062: Maple Suggests SCOOTERS, etc.
Voodoo pretzel sticks and more
~I'm Maple, I’m currently in Denver, Colorado 🫶 and this is a weekly deal where my friends and I suggest all kinds of things you should try~
I’m in Denver. It’s weird out here! Like an expansive mall in the middle of the mountains.
I’d planned to spend five days in Denver hiking, eating, doing Meow Wolf or whatever… it didn’t work out that way. I lost three days to cancelled or delayed air travel, those surefire ways to stay humbled with the reminder that precisely no one cares about your important travel plans except for you, especially not an overworked/ underpaid gate agent. So, this week, here’s what I recommend:
1. Not checking a bag. I’ve had terrible airport experiences like any other person, but none have been as drawn-out or tension-inducing as the one this past weekend. I’m not here to regale you with the minutiae of it all — no one’s airport stories are good cocktail party fodder — but I’ll just say this: since I was trying to travel with a sleeping bag, I checked luggage for the first time in years. I ended up spending about 10 hours (yes) longer in the airport than I would have if I hadn’t needed to retrieve my silly checked bag (twice).
I know sometimes checking a bag can’t be avoided — at least, that’s what I told myself when I knew I was going to be camping out west. But guys, I’ve been scarred. The final trip to JFK (I took four round trips to two different airports over the course of three days), I traveled like I usually do with one single carry-on and a backpack, leaving the sleeping bag at home and opting to buy one from REI in Colorado and return it later.
That time, I made it out. Never again with the checked luggage. Here I am spreading the gospel.
2. Voodoo pretzel sticks. Walkers are the best chips, but Voodoo chips are second-best, and I just realized there are pretzels in that same, perfect flavor. Ee!
3. SCOOTERS! All caps because that’s how I FEEL! When I visited Portland in 2021, there were Lime electric scooters everywhere and I remember making the automatic judgment that they were ridiculous and I would never be caught dead on one (looking back, I think this decision was made mostly out of fear that I wouldn’t understand how to ride it, crash, and actually be caught dead on one). However — I recently visited a friend in Durham, NC, and he insisted we use electric scooters to get back to his house from downtown. Friends, I didn’t crash, and I loved every second of it. Just as I have changed my mind about other things I though to be cringe-at-first-glance (LIC parks, air fryers), I’ve become a deacon of the church of the electric scooter. Yes, you do still look like a ding-dong riding one, but the experience is magnificent. That wind in your hair! That superhero rush when you can hit the max MPH! Zipping up hills without breaking a sweat!
4. D’Corazon. Mexican restaurant in Denver that is no joke. The salsa was stupid good. I also love their website.
5. Listening to Taylor Swift in Prison. A New Yorker piece I gobbled up. Extremely sanitized version of what prison life must be like, but touching nonetheless.
Kind of related: not too long ago, I asked someone if they were a Swiftie while a Taylor Swift song was playing and they said, with saccharine disdain, “I can’t name one song.” This struck me as being the most annoying possible way to answer the question. First of all, it closed every single conversational door. Second… to me, that’s like saying you can’t name a Beatles song (though no one would ever say such a thing because the Beatles are inherently cool, and Taylor Swift can be awkward and polarizing). But even if this person really couldn’t name a song (or at least be like, “You know, the one that goes like —” and then hum the tune), it was the disgust in the answer that really got me. Don’t associate me, was what they meant. Don’t think of me that way, whatever that way is.
I wondered if in my own life I’d been so determined to set myself apart from a totem of culture because I thought being affiliated with it would negatively define me, and I had. I was a huge Phish fan growing up, and when I moved to Brooklyn in 2012 I decided I could no longer admit to this because Phish wasn’t in the venn diagram of stuff that was cool to the people I wanted to be associated with. As if liking one band would define me in my entirety, instead of just being one fold in the ever twisting fabric in the laundry cycle of my being.
Anyway. I think there is an essay here, so I’ll stop for now and think about it! And my parting T Swift comment is this: I think she’s a marketing genius and talented songwriter with an only-okay voice and I love getting into conversations about her music with new acquaintances and old friends alike.
Okay bye I love y’all!
Until next time,
xo Mapes