Delicious Denver

After a few hours wandering aimlessly in the Denver Art Museum on the MLK holiday, our daughter took us to a nearby bakery, Leven, where I had one of the best sandwiches of my life. Fresh mozzarella, roasted tomato pesto, arugula, on sea salt and rosemary focaccia. The mozzarella was melt-in-your-mouth soft and tasted simply of fresh milk with a light tang. The tomato pesto was bright and acidic with a touch of heat and the bread was voluminous, yeasty with a bit of crunchy salt on top.

My choice of side was spicy, marinated green olives that were picante and delicious, while my daughter had the bread and butter cauliflower pickles and Barbara chose the marinated artichokes. The sandwiches were huge and we all took half home for another meal. My son-in-law purchased a huge loaf of sourdough (1 kg?) to bring home.

I was motivated to try to make my own mozzarella when I get home. There are lots of videos on YouTube on how to do it. Alex is my go to.  I’ll report on the results.

Denver is a culinary powerhouse and especially welcome after you have spent three days driving through southern Indiana, Missouri, and Kansas. In spite of booking a hotel with a kitchenette, we have succumbed to the temptation to dine out multiple times. We had an incredible vegetarian Nepalese meal at Sherpa House in Golden, Colo. and a decent wood-fired pizza in the Belmar town center in Lakewood though not worth the $62 price tag for lunch for four.

Tuesday morning was spent transferring ownership my mom’s low-mileage Honda Civic to my son (Thanks, Mom!). This required an emissions inspection (recent Maryland inspection not accepted) and a VIN verification (30 min./$50), then a trip to the County Courthouse (known locally, I learned, as the Taj Mahal thanks to its central dome) for a Colorado title and plates (30 min/$68). As we were leaving the courthouse, plates in hand, my son wryly noted that if our goal that morning had been to purchase a hand gun, we would have completed our task much quicker, probably cheaper as well.

With little time left before my son needed to be at his graduate school class, we sped off to Carmax to unload his old Mazda 3. Just 20 min later, we walked out with cash.

After our deep engagement with American bureau-crazy, we stopped for a well-deserved classic burrito from Bonfire Burritos. It was chilly sitting at the tables in the plastic wrapped deck area but the cheesy beans, roasted peppers and hot sauce warmed things up nicely.

Is there anyone on this planet who doesn’t love a burrito?

A lighter dinner was appropriate so Barbara and I prepared a meal of salad, roasted brussels sprouts, and potato latkes for the family at my daughter’s pad. Yes, latkes in Tevet! We had no applesauce or sour cream but there was plenty of ketchup so….

We were going to begin the journey home today but with up to a foot of snow expected, we decided to delay our departure for a day or two. Damn!

Oh well, where are we going for lunch?

Winter Visitors

As we approached home last September after nearly three months on the road, we stopped on at Barkcamp State Park in Ohio for our final night of camping. The weather was mild and with the weekend approaching, the park was packed with RVs, tents, and vans ready for a weekend in the great outdoors.

Fortunately, we had a reservation and squeezed into a spot next to a large party which was rocking to some raucous beats. We had just made our peace with the loud music when the same group fired up the most massive generator I have ever seen (or heard). The ground shook.

The camp officer kindly allowed us to move to the last remaining space in the campground, the “Emergency Space” that was around the corner. The generator could still be heard but it was more subdued. You might pretend it was large truck passing on a nearby road.

All of which to say, that when we returned to Barkcamp earlier this second week of January, it was a very different place. It is now winter, of course, and the trees are bare. It was also 4 degrees Celsius and snowing lightly when we arrived, though the sky soon cleared. There was no attendant was at the open gate to collect our fee. We found an empty site (they were all empty) and set up camp.

We prepared a quick meal of hot soup and pasta at our picnic table and dined – alone. There was not a soul to be seen and the only sounds were the hooting owls which very grammatically called, “whom! whom!” We had the whole dang park to ourselves. Amazingly the water and lights were still turned on in the shower rooms, not always the case in the winter. The water was hot.

The temperature dropped further overnight and by morning there was a thin layer of ice on the inside of the van’s windshield. I had awoken several times during the night to find a luminous full moon directly overhead and the soft sounds of night critters. It was chilly during the few moments, I needed to spend outside but the van holds warmth nicely and the down comforter was nice to get back under. We retired at around 8:30 p.m. and slept more than 10 hours.

In the morning we skipped breakfast and just made coffee enjoying our freshly ground and brewed joe while packing up.

Heading back toward highway, we slowed at the park gate once more to try and pay for our night’s accommodations. The booth was still deserted. “Catch you on the way back,” I thought as we picked up speed.

More likely, it will be Spring before the fee collectors are back. In addition to the other benefits, winter camping is also often a bargain.

The nocturnal creatures figured it out long ago. Time your movements to when the rest of the word is hunkered down or asleep and you’ll have the world mostly to yourself. You don’t have to stray outside your comfort zone, only outside the comfort zone of 95% of humanity to find yourself enjoying the rarified air of solitude.

Make sure to bring plenty of warm clothing.

Knowing When to Quit

“The time to quit is before you wish you had.”
― Kimberly K. Jones, Sand Dollar Summer

Annie Duke, the world renown poker player has a new book, Quit: The Power of Knowing When to Walk Away. She was interviewed recently by Steven Levitt on his podcast, People I Mostly Admire.

Many of us find quitting is one of the hardest things to do, particularly in our culture which says “Winners never quit and quitters never win.”

As I am writing, Kevin McCarthy is taking his 11th shot in three days to become Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives in spite of having been 20 votes short of success on each of the 10 previous votes. McCarthy was asked by a reporter last night, “Are there any circumstances under which you would consider pulling out of the race?”

“No,” he replied.

“Not one?”

“Not one.”

Now that may simply be necessary political posturing but it certainly does beg the question.

What would it take for Kevin McCarthy to abandon his ambition to be speaker. What would it take for him to quit and what would it cost him?

One of the things I have heard said about McCarthy is that he has dreamed of being speaker for all of his political career. For him to give up, to quit this dream, is to walk away from his very identity, the story he tells himself about who he is. It may be among very hardest things to do even when the cost of not doing so is complete and utter humiliation.

And it begs a question for us as well.

How do you know when it’s time to quit?

As I think back, many of the times I have called it quits have been pivot points in my life. The ones that were most difficult were the ones where I had to reassess who I was. The moment of quitting was scary but was followed almost immediately with a sense of relief, freedom, and even wonder. Invariably, quitting was the beginning of a new and better chapter.

Most of my ‘quits’ have been jobs. I have quit solid secure jobs, jobs I enjoyed, six times in order to change direction or seek new opportunities to learn. The last time (2020) was to leave the workforce entirely and face the final frontier, retirement (the scariest of all.)

I don’t regret any of these quits.

Often there are real barriers to quitting chief among them are fears such as:

• Will I be able provide for myself and my family?

• How will I use my time?

• What will happen next?

• Won’t I be throwing away all I have invested?

• And (perhaps most often) who would I be if I didn’t do X?

The new year is a time traditionally associated with fresh starts, beginnings, and resolutions to change. Often these resolutions take the form of attempting to quit something. Quit smoking, quit alcohol, quit overeating, quit a toxic job, a destructive relationship, or other habits that we know do not move us toward our best selves.

Why is it so hard to make these changes?

One reason is that these habits, jobs, relationships serve our sense of self. After all aren’t we for the most part, the sum of the things we do more than the sum of the things we believe?

Perhaps the hardest component of change is figuring out what you are willing to say no to – what you will quit. Because as Duke, who herself quit a highly successful poker career, says, “the hardest thing to walk away from is who you are.”

What would you like to quit, to say no to, to walk away from in 2023?

How would you have to redefine yourself in order to succeed?

What would you need to become to walk away from who you are?