Chapter 167
Surprise, Surprise

November 4-10, 2013

November 9th was my dad’s 60th birthday, and when we were planning our next trip out to Colorado, I thought it would be fun to time it so that Tracy and I could surprise him. My stepmom, Beth, took the idea and ran with it—deciding to fly my sister out from Boston and my uncle out from Florida so that we could do a massive surprise party.

The first half of our trip was mostly just work travel, as usual. On one of our first mornings there, however, I woke up to the surprise that Grumpy Cat had followed the Disneyland Cats on Twitter and started a conversation about Disneyland social clubs.

Of course, my good friends had to respond in kind with a picture of our mascot hanging out with the grumpiest cat in Disneyland—complete with social club vests.

After getting retweeted to more than 200,000 followers, the cats’ base on Twitter started to really pick up steam. Later on the same trip, they got tweeted about (and followed) by one of the executives at Marvel, Ryan Penagos, who had over 1 million followers. I’ve never felt much like a celebrity in my life before, but the Disneyland Cats are the closest I think I’ll ever come to notoriety.

The weekend arrived and we got all pumped up for the surprise party on Friday night. The four of us that my dad wasn’t expecting met in the parking lot of a Chinese restaurant by his house to work out our plan. We decided the best option (and the one least likely to give him a heart attack) was for us to casually go in one group at a time as though nothing out of the ordinary was happening. Tracy and I went first because we knew our presence wasn’t that surprising—we were already back in Colorado pretty often. My sister Emma went next, and my dad was much more shocked to see her because she’s in college and rarely ever gets the chance to come home. But my uncle Rich was the biggest surprise of all. In the end, we were really proud of how it all turned out because I honestly think he had no idea what was in store.

The rest of our visit passed pretty quickly. The other main reason Tracy had wanted to come out this week in particular was because our friend Lainey was going wedding dress shopping and wanted her to come along. While she did that, I hung out more with all the visiting family. We went to the Pearl Street Mall (one of Boulder’s best-known attractions) and were enjoying some of the shows the buskers were putting on. These same street performers have been around for decades, and they include the “box man”—a contortionist who fits himself into this box.

Another one I’d heard about for years but had never seen in person was the “zip code man,” who knows every zip code in the country and can tell you which town you’re from based on your zip code. He’s even branched out into international postal codes recently as well. He had no problem telling me I was from Orange, CA, when I told him our zip code.

Of course, we also had Stupey Doodle to visit with when we were back at Tracy’s parents’ house.

We also stumbled across Tracy’s wedding bouquet, which had been hanging up to dry for almost four years at this point and wasn’t in great shape. She made the tough decision to throw it away because we really didn’t have anything else to do with it.

Of course, Colorado was looking lovely as always. I think there had just been a cold spell that ended right before we headed out, and the temperatures were in the 60s and 70s when we were there—not too shabby for mid-November.

On the whole, it was a really successful trip. We’d had a fun, relaxing time, and we knew that the Holiday Time celebration had started at Disneyland while we were gone, so we were ready to get back and start enjoying the most magical season of the year at the parks for the first time.

Of course, little Crooky was thrilled to see us when we got back…