This past weekend, I went to Boulder, Colorado for the Gopher game at UC. Thoughts:
-Until Thursday night, I've never been paid to get off a plane. But Delta paid us a fair amount each to do so, to fly to Denver on Friday morning instead of late Thursday night. Living 15 minutes from the MSP airport makes this much easier. My wife and I both feel like we've gotten our pound of flesh from the travel industry.
-Over the weekend, we stayed at a friend's place in Broomfield, near Hwy 36 and the Northwest Parkway. On Friday, after getting our things settled, we went to Boulder and rented E-bikes. I hadn't been to Boulder in almost 20 years, and in the years since I had visited, Boulder has really turned into a bicycling hotspot. As a civil engineer who dabbles in recreational cycling, it's hard to NOT notice it. Trails everywhere, bike lanes in the street that are separated by actual physical barriers, and TONS of all types of bikes. Mountain, road, gravel, hybrids. The amount of bike-and-ped focused infrastructure in and around Boulder and the NW Denver suburbs is much more than just an engineering spec. This is much closer to what Complete Streets policies are intended to do. It takes dedicated, high-level strategic decisions by the cities, counties, and Colorado Legislature for this to really be a thing.
-On Friday night, our friends had bought tickets for a bluegrass concert at the Chatauqua Auditorium, a park/converted summer camp on the mesa above Boulder. By summer camp, think Dirty Dancing-esque camp. I don't know what the name of the band was, but after a long day it was a very enjoyable concert to relax to.
-Saturday morning dawned VERY early. So early that you couldn't buy beer. We headed up to the UC campus to pregame. We arrived early in the 7 AM hour, and beat the clerks to the parking lots. We'd paid for ours in advance, but no one from UCPTS came around to scan credentials or check passes.
-The others in our group had decided to make the 14-hour drive out to Denver for the game. In their rig contained the buckets (making their 4th road game appearance), as well as a recently obtained large flattop grill. Before the game started, we had a very large crowd of Gopher fans around our tailgate spot. One of the guys has taken great pride in using the flattop to cook a very large quantity of pancakes, French toast, and bacon. He may have been worried about leftovers, but by the time we went up to the stadium, nothing he cooked went in the trash can. It was an effort that
@utee94 would appreciate.
-This road game was quite an affair. I saw several people whom I hadn't seen in many years, and their current environs were from all over the country. Also, every flight between the Twin Cities and Denver on Thursday and Friday (and back Sunday and Monday) were full of Gopher fans. The northwest quadrant of the stadium was full of Gopher fans, with others in chunks scattered all over the place.
-The CU campus is quite friendly. The exterior is all
-Between the 11 AM MDT start time and the ass-whooping administered by the Gophers, it really took the vinegar out of the crowd, if it ever existed. As I overheard several times, no one can remember the last time there was a morning game in Boulder. Students had a pretty good turnout (filled most of their section), but were largely gone by the end of the 3rd quarter.
-Folsom Field is the 16th stadium in which I have seen a Division 1-A football game. The homes, in no particular order:
Minnesota x2
Iowa
Wisconsin
Michigan
Nebraska
Ohio State
Maryland
Iowa State
Washington
Texas
Vanderbilt
Missouri
Arkansas
Tennessee
Colorado
-I've said that Washington is the prettiest setting in college football, but Colorado and Utah have to be 2A and 2B. Just a gorgeous setting at the base of the Flatirons and Wasatch Ranges, respectively. The stadium itself is easy to move around in, even with a solid home crowd. Concession lines weren't obscenely long.
-I've mentioned that Weather was nice at the start, but it got REALLY hot by the end of the game. Also, the altitude was a factor. Unlike heat in Minnesota, where there is always a certain amount of background humidity, heat at altitude is tinder dry. Everyone was thirsty and hot at the end of the game. Fortunately, we had a lot of water in our coolers back at the parking area. We stuck around until about 4
-I don't know if anyone hustled down to the Spring for Air Force-Utah State in the nightcap, but I know there was some chatter about doing so.
-We did end up going back to where we were staying instead of Colorado Springs.
-Sunday we had entry passes for the Bear Lake area of Rocky Mountain National Park, and we did a couple miles of hiking. I fancy myself to be in pretty decent shape, but hiking at 9,000 feet above MSL is an ass-kicker. I could definitely feel that the air I was sucking down had a lot less oxygen than I was used to.
-Estes Park is a sister city to Wisconsin Dells and Gatlinburg, Tennessee. Kitchy tourist central.
-Denver International Airport was ridiculed from all quarters as a horribly expensive boondoggle when it was being built and opened in the mid-90s. However, with the completion of the RTD rail line and virtually no issues with airfield congestion in the 25 years since it opened, no one is complaining any more. Fun fact: Ames Construction out of Minneapolis did almost all of the grading for DIA.
-6 AM flights are for the birds. I did work after got home yesterday morning, and my sense of time was all blown to pieces.
Overall, a very fun trip.
