Balls' Gang Goes to Denver

Well this could be a long post so grab a drink, something to snack on, a pillow if you get bored and fall asleep easily, and a squeaky tennis ball to amuse yourself with, last week myself and three girls went west to find Lars, mountains, and Nebraskan cornfields. Events may end up slightly out of order, alot happened what can I say?

So funny story about heading out. See we were expecting it to take about 24 hours to make it there so we timed things so we'd leave here about noon and get to Denver about noon. By about Nebraska we realized we were going to get there early, say 10 or so. By Colorado we realized we were going to get there really early, say 5:30 or so. So after the excitement of Kum & Go in Iowa and Nebraska by Night (White Wolf really needs to make that supplement for one of their games, I'll write it for them if need be) we hit Denver about 4:30 AM. We killed time by having an hour long breakfast but still arrived at Lars' place in the foothills at 6:30. So we enjoyed the sunrise over Denver and the scenery and then played cards in the driveway until John's (Lars' uncle) girlfriend came out of the house and discovered 4 college kids sitting there.

Which leads us to day 1: the girls napped in the morning but wanting to be on a normal sleep schedule I opted to stay awake. I met Lars' uncle John and played with Jabez and Mickey (John's dog) a little. Then Lars and I headed down to Denver to get some food and check out Valhalla's Games which was going out of business. Now they had a nice deal since they were going out of business, if you bought more then $400 dollars of stuff it was half-off. Lars and I figured we could find enough stuff between the two of us and went all out. I picked up over half a dozen books, plus Junta (which Aprill rather enjoys and after playing it I concur), the Star Munchkin expansion, and some other random stuff. Lars got Ninja Burger, some minis, a mat (for the minis), and another board game which I forget what it was called (Knight Warriors?). All in all I was pretty excited. I'll post the RPG book haul over on the gaming blog if you are interested. Afterwards we all went to Casa Bonito for dinner. It was a very interesting Mexican theme restaraunt. By this time I was dog tired however having been up nearly 40 hours and having driven halfway across the country, and deprived of my normal oxygen count and sacked out.

Wednesday Lars had us going down to Sox Place to help volunteer. It is a place for street youth to get a meal and hang out during the day. I was kind of nervous cause this could be pretty people interactive volunteering and with a category of people that through travelling I have been taught to give as much of a wide berth as possible so not exactly my thing. We helped clean and organize the place and then just kinda watched and talked to the kids coming in. They were an interesting bunch, not all that much different from your average group of people in the end. Not sure it's something I'd do again but certainly wasn't a wasted day and it was nice to be able to help out there. They do great stuff there. In the end once again we were bushed but first we made a meal for John, Brigit (his girlfriend), and Lauren (his daughter). It was good stuff. Then kinda crashed again as our bodies were still looking for oxygen.

Thursday we headed for the mountains. Or higher up since Lars lives in the foothills. Our specific target was Mt. Evans a 14,258 foot (according to the little bronze marker at the top) giant just up the road from Golden. The cool thing was it had a paved road right up to about 100 feet below the summit so we could "climb" it with relative ease. Or we could bike it like the dozen or so people were doing. It was very cool to do if a bit unnerving to realize your car is less then a foot from a couple hundred foot vertical drop at times (Dad's wariness of heights has worn off on me). We saw various mountain fauna, the mountain goats in particular had taken over the burned out restaraunt at the summit. After rolling down in neutral because Lars was nearly out of gas we at Beau Jo's Pizza in Idaho Springs. Great pizza! The irony was a couple hours later we headed over to Lars' godparents for supper. They had made another huge meal for us which we somehow managed to consume. That evening Lars and I kicked back in the hottub and enjoyed life (yea, you're jealous, admit it).

Friday we helped do some cleaning at Red Rocks Church which is where Lars is involved at. It was pretty simple stuff and it got us lunch. Their set-up is very interesting. They are in an amusement park set up by a mining company to dampen noise from their mining. It was the only way the city of Golden would let them mine the area. So it was a church in a small themepark. It was still pretty big. After that we visited the Colorado Mills mall and I found Alex a birthday present (The Lorax, which Al and Steph had, shockingly and appallingly, never heard of). Then we returned home for a relaxing night. The girls and I took advantage of the hot tub while Lars ran some errands.

Saturday Lars and the girls went to go volunteer at the Orphan Exchange. This meant they had to get up incredibly early while I got to sleep in because I was going to visit my aunt and uncle and cousins in Aurora. It was going to be an interesting day driving for me though because I was gonna have to cut across Denver to get to Aurora. The highlight of that drive was I25 with 12 lanes of traffic moving at 5 mph. I made it there fine though and spent some quality time with the relatives. It's a little strange around my cousins as they find me as a giant jungle gym and I'm not really used to that. Hopefully I wasn't to much trouble for my aunt and uncle. They cooked me a great meal though so I drove home nice and full.

Sunday we headed over to church early and it was a good thing too. The place was packed. A couple hundred people at least. I still like Evergreen more but it was a nice sermon and all. Worship band was quite good. Totally unuse to sitting in the crowd rather then lurking in the back. We then explored the theme park a bit and then headed over to Red Rocks Amphitheatre. Yea that Red Rocks, where the Beatles first played in America, where Dave Matthews, U2, and just about anybody whose ever been good has played. Its huge. You get winded walking up the stairs. Lars, Lauren, and Chris would run it three times a week in the summer. I wish I was that kind of physical shape. I took everyone out to eat at one of Lars' favorite places in Denver (The Yardhouse). It was great food and I got calamari! Yay! We took the rest of the day as an R & R day and went back and played games: Junta, Ninja Burger, and Blokus. Lots of fun. Junta's a blast. You get to assasinate close friends or overthrow them in a coup. Good clean family fun.

Monday was our departure day. It was also Lars' first day of class so he was gone all day. We milled around watching tv and cleaning up a bit. We weren't leaving til 6 that night so it was kind of a strained day in ways. We were sad to be leaving but happy to be going home and we didn't have anything to do til then. Eventually we hit the road and 16 hours later were back in Stevens Point. On the way Aprill did find her Iowa dip and we did have the crazed fun of staring at our cell phones waiting for them to switch time zones automatically in Nebraska. Kat never did get her picture of Nebraska cornfields because we never we actually in Nebraska during daylight hours.

All in all it was a great trip. We never got to the point of wanting to kill each other. Sometimes we needed a break from each other, especially me I suppose since I live alone now I am used to having a lot of personal space but everything turned out fine. I couldn't have gone out with a better group of friends or stayed with a better friend (and his relatives). So here we are back and school is just about to start. I'm actually pretty lonely, life is strange after spending a week with 3 cute girls and two very attention demanding dogs. Ah well the wheel keeps turning and I got a squeaky ball out of it :)