Tales of Beerfest

When I agreed to go to Beerfest in Denver, I wasn't ready for this. The Cheyenne hotel room was filthy, and reeked of mildew. A film of grime covered all the surfaces, and the full length glass windows looking out over the entry hallway made it feel like an Amsterdam Sex market. The five of us crowded into the tiny room. Victoria started to crack up.

As I stood pondering the cleanliness of the brown comforters adorning each double bed, a horrible moaning sound rolled over us. It was horrific, like a dying moose, or a off-key Shofar. Victoria's husband Mike emerged from the bathroom with a startled look on his face. It was the toilet. Apparently that hotel had not replaced its plumbing since the first world war. By that time we were rolling with laughter about the abject trashiness of the accommodations.
If it hadn't been 1:30am, and we hadn't been driving for eight hours already, we might have reconsidered staying in this flop house. As it was, we were too tired to do anything about it, so we bedded down and tried not to imagine the horrors a CSI-style black light would reveal.

In the light of day, the place looked just as bad, though a bit less scary. After an interaction the night before with the award winning staff, we decided to skip the continental breakfast and stop at a chain restaurant. It's a sad thing when the bathroom floors at the Village Inn are cleaner than the rooms in the actual inn.

After breakfast we headed back onto the interstate towards Denver. While the scenery in Wyoming was a drab brown, the highway into Colorado became increasingly varied as we approached the border. We listened to iTunes on Jen's laptop as craggy outcroppings blurred by.



When we hit the Denver plateau, I was almost immediately struck by two things; the Skyline and the people. The Denver skyline towered downtown in the distance over miles of suburbs. Compared to Salt Lake, which boasts perhaps five or six skyscrapers above 15 stories, Denver boasts at least a dozen. The people were even more remarkable. In this high mountain metropolis, just one state over from Utah, I saw racial diversity I didn't know existed away from the coasts. Even among Caucasians I was amazed to see so many differences in ethnicity and style.

Compared to the Hell that was Cheyenne, our hotel just outside Denver proper was the Four Seasons. Colorless water from the taps, non-necrotic staff, and toilets we can safely use without an exorcism. When we arrived it was just after noon, leaving us with just about five hours until the festivities.

Even though we were all tired, we decided to kill time by driving downtown and walking around 16th st. By the time we had walked back to the convention center, the entrance was already swarming with people. "sold out" signs adorned all the doors, and a sea of people wrapped around the outside of the building. An elderly man with a pointy hat and a bullhorn directed latecomers to the will call line from atop a soap box, while convention center staff with fluorescent yellow vests and sunglasses prowled the line like prison guards monitoring a chain gang.

After picking up our tickets, we set out to claim our place in line. People from all walks of life populated the crowd here. One group of individuals came dressed as brown beer bottles. Another pair of young ladies were dressed as German milkmaids. Better than half of the people wore pretzel necklaces. It was a menagerie of beer drinkers, from fraternities to armchair quarterback archetypes.

We stood in that sweaty herd for close to fifteen minutes before we started to move forward. A few steps at a time, we got closer to the entrance as latecomers continued to stream past us to refresh the line. As we finally came into view of the front doors, we broke off into groups. The three men teamed up to go sampling, while the women started heading towards the Designated Driver Lounge...

To be continued