Coloradoans are dead serious about their trails — they aren’t finished until they are paved with concrete and gravel shoulders from one town to the next, lined with split rail fence, dotted with trailheads along the way, and outfitted with all the supplies needed to pick up after your dog. (Though few do.) Texas flora = prickly jungle preferred by spiders, snakes, and biting bugs, i.e., not the Great American Desert depicted in your fourth grade textbook. Colorado flora = the desert depicted in your fourth grade textbook. Lungs breathe shallow and rapid, yet you are not breathless. Rabbits and coyotes run from you, but the prairie dogs stand up and squeak “high five” as you go by. Running with your 21-year-old son gets you some odd looks (trainer? body guard?). When you are all grown up, your dad can drive you to the edge of town and you can run back to the house without having any emotional duress.

Last summer, I got a fat dose of South Korean pop culture when Paige was home from college. I watched a Canadian couple make kimbap on YouTube. One day she showed me a rap star. His earnestness made me smile. The music was not of his continent, but he made it his own with a sense of humor, but straight — like the local band that was the rage when I was in college, Brave Combo.

When the rapper made a cameo on the season premiere of Saturday Night Live, I texted Paige to ask her if it was the same guy. Yes, she texted back, that’s Psy. When I told the newsroom about it Monday morning, I got called a hipster.

Hardly. I was born a dork and I cannot escape it. On trail runs, I’m the durable socks and comfortable shoes to RunnerSusan’s body glide and  marathon runner kitten sex.

Yes, I know the first rule of being a hipster is not talking about being a hipster.

I keep my cool and act like a boring, responsible adult, but it’s fun re-living college life vicariously through the kids, especially this latest round of new ideas and new experiences.

My dork-ness was at its zenith, of course, when the kids were in high school. While Sam’s pursuit of an associate’s degree in computer information and technology has inspired a whole new arena of dork-ery for me, the perception of my dork-ness has changed a little with the kids. Michael got me wearing Ray-bans and Sperrys and using an iPhone.

My job has cool factor that many other kids’ parents’ jobs don’t. Someday I’ll break it to them. It’s cool to be a reporter, but it works best when you’re like Forrest Gump and keep falling into history, wearing durable socks and comfortable shoes and carrying a pocketful of pens.