Breakfast with Amber

October 2020: REALLY Remote Learning

Just like I mentioned in the last chapter, we were going on a second trip to the cabin, this one two weeks long, something I didn't know until it was too late to record enough videos for that whole time. This isn't about my YouTube career, though. The cabin's wi-fi doesn't have that kind of bandwidth. We're here for vacation. Sort of.

We left on October 2 for Colorado. With the pandemic going on, there was no way we were going to take a plane, so we decided to pack all our stuff into our van and take the 2-day drive. This 2-day drive was no joke, either. On the first day, we drove 13 hours, and who knew just sitting in a car would take so much energy out of you? When we stopped for dinner (takeout from 287 Roadhouse in Dumas, TX), we got our picnic tarp out, ate our dinner, and then just spent a few minutes lying there taking a little rest. Actually, this wasn't uncommon for our road trip meals. After lunch, we'd lie down. Then after dinner, we'd lie down. We wouldn't lie down if we were eating in the car, though. Anyway, driving across Texas is tiring business. After dinner, we hit the road again, driving what must have been another two or three hours to the Best Western Plus in Raton, New Mexico. It must have been at least our third time listening to the Top 40 Countdown on SiriusXM 80s on 8, and I was zoning right out. A week later, I wrote a post on my Tumblr account describing what I was feeling at the time:

"There's no feeling quite like listening to "The Captain of Her Heart" by Double on the radio while arriving at a Best Western at 9 pm after 13 hours of driving. You're tired. You're delirious. The beat is chill. The guitar is vibin'. Circling around the hotel looking for a parking space. Mom is checking in. The portico ceiling reminds you of that time when you went to the Atlantis resort in the Bahamas with your grandparents in middle school. The Commander of Her Lungs. The Lieutenant of Her Spleen. You can fall asleep at any moment. Truly an amazing feeling."

That post got 0 notes. Shame.

We did eventually find a parking spot, and we did check into the hotel, but I don't remember what happened after that. I could have just passed out on the bed for all I know.

The next morning, we ate breakfast, Dad took a picture of some deer grazing in the...gravel? And then we were on our way. There were wildfires happening on the route we usually take to the cabin, so we had to take a different one. I remember this because I had decided to use my ample car time to start on a side project called Glover: Gotta Love the Glove! This series had a rocky production history, not because I lost the motivation to write it two-thirds of the way through, took a break, got back to it, rage-quit again because the G and H keys on my keyboard stopped working, and have since deleted it from my Wattpad page. Okay, all those things did happen, but that's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about writing episode 1 while you're driving down a winding road you don't recognize, and believe me when I say it was winding. How could I possibly focus on writing about Dexy confronting Cross-Stitch at the top of the wizard's tower when we were serpentining through the Rocky Mountains? I did also look up just to take in the scenery just outside our window.

(For the six people who care about Glover: Gotta Love the Glove, I still have it saved on my computer just in case I want to get back to it again.)

We arrived at the cabin late in the afternoon and hauled the groceries we had picked up from the last Wal-Mart before the end of civilization. Now it was time for our vacation to begin.

My favorite part of visiting the cabin was waking up, going downstairs (unless I was already downstairs–I don't remember if I was sleeping in the loft or in one of the downstairs bedrooms for this trip), and looking at the sunlight shining through the windows by the dining room. Then we'd all sit together for breakfast. Usually on trips to the cabin, we stop at a store right on the edge of the mountains called Vern's and buy a couple of these gigantic cinnamon rolls they make that we call Vern rolls. It usually takes us a week to eat them, but we probably skipped Vern's this year considering it was on the road that was blocked off due to wildfires. The cabin does have a heating system, but you can still feel the cool of the outdoors through the walls, and at this time of year, the lows were hitting 24 degrees.