Wish I was here! Photo from T-licious

Sometimes you just really need a vacation. If you can’t manage to take one for a while, you’ve got to live vicariously through your friends who can. My friend T-licious just got back from Puerto Rico and told me all about her adventures in this beautiful island. What with it now officially summer, I’ve been itchin’ for some beachin’ and the next time I go on vacation will be, approximately, the end of the world, so now’s the time to get creative.

I imagine that Puerto Rico is a little bit like Costa Rica, and while I was there, the only thing I wanted to eat were mangoes. My fantasy vacation began with a delicious breakfast of a mango smoothie. I added a banana, a freshly-peeled pine-smelling mango, some oj, honey, ice borrowed from Panera (who doesn’t have ice in the summertime?) and a dollop of almond butter for some protein. It tasted about like garbage. Denver foodies, how do I fix it for my next fantasy adventure?

T-licious managed to text me a few times while she was there; cell service was around, but sketchy. The last night she was there, she sent me this gem, quoted from a real bumper sticker I told her about: “‘Horses are proof that God loves us,’ it’s TRUE!!!” I took that to mean rode a horse while on her trip, and, sure enough, she spent a great deal of ass-bruising time on horseback. I know you’re wondering how I managed that here in Denver (are there stables here in Denver?) and I could tell you that I strapped some stirrups on my feet and cantered across town. Actually, I just took myself on a nice jog to the park and took my shoes off to run in the grass while occasionally tossing my hair like a mane. After running the loop, I found a nice spot of grass and plopped down on my back, letting the freshly mown blades stick all over my sweaty limbs. I watched some ants mate on my forearm, then was parched out of my mind so I trotted back home.

An item on the bucket list of T-licious was to get behind a waterfall, and she checked that one off in Puerto Rico. She said it was rocky and scary and awesome, and we definitely don’t have a waterfall in Denver, so to experience it as best as I could, and this is pushing it, I took a cold shower. And not a very long one because I’m a wuss with cold water. Nothing rocky or scary about that at all. Maybe I could have turned the lights out or something.

The evenings in Puerto Rico were spent relaxing in the setting sun, eating delicious food and drinking beers. After my refreshing waterfall shower, I grabbed an apple and a Shock Top and headed to Cheesman Park for a little lie-down. I spread out my towel and put my shades on and the sun was deliciously warm with a perfect breeze blowing across the park. I would have loved to have been in Puerto Rico with T-licious, but when I sat up and looked west, the sun sinking behind those Rockies, I thought, “I could be in worse places.”