Denver Trip

The Austin Family goes to Colorado





Wow. I'd like to retract my bitching and whinning about short trips, and that's all I'll say about that.

We packed a lot of stuff into our little 4 day trip to Colorado. What was at first just a weekend packed around an Eddie Izzard concert on Monday turned into a pretty packed couple of days, capped off by a hysterical performance by our favorite Executive Transvestite.

To start, we flew into Denver and headed straight for the Air Force academy to see the Falcons take on the Cowboys of Wyoming. In the past, I was pretty sure that Wyoming would have kicked our butts, (I say "our" because Air Force is the home team) but it turns out AF is pretty good this year. They won, but not terribly convincingly. If you don't know about Falcon football, for the past, I don't know, 20 years, the head coach, Fischer Deberry has had about 5 plays in his playbook and he runs them all in succession. They're all Option plays. Q-B runs, Q-B pitches out, Q-B hands off to running back, or drops back and throws to the only receiver. You'd think with a name like Air Force, they'd pass more. Anyway. We also found out that my dad is now the 3rd highest "ranking" civilian to hold season tickets. Way back in the late 60's, AF built a new stadium and my grandpa got tickets in the family section. These tickets were passed on to my dad and I'm sure one day to either me or my brother. I'm hoping they make a Rollman plaque somewhere on section M13 to commemorate the dynasty of airchair quarterbacks.

So a good time was had by all. I haven't been to a Falcons game in years, and it was such a treat because this represented a piece of my childhood. The memories of fly-bys and parachuters and the cadets marching onto the field and peanuts and cocoa and frigid cold days and sunburning hot days, they all came back to me and it felt like a home away from home. I'm glad I got Mrs. Austin to see the Drum and Bugle Corp, I'm glad Lil Miss Austin got to see the Bird and the "only performing mascot in the NCAA" (which is actually a peregrine falcon, not the guy dressed up, though he does do some fun stuff.) Afterwards we headed back to Casa Rollman and grilled up some burgers and chatted with everyone in what amounted to a family reunion. LMA got to see her great-grandparents, who are pretty great, as well as most of the great aunts and uncles, so it was pretty keen.

That was just Saturday.

Sunday we headed south to Colorado Springs to see my mom and step dad. We grabbed some coffee and headed to Canyon City and the Royal Gorge. The Royal Gorge is an 1100 foot crevace carved out by the Arkansas River. I don't know the distinction between gorge and canyon, but I guess the geologists among you will whisper this tidbit into your needy little ears. The point is, there's a bridge that goes over this chasm and it's pretty spectacular. Along with the shops and kiddie stuff, there's a gondola/tram that goes to each side, an incline railway that goes to the bottom and a Skycoaster that flings out over the abyss. We did all the attractions, and took a lot of pictures.

Mr. and Mrs. Austin at the Water Clock.


Mr. and Lil Miss Austin petting some (devil) goats. (I hate goats.)


Dad and Daughter riding the tram. (Scarier to me than the skycoaster, for real.)


Mrs. Austin was taking pictures of this while simultaneously on the phone checking how much life insurance money she could get.

So we spent a goodly amount of time trapsing around the Gorge and its Bridge and headed back. The next day was a pleasant lunch with the other great grandma, great aunt, grandma, Mrs. A, LMA and myself, then a nap, then off to downtown to hang out and see Eddie. We had some plans on going to a candy factory tour, or a movie, or Elitches, but by the time we actually got downtown we had just enough time to do nothing in particular. So we walked down to the Capital building, saw a drug deal, felt kind of threatened and out of place, ate some Subway and did some window shopping. 16th Street in Denver has changed a lot since I was there so it was fun to see what has changed, and what hasn't. Over all it was NOT fun to get lost while driving. Between having a 6 year gap in memory and all the construction going on, my normally keen geo and topographic mind was reduced to a stuttering nimwit full of holes and "I think this is it."

>	But we did make the show, and it was awesome. I remember seeing Seinfeld in Austin and not laughing this hard. Izzard is the funniest comedian today I think. Nods to Mitch Hedberg and Thomas Rhodes, but for my money, give me a British Transvestite talking about Neanderthals. Top notch.

So we made it home without incident. It was a good trip and everyone behaved, for the most part.