A buddy of mine and I had a conversation today. He was a couple beers in and asked me in all seriousness if I had ever been to Idaho Springs. I told him that I had. I told him about the time about five years ago when I got sick of sitting around by myself waiting for a woman I was seeing to commit to any plans for the weekend (spoiler alert, she didn’t). So, I called up Nicole, a new friend of mine at the time. It was a Friday and we were both at home doing nothing. I asked her if she liked barbecue. Of course she did, she told me. So I asked her if she wanted to try a place out I had read about online.
I picked Nicole up at her house and we drove an hour and a half to Idaho Springs. We ate so much barbecue at a place called Smokin’ Yards. On a charisma scale, she is much higher than me. She’s the kind of person who walks into a place and immediately makes friends with the bartender, the bouncers, half the people in the place, and then the server at the dinner on the way home after shutting down the bar. Nicole is one hell of a wingman if you need one. These kinds of people are good to have around, especially if you need a little push out of your comfort zones.
So, we ate barbecue, drove back through Denver, stopped off in Loveland at her favorite dive bar, sang Karaoke, met a bunch of people, and shut down an IHOP. So yes, I have been to Idaho Springs. You won’t find better BBQ this side of Kansas City. Plus there is a BeauJo’s pizza (the original one, in a big labyrinth of a building) and all sorts of things to see, just half an hour outside of Denver up I-70.
Pro tip: You aren’t going to get to Nicole’s level overnight. You have to either be born with it, or work towards it.
He told me that he was thinking of going. Now, here’s the dilemna. I made this website and I record so many of my adventures here because after my divorce I realized I was 39 years old and had been almost nowhere in my entire adult life. I was struggling with being broke, starting a new life, having almost no friends, and building up my confidence to do things out on my own. If I went to a restaurant, chances are it was going to be by myself. If I wanted to see something new, well good luck coordinating that with any friends, so it was going to be alone. Idaho Springs had been one of the first times I had a friend come with me.
I had a lot of ground to cover, and so I just thought I would share my adventures.
So, my buddy basically said that he supposed he would rather just stay home. That was even with the hard sell. He’s a single man, part of the same layoffs I went through with the university where we both worked for nearly twenty years, and he has no kids. He won’t admit it, but he is depressed. Many nights he sits at home, killing a case of beer. He’s a good guy, but that has become his routine. He told me something about home being the place you are when you’d rather not be someplace else. In my opinion, a house isn’t the same as a home. A home is the people you love and care about. It can be anyplace. A home can just be yourself if you get to know yourself and love them too.
A house can become a rut. This is why I believe emphatically on challenging your comfort zones. That’s the entire point of this blog! Otherwise, you’ll be sitting alone on a Friday night wondering what it might be like to drive up to a mountain town and whether or not your horn will echo when you drive through the tunnel. You already know how going through a case of beer is going to turn out. But what if you leave your comfort zone?
What if you meet new people? Have new experiences? Start a new life? Get over this self-imposed isolation funk driven by nearly two years of lockdowns and being afraid to shake hands with people much less hug them.
Just a few years later, after Nicole and I shut down the IHOP and sang badly to whatever they were playing at the bar, I found myself on my first international trip. Alone. The same man who wondered if he shouldn’t spend a dangerously large amount of money which would have left him with very little to get through the rest of the month just to get the hell out of the house for an evening would be giving directions to Austrian tourists in Hyde Park like he lived there. It all started with just one moment to push myself out of my comfort zone.
I knew that I could sit at home and watch Netflix alone and eat whatever I had going bad in the fridge, or I could go on an adventure. Last weekend, I drove 1000 miles just to visit a place I picked off a map. I saw petroglyphs, I ate new food, met interesting people, and anytime I felt like there was something to fear, I knew that was the direction I needed to walk towards. So far, going towards what scares me has paid off somehow. Either in making the next try easier, or being such a payoff that I would have never imagined life without it.
We only get this life once. Some opportuntities only present themselves one time. Every time we fall in love it is different. Every time we stumble and fall flat on our faces gives us a new reason to get up again. The unexamined life is not worth living! I did that for so many years; in my marriage, in growing up, there were always preconcieved notions of how things were and “WHY would you ever want to go there? Why would you want to do that?” The real question is why wouldn’t you?
So whatever it is, no matter how small or big, push out of your comfort zone. It isn’t home. It’s probably just a rut. That’s the best advice I can give anyone. If not now, then when are you going to do it?
I don’t think he will take that drive. He thinks he’s just fine at home with his beer, and nothing else in his life changing, but still complaining about what isn’t happening.
Get out of your comfort zone. One of these days there’s a good chance, if you aren’t careful, your comfort zone is the place they are going to find your body.