The flight out was at 11am. The time on my alarm clock said 9:24am. The time the alarm clock had been set for 7:30am. The time I went to sleep was about 4:30am, the time I drank my last shot of Jack Daniels was about 4:25am. Somehow me and my sister decided it would be a good idea to have our friend Angie out to the house to see us off on our trip to Colorado. Somehow it seemed like starting a poker game at 1 in the morning and drinking shots of Jack Daniels was perfectly normal behavior. Somehow, when I finally woke up at 9:24am, I realized I was still drunk.
I didn’t really remember packing my bags at god knows what hour of the early morning, but I jumped out of bed, took a shower in record time, woke up the sister, grabbed my suitcase and was soon going as fast as traffic would allow to the airport. Sometimes it was 5mph, sometimes 85mph. I wouldn’t say we made record time, and after the whole 9-11 thing with the airports, we were pretty sure we were screwed for our original flight. Long term parking full. Daily says they have room. $15 bucks a day for 6 days. No time to think about that. Find a spot… park… then run as fast as my Jack Daniels soaked brain could handle.
A freaking line 20 deep at the ticket counter. Computer ticketing was listed as for premium members only. Finally at the counter, we are told it’s too late to check our bags, but if we carry them on we can just barely make the flight. Sister says go for it. I decided to take a chance and see if I could get in with my toiletries. They search my suitcase, remove my toothpaste, shaving cream, and foot spray. Sister had already thrown out $60 worth of lotions and girlie items, and they didn’t search her bag. Go figure.
We get to the gate… the last gate… the gate furthest from the escalator, and it’s 10:55am. The only thing that saved us was a connecting flight with passengers for our flight was running a little late. We just barely made it. Sans a few products over three ounces.
The flight out was fine. I had a book. I had a talkative seatmate. I was still drunk. We arrive in Denver, find the bus to the rental car place, and we are off to Avis. It’s just after noon central time, so we think we have plenty of time to get our car, drive to the hotel, check in, and get to Red Rocks for the String Cheese Incident show, which the tickets say starts at 7pm.
If Avis’s motto is “Try Harder”, then someone in Denver didn’t get the memo. We are dropped off at a building with no air conditioning, and line about 120 people long, which snaked it’s way back and forth through the ropes not once, not twice, but three times back and forth the entire length of the building with only four car rental people behind a counter that would easily fit twenty. An hour later… yes I’m serious… I made it up to get my car.
Now for this… my mountain vacation… I decided to spend the extra money for a convertible. I had not been back to Colorado in eleven years, and I thought what could be better than driving around the Rocky Mountains with a killer view. As with the nature of car rentals, you don’t really know what you are getting. What did we get? A fucking PT Cruiser. About the ugliest damn car I had ever seen. (They are actually uglier than normal in the convertible variety) But by this time, after barley making the flight, after standing in line for an hour for the car, I wasn’t about to start complaining to the Avis people. I was however dismayed by the tremendous thick black clouds and lightning covering the sky.
Once our stuff was inside the car, I naturally wanted to figure out how to get the top down. No book in the glove box… so we start unlocking things and hitting switches. Just as we figured out the correct sequence of switches and locks, the skies open up, and I can’t figure out how to get the top locked back down. I’m pulling the handle, I’m trying to turn it, the rain is starting to come through, and I just can’t figure it out. After a few nervous minutes, I tried rolling down the windows, which I eventually figured out were holding the top up so I couldn’t lock it down. The lock turned, the windows went back up, the Phish CD went in the CD player… and we were off to the hotel.
It didn’t take long to realize that this car didn’t have an actual car engine. It might have been a Go-Cart engine… or possibly a lawn mower engine, but it didn’t want to go any faster than 60 miles an hour. I guess that’s their definition of “Cruiser”. You literally had to just floor it, and wait for it to speed up.
Despite the long wait for the car, we thought we had plenty of time to get to the hotel and then Red Rocks. The rain began in earnest. Loud pelting drops that could have been hail for all I know start wailing on the car. Driving with the wipers on full speed, and still not being able to see too far in front of us, we hit I-70, and then everything stopped. Here I thought I had just left Atlanta, and that I had left all that damned traffic behind me. I was wrong. It was 2pm Denver time now, and the freeway was locked up tight.
Now because of our quick exit from the house this morning, both my sister and I had gone without breakfast, and the Air Tran pretzels had long since burned up. In our hurry to get to the hotel, we thought we could grab food after we get the car, not realizing that getting the car would take 1.5 hours by itself, and now we are trapped on I-70, with no food, unbelievable rain, and what must have been a nasty wreck somewhere up ahead of us. It took 2.5 hours to get to our exit, which was only about 30 miles away. I stop at the first Dairy Queen I see, and we run inside for something to eat, but this is some weird Dairy Queen that only sells hot dogs and ice cream. Well, that wasn’t good enough for the sister, so back in the car we were, and down the road trying to find some non-offensive food.
A few burritos later, we found the hotel, and had about an hour to lie down and recoup before heading out to Red Rocks.
String Cheese Day 1:
Traffic wasn’t too bad on the way in. we parked in the lot, and begged some beer from our neighbors since we didn’t have time to buy a cooler and fill it up. The rain was long gone, and the scenery was filled with mountaintops and hippies of all ages. Although I couldn’t help but notice that I was one of the oldest people on the lot. Most people were in their 20’s, or even younger. It was kind of like that moment when you look at some 16-year-old kid driving a car and you think to yourself, “Man, they are way to young to be driving. Did I ever look that young to other drivers?” I was looking around the lot thinking again to myself, that these hippies are way to young to be partying like this. I guess I’m just getting old.
We started the walk up to our seats. Now a thing about Red Rocks… There are two lot areas, the north and the south. The north lots are on top near the highest seats, and the south lots are below the lowest seats. Because our hotel was south of Red Rocks, we ended up in the south lots. Which means we had to climb. For the sister, this was fine, but she isn’t a smoking drinking liquerbag like her brother up at higher altitude for the first time in eleven years. Needless to say, I had to stop several times along the way to catch my breath. I estimate it was maybe 300 vertical feet to our seats. To the average person, no big deal. To an out of shape Shawny? I felt like I was going to die. If you can’t imagine 300 vertical feet, think going up 30 flights of stairs, or climbing almost to the top of Stone Mountain, except at much more drastic incline, and without 30% of the air you are used to.
We picked some seats about 1/3 way up, and sat down with our beers and waited for the show. There was some worry at one point, when we were told that the seats we were in were assigned seats, and once we looked at our tickets, we realized we should have been another 20 rows up, but we decided to wait and see. But no one came to kick us out of the seats, in fact about 10 other people ended up sharing them with us. The whole show I had at least three people standing in front of me, pushing me back or to the side, while I tried best I could to keep my place next to the sister’s purse and our shoes so we didn’t lose our stuff.
At one point I had a conversation with a young kid who said this was his 85th show. I told him I used to see the band back in 1996 when they were just getting started while I was living in Breckenridge. When I told him I had seen them before the keyboard player joined up, and that I remembered the first night he joined them, he freaked out. I made a buddy that night.
I’m not going to give the play by play on the show, because I’m not the biggest String Cheese fan and I had only heard maybe ½ the songs, but suffice to say, the sound was great, and it was crowded as hell, and I was just plain beat after the late night, no sleep, and constant traveling. I ran into the girls who gave me some beer before the show while on a beer run once, and they asked how my show was going, and I commented that it was “Weird because they are playing some of these songs for the last time, and I am hearing them for the first time”.
That night, for the first time in years, I feel asleep about 3 minutes after my head hit the pillow.
String Cheese Day 2:
My sister is the best sister ever. Just needed to say that. Before I had woken up, she had already taken the car, bought a cooler, bought three days worth of several different beers, bought me a single shot of Jack Daniels, and had even bought me one of those fold out captains chairs so I had a chair for the lot that day. (She had brought hers out on the flight) We drove around a bit. Met some old Internet friends of mine I had known only on the computer screen in chat windows since 1999, and we got to the lot a little earlier this time fully prepared for proper tailgating. We parked in the south lot again, so I knew I had that climb to do again, but I was refreshed and well rested and lubricated. This time we waited until the crowd was mostly inside, and by the time we started walking up, the band was already playing. We found a place to sit way up top. The sound wasn’t as good, but we were not as crowded, and the bathrooms and beer sales were much closer. Overall, I had a much better night… not getting pushed around or stepped on, and we even left during the encore so we could be out of the lot without nasty traffic. (Remember earlier? I said I was old now.)
String Cheese Day 3:
Much to my delight, the climb up the third night went fairly well. When I got to the ledge I had stopped at the first two nights, this time my heart was not beating out of my chest. I was just a little winded. Either I was getting used to the air, or the previous day’s exercise was making a difference. Regardless, after discussing the game plan, the sister and I decided to shoot up to the top again, and find seats around where we were the second night to avoid the crowds of people crunching to get closer below.
We had another enjoyable evening, and the second set they played was my favorite of all three nights. When it started, I expected them to play hard, and try to send everyone home on a rocking note… well as much as a hippie bluegrass jam band can be rocking… but they did the complete opposite. They played slow, ethereal, relaxing songs and jams to close out their run. So with our seats again being near the beer and the bathrooms, I would say the last night was my favorite night at Red Rocks.
The rest of the vacation:
The next morning we woke up, and I took my sister to the airport. Only 45 minutes without traffic. The rain clouds were back, and I found myself driving around turning this way and that on random roads I did not really know. The nice thing about Denver is that their roads are basically in a north-south east-west grid, so even if you head down a road you don’t know, you can find your way back to a freeway pretty easily. As I saw a scattered shower ahead, I would turn and try to go around it because I didn’t want to put the top down. You can see for miles, so it’s pretty easy to see where the rain is.
I ended up with my Internet friends again for the day. We went to dinner, and I saw the Bourne Ultimatum.
The next day I took a day trip up to Breckenridge again. I found the old house I used to live in. I had a beer at the Breckenridge Brewery. I had another beer at Eric’s Downstairs. I walked up and down Main Street. I drove up two passes to over 11,000 feet and took some pictures. It was a bit rainy, so I kept putting the top down, stopping and putting it back up again, then putting it back down. Back and forth the whole day with the top. I tried to surprise my old roommate Buzz, but he didn’t answer his phone. I bought some beers at my favorite package store, and then started the roller coaster ride down the mountain again to my hotel room.
The next day, I dropped off the left over beer at my Internet friend’s house, and got to the airport in plenty of time. They asked if I wanted to upgrade to first class with free drinks, to which I was happy to hand over the credit card. I drank Jack Daniels all the way home, and somehow managed to find my car, which I realized I had totally forgotten where I parked in the rush to get to the airport.
In the car going 85mph on the way home, like any good Atlanta driver should be doing on 285, I called my sister to tell her I made it, and that it was great to hang with her, and it was even greater to be a in car which would go faster than 60mph. Sure the top won’t go down, but what is there really to see in Atlanta anyway? The skies are grey instead of blue. The air is oppressively humid, and any mountains we have are like mere speed bumps compared to the Rockies.
So that was my summer vacation. I had forgotten how beautiful Colorado is, and I am now thinking how much longer until I find a way to move back out west. |
