In her own words

She's a woman heartbroken, a woman betrayed, or at least that's how she sees it. To her table of regulars, she drops all pretense: "Oh, these shenanigans just piss me off!" She sighs, and she shakes her head, and she'd throw her hands up if she wouldn't drop her tray and order pad, the one with the Green Bay Packers sticker displayed on the back. We tell her we like it.

"I'm from Fond du Lac," she tells us, in Manitou Springs, Colorado, in an accent as strong as her allegiance to the gold and the green. "They've got two religions," she says, though the pronoun might as well be"I": "Catholic and Brett Favre."

"And he sat there in March," she picks up in the middle of the rant that she's been perfecting,"all that boo-hoo-hooing. . .said he didn't know. . .liar!" in a tone so harsh it surprises. And then back over her shoulder, "I cried too!" I nod and try to remember the stages of grief.

"Do you know how many magazines with him on the cover I saved?" she offers with refills and a description of her spare bedroom shrine to her man. "I was gonna have an affair with him," she jokes, kinda, about the man as young as her son, and then follows, "We wanted him to run for president!" She lowers her voice: "Better than that Obama."

"I'll never forgive him. Do you believe that?" I'm not sure that I do, considering she's worried he's going to get booed, if he ever comes to Lambeau--God forbid--in some sick and wrong colors. We've already established the obvious, that he cannot. be. a. Bear.

When she casts about for reasons, and says, "It can't be the money!" we blurt out, "He just wants to play," before she rolls on. She concedes, but sees her Packers in a corner and no way for that to happen in the only acceptable way. Some religion with little faith.

And again I hear about the shenanigans, though she's talking across the room. And then the ridiculous opinion that number 4 should have retired two years ago, from some man (who may or may not be a jackass, but) 30 years removed from the Badger state. In a pancake place. In Colorado. In July. Meanwhile, my daughter contemplates eating watermelon rind in an effort to clean her plate "like we do in Wisconsin" since anyone who could be mad at Brett Favre is just a little scary.

"Clearly I have no life," she says, with a wry smile that pretends to try for chagrined. "E-mail me the latest," she kids, "since I'm all the way out here." We leave a note with the tip and happen to see her read it as we get in the Pathfinder to drive away. She's on the patio having a smoke and talking to her fellow waitress, her twin sister (how I wish we could go back for lunch) when her boss brings it out. She pockets the scrap with a roll of her eyes and is off on a tear again. "Go Pack Go," indeed.

Leavin' on a jet plane

Only appropriate to wedge a John Denver song right into your head as I get ready--well, pretty soon I'll get ready--to fly out of Colorado. Last big trip we took was Florida, during a which a recovery week at Siesta Key was preceded by a planned-to-the-minute week at Disney (but did we stand in any lines during the jammed-packed height of the season? NO!), so this time it feels as if we've done nothing much, which is what vacation should be. On the other hand, we've seen a Rockies game, the state capitol and history museum, albeit accidentally, some friends, Casa Bonita, the Museum of Nature and Science (also with friends, which made it better), a movie or dim sum, Elitch Gardens amusement park, Mile High stadium (or whatever the corporate sponsor calls it), most of the shops in Manitou Springs and some in Old Colorado City, the motel pool, the penny arcade, the penny arcade, the penny arcade, Pikes Peak on the cog railway, the Olympic Training Center, the Garden of the Gods, the Flying W Ranch (nostalgia trip, part II. see Casa Bonita), Royal Gorge from the bridge and the train to the bottom and the aerial tram, an awesomely scenic drive on the way back from the gorge through the gambling wasteland of Cripple Creek because gas is free here, though we never found anywhere to pan for gold that was not basically in a strip mall, and something else but I forget. Ah yes, the lithium water. Oh, to take some home.

When asked to name her favorite part, my daughter ran through that whole list, starting with meeting a new friend, and declared it all equally awesome. I'm glad. I'm also glad to have vacation stories to torture her with for the rest of her life, that being part of my job. There's a ton we didn't do, but considering our pace this morning, I'm assured we'll leave the Bataan Death March of Vacation to the tour groups that we kept running into in between our naps and our trips to the penny arcade.

Some Numbers

Number of hours that I have been in Denver: 23
Number of minutes our flight was early: 35 (on a 1:45 flight, that's almost disturbing)
Number of lost pairs of shoes, 11 year-old girl division: 1
Number of professional sports stadiums visited: 2
Number of yellow-fever-ridden ditches adjacent to sports stadiums here: 0
Number of promised fireworks displays that materialized: 0
Number of home runs witnessed at Coors Field: 6
Number of days by which we missed witnessing a 43-hit ballgame: 1
Number of Blue Moons consumed at the ballgame: 2. Was I having an issue with Belgian-ish beer and ballparks or something? Disregard.
Number of feet above sea level: 5280! Now, where's my oxygen?