August 1, 2000 to August 8, 2000

Trip to Denver

Introduction

I made some plans for my friend Sondra and I to go there. Alex had said she and Dan were going to leave for their honeymoon after the wedding, so I planned to be there for the week before the wedding.

Coincidentally my brother Adam was going to be in Denver as well. Originally he was going to be there the week after the wedding but switched stuff around so he could meet with a girl he met in Austrailia earlier in the year, so he ended up in town the week before the wedding.

I don't travel much, and here's why:

Tuesday, August 1 Our flight was to leave Rochester at 4:50 P.M. to arrive in Denver at 8:30 (Denver time). We left my house a little before 4 in the midst of an incredible downpour which started about 3:45 and ended about 4:15. It was sunny by the time the plane took off. Oh, but that was just the start of it. We had what was to be about an hour layover in Chicago. We were supposed to leave at around 7 Chicago time. We got to the gate just fine, and the plane was almost immediately delayed by 20 minutes or so. No big deal. Then it was delayed another 20 minutes, then another 10. By the time we were up to an hour and a quarter, Sondra and I started requesting some assistance from the gate staff -- the Enterprise rental office in Denver was to close at 10, and our arrival was now to be around 9:45. American Airlines offered us nothing but excuses. First, O'Hare had a new air traffic control system and the people running it weren't completely trained. Then it was a weather problem (even though Chicago and Denver were clear.) What I guess was the "real" reason was revealed: pilots are only allowed to fly up to a certain limit each day and they had no extra pilots who could make the trip; our pilot was tied up in Atlanta and would be arriving a bit late. Anyway, we were hoping they'd do something, I mean, by this time we were going to get there about 10:10. They said they'd call Enterprise, and they did -- then handed the phone handset over. Thanks a million. Enterprise offered to stay open an extra half hour for us. The plane finally arrived and we though it was all set -- but the plane needed new front tires. We were delayed some more. We begged American Airlines for anything -- a hotel voucher ... pay for the rental car ... heck, anything: cab fare even. Nothing. Thanks a million. It was cool to see them change the tire. They've got a jack they put between the two front wheels and lift the front of the plane a couple inches then they get this big wrench to change the wheel. They replace the bearings and stuff too. We finally boarded the plane and get to Denver around 9:25 or so. I tried calling Enterprise again, but the cell phone didn't work inside the plane. Besides, they were just starting up the engines and said I had to turn it off anyway. Oh well. After a relatively uneventful flight, we touched down in Denver around 10:20. Sondra took care of the carry-on stuff and I booked for the rental counter. Well, you have to take this subway thing between terminals -- we were at the third of three terminals away from the main one. The tram had this stupid plucky faux-Westernish song they'd play ... "The doors are now closing. Doo doo doo doo doo dee deedle doo." Fucking song! Just shut up and start the tram, damn it. The Enterprise booth was closed anyway. I ended up spending $30 to ride in a panel van to the hotel. The luggage conveyor system at the airport broke too and they had some guy go inside it to fix it. By the time we got on the van it was around 1:15 A.M. The people in the van were kinda fun since we were all weary travellers. Nonetheless, our place was the farthest away so we were last. We rolled in around 2 in the morning, Larry the night guy let us into our room and we crashed.

The stupid rain only lasted about a half an hour.

Adam told us more than once that the QWest building was near his apartment and he might get a job there.

Wednesday, August 2 After rolling out of bed relatively early, we got started unpacking for real and checking into the Homestead Village (4444 Leetsdale Dr.) I called Enterprise, but they didn't have a pick-up service from the airport, but they did have a location that was only a couple miles away. I called that location and they were getting a car for us. Around 10:00 and after a few phone calls they picked us up and we got moving in a Geo Metro. Moving slowly, but moving nonetheless. We tried to play the sympathy-card with our travel tale to get a free upgrade. They said they'd see what they could do. My brother Adam was also in town. He had been on a long vacation after leaving the Air Force and was planning to move to Denver in September, but happened to be in town before continuing on to the west coast. His car was in the shop getting dolled-up so we went down there to pick him up. We eventually found the place and picked him up. For lunch, we went to the Black-Eyed Pea Restaurant (1470 S Colorado Blvd.) At that point the altitude and lack of humidity was hitting us pretty hard, so we were chugging the water and iced tea. The waitress, Nicolette, was charming and witty and when we left, she had offered her pager number on the check. In the end we never got a chance to call her, but it was pretty cool nonetheless.

After lunch we picked up Adam's truck and followed him some absurd distance south of Denver to go to his friends' house where he was staying. On the way, we realized what the rental people meant when they said the Metro wasn't a very good car for the area. It was around a hundred degrees outside the whole time, so we had the air conditioning on. Unfortunately, the lack of power made it hard to keep up with Adam, and he has a 12-year-old GMC Jimmy -- not the fastest car in the world by far. A couple times the car just seemed to shut off and coast, almost as if it was overheating but the temperature gauge was reading normal. I called Enterprise and they said they were working on getting a better car and to call back later to see if anything came in. He followed us back to our hotel and then we headed for downtown. We started in the 16th Street Mall (16th St.) area which has a bunch of free shuttle busses that run the length in both directions. It's a good idea, but there's only so many interesting places to see.

The 16th Street Mall was so hot it was on fire.

Strangers cross the street near 16th St. and California.

The bar at Josephina's had people drinking in the late afternoon.

The Denver Performing Arts Center was basically closed when we saw it, but there's a big open area to walk through.

The Center has a disproportionate statue, made more so with a careful selection of lenses.

After that we headed to Adam's favorite haunt, Josephina's (1433 Larimer St.) The local brew is Fat Tire which is a good full-flavored beer. I think it's a pilsner. It was also the only local brew we could find even though there's many more. Anyway the bar was pretty nice. Later, we toured more of the downtown area and headed to the Denver Performing Arts Center. It was closed at the time, but we walked around the outdoor atrium area. For dinner we headed over to Wynkoop Brewery (1634 18th St.) The atmosphere, food, and beer were all great. Well, except for the artwork which was bizarre in that art-school project "this piece is about x" kind of way. While I was there I noticed they have an improv troupe play in the basement on Thursdays.

From there we headed back to the downtown area where we met up with a "Tarot" card reader named Dustin on the corner of 15th St. and Market St. He said real Tarot cards are banned in Denver so he has to make do with marked-up playing cards. He can do stuff like answer a question or perform a reading. Adam asked about his near future, so Dustin lit a candle and had Adam shuffle the cards. With some explanations, he basically said Ad's financial future would be good but it would be a while before he fell in love again, to which Adam said something like, "Yes!!" When prompted furtuer Dustin said it would be around six months or so. He did a reading for Sondra, too, but a regular whole reading. He said something about Sondra's sexuality being controlled by the Inverted Cup, but I can't remember exactly what that was supposed to mean. I didn't want a reading but started taking some pictures. Dustin freaked out at the prospect of having his picture taken but allowed me to take pictures of his stuff which was pretty much just as good for all I cared.

Dustin had a collection of stuff like a metal bug, chopsticks, a cup, cigarettes, and a chair.

He had cards with infinitely witty phrases like, "Being in touch with yourself isn't about masturbation."

Although unseen to the human eye, the camera captures the image of the Fire Picachu Elemental.

Then we went back to Josephina's (1433 Larimer St.) for a couple more beers and to see a band called Stranger Neighbor. This was our first indication of how music was around Denver: the band introduces itself in a "we're the band, you're the audience" kind of way then plays a perfect studio set. Whenever we stopped somewhere that happened to have a band, this is how they played. We spent some time later going around Denver's downtown area. Thursday, August 3 When Sondra and I finally moseyed out of bed, we headed downtown for a late lunch and eventually settled on the Cadillac Ranch (1400 Larimer St.) We went upstairs and sat on the covered patio. It kinda looked gloomy that day and we were pretty spent from doing stuff on Wednesday night. The only other group out at that time was a couple guys and a couple girls. As we found out, most of them had just finished with finals at some community college across the street. One of the guys in the group was trying to pick up the waitress, and it was apparent there was more than just friendship between the rest of the group (and not quite dating.) We were just watching them for the entertainment and they invited us over. Even though they were pretty friendly, it wasn't the kind of group we were interested in hanging out with so we bid our farewells and embarked on more touristy stuff. Later we headed over to Josh & John's (1444 Market St.) which is a great local ice cream place in Denver. If you get a chance, you should check it out. Especailly if it's hot out ... especially if it's in the evening ... and on a weekend. It's kind of a hangout. While there we noticed Denver has a Denver-events-related version of The Onion. Apparently they franchise, which explains why the people who do it keep doing it. We met up with Adam and his friends Chris and Cheryl at Wynkoop Brewery (1634 18th St.) had a few beers and headed downstairs to see Impulse Theatre's improvisational comedy show. The show was pretty good -- they are much more structured than other shows I've seen. They'd ask the audience for a couple suggestions then do a sketch based on that. They really didn't have the audience do much. I was of course the guy they hate to have in the audience. For any game that required a noun for virtually any reason, I yelled out, "a stuffed porcupine" until they finally used it (for scenarios involving stuffing a turkey, and I thought they could have been funnier about the porcupine.) After that we all headed to Old Chicago (1415 Market St.) which sort of a combo pizza restaurant and sports bar. The pizza was alright but we were all pretty tired from the day and went home afterward.

There were a bunch of contrived knick knacks around Josephina's, presumably from a TGI Friday's auction.

Friday, August 4 When we got up on Friday we decided to get lunch at Alex's recommendation, The Sushi Den (1487 S Pearl St.) which was excellent. Sondra and I have had sushi at a bunch of places, but this was the first time we had encountered melt-in-your-mouth nigiri. Even the squid was more tender. After that we headed out of Dodge ... er ... Denver and drove an hour south to Pikes Peak (Pikes Peak Hwy.) which was really cool. When we got to the top we played the "race to the lodge" game which basically involves getting out of the car, running toward the lodge, and collapsing because there's no air at 14,110 feet. While we were there Sondra went out on the rocks and said she heard some guy playing a pan flute on an outcroping below to some kids and that her hair stood up once and was crackling. I told her she was almost struck by lightning -- in fact, the people there kept coming out saying for everyone to go inside becuase there is a storm coming. Everybody up there lived at normal elevations and were unimpressed. Of course when you think about it, if lightning were to strike the highest point, it would go for something that is, say, 14,116 feet high instead of 14,110 feet high, so you better get inside. We headed around the perimeter and back to the car. Before the storm hit, though, I managed to get a signal on my cell phone so I called Jan to say, "You'll never guess where I am." Face it, it had to be done. Anyway, we made a break back to the car when it started looking bad and then the pea-sized hail started and kept coming for about 10 minutes. There was about a half an inch on the bottom of the windshield. I took some pictures and a few came out okay, but the roll I blew trying to get a picture of lightning was a waste. After I shot the roll I realized I had the shutter speed way too high. Oh well. On the way down, the sun came back out and lit up the landscape really nicely. The wet ground offered a lot of contrast and the cooler dry air was very clear. When we got back we went to the bar across the street from the hotel called The Boat House (Leetsdale Dr.) The bartender's name was Jim. I asked for a Genny Cream Ale and he said, "what, are you from New York or something?" and was the only bartender who even knew wat Genny was. Anyway, I pressed him on the quality of the chicken wings and he said they were alright, and indeed they were. Later that night we headed back downtown to Josephina's (1433 Larimer St.) to meet with Adam and Rachel. They met when Adam was visiting Austrailia earlier in his journey and she wanted to see the western United States and he could use a ... umm ... travel companion for the trip. She was 19 so she wasn't allowed to drink over here. We only stayed a little while. I wanted to get a chance to get to know Rachel just a little before they took off so I said we should go someplace quieter. We left and started walking down Larimer toward the downtown area. We turned the corner on 17th and ran into this group of people next to Uptown Pizza (1312 17th St.) who were giving away free food and drink. I think it was four guys and two girls. Anyway, their friend Chris had just turned 30 and the party was at the pizza place. Well, Uptown closed at 8 so they brought all the stuff outside but didn't want to haul it back to the car so they were just giving it away to strangers. Their friend Jay was being particularly wacky about it and people were more scared by him than interested in free food. While I was explaining to someone about why Sondra, Adam, Rachel, and I ended up in town together, one of the guys yells out, "Hey, there's our party -- the wedding party!" I turn around and I couldn't believe it--it was Alex being hauled around for her "Bachelorette Party." All her bridesmaids had set up little dares all around various oddball places and sex shops downtown, so when I yelled out to Alex, she just gave a puzzled look like what is Jayce doing here? She stopped by for a minute and I got a chance to finally see her after a couple years away, but they had more things to do and I would see her again soon anyway. We'll just call this Coincidence 1. Anyway, a little while later Adam and Rachel headed home because Rachel was on Australia time about 12 hours off. Sondra and I hung around the weird little crew for a while longer. While we were standing there, I said we should hide the alcohol we were drinking a little better so when the cops drove past the first time, I opened up the newspaper rack for Westword and said to put it all in there. A little while later these guys from New Jersey near New York City showed up and wanted to be more rowdy. Everyone was getting a little bolder with the alcohol, but when we saw the cops the third time, Sondra and I said goodbye to everyone and headed on out. We had a plan to find this bug place we had seen. Basically there is a building in downtown Denver with big fiberglass-and-metal bugs climbing on the outside of the building. We knew it was down by the river but not exactly where. We went around the corner and I said we should stop someone. We asked these three guys and they said they couldn't help us because as they said, "sorry, we're from Rochester, New York." Ok, let's just call that Coincidence 2. They were Chuck, Jeff, and Eric and were sent to Denver for some kind of corporate training. Chuck is in the band Astropimp which Sondra and I had heard of at some point. I was explaining how we were there and along comes Alex again. Coincidence 3. We split up with those guys and headed on our quest. Finally we did find the bug place. It's apparently called Rock Island (1614 15th St.) It's a dance club type place sort of like a cross between The Bug Jar and Piranha up here. It's got a dance floor upstairs which had about five people on it with techno-esque music blaring away. Downstairs was a somewhat separate club and bar in the basement with people who looked a lot like they were or could be tripping out on drugs. Really. We hung out there for a while and eventually called it a night.

Jayce at Pikes Peak

Sondra at Pikes Peak Parts of cog railway

Buffalo and Beer sign Buffalo Bill's Gravesite Denver's muddy skyline from Lookout Mountain

By the time the night was hitting adolescence, the wine was flowing like wine and the candles were buring at what seemed like a frenetic pace.

Saturday, August 5 We got up a little earlier than usual ... I wanted to get some of the film developed at some one-hour place so we headed out to go to Wolf Camera (1629 S. Colorado Blvd.) Sondra headed to one of the other stores, when I went to Wolf. I asked them if they could push-process film in an hour, but they had filled all their one-hour slots for the day but they could get it back to me by Monday. I figured I wouldn't risk it. While I'm standing at the counter, one of the other workers nudged me with a box as he headed to the back room and said hi. It turns out it was Jay from last night, which we shall call Coincidence 4. As I asked him, do 20 people live in this town or what? Sondra was equally amused by the serendipidy of the whole thing. Anyway, from there we went west ... to the mountains. We headed out on one of the numbered streets from Denver and just kept heading for the mountains. We just picked a hill and headed for it. As it turned out we headed through Golden (where the Coors Brewing Company is.) Coming out the other side we headed up Lookout Mountain looking for a place to have lunch. We passed a couple places through Golden, but we figured there must be something better way up at the top. We found a place by the top that had a sign out front that said, "Buffalo and Beer" so we had to stop It's called Buffalo Corral (836 Lookout Mountain Rd.) and as it turns out it was the original fort built on the hill. They did have what they said -- we had really good buffalo burgers, but skipped the beer, preferring something to reduce the overbearing dehydration. We talked with the owner, Georgia, who is starting a business buying and selling stuff in the Far East. She's also got a buffalo fur coat hanging on the wall which she said was over a hundred years old and used by a guy in Alaska years ago. It was insured for $10,000 or so. After that we headed over to Buffalo Bill's Gravesite (987 Lookout Mountain Rd.) which was right around the corner. When we got back, we went to Mouse and Mark's house for a dinner party for Alex. I finally got to meet Dan more personally even though I was there when he and Alex met at Bev & Cam's wedding in Toronto in last May. Alex lived with Mouse and Mark when she first moved to Denver. They've got a nice little house with an incredible garden in back. The party was nice -- at least it cooled off a little in the evening. I got to see all of Alex's school chums again. After the party, we headed out to an "authentic" Irish pub, Nallen's Irish Pub (1429 Market St.) It wasn't all that authentic we thought, but at least they had beer and stuff. It was part of that chain of bars (who I've found out are all owned by the same group which is why they all look alike) including Josephina's.

Sunday, August 6 We were pretty weary of Denver at this point. Sondra was working on the movie back in Rochester and wanted to see what Breckenridge was like because they have a film festival out there each year. It was pretty far over the mountains and through the woods, so to speak. We didn't even stop. It was like the ultimate rich-people tourist trap. Actually, we did -- so Sondra could pick a flower, I think. Oh yeah, and on the way out there we stopped at a WalMart to get something to drink. And some Slim Jim's. On the way back we stopped at a Burger King for some quick lunch then it was off to the wedding in the Romance Garden in the Botanical Gardens in the south part of Denver. The wedding was nice and thankfully short -- it was notching up just over 100 degrees outside and we were sitting directly in the sun. Afterward, we went to The 4th Story Restaurant for the reception. It was kind of a buffet/hors d'ouvres style reception with some excellent food. We got to meet some of the people in the wedding party and just hang out. Unfortunately the restaurant closed at 10 so we had to go. I tried to convince a few people to head to The Boat House (Leetsdale Dr.) with us for a few drinks. Tracy and Brian showed up -- they're also from Rochester (at least sometimes.) We loaded up the jukebox and sat on the patio and drank beer all night. It was a lot of fun, and a quiet night being a Sunday.

The redundant naming of the Botanical Gardens is underscored by the excessive amount of vegetation.

This is not a toy. This is food.

Monday, August 7 We got up and headed to Alex and Dan's for a continental breakfast. Again all the regulars were there and we chatted with them some more. Alex's cats were nowhere to be found, hiding from all the excitement. After we left there we headed back to the hotel for a nap, then it was off to Mouse & Mark's again for a garden party. Slowly the week winded down with relaxing and casual stuff like this. Tuesday, August 8 We got out of the hotel and checked out this morning. We drove all over the place looking for a flea market so Sondra could buy here kids some souveniers. It turns out Denver is mostly new so they didn't have a lot of "authentic" Denver-like stuff. We eventually found an antique place way out somewhere that had some neat things. Weary and bored, we headed to the airport early because there was a United strike going on and we didn't want to get delayed again. In the end, we had a relatively uneventful trip home. One of the things that struck me was how much I missed the humidity. It took several days before we could breathe right again, but eventually everything was back to the way it was.

Alex, of course, has a pink flamingo in her yard.

Last updated 2001-Apr-15

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