Diplomats, Gamblers, Businesspeople, Students, Siblings – Part II
2015 August 9
San Francisco – March 2015
Less than a month later, I was on a plane heading to San Francisco for my senior year spring break and a class for my university. The weekend before was spent with 3 other friends from Creighton, Elizabeth, John, and Vinny.
The pre-class weekend was spent doing many things. Even though these activities were typical tourist things, I still had a lot of fun. One was a boat cruise under the Golden Gate Bridge and around Alcatraz Island.
Another typical-yet-spontaneous tourist activity was a bus tour through downtown and Chinatown. It must have been a slow day because the bus driver drove up to us on the sidewalk and asked if we wanted a tour. We planned on walking somewhere else, but quickly changed our minds as a group.
The best part of the weekend was through the use of an app (so typical of the Bay Area). The app, “GetAround”, at the time was only available for use in San Francisco and Seattle (though I believe they have expanded since then). This app lets people who have cars but don’t use them much rent them out to strangers for a set $/hour amount. We were able to rent one of the nicest BMW convertibles I’ve ever seen for about $20/hour. With an $80 coupon thanks to John (who is big into cars and now works for Ford), we were able to use it for 6 hours and drive in downtown SF, across the Golden Gate Bridge, into the Muir Woods for a hike, to a nearby beach, back across the bridge, and to a lookout point for $40 as a group of 4.
The week only got better as the class started.
Birthday
Googz
Selfie stick @ Googz
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Don Waite. Le Mars, IA native, Creighton graduate, Seagate VP.
Stanford
Like Nebraska but not
Rich fraternity kegger party supply
Denver – June 2015
Upon finally receiving word as to when I could start my new job and be a real adult, I decided to shoehorn another trip into my schedule to possibly stave off adulthood for as long as possible. Quebec? Maybe. I tried that last year around this time and it didn’t work out due to time constraints and budgets. After seeing plane ticket prices for Omaha to Quebec a week out, I decided driving might be better. But after looking at a calendar, I would have to leave Monday night or Tuesday morning due to volunteering duties on Monday and move-in plans on Saturday. That wasn’t nearly enough time to make it worth the driving, so Quebec would have to wait.
Chicago? Maybe. It would be nice to go to Chicago without a set agenda for once. The reasons I have gone to Chicago have been show choir, Lollapalooza, AMUN, PBLI, AMUN again, and PBLI again. While every trip had been great, I do eventually want to go just to visit and explore the city, maybe go to a jazz bar or whatever. But it didn’t feel like the right time to go to Chicago, since I had a better place to go.
Denver became the obvious choice. I hadn’t been there since high school, and that was for a concert band trip and I wanted to visit my sister. Plane tickets, like Quebec, were relatively expensive being less than a week away and prices were only going to climb. I have always wanted to see what train travel was like in the US, so I bought a two-way ticket from Omaha to Denver, Monday/Tuesday to Friday/Saturday. I give train travel 2 thumbs up. While it’s not as fast as plane travel, it is so much less expensive that I’m surprised people don’t do it more. While some time is lost to travel, if you are able to schedule a night trip like I did, not all that much time is actually lost since sleep would be happening anyway. Plus, if you’re not sleeping, you can get work or reading done if you bring a laptop or reading device (or book, if you’re some sort of savage). And it is safer than car travel. While the news distorts this view of reality somewhat with its excessive reporting of every train derailment that happens, I take it as a signal that it is safer. Car accidents happen thousands of times per day and car travel is one of the most dangerous forms of travel. Since this is so commonplace, it’s not new to anyone and therefore not news to anyone. If one train accident happens a year, it gets covered for a week straight by every news outlet since it’s so rare.
When I woke up, I was in Colorado and close to Denver. Beverly picked my up downtown and we drove through some heavy morning rush-hour traffic to arrive at her apartment. Shortly thereafter, we went on a hike at Devil’s Head trail. I’ll let these pictures do most of the storytelling. Also I’m getting writer’s fatigue. Is that a thing?
That night I met up with my old roommate, Michael Lazzeri, and met some of his friends from high school. Everyone seemed to be about as nerdy as me, which was the sign of a good night. We spent a lot of time at a bar called 1-Up, an arcade bar a lot like Beercade in Omaha.
The next day, Beverly and I went to a Rocky’s game.
Baseball things happened.
Then we went to Red Rocks to see a concert of Colin Fay, the Violent Femmes, and the Barenaked Ladies.
On day 3, we drove to Golden to do the tour of the world-famous Coors brewing company.
The scenery and architecture of Golden reminded me a lot of Berkeley, CA. Both are smaller towns near a much bigger one, located near some mountains, and closely integrated with a college (UC Berkeley in Berkeley and the Colorado School of Mines in Golden).
The night ended with Mike’s gang again, this time going to a restaurant, then ending the night at Mike’s house for some drinks, ping-pong, pool, and Netflix.
Friday was my last day in Denver. Due to a schedule change, Beverly got her shift covered at the bar where she works and we were able to see a movie. The movie was Jurassic World, which was not only good, but actually exceeded my expectations, especially for a reboot/sequel. The first time I saw the first Jurassic Park all the way through was this January to be honest, so I haven’t even been a fan for that long.
After, Beverly and I returned to her apartment complex to relax by the pool since the sun had finally shone for once in the last couple days. We read for a couple hours, then prepared to take me back to Denver Union Station to head back to Omaha.
After a quick and easy boarding (another advantage over air travel), I got to my seat and decided it might be a good time to update my travel blog since I hadn’t done so in a long time. As I type this, it is now 12:35 AM and I am heading to Omaha to move into a startup incubator called Year of the Startup (yearofthestartup.com) and try to start a business while starting a new job at Yahoo! Time will tell how everything works out, but I will almost certainly not stop traveling no matter how things turn out in these upcoming years.