Bikes and beers.

Denver/Colorado is doing it to me. Hard.

My grandparents lived here years ago and has never had a negative word to say about this place. I am so happy to finally being able to get to visit this place. There's a lot to do city-wise and you are a stone's throw from any number of wilderness activities, of which we have unfortunately had little time to take advantage. But, we'll be in boulder by Sunday(?) and will hopefully get down and dirty.

We pulled into this burg late, late on Sunday after another long, long day on the road. The house is very nice and comfortable, but we were instructed that we ought keep the door locked at all times and telling locals of where we live has provoked a few concerned "Eghhh". Since then, as its been with the other cities, we hit the ground running and we haven't really stopped moving since.

This last Wednesday, Kim and I went on this excursion with a band of biking misfits known as the Denver Cruisers. It is a lot like Critical Mass, for those of you who know of it. But the difference here is that every week they have a different theme and everyone dresses up in costume for this bar-hopping bike ride through downtown Denver. This weeks theme was 'Ugly Sweaters and Moustaches', so Kim and I hit the local Salvation Army (which Lizz commented had a very picked over feel to it) and armed ourselves with eyebrow pencils, and headed down to the Ginn Mill. We got there at 7 and NO ONE was there. We thought we had been tricked, but Kim went inside and ask the bartender and he assured us that S was going D. So we walked around for a little while and headed back at 8 and the bar was filled wall to wall with biker kids wearing priceless gems of the 70s, 80s, and 90s and sporting their various takes on what it meant to be a moustache. After a little drinking and some friend-making (CHRIS HUDSON!) we hit the streets with the more than 75-100 other bikers.



From there we hit a few bars with the brigade. More friend-making ensued (MICHELLE, CAYENNE, AND ILYANA!)








This is a photo of some of the hooli-est of hooligans that we came in contact.









After the second bar Kim split off to go explore the club scene with Michael and Lizz went to go read a little HP. So I suited up solo and inquired of the other riders where our next stop was and they're reply was "THE CIRCLE OF DEATH". Having no idea what this meant but being very excited to find out I followed. As it turned out it was an amphitheater in Civic Center Park, in which it seemed to be the common practice for people to ride in one direction around the circle while others rode around in the opposite direction making for a lot of crash ups and carnage. There was a man hanging out in the center of all this with a homemade speaker box carriage that was pumping some tunes, so as I have been known to do in situations I do not fully understand I decided dancing was my only recourse. This quickly caught on and in no-time the circle was a dance floor. It was a very fun time, my favorite of all that I've had in Denver.






This isn't a picture of the week I was there, but this gives some idea of what was going on. There were WAY more people the week I was there.






The rest of the crew is now waking, Kim and I are going to Red Rocks Amphitheater today to see the Monolith Festival (Vampire Weekend, The Fratellis, Devotchka, Dressy Bessy, and mucho more.) Lizz and Mike are coming along and we're all going to do a little hike before the show.

Love you all. Hope you are all very well.