A typical (for me) trip to Denver

With summer vacation winding down, I was looking for a little R&R time away from McCook and I got it in the form of a text message from a good friend of mine who recently moved to Denver. Norm (affectionately nicknamed by his friends from the character at the bar in the television comedy series Cheers) told me about a concert coming up we should go to at Fiddler's Green that featured Boston and The Doobie Brothers. Norm and I have gone to several concerts before and this sounded like the perfect trip to take before college begins in another couple of weeks.

We decided that he would book the tickets and I would reserve a hotel room close to the site so we could walk instead of drive. Our history involves consuming a few adult beverages before we go and that doesn't combine well with driving in Denver. Norm gave me two hotels that are less than a mile from the concert site, one of which we had stayed in before. That's the one I contacted first and, unfortunately, they were already full so I tried the second one and successfully booked us there.

It was going to be a short one-day trip because Norm manages a bar and restaurant in Evergreen, west of Denver, and Wednesday was his only day off but a day is better than nothing so we put the trip together. He somehow scored us second row seats and with reservations at the hotel already made, I left Wednesday morning with high expectations of a great time.

The first interesting development occurred as I approached the suburbs of Denver on I-76. There was an old, run-down car in the right hand lane pretty far up ahead that was obviously going well below the speed limit and all the traffic ahead of me was shifting to the left-hand lane to pass and I did too. As I approached the car, it was obvious it was going no faster than 45 m.p.h. with a 75 m.p.h. speed limit, which was curious to me because you can be pulled over for going too slow as well as going too fast. As I got closer to the slow car, I noticed with surprise it was carrying Nebraska 48 license plates and was occupied by what appeared to be four teenagers. I went by them too fast to recognize any of them but figured their low speed was caused either by a malfunctioning vehicle or a malady that I'm sure occurs more often now because of Colorado's new marijuana legislation.

You don't drive fast when you've smoked the funny stuff and are going back for more.

I got into Denver around 3 p.m. and the traffic was insane as I turned south on I-25 and headed for the hotel. Those people drive in that traffic at least twice a day on the way to and from work as I used to do in Tulsa and would never do again. I finally made it to my exit where Norm was waiting for me. As we were having a cocktail at Red Robin's, Norm told me I had booked a hotel that was five miles away from the concert site instead of half a mile and that we were going to have to make other plans to get there.

As it turned out, I used a booking site on-line rather than contacting the hotel directly and so even though I thought I was booking at the correct hotel, it turned out I wasn't. We checked in and secured a ride with the hotel courtesy van to Twin Peaks where we were going to have supper before going to the concert. Twin Peaks is a bar/restaurant based on the Hooters concept although, in my opinion, far superior and I had a few cocktails along with a green chili meatloaf, macaroni and cheese and broccoli and the meal, along with the scenery, was excellent.

While we were eating, it started raining hard and we became concerned that we were going to get drenched at the concert but the rain soon stopped and the night ended up being perfect.

We walked the rest of the way to the concert site, stopping a couple of times for liquid refreshments which made us late and The Doobie Brothers were already playing when we got to our seats. The only thing better than second-row seats are first row seats and we were excited to be so close. The Doobie's put on their usual professional show and Norm commented to me that all the members of the band seemed to play because of a real love for the music, unlike a lot of bands that just go through the motions. I don't know what I was doing during the time Boston was popular, because I was never a fan and after watching their show, I'm still not. They played for an hour and a half and I only recognized two of the songs they performed. I was certainly in the minority though because the rest of the crowd seemed to love them.

After the show, we were going to take a cab back to the hotel, but they were all gone when we got to the front gate so we took what they would call a rickshaw in Asian countries to the light rail. It was a two-seater carriage pulled by a bicycle and we were charged $15 for a ride that was less than a mile. We took the light rail back to the hotel and the problem there was that it was on the other side of the eight-lane Interstate.

Thankfully, a walking bridge had been built over the Interstate so we took that and it let us out in a parking lot above the hotel site.

We walked the length of the dividing line between the hotel and the parking lot and it was about a 10-foot drop to get to the hotel level. Norm asked me if I wanted to jump and I assured him I didn't. After a 15-minute search, we finally found a way down to our hotel that didn't require jumping off a ledge.

We got up the next morning, had breakfast at an Egg and I restaurant and then Norm headed back to the mountains and I headed home. Over breakfast, he asked me how I would feel if I ever took a trip where something didn't go wrong.

I told him I didn't think it would be very much fun.