Fugetaboutit!!!: Lord I was born a travelin man... as long as I don't have to climb anything.

I was in Boulder Colorado last week.

I have to give them credit. Colorado does green real well. There are trees and plants and nature everywhere. I usually only eat nature but it was truly a beautiful place to just look.

I stayed at the St. Julien Hotel.

“Julien” is a French word that means “Holiday Inn”.

St. Julien, as we all know, is the patron saint of hotel rooms with no closet space.

Boulder is 5,000 feet above sea level.

Architects that live where there is no oxygen should not be allowed to design hotels.

They actually sold oxygen tanks in the spa at the hotel.

I walked around like a scuba diver for four days.

How in the hell do people live in these cities where you can’t get air?

Boulder is a college town. I think it is home to The University of Cities with no Oxygen.

I noticed something very odd about Boulder.

There are no old people.

None.

At first I thought they had been kidnapped but then I realized they had all probably died from lack of oxygen.

The whole town is full of young unshaven college kids.

And that’s just the women.

I felt like any moment someone was going to come up to me and hit me up for their tuition.

When I called the hotel ahead of time to find out if there was anything exciting going on in Boulder they told me that it was, “Tea and Tofu” week.

Tea and Tofu?

Uh….

That’s just sad.

I didn’t realize that Tea and Tofu went together but it’s probably some bizarre “new age” health potion to help bald guys grow a longer pony tail.

They also told me that I could “stroll” along the Pearl Street Mall and see “Bongo the Balloon Man”.

Stroll? I only stroll when I’m drunk and I’m listening to The Diamonds.

And there has to be oxygen.

“Bongo the Balloon Man”?

More proof that the old people had all been eliminated. The whole city was run by teenagers who entertain themselves at the mall by watching the last person to make it through puberty create balloon giraffes.

They also said I could hike to Chatahackawuckapucka… whatever… and see the flatirons.

Hike….

Right.

I’m all over that.

Hiking through the mountains with my scuba gear.

By the way flatirons are rocks.

They wanted me to hike to rocks.

We went up to Estes Park which is about 50,000 feet higher than Boulder to have dinner at the Stanley Hotel.

You kind of chew between breaths.

The Stanley Hotel was the hotel in the movie The Shining. Very cool old hotel with a Stanley Steamer in the lobby and a gift shop that my wife disappeared into thirty seconds after we got there.

As I walked up to the front of the hotel I turned around and saw these incredible snow capped mountains.

Damn.

That might be the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen in my life… next to the first episodes of Bay Watch.

While we were having dinner it started to snow.

Here’s the thing.

I have never seen snow fall in my life.

I’ve seen snow.

Sea World used to make it around Christmas time for the kids.

But to see actual snow fall was amazing.

I ran out of the hotel to frolic in the snow.

It’s very hard to frolic when there is no air.

But I frolicked.

By the way snow tastes like crap.

While I was frolicking I noticed something coming out of the snow.

It looked like a bus.

When it got closer I realized that it was alive.

I yelled out…. “A MOOSE!!!”

Then I noticed there were more of them.

“A HERD OF MOOSES!!!!!”

Standing on the hotel porch was a couple of guys that looked like a cross between Elmer Fudd and Grizzly Adams that were looking at me like we were in the movie Deliverance.

“Them there are not moose. They’re Elk. If you creep up behind them and whistle they might come right over to you. You probably shouldn’t creep up behind that buck though.”

Yeah…

That’s what I was thinking.

Don’t creep up on that buck.

Which one is the buck?

I counted twenty two elk. How do you “creep” up on twenty two elk? WHY would you creep up on twenty two elk? And if all you have to do to catch an elk is whistle then the NRA has a lot of explaining to do.

I’ve never been that close to live food out in nature before.

I looked back at Elmer and Grizzly to ask a few more Elk questions and all of a sudden I noticed something. Something that was totally odd about these two Colorado locals.

They weren’t symmetrical.

I know that’s not something you usually think of when you’ve come face to face with nature but this was really weird.

Elmer had a huge head that just didn’t fit his body.

Grizzly had was really tall but had arms that were way too short.

You know how when you first notice something that you hadn’t noticed before and you kind of have that “holy crap” moment?

Try not to do that out loud.

Then it dawned on me that everyone I had seen in Colorado wasn’t symmetrical. It scared the hell out of me. I ran to the hotel gift shop to find my wife who at this point was teaching the rest of the hotel guests how to properly stack clothing at the counter so it won’t tip over so you can continue to shop.

“We… need… to… go…”

“I’m not done shopping.”

“We… need… to… go… NOWWWW!”

“What’s wrong with you?”

“Ali………….ens.”

“What? Why are you breathing like that?”

“No…air….”

“Well put your scuba tank on and go back out in to the snow.”

“The… aliens… took… the… air…”

When I came to I was sitting on the tour bus with a huge, filled, gift shop bag sitting on my lap.

“What happened?”

“You sort of passed out.”