I could have stayed in bed all day. The bed was warm and the air was cold, and while I did not feel the kind of strange malaise that overtook me just before I went to sleep, I could have still excused myself saying, “Not yet, not yet.” My computer was within reach, and so were many other gadgets of the day. I rested, then, and waited. I waited for it to be too late for me to do my workout, to go hiking in the mountains, to do all those things that, in a vacant hour, I dreamed of, but never got around doing. I drifted downstairs for food and drink, losing myself a moment in a television show.

They were showing a television show about all the wonderful restaurants here in the Denver area. I wrote down all of their names, knowing I would forget them as soon as they said them. I looked down at the list and I thought, ‘why don’t I go’?

I had been listening to one of those motivational audio programs that I am so fond of, this one about fixing your dating life. The speaker talked about a lot of different pieces of advice, but the most obvious and most shame-provoking observations was that men will find you wherever you happen to be. Based on my lifestyle, I am afraid that my only chance of being met was some Twilighteske scenario in which the man sneaks in through my window… in which case, I am afraid I would have to hit him over the head with a baseball bat… or perhaps my Swingline stapler as, sitting here, I realize that I have no baseball bat in my room.

I will go, I decided. After I- I will go, I repeated. But which-? I will decide in the shower- and so I marched up the stairs into the shower and decided to go adventuring in the district up near my mother’s work, a recently developed area that I did not know much about. I got that address of a local bookstore that was nearby and the address of a Pho restaurant not for from there. I loaded my computer in my car and off I went.

The first place I went was the bookstore. The bookstore was a fragment of what used to be the crown jewel of our mountain city. It was a local bookstore, filled with nooks and crannies and stuffed with books of all kinds and varieties. It was this store (or these stores, I should say now) that caused me to discover “The Great Book of Amber” “Windup Girl” and that new non-fiction book “Quiet.” But a fallout in a real estate deal caused this much beloved four-story bookstore to fall to the earth shattering into three branches. The bookstore industry is struggling, far more than the free counterpart that currently employs me.

The collection was weedy, the top shelves, bare. The books slanted this way, as though ransacked in a surge of apocalypse survivors. I found a book readily enough and another and another. I asked after a set of language books, and an obsessive quality (ingrained in by my new profession) provoked me to straighten all the shelves, choosing beautiful volumes to put face out as I went along.

“Boys!” I reminded myself, and I looked around. There were not a whole lot of people my age randomly perusing the bookstore this Christmas season. I suppose I should not have been a surprise. So, I decided to play a short game. “Who looks approachable.” No one. No one looked especially approachable… except possibly the folks in the café… possibly.

So, I went to the restaurant. I wanted to pick up take-out, but the restaurateur was on the phone when I arrived and I felt hesitant about objecting to her. I ordered a single entrée and she bustled off to get it for me. I saw a family out of the corner of my eye. They had a small boy who kept making goofy faces at me. A group of them left to go to the restroom, leaving me alone with whom I thought to be the mother of the family, so I decided that she would not mind my speaking to her and I started to ask her about where they had come from. When he spoke, I realized my error. He was a fifteen-year-old boy. Luckily, I had not said anything to give away my prejudice and he seemed to be friendly enough. He was perfectly willing to tell me the tale of how he and his family happened to be where they were that day and, I feel, was entertained until the remainder of his family returned, the little boy, eager to show me his new ‘cookie’, which was, in fact, a lollipop.

I finished my meal and was on my way. The right lane was a terrifying one to drive in. It was as if it fought to pull me into the curb every one hundred yards or so. I could see that the cars around me were starting to give me a little space.

It was not long before I had to make a decision, again. What do I want to do now? I decided that I was in the mood for donuts, and since today was one of those spontaneous days where I was not going to take great pains to deny myself anything, I decided that I would get a donut.

I pulled into the parking lot of the grocery store and lot was packed. At the end of the row was the old ski shop. We used to go there all the time for our skis. It is cheaper to rent the skis in town and then take them up to the slopes then it is to get skis at the resorts, and since skiing is an expensive hobby as is, we had spent a lot of time in this little ski shop over the year. When I entered, I was immediately greeted by ‘Sven’, a tall skinny red-haired guy who looked to be about my age. I never did get his name, but it seemed fitting, as he reminded me of someone I had made up a number of years ago by the same name. I told him I was a snowshoe-er and that I was trying to figure out what they had for me.

Well, I got a very fine tour and he told me all about the gloves and the shirts and how its nice to have light things in case you have to strip… well, you know… when you get hot and you have lot of layers… Which, of course I understood. Then he asked me where I hike and I told him Estes Park (because that had been the last place I went) and he told me about a 9 mile hike which seemed quite nice, all things considered. I thought that I would have to take Zanzibar to see it when she was back in town, as it ends in a large glacier with gorgeous views of the sky. It keeps snow on it, even in September, so it seemed like the perfect sort of place to go. I told him that I would have to bring him pictures of it when I went. I said goodbye a bit awkwardly and went off to get my donuts.

I listened to my tires crackle against the rocks as I pulled into the drive. I had been out today, and it felt good.

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