BMFRTE Day 14: Denver

Thursday 8/30, the Super 8 motel, just outside Nebraska City, NE:

We manage to get up at a semi-reasonable hour and hit the continental breakfast before heading out.


Yep, southwest Iowa just doesn't get any better than this...








Now, I'd love to say that this post is going to tell of various and sundry crazy adventures, but most of the day was spent driving across Nebraska...

Yes, this is actually the place where they thought up Arbor Day. Because there weren't any trees. To date, no one has had the heart to tell Nebraskans that corn isn't a tree.


The first half of our day consists of driving through flat cornfields. I pop in today's road trip mix...

8/30/07: Country Mix

1) Quarter Horse - Unknown
2) White Horse - Laid Back
3) Wild Horses - The Sundays
4) Ghost Riders in the Sky - The Outlaws
5) Country Grammar - Nelly
6) Out of Habit - BR5-49
7) Who's Cheatin' Who- Alan Jackson
8) Before He Cheats - Carrie Underwood
9) It's a Little Too Late - Mark Chesnutt
10) Boot Scootin' Boogie - Brooks&Dunn
11) Born Country - Alabama
12) Thank God I'm a Country Boy - John Denver
13) All We Ever Find - Tim McGraw
14) Long Gone Lonesome Blues - Hank Williams
15) Don't It make My Brown Eyes Blue - Crystal Gayle
16) Gentle on My Mind - John Hartford
17) Cowboy Take Me Away - Dixie Chicks
18) Take Me Home, Country Roads - John Denver

We stopped for lunch at a nice Nebraskan restaurant...


Note that via Ed's artistic direction, this picture's center is a sign that says "cold beer". This is not an accident.






You've no doubt heard of the World Famous Crystal Palace Revue, but never knew exactly where it was. Well, here it is. Today featuring: a shoot-out! On the street! Too bad we can't stick around here in the middle of nowhere for another 6 hours. I mean, it's fun for the whole family.



After yummy buffalo burgers, we continue west. Then, it what is possibly the most exciting development since crossing into Nebraska, the scenery changes from flat endless corn fields, to perceptibly hilly endless corn fields! Amazing!

Welcome to Colorful Colorado, a Laconic Land of Alluring Alliteration.








By now, we're running a bit behind (a surprise, no doubt, to readers of this thread of posts) since we got up a little late, it's a lo-o-o-ong way across Nebraska, and we spent too long eating buffalo burgers. It's just too hard to rush when you're in country like this. When we get into the Denver area, we hit some bad traffic, and wind up getting to Sarah's house pretty late.

Sarah is an old friend from LA, who grew up in Denver and eventually moved back. We're going to the Broncos game tonight, and our lateness means we wind up arriving at the stadium just after the opening kickoff.


It's preseason, so I guess it's customary to arrive late.











Are you ready for some football??












Broncos win! I'm still undefeated picking teams to root for on this road trip.





We are all thrilled to see the Broncos win- Sarah because it's the home team, Ed because it's his first time in Mile High and he's pumped up about it, and me because the Arizona Cardinals, who have just lost, are on List 4.

Like King Kauffman of Salon.com, I have a very complicated calculus of teams I root for. All teams fall on one of 4 lists:

List 1 - Teams I Always Root For:

St. Louis Cardinals
St. Louis Blues
Missouri Tigers
Pomona College Sagehens

List 2 - Teams I Almost Always Root For:

Anaheim Angels
LA Clippers
Yale Bulldogs
Virginia Tech Hokies
New York Rangers
New York Giants (new as of most recent SuperBowl)
Golden State Warriors (new as of move to Bay Area)

List 3 - Teams I Am Open to the Possibility of Rooting For

Any Team not on Lists 1,2, or 4

List 4 - Teams I'd Rather Hit Myself in the Balls With a Hammer Than Root For

New York Yankees
Minnesota Twins
Detroit Red Wings
Duke
UCLA
New England Patriots
Arizona Cardinals


List 1 is basically the original home teams. Now, I haven't lived in StL for 18 years, and in the meantime I've lived all over the damned place, so I try to adopt at least one local team everywhere I live. List 2 is basically composed of the teams I've adopted from the various places I've lived. List 4 is composed of teams that have royally pissed me off, typically by beating a List 1 team in a postseason event.

Movement between lists is rare, though in 2006, the Detroit Tigers moved from List 4 to List 3. They had been on List 4 as a result of beating the Cardinals in the 1968 World Series. My grandpa was at game 7, and the tough loss in the late innings scarred him for life. He still tells the story sometimes when we go to games. But the Tigers redeemed themselves by losing in the 2006 World Series.

Of course, within List 3 things get very complicated. For instance, if the Mets were playing the Tigers in the World Series, I'd root for the Mets, because although I don't like either team very much, the Mets never traumatized any family members. But if the Orioles were playing the Tigers in the ALCS, I'd root Orioles, who were once upon a time the St. Louis Browns.

Anyway, the Arizona Cardinals are a List 4 team, courtesy of playing 30 years in St. Louis and almost never getting to the playoffs, and on the couple occasions when they did, losing immediately, and then, after all that losing, demanding that the city build them a new stadium or they'd leave. Thankfully, Missourians being a fairly down-to-earth, practical lot, we said "OK, buh-bye." So, I was very pleased to see the Cardinals lose.



Ed, Sarah, Me










After the game, we head back to Sarah's, and stay up for a little bit talking. But she's a teacher, so she gets us at a crazy hour, and we have to get up then too, because tomorrow we have to get all the way back to Vegas in time to meet MK and J-Rob, who are flying out for a guys' weekend. So, we compromise and go to bed around 2, which means 4 hours of sleep. Another night of little sleep. Oh well, sleep when you're dead and all that...