GABF

Posted on October 12, 2016 by dhill

Thursday, October 6

I’d been to the Great American Beer Festival before. That was at least twenty years ago. We bought tickets at the door. The tasting glass was actually glass. You could get as many samples of beer, one ounce at a time, as long as you had the glass. Sometimes people dropped the glasses – the sound of the breaking glass had a ringing quality that allowed it to be heard over the general hubbub of the crowd. People at the epicenter would call out an “Oooooh!” that rippled through the hall. No more beer for some poor guy. This occurred with increasing frequency as the night progressed, as you might imagine.

All they had was beer; there was no food. This was back in Currigan Hall. It was just a big open space (the world’s largest rigid space frame when it was built in 1969). There was a balcony that went all the way around the inside, just a wide corridor, really. Nowhere to sit, but you could lean on the railing take in the spectacle of the next dropped tasting glass. We found a vending machine up there, Funyuns and other long shelf life pseudo-food.

That was then. Things are different now. I haven’t even tried to get tickets as they sell out so fast. This year I’m told it took sixty-seven minutes. Sixty thousand people will taste nearly seventy-five hundred different beers. It’s the largest beer festival in the country, attended by people from all over the world.

Jason was kind enough to give me a ticket this year.

I don’t make it downtown very often. Last time was for the Bronco’s parade back in February. Genae and I took the bus, the Flatiron Flyer, to Union Station. That probably would have been the easiest thing to do tonight but Genae suggested I make an adventure of it and take the train instead. We have a few free passes, so what the heck.

After an early dinner I headed to the train station. I didn’t know exactly where it is, so I just punched the address into the phone and set off. Naturally, it took me to where they’re still building another parking lot, on the wrong side of the tracks from where I needed to be. Finally in the garage, I get a prime end spot next to the stairs. As I’m stepping out of the garage, I hear a train whistle. There’s the train, pulling into the station. Several minutes earlier than I expect. On reflection, it must have been sitting there the whole time as this station is at the end of the track (for now). It wasn’t pulling into the station from the east, full of commuters, it was coming from the west, empty.

I didn’t exactly run to the train, but I did pick up my pace a bit when a fellow ran past me. I needed to validate my free ticket. The guy who ran by me was working one of the credit card machines. I looked at the other but didn’t see anything about validation. I asked the other guy if he knew how to validate my pass but he didn’t. We got on the train, sat across the aisle from each other. How much trouble could I get into for not having my pass validated?

It’s a nice car, brand new. We sat a while before the doors closed and we departed. I never went through a turnstile so I assumed somebody would come by to check for tickets. I chatted with my fellow passenger. He, too, was headed to the festival. He’d spend the evening there with his son, then Uber home to Erie. Before long our conductor arrived. I told him I failed to validate my pass. He told me what I should look for next time and took my pass, which he immediately gave back to me.

When we got off the train we immediately met two women who asked us if we knew how to get to the beer fest. “We think we know where we’re going. You’re welcome to come with us.” On the train he had asked me where we needed to go. I said I thought it was 14th and Champa. We’d hop on the mall shuttle and head that way. Of course, half the people on the shuttle were going to GABF. Turns out I was off by a couple of blocks. The entrance is on 14th at California.

There was a line of people, four abreast, going through the glass doors. My train companion headed to will call and I went to get in line. At first I thought it was maybe fifty feet long. But it took a jog around a corner. Then underneath the building, past service entrances, along the single row of parking, almost to 12th Street. How many people in a line two and a half blocks long and four across? And the place has been open for about an hour, so how many people were there already?

Mercifully, the line moved pretty quickly. As we made our way toward the front a steady stream of people passed us on their way to the end. Lots of guys had necklaces made of pretzels. Take a bite of pretzel between samples to clear the palate. Judging by the number of pretzels, some of these guys were serious. Some were not so much necklaces as bandoliers, reaching from left shoulder to right waist.

Once inside I headed over to say hi to Jason. His team was pouring last year’s medal winners in the back corner of the entrance hall. I had my first sample right next door, the Bleidorf Kolsch from Periodic Brewing.

I downloaded the GABF app a few days ago but haven’t played around with it. I was thinking I’d be able to check off the beers I’d sampled. Instead, it gave me all sorts of sliders. I’d have been happy with a checkbox or a 1-5 star rating. It also wanted me to sign on to Facebook. Too much bother. Instead, I grabbed a pen from Port City Brewing and circled all the beers I tried in the 32 page beer list we got at the door.

My plan, more or less, was to stick to lighter beers for the most part, avoid standing in line, skip Colorado brewers and anything I can buy at the store, and walk every mile of the show. I also wanted to keep in mind the train schedule; my choices were 9:21 and 10:21.

I’m a lightweight. I sampled only a fraction of a percent of the available beers. I tried a variety of fruit beers: watermelon, black cherry, blueberry, peach. I like my fruit beer to be subtle. These were all pretty “in your face” except the blueberry. The only dark beer I tried was a chocolate chipotle – the chocolate was just undertones and the chipotle a smoldering aftertaste.

By the time I’d made a couple laps of the place I decided I’d had enough and made my way out. I arrived at 16th Street about sixty seconds too late to grab the shuttle. I expected to see another one soon; I expected one to pass me before I walked the length of the mall. This was optimistic: I never saw another shuttle. I made it to the train station at 9:24, missing the train by three minutes.

My free pass also works for the bus. When I texted Genae to tell her I’d be waiting nearly an hour for the train she suggested I take the Flatiron Flyer and she’d pick me up and shuttle me to the train station to fetch my car. Seemed like a lot of bother, and it kept her up after her bedtime, but in the end it saved me ten or fifteen minutes. And saved me pacing up and down the platform for an hour as I didn’t see any benches.

I enjoyed the evening. The beer festival isn’t something I need to do every year but it was fun and interesting.

Broncos Victory Parade

Posted on February 11, 2016 by dhill

Tuesday, February 9

It’s a bit odd, as a fan, to say “we won the Super Bowl!” Of course, as fans we contributed very little. We didn’t go to any games; the team couldn’t hear us cheering them on. But we were carried along with the team on their emotional roller coaster: happy when the team won, not so happy when they didn’t.

Timing is everything. My gig in San Francisco ended just as the city was getting ready for the big party. I was gone before they had everything set up at the end of Market Street. Being there for the preparations was a bit of a vicarious thrill. Okay, thrill overstates it a bit. But I did have a sense of being included in something big. Being there before the game, watching them put up the giant Lombardi Trophy on the building across the street, got me more excited for the game.

Every winning team gets a big parade when they get back home. When the Broncos won their first Super Bowl we were in Phoenix so we missed out on everything. They say 650,000 fans turned out for the parade after Super Bowl XXXII and half a million came out for the one the next year. For this year’s parade, they were expecting similar sized crowds. Genae and I decided we’d join in the fun.

I’m not a huge fan of large crowds. As large crowds go, Broncos games themselves aren’t bad. For most of the people at any given game it’s not their first time there. They know where to park, how to get in and out of the stadium. Things are pretty orderly. Concert crowds generally aren’t as good. Ingress and egress are often in the dark, more people have navigational problems.

A parade crowd of half a million people is the equivalent of four Broncos games and ten arena concerts at the same time. The largest mass of people would be in Civic Center Park. A bus to Union Station was our best option. There was no possible chance of parking anywhere near downtown, and we don’t have a convenient train. We felt our best strategy was to walk to the Park N Ride, take the Flatirons Flyer to Union Station, and stay as close to there as possible.

The weather couldn’t have been better – bright and sunny, not a cloud in the sky, calm. We left the house earlier than our original plan, which turned out to be a good decision. There were about a hundred people lined up there before us. The Flatiron Flyer runs about every fifteen minutes.

The first FF1 arrived a couple of minutes late and took on only about a dozen passengers; standing room only. It’s a nice bus, a coach. The driver closes the door, tells the guy still on the stairs to move behind the yellow line. Everything in order, he starts to pull away from the curb. Unfortunately, an alarm is sounding: beep, beep, beep. He stops, opens the doors, closes the doors, tries again. Beep, beep, beep. Pushes some buttons. Gets on the phone. No, not a cell phone: a handset like from an old pay phone. The pear-shaped driver gets out, opens a couple of access doors, fiddles with this and that. Gets back in. Beep beep, beep.

Before long a supervisor showed up and the bus was quickly on its way. By now, some people had given up on waiting. Others ventured on to local buses to get down to Colfax. Through attrition, we’d moved up and were perhaps sixtieth in line. At a dozen per bus, we’d be here quite a while. We discussed our options. Maybe Michael could take us down and drop us off. We could get an Uber – one was seven minutes away. Or we could wait.

We waited, and our patience paid off. The supervisor announced that he had four empty buses on their way here. The next bus was, indeed, empty. When we boarded, the driver kept his hand over the money slot. We’re getting a free ride – that saves us nine bucks. A nice coach, appointed almost like an airliner: overhead bins, cloth seats, fan and light (but no tray). We were underway without any drama, fifty-six people dressed up in orange and blue.

Genae likes the navigator app on her phone almost as much as she likes checking the weather radar when it’s stormy. She shows me the map: a red spider-web. Everything going downtown is congested. Even so, it didn’t take too long to get to Union Station. I had never been there before. They recently finished the big underground bus station, but it was all new to me.

This is a bigger bus station than I expected, a concourse with at least ten gates on each side. We follow the crowd up the escalator and out onto the plaza. Amtrack and light rail lines terminate here from the north. The crowd flows south toward 16th Street. Normally, you can catch the Mall Ride here but today the Mall Ride is out of service. All their buses are lined up two by two, filling the concrete apron.

People are pushing strollers, pulling wagons, carrying children. The flow of people, a moment ago organized and directed in the bus station, like blood pulsing in a vein, is now more random. We went to the front of Union Station. People were lined up ten deep here so we went back to 16th and down a couple blocks to Larimer. Here it was only about six deep. We weren’t going to find anything better anywhere else.

We were in the second rank on the sidewalk, with three or four more between the curb and the barricade. The people in front of us had kids; the father wearing the daughter’s tiara on his baseball cap. There were strollers parked along the curb, and there were a lot of kids. There’s a stream of people behind us.

A guy comes up from behind me, says “Excuse me”, wanting me to move out of his way so he can get to the front. I ask him where he wants me to go and he has no answer. I turn my back on him. A few moment later he shoves me then steps in front of me. He now sees the strollers and kids blocking his way.

I said, “I know how you can get in the front row. Get here early.” He gives me a blank stare. “Oh, that’s right. You didn’t get here early. Too late for you.”

No more blank stare. “I’ll kick your ass!”

I chuckled. “Really? You’re going to kick my ass in front of all these people?”

“You could have just gotten out of my way.”

You could have just not been a dick.

Undeterred, he worked his way to the front. The guy next to me, not tiara guy, is with his wife and young daughter. “Good thing for him my daughter is here.”

Every now and then, a couple of police motorcycles would pass slowly, lights flashing. The crowd would get excited then realize it was nothing. There was something going on across 17th from us. A few minutes later some paramedics wheeled out a guy on a gurney. Finally, at about 12:15 we could see the first fire truck over the heads of the crowds. The parade was under way!

How do you get the job cleaning up after Thunder?

Engine 18 – Kubiak, Manning, Ware, Mrs B (with trophy), Miller

The receivers

Defense!

How many people in this picture don’t have phones?

Eng77ine – Karl Mecklenburg

My Arvada tax dollars at work! We got a better deal than Littleton!

After the last truck went by, we spilled past the barricades. The general flow was to follow the parade. We swam upstream, back to Union Station in search of lunch. We stood in line for fifteen minutes at Acme Burger. After placing our order, Genae went off in search of a place to sit while I waited for the food. I waited so long she thought I’d wandered off. I kept thinking our order would be up soon, then I realized how many orders they had lined up. And more kept spilling off the printer.

It was easy to spot our order come up. We ordered onion rings, which turned out to be unique. After the rings, the cook put up a burger, told the guy assembling the orders what it was – “original, no onions, no sauce”. So that’s our rings and Genae’s burger. But the burger ends up in someone else’s order, and my buzzer hasn’t buzzed. Another burger gets put up: “Western burger.” That’s mine. My buzzer buzzes. They’ve messed up. My burger and our rings are in the bag with an order of fries.

I tell the clerk it’s wrong, he looks at the ticket, calls out “I need an original, no onions, no sauce.” The cook responds, “I already gave you one.” “Give me another.” So we get a bonus order of fries. It took us a half hour to get served. I heard quite a few people ask for their money back. But what can you expect when there are a half a million people nearby?

Back at the bus station we found ourselves queued up for the FF1 behind about a hundred and fifty people. We considered jumping to the end of the Longmont bus queue when they were boarding but we remained patient and were again rewarded. “I have two buses for FF1!” One was a regular local bus, the other was a coach. We got on the coach. Again they weren’t taking any fares. When we rolled out the driver announced that today was a free day until 8pm.

Watching the news reports, I couldn’t believe how many people showed up. Initial reports had the number at a million. Now they’re saying it’s more like 780,000. Either number is mind-boggling. There are only about five million people in the entire state.

Lake Haiyaha addendum

Posted on March 10, 2015 by dhill

One thing I forgot to mention…

On the hike out, I paused to catch my breath. A little bird, a gray jay, approached. First it landed on a tree branch six or eight feet away. Then it hopped to a closer branch, and then to one just inches from where my right hand rested on my trek pole. It sat there a moment, then flew away. It quickly returned, and repeated its movements.

Next, rather than flying away again, it flew up to look me right in the eye, hovered momentarily about a foot from my nose then returned to the branch. It did this hovering maneuver twice. I’m quite accustomed to having birds come begging when I’m eating, but this was a bit unusual. I don’t know if it was looking for food, or if this was some sort of defensive move. I understand they rear chicks in winter. Was our track close to its nest, or was it just curious?

Last Week’s HPR Video

Posted on January 24, 2015 by dhill

I’m not the most creative guy when it comes to putting these track videos together. I have three basic types – a lap, a highlights reel, and ‘passing fancy’. This time I opted for the latter – nothing but making passes and getting passed. Every pass from all three sessions.

When I was driving, I never realized I was ever more than fifth car in line. But studying the tape, I see I was 18th in line at one point. That’s a lot of cars on track. I also couldn’t help but notice that every time I make a mistake, it messes me up for three turns. Something to work on.

Obviously, passing cars is more fun than getting passed. I admit to enjoy passing Corvettes and Mustangs, BMWs and Acuras. But for some unknown, irrational reason I really get a kick out of passing Porsches. Boxsters, 911s, 944s, doesn’t matter. I really like passing Porsches.

Alton Brown Live

Posted on February 3, 2014 by dhill

Genae and I went to see Alton Brown do his thing at the Ellie Caulkins Opera House. I really had no idea what to expect. What does a famous TV cook do in a theater? Sing and dance?

Yes and no.

That is, he sang and played guitar (and saxophone!) and did some standup comedy. All about food and cooking. And even without any sort of kitchen equipment (except a mini fridge) he managed to whip up some ice cream and pizza. But no dancing.

Before the show

But let’s back up a bit. The entertainment began well before the show started. There was a video screen above the stage, pure white and seemingly not in use. Every now and then a sock puppet showed up briefly. As it got closer to showtime, the puppets appeared more frequently. Then they started belching and farting. Made the campfire scene in Blazing Saddles seem tame in comparison. I was thinking it was directed at those of us in the audience stuck at 12 years old, but it turns out the little guys represented yeast. Then the lights came down and he walked on stage.

Alton Brown tweeted this picture early in the show.

He made a couple of jokes about the Super Bowl – “I lost a hundred bucks last night, so I know how you feel!” And a couple jokes about pot brownies. Then launched into his show.

For the musical parts, he played guitar and sang. He did a love song to caffeine and a blues about pork chops, a rocker about wanting an Easy Bake Oven and a complicated lullaby about how easy it is to cook.

He had two big set pieces that required a participant from the audience.

The first was to make ice cream. He had constructed a device from plastic 5 gallon water bottles and fire extinguishers – a CO2 extinguisher on one end and a water one on the other, with a canister in between made from the bottles. The water one had chocolate milk in it instead of water. And the canister in between (held together with duct tape) had holes along the top for vents. He made sure to explain what the vents were for, then rotated the canister to angle the vents toward the audience. Then he passed ponchos out to the folks in the first couple of rows.

A member of the audience pulled the trigger on the chocolate milk side while he did the CO2 side. Ten seconds later, after a fair amount of noise and venting of chocolate laced CO2 over the folks up close, he pulled the tape off and scooped some of the contents into an ice cream cone. He had the volunteer taste the concoction – chocolaty and … carbonated!

This operation made a bit of a mess, so they took a break to clean things up.

The other big set piece was brought out after singing his song about the Easy Bake Oven. During the song they lowered an Easy Bake Oven from the rafters and he stopped the song: “I said 12 feet high!” The prop guy showed him the plans: “Two marks means inches, one mark means feet. Two marks!”

After the song he told us the story of his first Easy Bake Oven. His parents wouldn’t give him one but he got a hand-me-down from a cousin. This was old school – not one but two 100 watt bulbs. (Now I think they’re 40 watt.) But now that he’s a famous TV cook with means, he scaled it up a bit. I could almost hear Tim “the Tool Man” Taylor saying “More power!”

He unveiled a big contraption – the Mega Bake Oven. Built on a big steel frame he mounted 54 par 64 lights. Those are the ones you see over the stage at heavy metal concerts. They’re 1000 watts each. Half on top facing down, half on bottom facing up. With a conveyer in between, operated by a wheel like you’d find on an old pirate ship.

He selected another volunteer to help him make pizzas. After they tossed the dough, slathered on the sauce, piled on the cheese, pepperoni, and beef jerky, she worked the wheel to move the pizzas back and forth for three minutes to bake them while he showed slides of the building of the Mk 1 prototype Mega Bake. On stage was the Mk 3. “Don’t ask about the Mk 2 … I’ll just say ‘litigation'”. We were close enough to smell the pizza. Smelled pretty good.

Alton Brown is a very entertaining and talented guy. We had a great time.

Watching the Geese

Posted on November 13, 2012 by dhill

I try to take walks three or four times a week. I went through a stretch where it was never near that often, but at the same time I was hiking more often, so hopefully it evens out a bit. My walk leads me around Lake Arbor, the neighborhood body of water. During the winter, it’s home to skeins of geese and rafts of ducks.

I had to look that up. I always thought “gaggle” of geese, but that’s only what they’re called when they’re on water. In flight, they’re either a skein or a wedge. Ducks are rafts, but there are other group names as well – a team of ducks if they’re flying or a paddling of ducks when they’re on water.

Anyway, there’s generally quite a bit of activity around the lake – fields filled with grazing geese, small groups of ducks swimming in circles, birds landing and taking off, both on land and water. Last week I took the cameras with me and shot some time lapse footage. I was a bit underwhelmed. In retrospect, it wasn’t that interesting of a day to film geese. It was good practice, though, both the shooting and the editing. I posted the video, but I have no doubt I can make a better one if I give it more time.

Today would have been a better day. When I left the house, I wasn’t sure I wanted to take the usual three mile loop or cut it off shorter. The walk to the lake is mostly out of the wind, but once to the lake it was obviously quite breezy so I decided I wouldn’t bother making a lap of it. I stopped at the east end, in the trees, and watched the birds.

A gaggle was getting out of the water to graze. The ones already aground were fanning out, beaks pecking the brown grass. Geese were lined up in the water single file, paddling somewhat upwind towards the shore. One after another would hop onto the bricks lining the water’s edge and immediately put beak to lawn. In the water, the wind was pulling the line like taffy, and now the geese were flapping wings to get ashore. Before long they were flying as far as twenty feet. Now the geese still afloat were reconsidering. Two or three turned around and went to the back of the line when their turns came. Eventually the group split, three quarters or so on land, the rest moving out to deeper water. Would have made for a good time lapse sequence.

Usually on these walks I see people walking their dogs, and the usual mix of joggers and retired folks out for a stroll. Today I encountered a guy dragging his roller board suitcase behind him, with a small backpack on lying on the handle. He was barefoot with his pair of shoes dangling from around his neck. Maybe in his early twenties, baseball cap, sunglasses, a couple days of beard. I’m wearing sunglasses and have the brim of my Broncos cap pulled fairly low. I’m wearing big headphones, not the little buds. I’m listening to a BBC business podcast.

I’m wondering where he’s headed. He’s heading south east, so he’s not going to the Park-N-Ride (which is north east). It strikes me as, if not odd, at least unusual. When I pass people I generally give them a nod of hello. As I pass, he hollers out a question – “How many yards did Manning get?”

Okay, I’ll have a short chat about football. I pause the iPod and take off the cans. I give a quick recap of the game and answer his questions. Then he takes his glasses off and introduces himself. Not just first name, but first and last. Asks my name. I tell him “Dave.” “Dave what?” “Just Dave.” He says okay but sort of rolls his eyes, miffed perhaps that I didn’t give him my full name. He then launches into a bit of history. He grew up right over there (waves his arm indicating the general direction). His parents have lived there forever, he has lots of old friends here.

I wonder where this is going. Does he expect me to recognize these names? Next he tells things aren’t going well for him. He’s not close to his family, doesn’t have many friends. He recently got divorced. He just found out he has mouth cancer. Tears well up in his eyes. He hasn’t told these things to his family. “I’m probably not going to live much more than a year.” This is a bit awkward.

He pulls himself together, wishes me a good day and we resume our opposite paths.