but my head was still spinning and my stomach still hated me, so I couldn’t enjoy it very much.
I parked by a meter once I finally arrived at the building, then had to call someone down to let me in. I FINALLY was able to check-in and find the parking garage. Then I unloaded my stuff and unlocked the door to my room, where all three of my suitemates had already moved in.
I met a girl named Caroline, from Florida, as soon as I walked in, and she was headed out to meet with some friends. She was wearing a nice, long yellow dress and seemed very friendly. So I introduced myself (quite the opposite, looking like a troll that just crawled out from under a bridge), and I started unpacking my things in my new room as she headed out.
I wasn’t able to bring much on the plane with me, so I still need to head back to Target later today to grab some more stuff.
And, as it turns out, Caroline, Alexa, and Kelsey weren’t able to bring much either, since we all flew here. So, the apartment’s pretty empty. And it probably will be for the whole month. (I plan on sending whatever I buy here back home in a box since I probably can’t bring it on the plane).
After I settled in, I grabbed a quick shower, then ran into another roommate, Alexa. We bonded over Qdoba (which happens to be right across the street from where I now live).
She’s from Arizona and she worked at an animal shelter before coming here. She’s a cat-person, like me (obvs.), and as it turns out, there’s not a lot of publishing opportunities in Arizona. Just like there aren’t a lot of publishing opportunities where I live either. (New York and California are the biggest states for publishers.)
Therefore, here we are, at this program, trying to jump-start our careers. So, we’ll see how all of that goes.
However, I haven’t met Kelsey yet (from Kansas, I believe), since she’s spending some time with her family.
This is the view outside of my apartment, and I had sent these to my mother, who spent her undergraduate years in Colorado. She replied:
“I see Denver still has that brown cloud.” Meaning, smog.
And I replied:
“Well, this air is a lot drier and cleaner than Baltimore, so I’m fine with it.”
I can handle dry heat. It’s the humidity that’s attacking the east coast right now that’s been slowing eating me alive me all summer.
However, Alexa had stated that Arizona was 104 degrees when she had left to come here, so I’d gladly take Baltimore weather over that.
Either way, I’m happy to be here where there’s Insomnia Cookies, Qdobas, nail places, hair places, Jersey Mike Subs, Safeways, and Targets all within walking distance.
I can’t say that I’ll be able to talk about the program very much, since it’s pretty private, but I will keep this blog updated on what happens during my stay here!
Hope you enjoyed and found some of this information useful!
-Rissy ❤
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