Meet me at the rodeo on Frontier Day

a

My clothing style is always fluctuating, just like my life plans. Right now, I’ve entered a phase that could be called streetwear or workwear, but I personally refer to it as aka lesbian style because I keep hunting for jackets in the men’s section.

That’s why I feel like my wardrobe is seriously lacking a suede jacket, the kind that makes you look somewhere between a Western cowboy and a construction worker. The first time I picked up that suede jacket in a boutique, I thought nothing in the world could be more beautiful—until I realized I had misread the price by a zero. It wasn’t $220. It was $2,200.

After leaving the boutique, I couldn’t stop thinking about that suede jacket. I headed straight to the mall. Store after store, and somehow, I ended up in Banana Republic. Zara feels too fast fashion, Aritzia’s quality doesn’t justify the price, and Alo is way too influencer-core. At this moment, Banana Republic felt just right, perfectly suited to my current patching-things-together phase of life. Prioritizing spending where it counts.

I picked up the suede jacket. It was stunning. Now, I was torn between beige and dark brown, between L and XL. Only then did I remember to check the price tag.

“How do you feel about it?” A bald male store associate asked me. Fast fashion store employees always have this strange aura, you can never quite guess their sexual orientation.

“I really like it,” I said. “But I want to check out some other options first.” He misinterpreted that as me wanting to try on more clothes from the store and enthusiastically told me to just leave them in the fitting room. The moment he walked away, I sneakily put them back where they belonged and speed-walked out of the store, consumed by an overwhelming sense of shame.

Seriously, why the hell does a Banana Republic jacket cost over $500?

b

c

I tried to go to this Chinese restaurant but completely failed to find it, despite being right in front of it. Honestly, who would have thought that a tiny booth in a parking lot was actually a restaurant? Outside, they had both the Taiwanese and U.S. flags, insisting on calling themselves a Taiwanese restaurant, even though the menu featured Zhajiang noodles, cold noodles, and scallion pancakes. The only truly Taiwanese dish was braised pork rice. Meanwhile, the male owner spoke with a warm and familiar mainland accent.

But he was kind enough to give me a black sesame bun for free.

d

Maybe in the next life, I’ll be a cowgirl because this is the coolest thing I’ve ever seen.

Meet me at the rodeo on Frontier Day.

e

From Laramie to Medicine Bow National Forest, you will take Highway 130, a scenic local route also called the Snowy Range Scenic Byway, passing through a small town called Centennial.

This town rose to prominence in the late 19th century due to mining and railroad development. Its elevation is approximately 8,076 feet, and its population is 283.

f

For a long time, I’ve been bothered by a specific smell that different fast food restaurants have.

McDonald’s smells like warm grease wrapped in crinkled paper, a scent trapped within its signature brown bags, familiar yet unsettling.

Denny’s holds the weight of an eighteen-year-old’s exhaustion. That night, stranded between trains from Davis to San Francisco, we had nowhere to go. The city pulsed outside, but we found refuge under Denny’s fluorescent glow, the only place open through the night. The server, maybe out of kindness or boredom, slid us free omelets.

Burger King, once, in Shanghai, tucked away in the basement of Jiuguang. As a kid from a small town where the only Western chain was a lone KFC downtown, that Burger King felt regal. The black-themed decor whispered “luxury.” I had never seen fast food look so refined. Years later, standing in an American Burger King, its fluorescent lights flickering above sticky linoleum floors, I felt an almost comical betrayal.

And then there’s Applebee’s, where the air hums with quiet conversations, the clinking of silverware, the steady presence of old guys gathering with their families. Their laughter, subdued yet assured, feels like the soundtrack of a life lived in predictable rhythms, a life I’ve only glimpsed from the outside.

g

A hundred years ago, when the first colonizers arrived on this land, what were they thinking? Is this a question we can find the answer to in Western films?

Read these words below:

Train robbery. Horse theft. Cattle rustling. Gunfights. Cold-blooded murder.

Since the stories of the most notorious outlaws of the Wild West first appeared in early American newspapers, they have been romanticized as daring bandits and swaggering killers. In many ways, their narratives were shaped into dime novels, TV shows, and Hollywood films to fit the frontier ideals of rugged individualism and pioneer spirit.

“Americans love an underdog, someone who stands up against what they perceive as tyranny,” Bill Markley wrote in his 1986 book, Billy the Kid and Jesse James: Outlaws of the Legendary West. “Jesse James and Billy the Kid embodied the spirit of rebellion. Americans overlooked the crimes and saw only the romance of the outlaw.”

These words are mainly saying that Jesse James and Walter Earl Durand were really hot.