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It's been a hectic journey, arriving in Fort Collins, homeless and without friends. I'm not sure why i thought this was going to be a stress free easy transition. In retrospect the tension would seem obvious, but I didn't see it coming. Hindsight, right?
For a week we had no leads. Our first hosts were awesome. The second were a little stranger. We didn't jive as well on first contact as with Jess and Austin, but after a few days we all warmed up a bit.
Our first lead started as a very unpromising place. The guy didn't know about our pets and was wary of two people. E-mails meant we probably wouldn't get it, so I called him up and it was settled we should come and see it. Griff was his name, and both he and the roommate we would be replacing were sitting around a fire in their backyard. It was a pretty cool place and close to downtown.
We sat down for a few beers, and they both seemed cool too. The house was niceish, and it had a kick ass basement. The rent was affordable too. He already had two highly hyper dogs who might have wanted to eat Simon. It wasn't a high likelihood, but we never brought him over to find out. They were great dogs. Loved fetch.
Griff invited us to a cabin in the mountains for a night, if we didn't have any place to stay for the next day, since we were still technically homeless at the time. We did have a place, and he was originally going up to write music in solitude, so we didn't go. It was cool of him to offer though. "I'm glad you didn't tell me about the pets before you came over," Griff said at some point. "I would just have said no on the spot, but this could actually could work."
"Yea? Awesome," I said. We hung out there for a while, blowing off a free sampling of 6 or 7 places downtown for our dinner. By the end of the night, he was calling us the new roommates and we were excited, if a little nervous, to live there. Simon would have to come back on a second run. We told him we would get back to him by Monday.
It was our first lead, and we were both tired of being homeless, crashing on other peoples couches / beds / floors and wanted a place to live. We wanted to pay rent! Crazy. He was going to give us the master and move all his stuff into another room. We could even stay in the basement for a week or so while it was all worked out. He wasn't the most excited because of obvious reasons and the pets. It wasn't going to be the easiest, but it could work.
10 oclock or so rolled around, and we decided to head out to check out the nightlife. It was our first Friday to check out the town. The first bar was cool, and I scored some pool in which I got destroyed. I tried to warn him that I was no good. He was a pro. The table rotated out a bit. He never lost but he let others play too. After the first $5 pitcher we decided it was time to move on.
Our current hosts, God's Girls, were also going out that night, and as happenstance would have it, we met up with them at the bar next door. PBR pitchers were up to $7. The first was on us. I got a pretty hammered, but I didn't really drink that much. I'm blaming the elevation. Tanya was driving, so I didn't really mind. We esatablished that early on.
The second prospective house was a tiny one bedroom on the edge of a park. Estimated sq. footage - 500. No thanks. Rent more than Griff's too.
The third house was the most promising yet. It was a single guy in his mid 30s. He had long blonde hair, wore a ball cap and lived just outside of town in a 3 bedroom. The kitchen was nice, and the place was roomy. Best of all there were no town lights, there was a gravel mine field to explore and we could see the mountains from our driveway. It was also the cheapest place we'd been yet.
DJ was cool, if a bit slow or something. Seemed like he'd had a rough life but still had a good heart. He reminded me a little of my friend Josh if a bit more put together or wiser. We didn't really hang out and went back to our high class private apartment for the night. We slept in our king bed with silk sheets as we mulled over the most recent plethora of choices.
For almost a week we had no leads, and in three days we had three good ones with a fourth tomorrow afternoon. Oddly enough the memory foam pillow top on our plush king mattress didn't treat either of our backs well. I kept rolling over on her all night, and we woke up creaky.
We met up with Jess and Austin for a trip to the Rocky Mountian National Park (which was free because of our
pass). See driving into snow for details and stayed longer than we'd planned. We called the next prospective house and told them we would be a little late. It was an awesome trip, and we will have to return.
Prospective home 4 was quite the package.
A married couple rented out three other bedrooms in their house with a fourth apartment with a separate entrance somewhere on the property. There could be up to 7 people living at the same address at any one time. There were two dogs, a cat, one bathroom and one kitchen. We would be living community style :). With a $400 rent, that would be worth it in some ways.
The wife, who was kind of crazy greeted us. Super friendly and excited, she showed us our potential room, which had a lot of promise. Good space and light, with a nice closet. We walked around and talked. I started asking about bills etc. She said we might have to pay $100 ea. for utilities and the rent was $500 for couples. Yikes... that's would be like a $500 energy bill, which is absurd.
We walked back into the living room, and she told us about this hash oil vaporizer she just bought at the dispensary (which requires a red card. While telling us about this, she pulled out a long cigar shaped black metal tube out and began inhaling A small red light lit up on its tip, and out she blew a smoky cloud of air/hash vapor. It's like the e-cigarette for weed. I didn't smell a thing. Then she told us about what drugs were and weren't allowed in the house. That was a little strange, but whatever. To each their own.
We told her we would also let her know on Monday and stepped away from whatever craziness would be happening at that house. Never mind our room was nice and the house biggish, never mind the wife seemed cool, if a little crazy, and never mind that we would be surrounded by people and animals at all times, there was no way the queen of kitchen affairs could share her domain and have so little space of her own. Back to the peace, quite and sanity of the rural mountain air please. It was close to downtown though, and we would instantly be plugged into a lot of what was going on. We could always just lock ourselves away in our room for some peace and quiet. Being close enough to bike to things is a big plus, and it would have certainly been a better situation than Griff's.
In our luxury apartment for one more night we had it narrowed down to 2. Close to town with potential craziness, a nice room, and lots of dog poop, or mountain air, close not not much, and an old metalhead hippy for a roommate. We deliberated, going back and forth a little. Tanya was surprised when I said I was leaning towards rural.
It was all coming together. If we chose Dj and our sort of mountain home we would only be 3-5 miles from town, and we could move in as soon as we liked. We could have a home tomorrow, She said she was actually leaning that way. I want to write. There are horses and plant nurseries close. The stars will surely be beautiful at night.
We had already planned to go over there again that night. A few hours later Simon was on his only second date. Jazz, DJ's grandma lab mutt apparently loves cats, and they both got on great from the start. She's a sweetheart, which had to say good things about her owner. DJ had a lady friend, Dixie, over. We all chilled, had a beer and at some point the question popped up. "So when can yall move in?" DJ asked.
"How soon can we?" Tanya grinned at me.
DJ looked around, thinking. "Tomorrow, if you want."
I jumped in. "Yea? That sounds pretty good. You want to baby?
She shook her head yes, and a few minutes later pulled me into what could very soon be our future room. "So you wanna do this?" I shook my head yes.
"You wanna do this?" Her grin came back. We found our home.
As of writing today is tomorrow, and we have just moved in. The local grocery had sirloin and ground sausage on sale for $1.00 /lb. I got 6 steaks and a pound of ground meat for $4. Hells yea! We cooked an awesome dinner of sausage rice and veggies and ate wonderfully happy on our floor. Were going to be eating steak baby! With more time DJ is definitely cool. I'm sure we'll all get on well as roomies.
The best part is still yet to come, maybe. The other half of the duplex has like an extra 1,000 sq. ft and a second story for only $100 extra in rent. We might be able to move in, but it's still too soon to tell. Don't count no chickens fore they hatch, so stay tuned for a possible awesome update. Thank you universe! It was harder than I thought, but we finally found a place. It's wonderful not to be homeless and moving anymore.
Peace world
-Seth
She got me an awesome new pipe along with some high quality tobacco which I crysined by a half frozen waterfall. It's so nice to have a quality pipe again (I lost mine in Utah somewhere). We ate delicious wraps with avocado for lunch with spinach dip waiting for me at home.
I happily played games for what little of the day there was. Jess, Austin, Tanya and I all went out to Hodi's Halfnote for some big show that night. Chips and dip, veggies and ranch and cookies were free for the munching once inside, and we got a free CD too. Hodi's is awesome. Some 8 bands played, and we shut her down. Tanya was the DD so I was pretty drunk by the end of it all, but what are birthdays for if not celebrating.
