Snowed Out

I can't believe it. I go out of my way to skip winter this year, spending November - March in Beirut where snow is a choice rather than a location tax imposed by the dictatorial hand of Mother Nature. Naturally, April came around and I was certain I had escaped her brutal oppression.

As you can see, I did not.

Boy is she brutal. Downright Qaddafiish, if you're into the whole making comparisons between totally trivial things and horrific real world monster thing. We woke up in sunshine and 63 degrees. By the time we got into downtown Denver and parked across the river, it was freaking freezing. (Ok, not literally freezing, but it had dropped to 41 degrees.) By the time we got to the stadium, it was raining. By the time we got our $4 Rockpile tickets and got into the stadium, white stuff was fluttering down from the heavens.

The woman at the ticket window told me the game was delayed - after I had purchased the tickets. No matter - I had dragged my friend out to the game and we had walked a mile to the stadium, so I was going in no matter what. He tried his best to hide the fact that he was not amused, but he wasn't very good at it and I felt a bit of guilt, as if I had any influence over the tyrant Mother Nature. What a bitch.

The concourse was pretty packed with hideous beer guzzling purple creatures. (Who on earth picked that color for a baseball team? Sorry, Rockies fans, but it's true.) I noticed there are hardly any seats in the stadium that are under cover, which meant that every brave soul who had dared the weather to come to the ballpark was standing in the concourse. It wasn't too bad back there - but if you got out into the open...wow. That wind was like a US missile tearing through a Qaddafi loyalist's body.

I only had one thing on my mind at that point - bratwurst. How do I explain the intense craving I've had for a good sausage for so long now? I don't even eat much meat, but the fact that you can't find a good sausage in Lebanon just makes you want one. I tell you what, for a culture that eats so much meat, it's surprisingly difficult to find high quality animal flesh for consumption. Well, there is some darn good seafood in the seaside towns.

If I hadn't been craving a good sausage for so long, I would be complaining about the soggy bun and the lack of good mustard and the overcooked onions and peppers, but I have to say, I enjoyed that bratwurst immensely. I didn't even care that the tarp was on the field or that I knew instinctively that I would not get to watch baseball that day. My mouth was so happy eating that overpriced brat. Didn't hurt that I had good company to eat it with.

It didn't take them long to call it. I'd say we were inside the stadium for about fifteen minutes before going out - you can actually get your hand stamped and exit Coors Field. I've been to enough ballgames in my life to know when a game is going to save itself for another day, and this one definitely was one of them. Oh, did I mention it was freaking freezing?

Contrast that with the day before, when it was 84 degrees! Look at the photos below to see the stark difference. It was such a beautiful night that we ate outside a few blocks from the stadium, where a game was going on. It was such a great day in every way, but I guess you could say Sunday, this snowy, snowy Sunday, was also a great day even if I didn't get to see the baseball game.

I'm going to try to hit the game tomorrow, at least for a few innings. At $4, a few innings is more than doable.