Today is different. It’s Aspen’s fault I’m here, midday for once. I head into the gym, and the pungent stench of sweat assaults my nostrils, and the clank of machine plates competes with the ‘90s rap music blasting through speakers, hanging crooked up in the corners near the ceiling, wires dangling and all.
This place is a dump.
I love it.
I pass the front desk and see Buck, his muscles shredded and busting out from under his faded hot-pink, baggy tank top.
He looks up from his computer, “Ryker. Man! Good to see you in town again.” He stands up and we shake hands. Buck’s in his late 40s, with inky-black hair and eyes. He’ll drop anything to help you out, a friendly guy, which is why I didn’t hesitate to help him out last year.
“Good to see you, too, Buck. How are things?”
“Can’t complain. I lined up the back wall with more of the body-building team’s trophies. Business is excellent, and my wife is ready to pop out our fourth baby. With all the girls, I’m surrounded by estrogen, so I’m over-the-moon about a boy joining the gang!”
“Glad to hear! Congratulations.”
“You still doing Spartan races?”
“Yeah, love ’em. Gearing up for another one in a few weeks. Expect to see me around here quite a bit.”
“Sounds good, bro.”
I head into the weight room and focus my mind on anything that isn’t Aspen as I work my way around the gym.
I recently ran a Spartan race—an endurance race in which contestants run, crawl, jump, and swim through a brutal, 8-mile obstacle course. It was in Denver, just two weeks ago, and I’m already eager for another. This time, I plan on competing at Beast level, 12-14 miles over rugged terrain. They say this is the race to come face-to-face with your demons. I know I have some, and I’m ready to play ball.
They say that, if you conquer the Beast, you conquer yourself. Well, I like to conquer, so I signed up. The Spartan races also scratch any itch I might get to be social, and it’s always just enough to make me realize I enjoy my own company just fine.
After my workout, I head to the mall to run a few errands to make myself feel busy. It doesn’t work. After wandering aimlessly through retail purgatory for an hour, I walk up to the ticket booth at the multiplex and buy a ticket for whatever’s starting next. I couldn’t even tell you the movie’s name. But it allows me to escape my life for a couple hours.
It’s dusk when I pull into the private drive to my house on the lake. The house is dark inside, no lights, except for the LED pathway lights along the sidewalk, and the stars overhead. I like the welcoming peace out here. I own a few acres, so even though the lake has a reputation for parties, I can escape here and get away from people.
I also bought this property because of all the trees, mostly oak and maple, with a few scattered pines, too. I have a thing for trees, always have since I was a kid. Apart from the privacy they afford from nosy neighbors, I like the grandeur that calms me when I’m surrounded by them. And the sound of the wind in the leaves… I feel like they have stories to tell, and for some reason, I don’t feel as alone. That’s why I have houses in Vermont, Colorado, and a villa in the Italian Alps. And now, Hawaii. Palm trees count.
I turn off the engine and carry my gym bag inside. I should be used to the darkness that awaits me when I come home most nights, wherever my home happens to be at the time, but sometimes the darkness stares at me. But then I remind myself that I like not answering to anybody.
After my parents split during my senior year of high school, my usual social self spiraled into the isolation and comfort of the lone wolf. No people? No let downs. I knew what divorce could do to a kid’s reputation at my cliquish school, so I struck preemptively and huddled in our basement most of senior year, doing my own thing.
My parents had recently remodeled the basement, complete with a full bathroom and mini-fridge, and then my mom scored the house from the divorce settlement. She let me move in down there, and it became my bedroom, gaming room, and all-around sanctuary.
And it was spending so much time alone, down in the basement, where I dove into all sorts of esoteric things on the Internet.
My dad moved into an apartment a few miles away, and I was always welcome to stay there. He worried about me spending so much time on the computer and tried to involve me in things like golf and social events, but Mom didn’t think twice about it. She didn’t care, so long as I kept my grades up and stayed out of trouble, which I did. So I spent most of my time at “her” house. She went about her life, and so did I. All alone, in my private, little underground man cave.
And that’s where I discovered cryptocurrency. Over summer break in 2009, I read Satoshi Nakamoto’s white paper, and downloaded some mining software onto an old gaming computer I wasn’t using. Just for the hell of it
