Illustration: Kevin Howdeshell/kevincredible.com

October is the Northern Hemisphere’s most soul-filled month, with all of the past and possibilities for the future colliding in that golden tilting light. The day I sat down to write this column, especially for Coloradoans, those two elements of old and renewed were obviously mixed. At the same time that the news of Oakland Raiders owner Al Davis’s death was starting to scribble across the wires, Wolf Creek Ski Area was celebrating its earliest opening ever with three feet of fresh.

After John Elway, Davis may have been the most important figure in football in this state, providing the rag-tag Broncos with their own Darth Sidious to battle in a final showdown for AFC West supremacy in remake after remake. Cursed, booed and even hated, with three Super Bowl titles to his resume, Davis’ silver-and-black empire continues to provide us with a ready villain to measure our own hometown heroes against. Thanks for the melodrama, Mr. Davis. You will be missed.

And for those who think that these things—death and good luck and the mysteriously recurring patterns of the universe—happen in threes like I do, it was a poignant week. Apple founder Steve Jobs lost his fight with pancreatic cancer, starkly reminding everyone who can’t imagine existence without their iPhone, iPad or MacBook, that even the greatest innovators are still bound by the tenuous web of life.

As for the third? Personally I found it in the passing of Charles Napier, the character actor who played Tucker McElroy in the Blues Brothers. As the lead singer and “driver of the Winnebago,” for the Good Ol’ Boys, he famously told Jake (John Belushi) Blues, “You’re gonna look pretty funny tryin’ to eat corn on the cob with no fuckin’ teeth!”

How all of that got me thinking about the only John Elway poster I ever owned I can only imagine. Just something in that gold, cold air and all the old images it sent spinning like a kind of highlight reel across my mind I guess.

It was one of those perfect sports hero posters that capture the athlete in absolute control of his realm, striding confidently into action as bodies swirled to the right and left. Elway was all decked out in his home turf Broncos stallion whites with his magic blue and orange No. 7 on his chest, his blue eyes ablaze at something moving downfield, and the football still cocked in his arm as he prepared to unleash another leather lightning bolt.

There was the sense of something still about to happen that fascinated you most. That part you invented about the trajectory of the throw, and the receiver still running even now, still just about to look over his shoulder to find the ball and make the catch.

My friend Olan gave it to me for Christmas. He lived down the street growing up in Park Hill. We’d never exchanged Christmas gifts before, but Olan could do unexpected things. He was the first (and only) white kid I ever knew who really could break dance. And in high school he disappeared for a few weeks to Mexico to sell Para-Sail rides on the beach until the towrope broke. Then he brought his new friend Pancho home with him, who wore three pairs of socks under his huaraches when we went to teach him how to snowboard in City Park when the snow was ankle deep.

It was Pancho who became the teacher though, putting his arms out like a bird once he’d strapped in, then floating to the bottom of the little hill. “Like surfing,” he said, to the amazement of both of us.

I haven’t spoken to Olan in years, though I have looked for him on Facebook, where your past and all of your old neighbors and classmates and girlfriends and ski buddies and even people who have died continue to exist. There are two skiers in particular who lost their lives in the past year, one in a slide and one in an avalanche, who I am continually invited to “friend.” And whose pages continue to fill up with messages and remembrances from the people that really did know them, who keep celebrating their lives in an ongoing digital tribute.

Sometimes I wonder how it would feel to actually try to friend someone like that, and if people have, and then how you would feel to receive a note confirming the request. But I also sometimes wonder if I would even recognize a few of the Facebook friends that I do have if I were to pass them on the street.

I suppose there is someone who monitors those pages, especially for the online shrines and message walls that any jackass or virus could turn into an ongoing advertisement for poker sites or secrets to weight loss. And I suppose I just wanted to tell Olan that I remember Pancho, and that poster, and how every October I think of how much of the history of our lives are stored in the memories of someone else.

I took that poster to college with me, as my personal hometown, home-team flag to fly on my wall in direct opposition to all of the Larry Birds, Michael Jordans and Dan Marinos that my classmates had put up beside their other posters of Jim Morrison and Clint Eastwood and Jimi Hendrix. It became my kind of scarlet letter or donkey tail when in two consecutive Super Bowls, the Broncos endured excruciating loss after excruciating loss.

But that wasn’t the reason I tore that poster down, and then into little bits. I did that because I was upset about a girl. And because I wanted that wall to look as bare as my heart. Which is the trick of memory, that for every recollection you hold dear, there are still quite a few other things you’d just as soon forget.

Here’s to all of the snow to come, and to a season that stays as deep as it started at Wolf Creek.

Peter Kray is an East High School graduate who married a Cherry Creek girl. He keeps a framed copy of John Elway’s Broncos rookie card next to his wedding photo. You can read more of his writing, including excerpts of his upcoming novel, The God of Skiing, at shredwhiteandblue.com

Illustration: Kevin Howdeshell / kevincredible.com

My father wouldn’t let my brother and I play football because he was worried it would destroy our knees. Skiing has always been king in my family, and any activity that might threaten our ability to carve the slopes every Saturday and Sunday was viewed suspiciously.

But football fascinated us, and we still watched every Broncos game on TV until the snow came, or listened to the radio coming back from the hill. And we still played full contact pick-up games almost every afternoon in the fall, coming home with our school shirts torn, and the occasional bloody lip or black eye.

Once a year we also beat the crap out of each other at an annual full tackle tournament called The Blood Bowl, which was always held the day after Christmas on the soccer fields at Denver’s South High. A drunken, belligerent, old score settling, no-rules kind of scrum invented as a multiple high school crossing excuse to punch each other out and play some ball, it kept getting bigger every time we held it, and somebody went to the hospital every year. I remember in particular helping a big kid named Christopher from the Bonnie Brae neighborhood into the back of a station wagon after he had his kneecap pushed halfway up his thigh.

But busted bones and noses were the standard fare, and hangovers for everyone involved. I cracked my ribs once and took a good shot to the jaw, and I couldn’t laugh or run or cough for a month afterwards. But that was my only notable injury from all those Blood Bowl years. My best bruises I got on the mountain, like two broken thumbs, a concussion and a couple of scars. Which is the irony I guess, that my dad thought we were safer zipping through the trees than we were sprinting straight into each other on the field.

In that same vein, I think a lot of pro athletes hear the word “skiing” and think it’s an immediate invitation to end a career. John Elway, the greatest quarterback to ever play the game of professional football, had it in his contract that he couldn’t hit any of Colorado’s many nearby slopes while he played—I imagine it’s a given in the contracts pros sign now, along with no motorcycle riding, or no pick-up basketball—and he spoofed that very legally binding line item with an ad where he came down the run in a limo fitted with treads, reaching out the automatic window with his ski poles.

Illustration: Kevin Howdeshell/kevincredible.com

I’m old enough to remember mixed tapes, especially one we passed around in college titled, “Saabs, Quattros and Wagoneers.” I can’t remember a single song that was on it, except that it was some sort of Freedom Rock meets punk rock meets classic rock mash-up. What was important was the title, a backhanded tribute to a guy everyone knew as Rado Dude. Rado was one of those guys who drives you crazy, but is your buddy, too. His biggest problem was whenever he got nervous, he would start bragging about how Colorado was the coolest place in the world.

But we all tried to wrap ourselves in that aura of place—we thought that just being from Colorado made us cooler than we really were. It’s just that ‘Rado always took it a little too far. His shtick was that the whole state was just L.A. at altitude, where everything’s a scene, and all the rock-climbing, powder-skiing, condominium-owning pot growers are all too hip to care. The clincher, was when some kid from the East Coast asked him, “So what does everybody drive out here?”

“Dude,” ‘Rado Dude replied (insert own surfer/stoner accent here), “It’s all Saabs, Quattros and Wagoneers.”

Anytime I remember that line, in my mind I-70 becomes this asphalt River Styx leading right into Yuppie Hell in which we’re all just a bunch of air-conditioned zombies listening to Sting on KBCO.

But Colorado is really nothing like that. That’s just the part of Colorado the realtors are trying to sell. Drive down Federal at noon and you’d think the state was made of green chile roasters, that everyone still drove Pontiacs and Pintos. Get south of Belleview on a Sunday and there’s still real hay in the bed of those F150s and S10s. And those are definitely real gun racks in the back windows.

The point is that in every CO zip code, there is always a different sense of what it means to live here. I’ve always thought of Coloradoans as a kind of happy mix of western attitudes—encompassing the mountains, the city and the eastern arc of the prairie—and that our elevation was our unique bond. But that’s not nearly as much fun as sticking stereotypes on people for the sake of making sweeping generalizations about who they are. Or in the spirit of old ‘Rado himself saying, “This state’s just filled with Ropers, Dopers and Dudes.”

Ropers: This is still cowboy country. It always will be, too. From the Arapaho who first lived here to the original Colorado cattlemen to all the 4-H clubs and the annual “yee-haw” extravaganza that is the National Western Stock Show, ropelines run deep in this state. And after deep powder skiing, cowboys and Indians are what out-of-staters still imagine Colorado is all about. Even though I grew up near City Park, I had cousins back East who thought the Pony Express was how we got our mail. And between the reality of the working ranches and the mirage of guys in cowboy hats working the scene in Lo-Do, sometimes it’s hard to tell the difference between the pardners and the poseurs here. Tell the next one you see, “I’d like to take you to Brokeback Mountain,” and if he knocks your teeth out, he’s probably the real deal. If he doesn’t? Well, you’re on your own from there.

Dopers: Medical marijuana is doing a lot more than Elwayville’s altitude to elevate its reputation as the highest city in the world. That should only continue to increase as late breaking news out of Amsterdam is that a new conservative government has signed a law barring tourists from the hash bars. So does that mean we’re going to see an increasing wave of medical marijuana vacationers? Is now a good time to finally launch your ‘Pot, Powder and Pizza’ package tours? Not likely. But it does mean a lot more stoners from across the country are considering moving here. If that will automatically result in more drum circles in Boulder, or Widespread Panic shows at Red Rocks, I don’t know. I do know it’s more fun to laugh about than the geriatric gang in Aspen that got busted for operating a major cocaine ring a few weeks ago. Or the out-of-control meth use. An attorney friend once told me he gets calls almost daily to defend some tweaker who, after being high for 10 days, committed some spectacularly stupid crime like trying to break into a jewelry store that wasn’t closed.

Dudes: Somewhere in the micro-brew swilling middle of it all are the Dudes. A little bit like old ‘Rado himself, with a mountain bike, some backcountry skis and a Grateful Dead sticker on his lacrosse stick, Frisbee or Saab, he is the kind of guy who likes to work as hard at his fun as he does at his job as an editor, realtor, architectural landscaper, publicist or personal trainer. As fond of quoting Thomas Friedman as Robert Hunter, he is either posting that he is at the airport again on Facebook, planning a trip to Moab or reading Elevation Outdoors. Easily distracted by texting, ski area webcams and ladies in yoga clothes, a Dude will gladly take an hour to tell you about the novel he has been working on for the past 10 years. Part River Runs Through It, part Catcher in the Rye, part Cliffhanger, “it’s the real story of the Rockies that’s never been told.” (You can easily end this conversation by asking to see a chapter or two). Remarkably well-versed in the Rolling Stones discography, website design, movie quotes and Costa Rican land rights, he can often not recall what he had for breakfast an hour ago. Next time you see one, say, “Yo, dude,” and then he will know that you’re from Colorado, too.

Illustration: Kevin Howdeshell/kevincredible.com

It’s always nice to write poems in praise of Rocky Mountain peaks and their orange and blue Denver Broncos’ colored sunsets. It’s nice for everybody back East, and down South, and in the Midwest and Texas to imagine us out here sprinting through purple glacial meadows, riding buffaloes bareback, and sipping Colorado sunshine by the pint.

But the truth is, for us city dwellers, those summit-topping days and epic rides that end in picture-perfect mountain towns really don’t happen nearly enough. Most afternoons we are lucky to even get out for a jog around the park. And it’s only thanks to dear old Henry Meryweather and America’s “City Beautiful” movement of the 1890s that Denver even has such beautiful parks.

It was Meryweather’s original design for City Park, envisioned as a kind of Central Park of the West, combined with a national quest for creating urban utopias that was sweeping the nation just before the turn of the last century, that first made way for all those lawns and trees and lakes to be planned and planted and built, and for the Natural History Museum and Denver Zoo to come into existence. That set the precedent for Washington, Cheesman and eventually Cranmer Park as well, and for a century now the entire city has been better for it.

Combined or alone, those parks certainly cover a lot of real estate. And with housing prices what they are along Monaco Parkway east of City Park (where Denver’s Governor John Hickenlooper lives and where present mayoral Candidates James Mejia and Chris Romer grew up), or in the Old South Gaylord neighborhood west of Washington Park, or anywhere around Cranmer or along 7th Avenue south of Cheesman, there’s no way a city today could ever raise the money to replicate even one of those projects.

Sure the parks have helped drive their local markets, and helped keep each neighborhood’s real estate rate pretty much recession-proof, but creating an urban upgrade on that kind of scale would never occur in this day and age. You’d have an easier time convincing voters that all that sweet-smelling smoke in the air at the next Widespread Panic show is strictly for medical use (I rest my case).

The truth of the matter is, unless you actually live in a mountain town, most days those beautiful (and still very white-capped!) mounds to the west just serve as a stunning backdrop to life. The average Elwayville resident spends a lot more of his week daydreaming about the high alpine than he does really enjoying its fresh-aired fruits. Which is one more reason why we’re so blessed to have those parks, because of the immediate contact—albeit manicured—with nature that they represent.

John Muir once wrote that, “In God’s wildness lies the hope of the world.” And with their geese and squirrels and presently blooming lilac bushes, I like to think of those parks as “wildness lite.”  It’s on those great expanses of green grass where you can track down an incoming Frisbee whizzing from over your shoulder, nap beneath a tree or just stare out at all the beautiful bodies outdoors in motion and go somewhere far inside your head—all while being no more than a few blocks or miles from your house.

I wouldn’t go so far as to label that “hope” inducing, ala Muir’s stance on wildness, but it sure feels a hell of a lot better than sitting around the house. And my memories of soccer practice in the goose shit and rain at City Park growing up, the Pink Floyd laser light shows at the Planetarium, or learning how to sail a Laser sailboat on Washington Park lake are sure a lot clearer than any day I ever spent indoors playing Dungeons and Dragons (that’s right, I claimed it), or watching reruns of Starsky & Hutch.

In fact, for better and for worse, some of the clearest memories of my life are based in City Park—getting my finger bit by an ostrich at the zoo, or getting mugged by the Thatcher Fountain while walking home from high school both obviously getting registered in the “worse” department, while seeing Ted Shred, the first snowboarder I ever saw onscreen in a Dick Barrymore film at the old Phipps Auditorium that is now an Imax, or having my wedding reception upstairs in the museum near the polar bear and wolf dioramas, coming in under the heading of “better,” and “best.”

Of course there are dozens of parks I’m not even beginning to name—as big as Observatory or Crestmoor with its little sloping hills and tennis courts, or as small as W.H. Ferguson at 23rd and Dexter, which reduces Muir’s vision of wildness down to a playground and flower-strewn postage stamp. There are the parks named after foreign cities, or the little lakes they house which most out-of-staters see as nothing more than grand ponds, or named places or presidents that I imagine each have some special hold on the people who come to visit them, occupying a little acre of pastoral headspace.

I know that just crossing Colorado Boulevard and walking under the trees at the entrance of City Park, or clicking the dog’s leash for a Washington Park walk, makes me feel as if I am entering a better place. My heart seems to grow, and I smile and nod at the same people I probably cursed and saluted in traffic. I feel the breeze come through me until it becomes my breath, and I am swept up by a sense of community, space and place, as if someone had planned for so many of us to be so happy together all at once.

Of course they did. And of all the things I love about Denver, from my own range of memories to the timeless natural beauty to the way the seasons smell, the ideas that built those parks are one of the things that I love the best. •

Read excerpts from Peter Kray’s upcoming novel, The God of Skiing, at shredwhiteandblue.com.

Illustration: Kevin Howdeshell/kevincredible.com

Colorado’s own unique, geologically gorgeous contribution to the pantheon of great American rock and roll venues, Red Rocks, is really like no other place on Earth. There is no other concert house where the stars come out above you in tune with the lights in the city below, until they all merge like one giant spinning wheel. No other place where the winnowed waves of stone deliver a sonically perfect stream of sound. Or where guitar legends from Jimi Hendrix to Stevie Ray Vaughn have electrified the alpine al fresco; and the Beatles, Clash and U2 have all at one time or another come from across the ocean with a message from the future of music.

I actually missed that U2 show, where they filmed the video for “Under a Blood Red Sky.” I think I had a science final the next day, and a friend took my ticket. I missed an Allman Brothers show where I was going to sit with some friends including the lovely lady who became my wife. It was a two-show stand and I didn’t realize until I got to the gate that my ticket was for the previous night. The wheels of matchmaking took another year to catch up, seating us beside each other at The Rio in Boulder, getting drunk on those famous margaritas before we went dancing to the now late great Lucky Dube (who we later saw again together at Red Rocks) at the Fox.

But I did get to see that Stevie Ray Vaughn show, where the man just tipped his wide-brimmed hat down towards his Stratocaster and tore the place apart. It’s one of the aces in my little hand of best shows ever, along with Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers on the Damn the Torpedoes tour when I was maybe 10-years-old, John Denver, Jimmy Cliff, Neil Young, and on two separate occasions, The Clash.

I especially remember when a friend made t-shirts for the Grateful Dead’s three-show marathon in 1987, with a cartoon Jerry Garcia holding hands with a Fantasia wizard Mickey Mouse, and the lyrics “Going where those chilly winds don’t blow,” printed on the back. When a gust of Rocky Mountain weather blew in on opening night, the band opened with Cold, Rain & Snow, and the whole week just kind of floated off into the atmosphere after that.

Being at Red Rocks is one of the best ways to obviously remind yourself why you live in the West. Along with Denver’s perfectly planned city parks, its stunning skyline, special seasons and heartbreaking sunsets, I do believe that Morrison, Colorado’s little stone stage really is intertwined with the cultural history of Elwayville. To attend a show—or several shows there—is like some sort of civic duty. To fall in love with the way some other body is dancing, or with a passing smile on those long wide steps, and to feel the evening and the music releasing the grip beneath your feet as you sway up into the sky, is a sense of perfectly centered disorientation that I think is incumbent upon all of us.

Since summer is coming, you’ve got to make plans to get there. Whether it’s to celebrate the end of a multi-day hike, a drive into the mountains or just a long workweek, you have to include at least one evening at Red Rocks. With a limited show list at press time, I made a quick summary of some of my favorite Red Rocks acts, and what are, or at least should be, some great upcoming nights at “The Rocks.”

Past Show: Neil Young
Neil Young is one of a very select few people in music who can single handedly take over an entire stage for an entire night. From guitar to piano to wailing dog harmonica, Young opened this legendary solo set with an as yet unreleased ‘Keep on Rocking in the Free World,’ and the entire audience was singing along by the second chorus.

On Tap: Ray LaMontagne, June 17
LaMontagne already has his own deep following that sees him as America’s newest musical prophet. With his eerily soulful singing, great songwriting and deadpan between songs delivery, seeing him in this setting just about guarantees a once-in-a-lifetime night.

Past Show: Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers
That Tom Petty show was the first real rock concert I ever saw, and also the scene of an artist beginning to put his imprint on the next three decades of American music, with albums such as Damn the Torpedoes, Hard Promises, Into the Great Wide Open and Full Moon Fever to his now extensive credit. I was nine or ten, with my jaw on the ground at the first show, overwhelmed by rock and roll and absolutely and forever hooked.

On Tap: The Avett Brothers, w/Grace Potter and the Nocturnals, July 9
The Avetts aren’t quite as rocking as Tom Petty—yet!—but they do make honest, sparsely gorgeous Americana that is reminiscent of the Band, and I like to think that they have a long future ahead of them. The talented Grace Potter can take care of the rocking part.

Past Show: John Denver
Seeing John Denver as a kid felt a little bit like a mix of Bob Dylan and Dr. Seuss. It was part of the music we heard on the radio, but trouble-free, and all mixed in with images of sunshine on our shoulders, country roads and featherbeds. It was a family affair. My parents brought a fried chicken dinner and a blanket for all of us to sit on, and I’m glad they did.

On Tap: Big Head Todd and the Monsters, June 11
Colorado’s hometown heroes return for a mix of guitar wizardry and a sing-a-long setlist. Get all “Bittersweet” about the quicksilver substance of summer as you sway back forth to the seaweed dance.

Past Show: The Clash
Both times The Clash hit Red Rocks, this little cowtown boiled over with its own strange brand of uprooted urban angst. Joe Strummer had to keep toweling his spit off he microphone, everyone cheered with a one-finger salute, guys with Mohawks were the coolest kids in town for a couple days, and a girl I knew from school hooked up with the guitarist who replaced Mick Jones on the second tour at the Colfax IHOP.

Wishlist #1: Green Day
These guys are one of the only high profile bands with anything to really say right now. I know they played “The Comfort Dental Amphitheatre” (some things you just can’t make up) last year. But if they ever played Red Rocks I missed it. It would be nice to have some of their energy pulsing through the suburban streets.

Past Show: The Grateful Dead
The Grateful Dead’s rolling caravan of hippies, wanderers and Garcia guitar aficionados was custom made for Red Rocks. Landscapers, lawyers and freaks all got their groove on equally at the last of the famed Morrison shows, forever happy over three days of timeless moments. But as the song goes, “nothing’s going to bring him back.” It was goodbye to an era, and a big thanks that we got to experience it.

Wishlist #2: My Morning Jacket
For my money, My Morning Jacket are the only band worthy of carrying the Dead’s superfreak cape these days, with blistering solos, real lyrics and a penchant for funk that blows all of those other jam bands back up to their fairgrounds and mountain fests. Since I missed the psychedelic throb of the 2008 shows, I keep hoping that these guys will please come back.

Going to polish off my dancing sneakers now, and check the Red Rocks website to see if any of the “wishlist” bands have magically appeared on the schedule. I’m sure there will be lots of other shows that I’ll want to add to the must-see list. I’ll be the guy in the tie-dyed #7 shirt!

Peter Kray is an East High School graduate who married a Cherry Creek girl. He keeps a framed copy of John Elway’s Broncos rookie card next to his wedding photo. You can read more of his writing, including excerpts of his upcoming novel, The God of Skiing, at shredwhiteandblue.com.

GIVE HOPE
The Love, Hope, Strength Foundation saved  lives thanks to bone marrow donors who registered at festivals and concerts in Colorado last year. And the foundation is hoping to save even more lives this year.

Denver-based Love Hope Strength was co-founded in 2007 by leukemia survivors Mike Peters of the Welsh rock band The Alarm and James Chippendale, president of CSI Entertainment. Foley and other members travel to concerts across the globe— hitting up everything from Michael Franti shows to big festivals like Lolapolooza—to register donors and raise funds and awareness. The group also puts on concerts on mountains like Pikes Peak, Kilimanjaro and Mount Fuji.

The process to register to become a marrow donor is so simple that EO editor Doug Schnitzspahn sat down and was registered in five minutes last year. Just fill out a form and swab both cheeks. The foundation will contact you if there is a match, you then learn about the person in need, decide to donate marrow and then get to meet the person whose life you saved after the procedure.

It seems to me that most columnists, commentators and even bloggers use their little slice of media space for the sole purpose of complaining about stuff. From Andy Rooney’s “did you ever notice?” whines to psycho narcissist Bill O’Reilly’s rants to former MSNBC chief crybaby Keith Olbermann’s “worst persons,” a lot of people get paid for the sole purpose of making their audience feel like shit.

Illustration: Kevin Howdeshell/ Kevincredible.com

I for one have had enough. Not just of those kinds of people—and television especially (which is always easier to say once football season is over)—but of just feeling bad in general. And right now, despite the state of the economy, the environment and the Broncos, there are also quite a few things to feel good about. So I figured it might be nice to just enjoy a little slice of sunshine for a couple minutes, and talk about a few of the things that make me feel stoked about Colorado.

The Snow Rocks!
Seriously. It’s March after a deep winter. From Aspen to Beaver Creek to Loveland to Steamboat right now, the snow is about as good as it ever gets. La Nina may not have hit any region other than Jackson Hole with as much white love as it is gave Colorado this season, which means that if you haven’t hit the hill at least a dozen times by now, you better get in as much spring skiing as you can handle. Whether you’re just zooming groomers, or going in search of the deepest winter waves, we are presently in the midst of one of those seasons that 10 or 20 years from now you can still claim bragging rights on—but only if you get out and experience it!

The Snow Industry Rocks!
We know that like us, a lot of folks who read and support this magazine make their paycheck in the snow industry. Which is good news, because right now business is absolutely off the hook. Not only are ski and snowboard retail sales on a record pace right now—likely to surpass $3 billion in total cash purchases for only the second time ever—but skier visits across the country are also likely to blast to record heights. Along with all of the faceshots and white room Nirvana people are getting this season, it’s also nice to know that everybody who put off college, marriage or any sort of commitment outside of a good dog for the next two to 10 seasons while they ride can actually still make some kind of living working on the slopes.

Snow Gear Rocks!
In January, I hit the SIA Snow Show in Denver—that treasure chest of all of next season’s hottest gear—and I was blown away by what the manufacturers are ready to introduce. From snowboards to fat skis to the recent advent of rocker, the past 15 years of innovation have been unlike anything in the history of winter. Now, from Burton’s next evolution of Nug boards, to Salomon’s surfboard-styled BBR ski, to Rossignol’s rockered Super 7, it feels as if we were only just getting warmed up. So much of the new gear is so good that companies cannot wait to get it out—literally, brands like Rossi have started to introduce next season’s skis. So don’t be surprised if you’re sitting on a chair this spring, and find yourself next to somebody who’s already riding what’s next.

McDaniels is out!
OK, it’s kind of a fast gear shift, but I am so glad that the Broncos finally fired Josh McDaniels, our little punk of a former coach. The guy didn’t seem to care about our town, our culture, and especially our team, and now he’s gone to St. Louis. We very well may see this guy leading some other city’s squad to a Super Bowl in the not so distant future. But after thumbing his nose at us, trading away all of our all-star players, and then being arrogant whenever anyone asked “What the hell are you thinking?,” it’s nice to be moving on to something—and someone (I’m looking at you, John Fox)—else.

John Elway is back!
I don’t know how many more comebacks the greatest quarterback in the history of professional football has left in him, but now that little Joshie got sent packing, it’s nice see that the Duke of Denver has been hired as a Donkeys executive and returned to clean up the boy’s mess. Sure all of Colorado’s Broncomaniacs may still be riding the road of disappointment, but at the very least we finally have some hope. And no one can question Elway’s passion for the Mile High City, or for the sport. In the spirit of this column, here’s hoping that Biff and Timmy Tebow can work together to pull off one more Mile High Miracle.

Denver’s Mojo Never Left
I’ve had the time to get back to a little bar hopping and beer sampling of late, from Sancho’s Broken to Steuben’s to El Chapultepec to the Wynkoop (where I took the lovely redhead from Cherry Creek who became my wife on our first date). And more than anything—from working out some old air hockey, foosball or billiards kinks—it’s been nice just to get out and enjoy the good vibes of Denver’s ever-welcoming melting pot. This town was built on transplants (thanks, Dad!), who moved here from Nebraska, New Hampshire or Nova Scotia, and who met in the bars and on the slopes and started the next generation of Elwayville-ites. It’s always nice to be in circulation, watching that ever-expanding circle of Colorado love play out.

The Governor and Everything Else
And congratulations to new Governor John Hickenlooper on what everybody in this state hopes is a pleasurable four to eight new years of prosperity and promise. Not that former Governor Ritter was a bad guy, but the flatout kooks like Tom Tancredo and Dan Maes who were running against ‘Hick’ were making me more than a little nervous. The fact that Hick has already done so much to help improve the Mile High City (starting with that aforementioned ale house), is proof that what he wants has quite often also mirrored what’s good for the state.

Is snowboarding facing a mid-life crisis?

The level of off-piste innovation in equipment, upside down athleticism and general energy in skiing right now, would have never happened so quickly—if at all!—if snowboarding didn’t happen first. Unfortunately, that level of enthusiasm is not being matched on the snow surfing front. Snowboard sales have dropped the past couple seasons, despite the rapid integration of the same rocker technology that’s changing the games in skis.

And while the sport has draped itself in rock star imagery, most Americans over the age of 18 could probably name every member of Pearl Jam faster than they could name a U.S. Olympic Gold Medalist other than Shaun White. In fact, as snowboarding hits middle age, the sport is increasingly looking back at its own roots, as well as hot trends in skiing, to try and stay relevant.

The problem with snowboarding is that it’s still trying to sell some outdated counter-cultural message (best exemplified by one brand’s 2007 ‘Poach for Freedom’ campaign calling on riders to poach no-board-allowed areas like Utah’s Alta and Vermont’s Mad River Glen) rather than focusing on just how good it feels to ride a snowboard.

Sure skiers made it hard on snowboarders in the beginning, and there was definitely a culture war at the start. As a skier-turned-snowboarder-turned-skier again, I remember those days when no ski area in Colorado would let us ride the lifts, and how mad I was in 1985 when I hiked Vail’s Gold Peak after hours and a ski patroller zoomed up on a snowmobile and declared, “We don’t allow sledding at this resort.”

So we just rode Loveland and Berthoud Pass instead, jibbing on Mother Nature and deep powder and hitchhiking back up with big families from Texas who asked us, “What the hell are you boys ridin’?”

There’s nothing as cool as kicking up a backside curtain of snow on a board, or dropping a big winter wave into a bowl of spring slush. Which is why it’s so mystifying to me how some snowboard manufacturers keep trying to concoct a faux revolutionary attitude about how the best thing about snowboarding is that it pisses off the squares. That’s the same phony message that initially resonated with the suburban school kids who claimed to “identify” with gangster rap. And, in a recurring case of arrested development, it severely reduces snowboarding’s potential market.

According to data from SnowSports Industries America, more than 70 percent of the snowboarders in the U.S. are dudes, and 27.6 percent of them are between 18 and 24. Get to ages 35-44, the age of many of snowboarding’s first generation of pioneers, and that number drops to 8.6 percent. Which means that many of the people who first fell in love with snowboarding, have not stuck with it. Why?

For snowboarding to keep appealing to potential riders from every walk of life, it needs to focus less on sticking it to the man, and more on celebrating the sport. More people just want to ride than want to join some vaguely defined counter-culture movement.

Thankfully, right here in Elwayville, there are several snowboard brands that have kept their focus on the fun and freedom inherent in riding. Never Summer is legendary among riders for its super durable boards, and for its focus less on attitude than design aesthetics and a deep sense of place. Since 1983, the brand has focused on craftsmanship, not hype. Which is the same message in Silverton, Colorado, where husband and wife team Klemens and Lisa Branner of Venture Snowboards are all about building bombproof big mountain boards for the high alpine’s burliest peaks.

Both brands have become pioneers in the development of splitboards, those detachable ride set-ups that let snowboarders ski up and then surf down the slope. Backcountry, sidecountry and any kind of powder country are the fastest growing segment of snowsports right now. And when you’ve got real terrain to hit, maybe, just maybe, you’ve got less time to talk shit about it.

Just as rock and roll becomes re-infatuated with country music every other decade, as some new version of The Band like the Avett or Felice Brothers jumps to the fore, or some new Gram Parsons, Bob Dylan, Neil Young wannabe builds a path to the future by mining the past, snowboarding’s current ‘back-to-the-woods’ revival could be building strong roots for the future of the sport.

Just up north in the currently incredibly snowy Jackson Hole, Wyoming, this season, Burton introduced a new Stash park. The sixth in the world and only the third in the U.S. (Killington in Vermont and Northstar-at-Tahoe in California host the other two here), each Stash consists of a series of natural terrain parks built using local trees, rocks and the enhancement of existing topography.

It’s a cool combination of backcountry roots and lift-served excitement, and it could be a good barometer of where snowboarding goes next.

“The concept of Stash has been pretty consistent,” Burton Founder Jake Burton Carpenter states on a YouTube video that chronicles the new Jackson Hole project. “That’s to just take whatever the indigenous materials or features might be and just amplify them a bit.”

Of course, you could almost describe snowboarding itself as simply as that. You go up the mountain, you go down the mountain, except instead of skiing you surf it. Pretty cool concept, especially if you live in some landlocked state where snow and gravity are much more familiar than tides and waves. Which is exactly the idea that America bought. Winter waves. Cold weather curls. Riding the mountain like a long break back to the base.

It seems like you could be anyone that you want to be, and still celebrate that. •

With Number 7 long gone, most pro athletes see Denver as a dead end—but when it comes to actually playing sports, Colorado still rules.

This whole town’s never had a bigger hero than John Elway—certainly not in sports, and honestly not anywhere else. Like it or love it, that big-toothed Bronco put this town on the map. And other than one glorious Stanley Cup win (I’m looking at you, Joe Sakic) in 2001, a miracle World Series appearance in 2007 (where we got swept, by the freakin’ Red Sox!), and a chance to play doormat to the Los Angeles Lakers in the Western Conference Finals in 2009, since Elway retired, Denver hasn’t done squat.

Which got me wondering—what’s wrong with Colorado sports?

At least Denver is not Seattle, which lost its NBA team (to Oklahoma!?), got crushed in its lone Super Bowl appearance and was named two years in a row as ‘America’s Most Miserable Sports City’ by Forbes.com. At least we’re not Buffalo, with all those blizzards to bury its football and hockey grief. At least we’re not Cleveland… Right?

Illustration by Kevin Howdeshell/kevincredible.com.

Not quite. Because it seems like the best thing about being a sports star in Denver is the platform it provides to be a bigger sports star somewhere else. Compared to Miami, New York, Los Angeles, Boston, Chicago, Dallas and even D.C., Denver’s still just that DIA connection on the way to Vail or Aspen or Cancun or some other trendier spot.

Too bad all those folks from the pre-mentioned marquee cities don’t always make their connections and actually end up moving here, raising kids who hopefully grow up to be Broncos fans themselves, even while mom and dad keep rooting for the teams in the towns that they just left.

Frankly, those folks are pushing the Denver fans out. At a recent Rockies game at Coors Field, where our home team was battling the Padres for a playoff spot (we lost), I was dismayed at how polite and respectfully appreciative the Denver crowd was. And especially at how many San Diego fans seemed to have just shown up.

“Oh you should be here for the Boston game,” the woman beside me said. “This place goes crazy for the Red Sox.”

On the flip side, we do produce more than our share of ‘team of one’ minded athletes who like to cheer for themselves. Look at all those locally bred big air pilots boosting it at the Winter X Games, or gold medal grabbing skiers from Vail (I’m looking at you, Lindsey Vonn), human-lung triathletes from the aerobic high cult of Boulder, or world-beating cyclists, gymnasts, swimmers and paddlers pumping out of the Olympian factory in Colorado Springs.

As far as the business of athletic abilities goes, a recent independent study by Deloitte found that the U.S. Olympic Training Center in Colorado Springs is both physically and fiscally fit. It drew more than 13,000 athletes and staff from around the country last year. And Olympic-related organizations and businesses pump an annual $215 million into the local economy according to the report.

Further into the mountains, Colorado’s ski business generates more than $2.5 billion annually. With nearly 12 million skier visits in Colorado last season, we lead the way in selling winter physical fitness. More importantly, with more than 30,000 people directly employed by ski country, a lot of Coloradoans can actually make a living from it.

In the cluster economy concept of sound business, that’s a lot of professional ski instructors, patrollers, coaches and guides—i.e., professional athletes—providing the kind of structure and network needed for such a service-based strategy to thrive. Especially in a town like Aspen, where big name backcountry athletes, both ex and up-and-coming World Cup stars, and all-around great riders are on every slope.

“I talked a little shit when I first moved here,” one East Coast transplant once confided to me. “But then I realized who I was riding the chair with.”

Should an old friend from one of those aforementioned marquee cities drop an e-mail about how great his team is doing, “I just send them photos from my last powder day. That shuts them up.”

And Denver’s sports future? There’s Tim Tebow, the dimple-chinned, remarkably charismatic, devoutly Christian, saving-his-virginity-until-his-wedding, Heisman Trophy winning quarterback that the Broncos traded up to get in the spring draft. That story pretty much sells itself—just like the kid’s newly minted Number 15 Jersey, which continues to lead the league in apparel sales.

But what I think’s cooler about Tim Tebow than almost any other athlete Denver’s drafted in past two decades (other than the fact that he led his Florida Gators to wins in the 2007 and 2009 BCS Championships), is that he seems to think Denver’s cool, too. Just like Elway did.

Elway told the Colts he’d rather play baseball than play for them, and they traded his pick to Denver. And Tebow, already well-versed in self-motivation, said he can’t wait to pay Denver back for giving him a chance.

Sweet. Because that’s really all there is to it. Whether we’re a Cowtown, Ski Town, Broncos town or what, the one thing Colorado sports fans love the most is finding other fans who love Colorado just as much as us.

I wonder what John Elway would say about that… •

Who’s going to have a tougher time scoring this year in Colorado—the Broncos or the GOP?

Here’s the plot: Two marginally talented frontrunners duke it out all summer for the right to lead their team in the regular season. With no standout skills, spotty win/loss records, and forgettable faces, it’s hard to give the edge to either one of them.

Then suddenly, a dark horse enters the scene. Media friendly, with a big-game name and national recognition that absolutely ignites the fanbase, he sparks a three-way battle for the signal-caller’s position. It’s winner take all, with the victor either galvanized by his public trial by fire, or the last man at the helm as the entire team’s season goes down in a ball of flames.

Does that sound like this year’s Broncos? Is it a snapshot of the Kyle Orton vs. Brady Quinn quarterback battle (also billed as Neckbeard vs. Beefcake) that’s been so stunningly disrupted by the arrival of wonder boy Tim Tebow? He whose proven game-changing heroics in college resulted in one Heisman Trophy and two national championship wins?

Nah. That was actually the plot of the Republican primary race for Colorado governor. You remember, the Scott McInnis vs. Dan Maes vs. “Tornado” Tom Tancredo primary in which common sense got hijacked by plagiarism, race baiting and the idea that supporting bicycle use in urban areas was nothing short of an especially toxic brand of UN-sanctioned, micro-brew swigging Socialism.

The GOP, in what should have been an easy place kick into the governor’s office, instead unleashed ‘The Biggest Loser Part Two,’ a three-legged race to see who can be the poster boy for a John Hickenlooper-styled tomahawk jam in the upcoming election.

It first I didn’t think there could be anything stranger than GOP gubernatorial candidate Scott McInnis claiming he was innocent of plagiarism because the copied text in his 150-page “Musings on Water” had actually been “borrowed” by the man—Glenwood Springs water engineer Rolly Fischer—whom McInnis had hired to provide the “research” for the document for him.

That the lifted copy was from a 1984 essay by Colorado Supreme Court Justice Gregory did McInnis no favors. Nor did the fact that Fischer declined to take the fall for him. He told the Denver Post that he thought the documents were part of “a private communication.”

According to the Post, McInnis actually knows very little—if anything—about water in Colorado, or just about anywhere else this side of the moon. Yet he was paid $300,000 to wax specific on that very same subject for the Hasan Family Foundation, whose self-described “original mission was to fund educational and health initiatives in Southern Colorado.”

I’m not sure how water and education mix. Except maybe it’s a conglomeration of common fates, like upstream and downstream. I do think that McInnis, in a sort of exam-night panic, hired a little help for his mid-term. At about $2,000 per page for the finished work, it’s hard to blame him.

Since being busted, he has signed a pledge to return the money. And Dr. Malik Hasan, who started the foundation, said he would be glad to accept the refund. He told the Post, “We are happy the foundation can now use the money for a more worthwhile cause.”

Of course, things got stranger. The McInnis gaffe was quickly usurped by Republican adversary Dan Maes declaring that bike pedals—and certainly not gas pedals—are speeding America down the well-paved road to a despotic, freedom-stealing, internationally conspired foreign assistance program.

As Maes told the Post, “Denver Mayor John Hickenlooper’s policies, particularly his efforts to boost bike riding, are “converting Denver into a United Nations community.”

That actually sent me daydreaming about international Cosmopolitania’s like Copenhagen and Amsterdam where hundreds of beautiful women go bicycling by wearing knee-high black boots with their hair blowing in the wind.

But then I realized that Maes thinks this is bad thing. And that self-powered transportation is a danger to this country, rather than a patriotic testament to the strength of self-reliance. He thinks the sheer act of riding a bike could contribute to the formation of a mountain bike patrolled police state run by French guys, vegans and triathletes (also known as Boulder).

Or, as he told the Post, bicycling “is bigger than it looks like on the surface, and it could threaten our personal freedoms.” You can be forgiven if you thought bicycling is a personal freedom. And that you couldn’t invent the irony of Lance Armstrong and current Gov. Bill Ritter hitting the streets the day after Maes’ statement to announce a new bike race to be held in Colorado in August next year, called the Quiznos Pro Challenge.

After all, you were probably more concerned about what a clear-eyed, thoughtful guy like Tom Tancredo was going to do to “fix” immigration. You know Tom. He’s the former Republican Congressman and current Tea Party darling who’s such a fixture on Fox News, and who famously called out Karl Rove and President George Bush for being soft on border protection.

Realizing that Maes and McInnis had about as much chance of residing in the Governor’s Mansion as Kyle Orton has of being named Super Bowl MVP, Tancredo decided to clear things up … by throwing his own hat into the ring.

After calling for Maes and McInnis to exit the race, Tancredo, said that he is willing to do whatever is necessary to “avoid the electoral disaster looming on the horizon.” By which he must’ve meant that by eschewing the Republicans, declaring his candidacy on the American Constitution Party ticket and shot-gunning the conservative vote, he would ensure that no one on the right would have a chance to win.

And all of this happened during the political world’s version of training camp, before Maes actually won the primary and headed for the big game against Hickenlooper’s Democratic cycling machine, all while towing his little buddy Tancredo’s baggage along.

Which is why I absolutely cannot wait for the regular season to begin. For the Broncos I mean. With sixteen games to play, they’ve got a few more chances to actually win. •

At an ultimate Frisbee tournament last August, I remembered that the Broncos had played a preseason game the previous night and I casually asked if anyone knew the score.

The first person to pipe up was a particularly hairy little fellow with a nose ring who replied, “Who cares?”

Which certainly wasn’t the answer I was looking for. And which left me a little stunned at the hostility, so that all I could mutter in response was, “Me, dude.”

But what I thought was, “You little gerbil. I’d like to see you catch a quick flick across the middle and just one time find a 235- pound linebacker named Bubba waiting to meet you there.” Wham-O!

Ultimate always makes me think about football, with the end zones and the chance to play quarterback from the handler posi- tion, or to go long for a big spinning plastic bomb like running out the post pattern for the last minute catch to win the Super Bowl. And the crowd goes wild!

Everybody loves the deep post (I think the Broncos should run it about 1,000 times more this season), because it gains big yards and because everybody loves a long throw down the center of the field. And because we all feel like heroes when we make that grab—Frisbee or football.

Which makes me wonder—how can you play ultimate and not like to watch pro or college football? Whether it’s for inspiration, entertainment, or just as an excuse for drinking beer? Or because when you see that deep throw to the corner of the end zone and the receiver and the defender racing down the sidelines looking over their shoulders to make the play, you love to pretend you’re those dudes.

And who the hell in Colorado doesn’t want to know the Broncos score?

Being an outdoor sports participant, and a rabid pro sports fan, is in the DNA of anyone living in Colorado, from Trinidad to South Park, Aspen to Pueblo. That summit-to-stadium existence provides the very essence of the good life in Elwayville—climbing a 14er in the morning and catching the Rockies game in the afternoon, mountain biking ‘til two through gold September aspens then watching the Donkeys on TV, or tuning your boards while listening to the Nuggets on the radio.

The perfect mix of outdoor lifestyle and pro sports stoke is why so many Front Range towns are annual shoo-ins for top ranking among America’s most aerobically-enhanced cities. It’s why a website called Calorielab.com ranks the entire state of Colorado fittest of the 50 states, and why Denver, Boulder and Colorado Springs regularly make the likes of Forbes’ and Men’s Health magazine’s most healthy towns.

Which, by sheer averages suggests that Colorado has the largest population of pro sports fans that can actually run from end zone to end zone. And by sheer pad-to-peak-proximity, that we can most likely outshred, outhike or out-pedal any other city with a pro football and hockey team to root for.

That Mile-High marker is what sets us apart. And makes us proud. It’s the reason even the pros who come here get gassed. The constant story about how the visiting team will have to deal with Denver’s thin air, and why our Colorado teams are capable of so many late game heroics. It’s why I remember when one of my favorite cousins had a mountain wedding in June of 2001 on the same day that the Colorado Avalanche met the New Jersey Devils in Game 7 of the Stanley Cup Finals.

The groom was from Vermont, which meant that in addition to all of the Colorado fans there were also plenty of New England boys cheering for Boston Bruins-to-Avs transplant, the legendary defensemen Ray Bourque.

And after a beautiful blue sky ceremony in a sunlit field, all the climbers, cowboys, ski bums and stock brokers slipped inside to hunt out TVs in a loft and next door in a sports shop, leaving the bride’s reception a ghost town until the final score: 3-1 in favor of the Avalanche.

At which point, the radiant Libby stepped to the microphone and said, “I’d like to congratulate the Colorado Avalanche for winning the Stanley Cup, and announce that I am going to have the rest of my wedding now.”

So we cheered and spilled back out into the sunset, celebrating all of the little histories of a single day—a day that we would remember beyond so many others—all golden and happy in the warm mountain air as we danced.

It was one of life’s little landmarks, at the intersection of self and sport. It is one of those stories that explains why I know most of my friends better through the teams they root for than I do by who they married, or what they do for work.

The Gerbil Boy was a rocket on the field, quickly out-running defenders and capable of great flying squirrel layouts for the deep disc. He easily scored half of his team’s points, and stopped just as many of our attempts. And as much as I regretted not seeing him laid out by a deep safety hit, I regretted even more seeing him go head over heels for a grab in that little dress.

Which may be the biggest difference between pro sports and alternative sports… the pants. •

You can read more of Peter Kray’s writing, including excerpts of his upcoming novel, The God of Skiing, at

shredwhiteandblue.com.

Medical Marijuana is creating a burgeoning new economy in the home of the Rocky Mountain High. Are we experiencing a societal shift or just the latest code word for smoking up?

Metaphor has always been at the heart of marijuana culture. Whether it’s calling the harvested plant “tea,” “weed,” “grass,” “hooch,” “dope,” or “joey,” or the smoking of it “packing,” “lamping,” “lighting up” or “pulling a 420,” being able to speak in code has often been just as important to pot smokers as having the right rolling papers. Now that we have Medical Marijuana, it seems as if even the mainstream will embrace legalizing weed, but only if it’s dubbed with the greatest “let’s get high” code phrase of them all, i.e., a doctor’s note. By placing marijuana in the realm of medicine, it seems that we can now discuss it in terms of commerce and culture without once mentioning how much people really just like to get stoned.

“Chronic neck pain,” is the reason why a buddy of mine’s 68-year-old mother is happily—and legally—puffing away nightly on a particularly stony strain of marijuana known as Grape Ape.

According to him, “This is much harder stuff than anything we used to steal from her drawer in high school.” He says that mom is happier, the pain is diminished, and that when he comes over to visit there’s a lot more food around the house. For “medicinalists,” buying your next bud can now be as pleasantly confusing as trying to decide if you want a bag of coffee from Kenya, Guatemala or Colombia the next time you visit Starbucks.

Which has been a surefire sales-starter according to the Denver Post. In March, the paper reported that Denver officials received 259 applications for Medical Marijuana Dispensary licenses and that there are more than 400 dispensaries operating in the state.

For a property market still feeling its way through a post-recession economy, that’s nearly 300 new storefronts. Along with the corresponding growth in jobs, taxes, grow operations and head shops, marijuana is rapidly becoming Colorado’s third greatest business boom—a 21st century Green Rush just behind the 19th century gold rush and the 20th century real estate rush.

So much so that Dan, a commercial real estate broker whom I met over beers, told me “right now medical marijuana accounts for at least one-third of my business.” Dealing mostly with leases for new grow operations being custom-built to feed weed into those booming dispensaries, Dan said although he has encountered a couple “grassroots” operations, most of his clients have been constructing state-of-the-art, high-yield, low-input operations.

“My experience with these kinds of clients so far is that you never have to worry about them being on time with the check,” Dan said.

Which was really always the most pervasive argument in favor of medicinal marijuana anyway—that while the revenues from weed would increase dramatically following the passage of a medicinal option, the number of smokers wouldn’t.

So far, it would appear that the city underestimated the economic element. Because alongside the dispensary growth, there has been an equal boom in the sales of property, liability, theft, and crop insurance, as well as the sales and installation of security systems and of ventilation equipment and grow lights.

There’s also talk of more established dispensaries from California—“dope franchises”—moving into the Mile High city and quickly undercutting the growing mom-and-pop weed shops. Free market realities are now part of America’s biggest black market going legit.

Don’t be surprised if competing dispensaries start offering frequent smoker discounts.

As for the real difference between potheads and patients, take a look at ganjagrocer.com, a dispensary resource page for California, and it’s obvious that will remain the one fine line of legalization we can continually expect to cross. Apparently compassionate caregivers with dispensaries named California Patients Alliance and Healing Touch will continue to operate right alongside dispensaries catering to a perhaps a more cigar aficionado styled connoisseur of THC, thus sporting names like Hollyweed and Dr. Purple Skunk Budd.

All of which means that the reality of being ‘Rocky Mountain High’ will remain somewhere in the middle of old world cure-all and new world party sport. •

High on Punt Returns

So just what does this have to do with the Broncos and Elwayville? Only that Denver punt return legend Rick Upchurch did once find his name and marijuana together in the news in a story reported nationally from the L.A. Times to the New York Post. Named one of football’s 300 greatest players, Upchurch was fast, fearless, and unforgettable, and the first name on the list when Denver named its 22 best players ever during a ceremony last season at Invesco Field.

After a reported stint in rehab for smoking weed in the 1980s, Upchurch was quoted upon his return to the game as saying he might still smoke at home. He claimed he was misquoted, which the Broncos organization reportedly backed up with a clean drug test. Much more interesting is the fact that in the 1970s Upchurch dated and was briefly engaged to future Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice.

And much more mystifying is the fact that he hasn’t been inducted into the Broncos Ring of Fame yet. Anybody who thinks that 10,000+ receiving yards, 35 touchdowns – 8 of them on punt returns – and 5 all-pro selections on a mediocre team doesn’t earn him that honor is smoking too much you know what.

Peter Kray is an East High School graduate who married a Cherry Creek girl. He keeps a framed copy of John Elway’s Broncos rookie card next to his wedding photo. You can read more of his writing, including excerpts of his upcoming novel, The God of Skiing, at shredwhiteandblue.com.

IN THE COMMENTS: Do you have a medical marijuana card? Let us know how legalization has eased your pain

Elwayville is awash with good vibes but is the Centennial State’s legacy on the national music scene nothing more than “Rocky Mountain High” and Winger?

In Whistler at the Olympics there was a hike you could take to the alpine events if you didn’t want to ride the chair. At the top of the hill there was a poster you could sign for posterity and all along the trail loudspeakers blasted fist-pumping, hike-inspiring rock and roll.

The Legacy: John Denver still brings tears to Mr. Kray’s eyes.

They played Queen’s “We Are the Champions,” The Who’s “Baba O’Riley” and AC/DC’s “For Those About to Rock!” And the day Bode Miller won gold in Super Combined—the day of absolute ski race redemption for him, his family and all his faithful fans—they played “Rocky Mountain High” by John Denver. I almost cried with joy.

Of course I was already pretty emotional. Already pretty “high” on the possibilities of the day. Skiing strong with a bronze in the Downhill and silver in the Super G, Bode was on an obvious hot streak (one that would propel the entire U.S. Alpine Ski Team to eight Olympic medals, three more than the previous record medal haul in 1984 in Sarajevo). Some crazy feel-good vibes were in the air.

So when they played that song, I felt like the Mile High sunshine was burning on the back of my head. Like I could close my eyes and see the fire in the sky. I felt like I could just click my boot heels together and be back in Colorado (even if Bode hails from New England).

“Rocky Mountain High!”

I got so jacked up on the overall feel-good sensations (and more than a little caffeine) that I wanted to turn to the cute Canadian girls dressed up like Smurfs in their official Olympic blue coats and hats with pom-poms to cheer the hikers and shout, “I’m a Colorado boy. Just thought you should know.”

I believed right then and there that song had been written just for me. As has anybody who’s ever been driving West on I-70 and had “Sunshine on my Shoulder,” or “Country Roads,” come on the radio. Anybody who’s ever seen that long view and thought, “I’ve never felt better than I feel right now.”

Already recognized as one of two official state songs of Colorado (along with “Where the Columbines Grow.” I bet you don’t know the lyrics to that one) “Rocky Mountain High” is the picture perfect pitch for the very best of this special place: the feeling that once you live here your life is now and forever made of gold.

On a state-by-state match-up of iconic instrumentalism, it’s in a class with Sinatra’s “New York, New York” and the Beach Boys’ vision of California. Or as a certain ski resort marketing guru from the Beehive State once told me, “I’d pay a million dollars for someone to write a song like that about Utah.”

Which would be nice, but unlikely, as I can’t think of much that rhymes with “Jell-O,” “3.2,” “John Stockton,” or “Wasatch effect” right now. And really, outside of John Denver, I can’t think of much in the realm of popular music that Colorado has ever shared with the world.

This being the music issue, I had figured it would be easy to recount all of the rock and roll revelations that Red Rocks has ever hosted—from the Beatles in 1964 to U2’s rainy day performance of “Sunday Bloody Sunday” to one of the late great Stevie Ray Vaughn’s last incendiary shows—and Colorado’s musical decree would be signed and sealed. Or that just by invoking El Chapultepec, Denver’s legendary downtown jazz and blues and booze bar, where Chet Baker, Ella Fitzgerald and Miles Davis all played, I could place our little cowtown at the top of the American music roll. But then I got the list of homegrown rock and roll talent that’s made it on the national stage…

Seriously, the highlight list couldn’t even fill a postcard. It includes Big Head Todd and the Monsters, Glenn Miller, Tommy Bolin, Devotchka and Kip Winger. Yes, that Winger. That’s it, unless you maybe want to count the Samples and that time my brother’s band, Local Threat, opened for Black Flag at the Fillmore.

I mean I realize we’re not on the musical levels of New York, Nashville, L.A., Athens or Seattle. But that list hardly puts us on a par with Idaho (which can claim Nikki Sixx, Paul Revere and The Raiders, Built to Spill, Steve Miller and new school troubadour Josh Ritter). I’m not saying we don’t have a great little music scene here. We do. It’s just that Colorado bands don’t seem to carry over into lower elevations.

So what is it? The lack of rain? All that clean mountain air? Is it that people are just too damn happy here to get down to the angsty urgent root of most great rock and roll?

I like to think so. I like to think we’re all out there so high on sunshine, so in the middle of something that we hardly have time to sit down and put it into music. I like to think the sound of Colorado is a little “Yelp!” of joy.

That’s certainly what John Denver thought of this state. And he moved here from New Mexico.

Cheers to 44!
On a Broncos note, congratulations to Floyd Little on his election to the Pro Football Hall of Fame. If it weren’t for Floyd, Colorado might not even have the Broncos. The All-American running back from Syracuse, where he followed in the footsteps of Jim Brown and Ernie Davis, saved this team, generating a string of sold out stadiums that continues to this day, and running his way to six straight NFL rushing titles.

Floyd’s 44 was the first number that the Broncos ever officially retired. The fact that he’s only the third Denver Bronco to enter the Hall of Fame—after John Elway and Gary Zimmerman—is a travesty. Hey Hall of Fame, after you finally give Shannon Sharpe the nod, how about you think about giving Steve Atwater, Dennis Smith and Karl Mecklenburg a call, too?

I’m just saying. It seems like a the kind of thing that a Hall of Fame is set up to do. •

Read more of Peter Kray’s writing, including excerpts of his upcoming novel, The God of Skiing, at shredwhiteandblue.com.

Brew Crew: John Hickenlooper (now Denver mayor), Jerry Williams, Mark Schiffler, Russell Schehrer and “Hicks” dog Holiday back in LoDo’s nascent days in 1988. Photo credit: Kim Allen/ Denver Photo Archives

Despite Colorado’s overabundance of natural beauty, Denverites, and especially Broncos fans, still find plenty of time to complain about things like blown pass interference calls, the fact that Las Vegas and Phoenix are sucking all the water out of our beautiful white Rockies, and most especially, about how much cooler the Mile High City used to be before your happy New England ass rolled uphill.

You’ve heard the ‘back-in-the-day’ laments–especially if you really are escaping some über urban utopia like L.A., Manhattan or Chicago–about how the sky was bluer, the powder was deeper, and sun-blessed girls jogged by like fields of daffodils. (And John Albert Elway could huck a football over the moon if he wanted to). Well, some of the legends are actually true. There were days when you could climb a 14’er, eat a five-pound pizza at Beau Jo’s in Idaho Springs and then channel Kerouac by getting your butt kicked by a transvestite outside Kitty’s on Colfax near Capitol Hill. Oh, those were good times for all.

But some of the ‘realer’ aspects of Rocky Mountain reality do seem to have disappeared in recent years. Open prairies have been swallowed by sparkling subdivisions, and good drinking dives have been co-opted by McMicrobreweries serving up 20 different shades of yellow ale. So lest we forget some of our favorite topics of complaint, here are 10 things that were a lot more fun in Colorado back when you were still buying acid-washed jeans at the Paramus Mall.

1) Colfax: Once named “the longest, wickedest street in America,” by Playboy Magazine, the “Fax” used to run a 24-hour Mardi Gras along the entire length of its 26+ miles. Hookers, hard drugs, legendary watering holes like the Lion’s Lair and Pete’s Satire Lounge (both still rocking), as well as a seemingly endless array of head shops, check-cash joints, comic/t-shirt/poster nooks and all-night diners produced a steady parade of shady people in search of illicit thrills. The bus commute, affectionately nicknamed the “Freaky 15,” was like an interactive tour of a demilitarized zone. Gentrification, historic designations, lofts, yuppies and–gasp!–new bookstores keep trying to push the freaks back up the alley, though.

2) Boulder: From hippie haven to yuppie utopia, Boulder’s long strange trip from far left outpost to dude-world destination can sometimes too easily be seen as the Kandy-Kolored dream’s ultimate derail. Rather than raising consciousness or debate these days, it seems that the fair elves of Dude-indell are more interested in raising heart-rates, real estate values and Subarus. And Pearl Street Mall has to have the most beautiful, well-fed panhandlers in the world (can you get a degree in begging now?). But hike the Flatirons on a Friday night, grab a beer in Chatauqua Park, then head down to the Fox Theater for live reggae/blues/folk/funk in one of the best intimate venues in the world and you know the old town still has plenty of soul.

3) The Blue Bonnet: Once a somewhat hidden hideaway of killer Mexican food, Elvis, Frank Sinatra and The Eagles on the jukebox, cold beer and stiff margaritas with really shitty parking has now become an open-aired pub of killer Mexican food, cold beer, stiff margaritas and really good parking, and who wants to go there? (Apparently, tens of thousands of people). Also see, Las Delicias, El Chapultepec…

4) The Wynkoop: The original bastion of craft-brewed beer and deep downtown-intensity, the Wynkoop helped create Lo-Do, like a tipsy train station itself ready to race you off to a different culture (but only to other suds-run countries such as Ireland or Australia). The Wynkoop helped me gain a wife (the scene of our first date), this town a heart, and this city a mayor. A snowy day sipping ESB in the original bar made you feel like you could write Ulysses (but with easier words). Once they added the upstairs though, frat boys filled the open space and the quiet locals with literary ambitions gave way to over-gelled mannequins in search of baby cougars. Of course, most folks might say, “That’s what bars are for.”

5) The Denver Broncos: Not only was the original Mile High Stadium a keepin’-it-cooler version of Invesco Pasture, where the former stallions are currently getting sheared, but the original team(s) had more character, too. From Floyd Little to Craig Morton, Haven Moses to Louis Wright, TJ, Gradishar, Alzado, D. Smith, Atwater, Terrel and Biff Elway himself, these guys were lifers, forever bleeding orange and blue. Now we’ve got ice cream man McDaniels on the sidelines in a white track suit (was that on Ebay from the Michael Jackson estate?), and a self-banished bumpkin in Poteet Cutler, the original Jethrosexual. But Kyle Orton? At least we get to keep watching Champ Bailey’s Hall of Fame career.

6) Vail: Once ground zero for easily accessed alpine opulence, Vail built its name as a kind of everyman’s Monaco. But the fantasy of butter buffed runs, Bogner-shaped butts and big blondes from Texas in white, furry boots has met the reality of global warming and beetle kill. One of skiing’s truest signs of the times, ‘Ever Vail,’ is a complete reimagining of the mountain’s western edge with trick energy saving features up the yahoo. And I thought all you needed to dissolve all sins was a day skiing powder in the Back Bowls.

7) Coors Beer: The first reason for even knowing Colorado existed other than gold, skiing, and all those mountain meadow backdrops, Coors was the Mile High brew. You couldn’t get it east of the Mississippi unless someone personally brought it to you. And for anyone that grew up here, it was our handheld introduction to alcohol. But then Coors went global, just as micro-bibing began to explode. Of course that doesn’t mean you can’t walk into any bar in Leadville, Alamosa, Delta, (or even the Campus Inn), order a cold draft and not imagine Sam Elliott growling, “The miners called it banquet beer,” which is pretty cool.

8.) Elitch Gardens: From the Mister Twister roller coaster to the Trocadero Ballroom, the Spitfire and 50 freakin’ lanes of Skeeball, Elitch Garden’s was the single high point destination of any summer (twice if your cousins came to town!). But since ‘Elitch’s’ moved to its present location on the Platte, it’s more like a hodgepodge collection of rides at the county fair. You spin around. You get nauseous. You eat pizza. You go try to meet girls in Lo-Do.

9) Berthoud Pass: Denverites learned to snowboard at Berthoud Pass when almost no other ski area in North America would let them ride the chairs. You could get a chili cheese dog in the café, a Coke and fries, and even a ramshackle room up there at the top of the world. But that’s all torn down now, to the delight of the hikers, I’m sure. Something funky and original about Colorado skiing went with it though. Thank goodness Loveland is still keeping it real.

10) I-70: Entire years have been lost to traffic jams here, powder days and birthdays, anniversaries and opening acts at Red Rocks shows. An absolutely incredible improvement over humping over Loveland Pass in a blizzard (the Eisenhower Tunnel opened in the ’70s), there was only about a decade where ‘The Ike” really was the freeway to freeriding. Better known as the “I-Lot,” I-70 west of Denver is often better served for tailgating now. •

Pete Kray is an East High School graduate who married a Cherry Creek girl. He keeps a framed copy of John Elway’s Broncos rookie card next to his wedding photo. You can read more of his writing, including excerpts of his upcoming novel, The God of Skiing, at www.shredwhiteandblue.com.

GOT 10 MORE THINGS THAT YOU THINK WE MISSED?

How about Casa Bonita, Colorado Springs, Jolly Ranchers and the Cherry Creek Reservoir?

Leave your nominations for what’s ruined in Elwayville in the comments below.

And… keep an eye out for the next issue of Elevation Outdoors and Elwayville’s “Skiing toward the Super Bowl.”

Here in Denver, it’s the time of year when locals dream of deep powder and wax all nostalgic for the Elway era.

Just saying the name “Elway” is like uttering the echo of “Denver.” It is the invocation of the patron saint of every powder-skiing, Frisbee-tossing dude from Denver.

“You know, it’s John Elway’s town, but we get to live here, too,” a friend of mine said just before my wedding, because he and I are two of those Denver dudes. And the beautiful wife is a Denver girl. And we got married in a field where the sunset behind the mountains blew up all orange and blue—the same colors as the uniforms of God’s favorite football team, or so the bumper sticker goes.

These days, she says she could care less about football, but anytime I put on that cheesy championship tape of the 1997 season (which I often do at this time of year), she magically appears in the doorway at the exact moment when Denver Broncos owner Pat Bowlen raises the Super Bowl trophy and says, “This one’s for John.” And yes, every time her eyes fill with tears.

That moment in Super Bowl history is the primary reason I still own a VCR, along with the fact that I’ve still got Sam Peckinpah’s The Wild Bunch on tape, and a couple of old Greg Stump ski films like Blizzard of AAHHH’s.

Yes, I’ll probably soon be watching those movies again, too, while fondly looking back on the glory years: The years when the Broncos played winning football; the years before I-70 west of Federal became a parking lot every Saturday morning; and back to a time when I could still ski 215s and still had most of my hair.

Yes, nostalgia and hope become better buddies at this time of year. If I think back to some of the best ski days or Sundays of my life, it doesn’t seem like such a stretch to hope there will be some absolutely epic powder days this season and that the Broncos will kick a little ass on the football field, too.

I don’t think that second part is gonna happen, though. I don’t like that this new Josh McDickless coach seems to think he’s so much smarter than the rest of the world. And as much as I’m prepared to be proven wrong, when he traded away Kid Cutler I realized that I’m a lot less interested in watching him coach than I was in watching an all-pro quarterback hurl the ball.

The fact that Josh came straight from Boston also doesn’t sit too well. The sight of all those BoSox hats in the brewpubs around town would seem to indicate that we’d hit the quota on acquiring expat New Englanders years ago. I mean is there any sort of reciprocity program where we get to ship an equal number of snowboarders back east for basic training or business school?

I’m just kidding, kind of, because I figure the average Eastern transplant digs 300+ sun-filled days a year and good powder skiing as much as any local kid from Park Hill. And as much as I like to remind Patriots fans that their team’s collective record of wins against the aforementioned Mr. Elway matches my own record of professional touchdown passes—zero—the truth is that in the last 50 years almost everybody in Colorado came from somewhere else.

‘Native’ stickers aside, my dad moved us here from New York when I was 2. He wanted to be an attorney, and a ski bum, and figured this was the best place in the world to combine the two pursuits. At first, all our relatives acted as if we’d moved to some low-budget, backcountry version of Austria. But over time, many came and saw the light. I still have visions of uncles flying back east with raccoon tans and a couple cases of Coors.

Back then, in most folks’ minds, Colorado was still just a recently annexed territory of cowboys and hippies, with moonbeams and mountain streams and John Denver on every radio station. Once in college a kid asked me, “How did you get your mail?” In his mind, the whole state was just one giant national park, with little outposts of quality caffeine and high-minded culture in towns like Aspen and Vail.

That is until Mr. John Albert Elway reminded the rest of America that folks from Colorado could come to your town and let off a little steam, too. Cleveland learned pretty fast that there’s more to the Centennial State than Fort Collins veterinary school students and Boulder Buddhists playing defense for the Broncos. Mention “The Drive” in Ohio and nobody will think you’re talking about how long it took to get to the ski hill. Bring up the “Super Bowl” in Green Bay and nobody starts flashing back to their last Red Rocks Dead Show. And if you go to Kansas City, Los Angeles or Oakland or even sunny San Diego (take your pick) and proudly declare yourself, “A Donkeys’ Fan,” people won’t feel compelled to go and hide their mules.

Nowadays, when people hear “Colorado,” they think, “great skiing, John Elway,” and “good football.” Probably in that order, too.

Hyperbole? Not at all: The emergence of Elway made it easier for kids from Colorado to go out into the world and not be mistaken for cowgirls or cowboys without a cow. It’s no stretch to say that as the Broncos did better on the field, the city’s civic pride also grew. Something new was taking shape west of Manhattan, east of Los Angeles, and cleaner than Chicago. When the Broncos lost, we thought we’d stalled. When they won, it was if we were living in our high-elevation Oz—titletown with a view. Elwayville.

Which is why I’m going to spend a lot more Sundays skiing this year than I am going to spend watching football. Out of respect for John. Because even if the Broncos haven’t been the winningest team in the past couple years (they haven’t been too bad, either), at least they always showed up with a gunslinger in tow. Plummer, Cutler, Griese—those guys came to throw. But sending a message that your team is going to prosper from an “efficient and consistent system,” well, that just isn’t that compelling a story to sell to an audience with so many Extreme! Organic! Outdoor Options! of other things to do.

So thanks to Mr. John Elway for all of the fantastic football memories and for helping this little cowtown claim its crown as the Queen City of the Plains. This winter when I’m outside skiing fresh powder on a Sunday instead of indoors watching replays of recycled schemes, I’ll gratefully say, “John, this turn’s for you.” •

Next Issue: Elwayville, It’s Ruined: 10 Things that Were Way Cooler Before You Got Here.