It's My Empire

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Last weekend, I had the pleasure of heading to Colorado for my ‘bachelor trip’. Most of you might be thinking, “Colorado? Why Colorado? Why not Las Vegas? Or Cabo? Or Bangkok? Or somewhere else crazy.” Well, as most of you already know, I don’t drink or, contrary to popular opinion, go to strip clubs. So the default, “lets get wasted and head to a strip club” was not really an option. I actually didn’t want to go anywhere. I am not too big on traveling. My idea of a relaxing vacation is sitting at home and watching TV. Sounds pretty boring, huh? I think it has to do with all the traveling I did for work at my first job. Anyways, instead of trying to think of a place where people party it up, I thought about doing something I hadn’t done before. And so, I decided to go the outdoor route, with white water rafting. Initially, the thought of Costa Rica crossed my mind, but given the limited time I could take off, we decided to keep it a little bit more local.

Accompanying me on the trip were Kiranjit, Danish, and Jigish. It’s no surprise that the group consisted of all Empire people. Being on the team forces us to spend a lot of time with each other. I guess the word force could replaced with a more friendly word like “allow”, but you get what I mean. The three of them planned everything for the trip. Aside from white water rafting, I had no idea what we would be doing, so the whole trip was a surprise to me. We began our trip Friday and departed five hours after our scheduled time due to many delays and plane issues. But eventually, we made it. After reaching Denver, we quickly got the rental car, picked up some halal meet to grill, did some grocery shopping at super speed, and finally made it to the cabin in Indian springs about 10 minutes before our deadline.

The cabin was pretty freaky looking at first. It was completely dark and looked like a scene out of one of those scary horror movies. Being Friday the 13th didn’t help the situation either. But Jigish manned up and headed into the cabin first. Once the lights were on, it got better. The cabin had a bunk bed, a separate room, a bathroom, a stove, and a fridge. It had everything we needed. We unpacked and started to grill some food. Due to the fires in Colorado Springs, normal barbecues were not allowed. Jigish came to the rescue, bringing a portable grill that ran off of propane. We started off with some hot dogs and finished it off with chicken. It ended up being around 2 or 3 am before we headed to bed. We had to be up by 6:15 the next morning so sleep was limited.

Saturday morning started with the usual getting up and yelling at everybody to get in the car. We had a 2 hour drive to the white water rafting river. KJ was driving like a mad man. The speed limit in the area was lower than California, and as a whole, people in Colorado just drive slower than in California. We were running late and had to make it to Granite (the white water rafting city) by a certain time, or they would leave us. The combination of all of resulted in a speeding ticket, which caused an even longer delay. But 2 hours and $250 later, we made it just in time.

Rafting was awesome. The river, which was classified as a class 4 and class 5 river was pretty challenging. Our raft guide, Jason, was introduced as the guide that talks a lot. He didn’t fail to deliver. But he was extremely friendly and helpful (though he did get a little frustrated when we weren’t giving our 100%). Rafting isn’t as easy as it looks. We got some basic training and headed directly down the course. To say it was tiring is an understatement. We rafted probably close to 20 miles which took 6 or 7 hours. We had a quick lunch break in between which gave us time to refuel. Though there were many close calls, nobody fell out of the raft, which I guess is a pretty good achievement. With all the forwards, backs, and leans in, all 5 of us in the raft really had to work together to make it through the river. Rafting could really be a great team building exercise because of each person having to pull his or her own weight to achieve that common goal.

After rafting, we headed back to the cabin. Saturday evening ended with a ton of eating, some 2 on 2 football (which ended with KJ eating it into gravel), playing some texas hold em (which was only possible because of Jigish getting fifty dollars in quarters), learning how to play grimm, some hookah, and swimming in the naturally heated pool. That kept us pretty busy, and again, we ended up sleeping at around 3 AM. The next morning we didn’t have to be up until 8 AM, so I guess we got to sleep in a little.

Sunday morning began with packing up and saying goodbye to the spooky cabin. Then we were off to do some zip lining. We took some off road routes to the top of a mountain. There were a total of six zip lines that we got to go on. I won’t lie, the first time up there, I was a bit scared. Being at the top of a mountain with nothing but trees a hundred feet below was on the intimidating side. I’m not the greatest at following directions, so I figured I would definitely mess up. After a pretty cautious first run, I got a bit more comfortable. Our guides were totally relaxed and let us try out some more challenging positions which included zip lining upside down, starting with a running start, and banging into the end without even braking. Jigish won the award for the coolest run by doing a front flip into the zip line which impressed even the guides.

Following zip lining, we headed to a mediterranean place in downtown Denver where we spent a couple of hours arguing about whether cross country is a real sport. Then we headed to a golf course and hit some balls on the driving range. I don’t think most of us were advanced enough to actually play 18 holes so I’m pretty glad we stuck to just hitting the ball as hard as we could. Before our dinner reservation, we had a few hours to kill so we ended up seeing The Amazing Spiderman. The movie was ok, I’d say. I think the lack of sleep was getting to me because I definitely nodded off a few times. Afterwards, we had a nice dinner and then headed to the airport. Our flight was delayed another two hours but the highlight was an upgrade to first class, courtesy of KJ. I knocked out before we took off and woke up after we landed.

And that sums up my bachelor trip weekend. Puneet and her friends went on a trip at the same time as us, to Orlando to see Disney World and Harry Potter World. I find it kind of funny that our trips were so different. She stayed in all these nice resorts while I was in a cabin enjoying the outdoors. I guess it goes to show that we have slightly different tastes when it comes to vacations. Lastly, I want to thank KJ, Jigish, and Danish for putting everything together and coming out on the trip with me. It was extremely memorable and I got to experience a lot of things I had never done before. And now we are a little over a month away from the actual wedding. Hopefully I get to do a few more posts because, to say Empire is heavily involved in a lot of aspects of our wedding, would be an understatement.