Back in the Fort

Dry your tears, I'm back!

New Belgium trucks are everywhere.  CSU stickers cover the back of cars.  There are restaurants as far as the eye can see.  Where must I be?  After a far too long 10ish months, I'm back in Fort Collins (at least for a visit).  Just a forewarning the main thing I did here was eat so there's going to be a lot of food references and pictures.

My flight was quite early Wednesday morning but got me to Colorado around 9:30AM.  After taking the shuttle up to Fort Collins/CSU, I headed straight for my old house.  Doing the walk back from campus, despite the finished construction projects and all the college students looking way younger than I remember, felt very familiar.  I was keen to see my old house and really wanted to go inside.  To quote the Trunchbull, "who's in my house?!"  To my surprise, the entire outside had been repainted and looked a whole lot nicer than it did when I lived there.  It used to look a little dank on the outside but the inside was glorious.  Now the out matches the in.

The old house

I then headed down Remington towards Old Town.  There were a lot of finished construction projects and new houses that hadn't been there before.  Old Town Square was under some major construction which was a little sore on the eyes but everything else was about the same.  After lunch at a new place called Illegal Pete's, I walked to Alley Cat to steal their WiFi and charge my phone for a few minutes.  

My next stop was the new student center which had been under construction since my junior year (I think) so it was nice to see it done.  

From the student center I made my way over to the other side of campus where I did the youth mentoring program and then headed to my old freshman dorm.  There were a few brand new dorms occupying what was previously a parking lot near my old dorm.  It made the ancient Westfall and Durward look a little out of place. 

To continue my tour of nostalgia, I made my way past where I lived junior year.  There was a massive amount of new apartments along the way.  City Park was next on my walk.  I found a bench and laid down for a bit before heading to the oval followed by going back to Moby arena.  That was a lot of walking with a semi-heavy backpack (found out later it was about 8.5 miles).

Once my friend Kerry got off work, we headed back to her place to catch up.  We got my favorite FoCo pizza, Krazy Karl's, for dinner and after some Super Smash Brothers and Mario Kart, we called it a night.

Best pizza ever

The next day, Kerry and I headed to Odell's Brewery to go on a tour.  Neither of us had been on this tour and although it was only about half an hour, it was interesting and we got some free beer at the end.  When we finished the tour and looked outside, it was snowing (which it did off and on for the rest of the day).  Awesome.

Kerry had to go to work so I stayed at the brewery for a few more minutes until my old roommate Heather arrived!  We headed to our old house again and then to where she used to work.  Our next destination was the oh so delicious Mary's Mountain Cookies followed by the place I went to every Thursday last semester: Fuzzy's.  We called it a night after that.

Odell's Tour

Mary's cookie

Friday morning I met back up with Heather and we had a delicious breakfast at Lucile's.  There are three main breakfast places in Fort Collins and this was the one I hadn't been to yet.  They specialize in Cajun food which I haven't had a lot of but it was quite tasty.  

After stuffing ourselves, we walked around campus for a bit and headed to Road 34 to shoot pool.  Later that evening, I had dinner with my friend Mary at the amazing Cafe Mexicali followed by an incredibly fun night out in Old Town.

The Oval

This morning, Kerry and I headed to Old Town to eat breakfast at Silver Grill, another of the amazing breakfast places in town.  We got some sort of lemon poppy seed french toast which was delicious and, of course, one of their massive cinnamon rolls.  While we were waiting to eat, I finally got a shirt with a Colorado flag on it.  It seems like it's a requirement to have something with the state flag on it if you live/lived in Colorado.  I've never seen people so into their state flag.

Silver Grill

Tonight when Kerry gets off work, we are headed to the cider bar, Scrumpy's, and playing some board games.  Good times.

I sadly head back to Portland tomorrow afternoon.  It was great to be back in Fort Collins.  I'm still a little conflicted as to if I miss the town or if I miss being in school/the activities that come with being in college/the people.  I think it's a combination of the two.   

Anyway, special thanks to everyone who made the effort to come up to visit from Denver and especially Kerry for letting me stay at her place!  It was great to see everyone!

That's all for now.  Bye.