Back to Colorado
The next couple of weeks I was winding things down and clearing up loose ends preparing for my final move back to Colorado for good.
I bought Denver’s Jeep. Paid in full, so all my extra money was now tied up in this new vehicle. I had talked to Chrissy, to confirm that everything was good financially and I could spend my money this way. She insisted it would be no problem.
The plan would be to drive it back across the country when it was time to leave. Originally, I was going to leave after Michelle’s wedding. Michelle was the one that became a lesbian after her horrific car accident and now ended up marrying her boyfriend Scott. They seemed really happy together. And ironically, Jean was the Maid of Honor. Funny to think that when we first met them they were ‘Enemies’.
But after that wedding, Jay’s band would be playing the entire Sgt. Pepper’s Album live on stage for Halloween. So it looked like I was staying until Halloween, much to Val’s pleasure, because now we could go as a couple’s costume one last time. This time we went as Austin Powers and Vanessa Kennsington, although people thought she was a Fembot. At the show I saw Azuree and Cliff one last time. Luckily, she didn’t do anything weird this time around.
Now that I was staying till Halloween, Corinne asked if I would stay for her wedding. Originally, I would have been back in Colorado and was not going to be able to attend, but it was only one more week. Plus, it was another week of earning money. I video taped and photographed her wedding and the last thing I did in NY was drop off the edited video.
The best part about driving back across the country was I was going to be on my own timetable. That was until Jen volunteered to accompany me on the trip. Of course, I jumped at one last adventure with my best friend. The one drawback was that she had to book a flight back to Colorado which means we had to get to Colorado by Sunday, still plenty of time because we were leaving early on Thursday morning.
I picked her up at the crack of dawn and we were on our way. We made really good time the first day, we got to the Ohio-Indiana border by nightfall. We had dinner and stayed at a quaint little bed and breakfast that was also very inexpensive.
The next morning we were on our way but we didn’t get far. We stopped at a Target for snacks. A few miles later we stopped off at a huge antique mall and spent the rest of the day there. By late afternoon, we decided we ought to make up as much distance that we could.
By nightfall we got to St. Louis. We visited the Arch and went onto a nearby Riverboat Casino. Because we were in a rush, we opted to leave and get some more miles in before we crashed for the night. We may have even thought of driving through the night until we stopped off at a gas station and met up with a family in a Dodge Caravan that had gotten their windshield smashed in by a large bird, possible a falcon, owl or hawk. Either way, it was enough incentive to stop for the night. We were tired and our conversation had gotten emotional by that point. I guess on a subconscious level we knew that our time together was coming to an end and the closeness that we had to each other wouldn’t be the same again.
We stayed at a run of the mill motel. In the morning we drove through Kansas, stopping only for gas and to see the stadium where the Kansas City Royals played. By early afternoon we arrived at my apartment.
We got back in time to see Chrissy before she left for work. She had lost a bit of weight. That was the first thing I noticed. She was apparently at a point where she was searching through couch cushions for gas money. When she left for work, I followed her out so Jen and I could get things out of the Jeep. When she pulled out of the parking spot with ‘Snout’, my Oldsmobile. it had a huge bright yellow dent in the back left quarter panel of the car.
“Oh my God! What happened!” I yelled.
“Oh yeah, I meant to tell you.” Chrissy said off handedly. “Someone must have hit it when I was in my school parking lot.”
“When did that happen?” I questioned in disbelief.
“A while ago…”She answered. Then she left.
I had already told Jen about the phone bill she never paid and her not saving money for the move. With this on top of it, I could tell Jen was worried.
We stopped at a grocery store because t
here was absolutely nothing to eat in the kitchen. While there, Jen got the ‘bread guy’ to give her a roll of round orange “Wonder Bread – SPECIAL” stickers. Which ended up all over my Jeep interior by the end of the day.
Jen and I only had one more day left together so we made the best of it. The Columbine shooting had occurred earlier this year so she wanted to visit the site. It was a pretty somber experience. They had a makeshift memorial on the hill behind the school in which these crosses would quietly overlook the football field. One for each child and one for the teacher killed in the massacre. Jen and I quietly wandered the grounds of the school and the neighboring park. It was very sad.
After that, we went to downtown Denver and checked out the city, we went to a little underground bar and had a beer and just chatted. I enjoyed it very much. We met Chrissy back at home after she got off work and took her with us as we went up to Boulder, saw the sites there and went out to dinner.
The next morning I got Jen to the airport and hugged her goodbye. I never wanted to let her go. She was cutting it close as it was, so we ran to her gate, hugged her once more and said goodbye. She got on the plane and as I turned and walked away, I cried. I was alone.
Yes, Chrissy was here, but I wanted to wring her neck. I was on my best behavior while Jen was here with us, but now I had to go home and assess the damage done since I left. And the damage done was substantial. The phone bill that was late was well over $150 dollars due to long distance phone calls to her boyfriend. Now there was a $100 re-activation fee added on. The Oldsmobile was leaking a lot of oil and radiator fluid. I asked her why she didn’t take it to the shop with the credit card I left like I asked. She was too busy. Instead, she ran the engine hot and just added a quart of oil every week. Then I found out that she did use the credit card for other things. She claimed she had to get school supplies and they were expensive. I asked her why didn’t she use the credit card I had given her for her own use from way back when, the one with the $2,000 credit limit. She had maxed that one out. I asked if she had been paying it off and she lied and told me she had.
I took stock of the situation. Chrissy told me none of this when she told me it was okay for me to spend $6,000 of my saved money on the Jeep. Now I was relatively low on my own personal funds and now income coming my way.
Chrissy owed me $250+ to get the phone back up. She owed me $2, 000+ for the moving truck. She owed me around $1,000 for her half of the initial rent & deposit (She spilled India Ink on the living room carpet the first week we were there, so there goes that part of the deposit already). On top of that, there was the money she owed me from before we moved to Colorado. And then the credit card bills came…