My Denver experience

Well, I'm finally back from my trip to Denver, it was a long weekend, but lots of fun at the same time. I'll start at the beginning and try to cover all of the events.

A few weeks ago a client asked if myself and Brian from Engage Software (my employer) could come out and give them some assistance with DotNetNuke, as well as begin to cover a few large projects they wanted to get started on. I requested that we arrange the meeting around the time of the Denver ProSolo. They were kind enough to fly me out on Friday instead of Sunday, so that I could attend the ProSolo, and then Brian and I could meet with them on Monday.

Friday afternoon I flew from St. Louis to Denver on Frontier Airlines, it was a bumpy flight, but direct into Denver and on time. I arrived in Denver and picked up my Hertz rental car, a convertible V6 Mustang. I immediately headed over to the event site, also located on airport grounds. After about 2 hours of walking around talking to folks I found a ride in ASP, in a 04 Z06. Aaron Boltman was kind enough to let me drive his car for the event. I walked the course far more than usual with Chris K. and Matt G (The STL Boys).

Friday evening we (Me, Chris and Matt) went out to the little diner near the Airport. They had what looked like the greatest milkshakes ever, but dared not try one, being that when I'm out of town I seem to develop a lactose intollerence. Saturday morning I got out to the event site early, met up with Aaron and then walked the courses a time or two. Come 7:30am I hear an announcement over the PA that BStock is nolonger making a class, they had 7 drivers originally but it appears only 4 showed up.

Around 8am, right before the deadline Eric Jones asked me if I'd switch to BStock and drive his RX-8 so that they could have a complete class. With the thought of getting to try an RX-8 and run in BS, my usual class, I jumped at the opportunity. Apologies for Aaron for not driving his car, but I really do appreciate the kind offer. Having never driven an RX-8 I was hoping to see what all the hype was about.

Saturday runs weren't all that interesting. Out of the 8 runs I took, 4 were redlights. Dan Pedroza was announcing and was on me about RL'ing all the runs. So my last two runs I managed to not RL and get decent times, after both the morning and afternoon sessions I managed to stay in 4th place, out of 5. I was sort of dissapointed in the RX-8s, I have become addicted to cars with Torque, and the RX-8 definitely lacks that. Though, driving an 8 was, I believe, good experience and hopefully training, as you have to drive them and try to maintain as much speed as possible. I have the bad habit of overbraking and powering out of corners, which a car with torque allows you to do. So hopefully if I got anything from the weekend it was the ability to maintain more speed when I'm driving the 350Z, thus making me faster!

Saturday evening the STL boys headed to Denver for dinner at the Wyncoop Microbrewery and then spent a couple hours walking around the downtown bar area. We had a few drinks at a place I believe called the Sports Club. We ended up heading back to the hotels around 11pm Saturday evening to get some rest for Sunday morning.

Sunday morning I improved quite a bit, I think I picked up nearly a second overall on the two courses, but not nearly enough to catch Jones who managed to take the win in BS. I barely held onto 4th as Mauro (sp?) got close to me, and I came fairly close to BJ in 3rd position. Brian took second just a few thousands back from Eric if I recall correctly.

Late Sunday morning I started trying to figure out what I was going to do Sunday afternoon. I needed to pick up Brian at 7:50pm, so I had from about noon to do whatever I wanted. I was talking to Adam Breakey from www.autocrossforum.com and he mentioned he was in town until he got his flight Monday morning. After deciding I wanted to head to Pike's Peak I asked Adam if he wanted to ride up with me. We took off shortly after the morning runs finished. Neither of us made it into the challenge, so we didn't have to be around in the afternoon.

We had a great trip, besides having to wait at a Wendy's to get lunch, which took about 45 minutes. We rode up and down the mountain with the top down the whole way. Luckily I don't think Hertz had a cleaning policy in their rental agreement, so I didn't bother cleaning up the inside of the car before I turned it in. It was COVERED in dirt from the trip up and down Pike's Peak. Neither Adam or I had been up the mountain before. It was amazing, and I was definitely kicking myself for not taking my Digital Rebel on the trip with me. We both snapped camera phone photos on the trip, I'll have mine posted a bit later, though they didn't turn out to well, they are better than nothing!

If you've never been up to Pike's Peak, I highly recommend the trip. Be sure to take your camera though. On the way down I turned the TCS off in the Mustang and had a little fun drifting it around some of the famous corners from the Hill Climb. Though, I didn't push it too hard, I can't imaging going up or down the mountain at full bore, I don't have balls that big!

Sunday evening I dropped Adam off at his hotel and picked Brian up from the airport. We headed out to Golden to the hotel that our client setup for our stay. Monday morning we met with the client and then headed back to the hotel Monday evening to get ready for the Cardinals Rockies game. Our client offered to take us, so we gladly agreed and had them book our flights out on Tuesday morning instead of Monday night.

We probably should have left Monday though, the game was horrible! The Cardinals got killed by the Rockies in a 2 hit shutout. I did however get to see one of my long lost fraternity brothers at the game. Jon Schmidt and his wife Jenn just had a baby girl (Haley) on Tuesday of the prior week and he managed to talk his way out of the house and to the game. It was good catching up with Jon as I hadn't seen him since his wedding in October 2003.

Tuesday morning Brian and I made a quick stop at McDonald's for breakfast and I got to try out the RedBox for the first time. I picked out a DVD for the flight home, and watched it on the plane. That's really not a bad arrangement, it cost me $1.08 for the movie for one night, and I dropped it off at a McD's here in St. Louis this morning.

Overall it was a great trip. The ProSolo was fun, even though I didn't do well. The trip up the mountain was definitely the highlight of the trip. Meeting for the first time with our client was great, and going to see Coors field was awesome as well, I think I'm up to 4 stadiums now, and will be going to my 5th in August.

I also learned another great thing. If you can ever fly on Frontier airlines do it! They have more legroom, and TVs in all of the headrests!