Massive Road Trip: Denver and Back in 71 Hours

So as everyone probably knows by now, I went to Denver over the weekend to watch the Crew play the Rapids. It was, by far, the best road trip of my life. You can read my game report over on The Columbus Offside, and if that alone doesn’t make you jealous you didn’t sit in a car for 21 hours each way to watch some soccer with me, here are the non-footie highlights of the trip:

The photo above is of sunrise Saturday morning in Somewhere, Colorado. I swear, on my mother’s eyes, that the intersection you see there is Broad street and some state route. Which means that I had driven for 18 hours (so far) just have breakfast at Denny’s on Broad. We all found it very ironic that we could have driven 10 minutes to have breakfast on Broad street but were instead in Colorado. Also about that Denny’s: it was the first of many times on this trip that Cory almost got slapped by a girl. The waitress we had was great and let’s just say Cory was sure to tell her so.

I’m gonna go ahead and say this: The best part about driving through Kansas is leaving Kansas. It is, by far, the most boring thing ever. I’m pretty sure it took us nine hours to get from KC to the Colorado state line. No joke. It probably didn’t help that we entered the State That Civilization Forgot at around 10pm and drove though a classic midwestern thunderstorm so we couldn’t admire the scenery, if there had been any. It was cool, however, that because it was dark we watched the lightning of that thunderstorm for probably 100 miles before it started raining. And then, ohmygod, did it rain. I’m talking cats and dogs style, but only for about half an hour, then it was clear skies and four more hours of Kansas.

About an hour after we left Ohio I decided that I wanted to drive the entire way to Denver. There were two reasons for this stupid decision: 1) I wanted to see if I could do it, and 2) I’m pretty sure that everyone should drive across the country at least once in their life. I pulled it off, although the main reason we stopped at that Denny’s in the morning wasn’t because we were hungry, it was because I was falling asleep and needed to get out of the car for a while. Breakfast just provided a handy excuse.

Thank God for XM radio.  After the storm in The State That Shall Not Be Named Patrick (riding shotgun) and I listened to the stand-up comedy channels while the other two guys slept. At one point, Patrick was asleep but apparently Blake was awake in the back seat because I kept hearing him laugh at the jokes, some of which weren’t all that funny. Blake later told me that he was only laughing because he had noticed that everyone else was asleep and he didn’t want me to feel alone. That’s a good friend right there.

Colorado is a strange looking state. It’s flat as Kansas, but as the sun came up we could start to make out the mountains in the distance and I kept expecting to eventually reach them and start the ascent into Denver. See, I’ve flown through Denver before, but it had never been a destination spot for me until now so I had pictured it like Charleston, West Virginina: a city up in the mountains. Come to find out that’s not how it is at all, ’cause those mountains stayed in the distance the whole trip, and made a gorgeous backdrop for the city. Funniest thing heard on the westward drive: about an hour out of Denver somebody (I can’t remember who) said “hey those aren’t clouds out there, they’re mountians!”

We finally rolled into our hotel in Denver at about 8:30 Saturday morning. The guy at the front desk was nice enough to let us check in four hours early, and we all promptly crashed. I slept for a couple of hours and then was wide awake. I have no idea why, but I just couldn’t sleep anymore, which was kinda no bueno because, like Columbus, there’s nothing to do in downtown Denver at 11:00 on a Saturday morning. I roamed the hotel, ran into a few guys from the Crew and chatted with them for a while, then wound up back in the room watching The Matrix after about 30 minutes.

The boys finally woke up around one, and we took off to find some lunch and explore the city for a bit. We walked around, made a quick stop at Coors Field (do you really expect me to not at least go look at the site where the Sox won their last World Series?), and found some lunch. We also met up with a friend of Cory’s who had moved to Denver about 6 months ago, a really cool guy named Kevin. Then it was back to the hotel and off to “The Dick” for the game.

You can read my account of the game’s happenings over on The Offside (hint hint) so I won’t repeat myself here, but I will add these two random thoughts: We got to the stadium two hours before game time so we could join the tailgate and there were two other people there. That struck us as odd because if you show up that our stadium for a tailgate two hours before game time, you’ll join a crowd of about 200 people. After some discussion Kevin and I realized that people in Colorado, due to their lack of OSU, don’t take tailgating as seriously as Ohioans do. Thought the second: If a drunken soccer fan declares that she wants to throw her beer in your face because you’re not wearing her team’s colors, calmly remind her that it’s a $9 beer. I promise you’ll stay dry.

After the game, we did what any five red blooded American guys do when they’re traveling: Went to discover the nightlife. Most of the stories I’d write here will stay classified to protect those involved, but let me just say this: Cory owes me for preventing that girl from pepper-spraying him, and Blake owes me for…well, let’s just say Blake owes me. It was a night for the books though, that’s for sure.

We woke up Sunday and were headed east by about 2. We had told a few of the locals at the tailgate how much we hated Kansas and they suggested that we take I-80 home through Nebraska, since it was about the same travel time and not nearly as excruciating. They didn’t, however, tell us it takes two hours just to get to I-80. Yay, more Colorado flatness!

We were in Nebraska for about an hour when we passed a sign that said “Fresh Omaha steaks, next exit.” It was immediately and unanimously decided to be time for dinner. Holy crap best steaks ever! When the waitress found out we were from Ohio, she asked what we were doing so far from home so we told her we’d been to Denver for a soccer game. Her reply will go down in infamy: “A soccer game?!” All-in-all though, the drive through Nebraska was much more enjoyable, but I think that’s just because we weren’t in Kansas. I will never understand why Dorothy was so desperate to get back there, if I was her I would have stayed in Oz.

After the hour-and-a-half dinner, the rest of the trip home was pretty uneventful. I was outvoted on my suggestion to stop at a casino in Davenport, Iowa (I wanted to spend the $2 cash I had on quarter slots). We stopped at a windmill farm around 3am so I could take a picture (it’s a wicked good shot, I’ll post it as soon as I can). I finally gave up the driving duties just west of Peoria, Illinois. By then I had driven around 2000 miles and was done. Blake took over and I was asleep withing minutes.

Speaking of pictures, there are a ton documenting the whole Massive trip. I’ll post links as soon as they’re uploaded.

We returned the rental car at about 1:00 Monday afternoon after 2664 miles, one soccer game, one speeding ticket (thanks Kansas!), and a crap-ton of good times.