Rocky Mountain High

As many of you know, I spent this weekend in the high country of Colorado. The mission of this trip was for me, my sister, and my brother-in-law to see some people in Denver and then to travel up to the small town of Leadville to see our grandparents and other relatives that were unable to make it to my sister's wedding a few months ago for whatever reason. Now to give you a quick background, Leadville is a tiny little town tucked away about two hours west from Denver in the mountains. Consequently, this town is isolated from a great deal of new technologies and advances in modern life such as, department stores, the Internet, acceptable clothing styles, and to some extent, racial equality. Besides all that, the town is a great place to visit and has a number of things to do in the summer such as climbing mountains, kayaking, fishing, and any other number of outdoors things that you can do. The only problem with this? You are literally two miles above sea level so just trying to tie your shoes while chewing a stick of gum can leave you feeling like Tara Reid after a long night of vodka, cigarettes, and a few irreconcilable gaps in memory. The point is that there is much to do, but there is also little to do.

So where am I going with this? I decided that during this trip I was going to do something for you, the readers. What is it that I did? I ripped off and idea from my favorite writer, Bill Simmons, and kept a running diary of the entire thing. So sit back and enjoy a wild ride to the top of the Rockies...

FRIDAY AFTERNOON
3:15 p.m.: At the airport with nothing to do. These new security measures seem to have done nothing. The only difference I notice is that I have to put my bathroom products (gay sounding?) in my suitcase and check it rather than fly carry-on. Oh yeah, that and the fact that I had to get here two and half hours early. This sucks. Let's get sloshed.

3:45 p.m.: DFW airport is filled with beautiful people today. It looks like a club scene from Miami Vice. No joke. Everyone is dressed nice, talking on their cell phones or flirting with each other. There is, however, a small section of average Joes that seem to be left out of the loop. Also, nobody seems interested in talking to me. It's like a game of beautiful person Duck, Duck Goose, only I'm not even getting the courtesy of a head tap. Not that I care. I'm just saying.

4:15 p.m.: Boarding the flight, only I don't see the seat numbers. How can you have assigned seats without displaying where the seat is? I'm freaking out. Where is 22F?!?! Oh, whoops, there they are. I'm just too tall to see them. Now I have to travel back through the flow of people heading onto the airplane and to their seats as I sheepishly apologize to the entire plane. Now I know what a salmon feels like.

4:21 p.m.: We have TV on the plane! And I don't mean a few large screens from the ceiling. I mean direct TV on a screen twelve inches from my face. Jackpot. How long has this been going on? Why wasn't I notified? If I had known that every time I flew I could watch PTI on ESPN as I drifted in and out of sleep in a "I drank way to much at the airport bar" haze, I would have way more excuses to fly. In fact, I brought a book to read, but I think that that idea has been officially put to rest. Oh well, nice try. Technology wins again.

4:51 p.m.: Derailed! Turns out that it costs five bucks to continue watching TV on the plane. Forget that, out comes the reading material. No way I'm paying to watch TV for an hour and forty-five minutes. I'm starting to get a little peeved about this whole thing, but luckily that final pint of beer from the cheesy, Texas-themed sports bar is starting to get the best of me. I might not last much longer.

4:52 p.m.: (Reading) words look like this.

4:53 p.m.: (Reading) word slook lik ethis.

4:54 p.m.: (Reading) wordslooklikethis.

4:55 p.m.: (Reading) worgdkslooikslitehes.

4:56 p.m.: (Drunk) Sleep.

5:45 p.m.: I wake up to hear that they are about to start serving drinks. This is good news because my throat is feeling dryer than a comedy show featuring Janeane Garofalo. ZING! Oh yeah, I've only been awake a minute, but I got jokes. On second thought, maybe I should go back to sleep.

5:50 p.m.: I order a Coke, but make the mistake of not specifying that I need the entire can. So instead of a tall tasty beverage I am staring blankly a shot-glass-worth of soda. This cannot be stood for. I ask for the entire can only to have the flight attendant, who looks like she plays Bunko with my mother and her book club friends, shake the empty can in front of me like it was a cat toy and give me a disapproving head nod. Frontier Airlines, gotta love it.

(Side Note: Shouldn't there be a rule about old ladies being nice to everyone? I mean I always grew up with the idea that old ladies lived only to make you grilled cheese sandwiches on request and give you gum drops when you behaved. Maybe my grandma raised the bar a bit too high for everyone else. Either way, I am NOT cool with sarcastic older ladies, especially on plane flights. If we no longer have younger stewardesses, then I better feel comfortable enough to ask these older ones to help me tie my shoes and randomly receive brownies from them in the mail. Getting atrocious looking sweaters and cards with checks for thirteen dollars will be our next step. Ok, I'm rambling...)

5:51 p.m.: Polished off my drink. I am secretly hoping the flight attendant's soul returns to her body and she'll bring me the rest of my Coke. No, I'm not obsessing.

6:00 p.m.: Not sure what this means, but my napkin from Frontier Airlines illustrates the available destinations you can fly from through the use of a small map of the United States. Strange thing is that from what I gather, you can only go to and from Denver to a select number of cities. That is, you can't go from Phoenix to San Diego, but you can go from Denver to either of them and vice-versa. Strange. Even stranger, there are seven exceptions to this: Kansas City, Salt Lake City, Nashville, St. Louis, and inexplicably Cancun, Cozumel, and Puerto Vallarta. Is this really the best business strategy? Who are they focusing on as their target travelers? It's as if someone in Denver was like, "Ok, we need start an airline, but try not to make a profit. If we're gonna do this, we need to stick to our values: Travel where us Coloradoans want to go and nowhere else?" I swear if they threw South Padre Island in there, they would have an airtight grasp on the elusive "Denver Broncos fan and Spring Breaker" demographic. I'm not going to try to understand this anymore.

6:05 p.m.: Redemption! My former nemesis, the deceivingly friendly looking stewardess, returns with a new drink along with a full can to go along with it. Bonus points for the can having a giant Denver Broncos logo on it. Frontier Airlines, gotta love it.

6:19 p.m.: I've had it with these motherfucking snakes on this motherfucking plane! Sorry, I had to do it.

6:21: p.m.: TONS of turbulence. I mean drink rattling, grab your seat and start praying turbulence. You know what I am talking about. The kind of shaking that ends with a long exhalation of breath only to find yourself clutching the arm rests like you’re the blown away guy from the Maxwell ads, like this.

This got me wondering, why does everyone react to turbulence the same way? No one really looks at each other; they just look around the interior of the plane --specifically the ceiling-- and out the window. It's as if everyone suddenly has a degree in aviation engineering and is looking for some issue that may have taken place with the plane. Once our curious minds have been reassured that our talents for fixing mid-air engine and flap mishaps are not needed, we settle back in our seats and act like nothing happened. Somehow no one reacts and we all pretend that we didn't just drop one hundred feet. I have never understood this. Why act like we are not scared when nearly everyone, except the drunk guy in the back and the lady on the way to stab her cheating husband, are absolutely losing their minds over the thought of crashing to the ground? We shouldn't hold in our emotions. Why can't we all just agree to scream? Will we ever know?

6:23 p.m.: Forgot to mention that something is rattling very audibly on the plane. This is not a good sound on an airplane. I repeat: This is NOT a good sound on an airplane. No sound=Good. Rattling=Bad. Frontier Airlines, gotta love it.

5:57 p.m.: No, we have not traveled back in time as some of you might be thinking by the time stamp on this entry. We have crossed into Mountain Time, throwing us back an hour. How about that? I gave you a whole extra hour of my life? And with it, I give you this nugget of truth:
I was wrong earlier when I said we no longer had TV on the plane. We have three channels to choose from. Its like we have been cut off at a bar after throwing back a potent combination of beer, rum, beer, and a lot more rum in less than an hour; and consequently, now having our choice of water, Sprite, Ginger Ale or nothing at all. The only ones still drinking are the ones who have the "in" with the bar tender. Or in this case, aren't so cheap that they will swipe their credit cards for five dollars to get sixty more channels that I refuse to pay for. Yes, I am unreasonably bitter. Anyways, the channel line up now goes like this:

1). The channel with the evoloving map of where our plane is flying at that exact moment. Only problem with this is that the plane is such a large icon on the screen that it stretches from Dallas to just south of Denver. From the looks of it, I could walk the entire length of the trip and never leave the plane. So that is one problem. The other is that it is boring. Sorry, Mapquest, the truth hurts.

2). The Generic Airline Channel is our second option. In the past ten minutes it has touted some Christian rocker immediately followed by a feature about the USA ski team's Spyder uniforms. I'm nodding off just writing about it. Time to move on.

3). A channel just displaying Frontier's logo and their slogan "A Whole Different Animal," which I have stared at for forty minutes and still can't figure out. I get that each plane has an animal on it. I get that. What I don't get is what this has to do with flying. I mean we have a lynx or something on our plane. I would understand if it were a bird, but a small feral cat? I'm confused. This would be the equivalent of J.C. Penny plastering pictures of Teen Wolf all over their stores and using the tagline, "J.C. Penny is Oooooouut of Sight." Makes just as much sense to me. I think I need another drink.

6:07p.m.: Denver! We're here, and not a second too soon. The lady next to me had a "why does this guy next to me keep pulling out a notebook and scribble something in it every five minutes?" look on her face, she and was acting a little too antsy for me. I think it’s best if her and me don't see each other for a while.

I think it all went down hill when her and I had the following conversation:

Her: "What are you writing about in your notebook there? Are you reviewing a book?"
Me: "No, this might sound strange, but I am writing about all the stuff the passengers are doing and junk like that."
Her: (surprised) "Why?"
Me: "I'm not entirely sure."
...(long silence)...
Her: "Are you going to write about me now?"
Me: "I think so. Anything special you want me say?"
Her: (Looking at her husband then back at me, a bit disturbed now) "Just make it nice."

I didn't say another word to her until we landed and she asked why she couldn't see the Rocky Mountains? Rather than explain the intricacies of cloudy weather and its affects on vision, I went with the line from Dumb and Dumber and said, "Yeah that John Denver is full of bullshit, man." She didn't laugh. I think it’s best if I sit the next few plays out.

(Side Note: I had to be very discreet writing that. She was watching me like I was a lost fourth grader walking past a NAMBLA convention. Just eerie. I think I should also mention that she is clutching her husband's hand right now. There's a lesson here.)

6:11 p.m.: Just thinking about time zones. Does anyone else not switch his or her watches in a new time zone, like I do? To me it's kind of like cheating on your time zone (stay with me, here). Just because you are on vacation doesn't mean that your Central Time Zone or Eastern Time Zone, or heaven forbid sweet Pacific Time Zone, isn't waiting for you back at home, tapping its foot and worrying about you. If you ask me I'd say that when you move into a time zone, you're married to it until you move out. I'm babbling its been a long day, never mind.

6:12 p.m.: Screw it; I'm changing back to Central Time.

7:12 p.m.: That's better.

7:30 p.m.: Remember how I said that DFW was a game of Beautiful Person Duck Duck Goose? Well, If there's a game like that being played here in Denver International, I don't want to be a part of it.

7:42 p.m.: In the ground transportation bus when my brother-in-law mentions something about how great it is to have XM Radio after hearing it being played from the bus PA system. Almost on cue, Cher's "Do You Believe in Life After Love?" song comes on. We all exchange frowns, but say nothing.

7:45 p.m.: The bus driver comes on the PA and sounds eerily like the German-fetish guy from Super Troopers. I keep expecting him to pull out a pink feather boa and try to start tickling me.
Also, people are starting to give me weird looks as I am writing in this notebook. I'm only a few minutes into Denver and I'm officially "That Weird Guy on the Bus." Damn.

7:47 p.m.: (Singing to myself) ..and maybe I'm too good for you, oh! Do you believe in life after love? (after love, after love)...I can feel something inside me say, I really dont think you're strong enough, no. Damn you, Cher! I hate this song.

7:50 p.m.: We leave the rental car joint and head out to the hotel. The great thing about Denver is that if you are lost all you have to do is find the mountains, and you'll know where west is. Even the most directionally challenged girl could do it. Unless you actually go into the mountains, then they are useless. Just keep that in mind the next time you are in Denver.

8:17 p.m.: We are lost. We are IN the mountains and we are lost. Somehow we shot past the city and ended up in the mountains near a heard of buffalo and the tombstone of Buffalo Bill Cody. I swear that this actually happened right after I wrote that last entry. You couldn't make up a more ironic turn of events. Add in the fact that we are hungry, cranky, and its foggy now. Welcome to Denver everybody. Two more days to go!


This was Part I of the coulmn. I will be back with Part II as soon as possible.