On Saturday immediately following the closing whistle of the OSU opening game Sam and I headed to LAX to catch our flight to Denver.  We needed to drop off the car at a parking lot first.  Sam had reserved a spot weeks in advance, however, when we reached the parking lot there was a cone in the entrance greeting us.  I got out of the car and found an attendant out in the lot who said they were sold out and gave me the address of another parking lot apparently owned by the same company.  I couldn’t help but think of the Seinfeld episode about making reservations; unfortunately it wouldn’t be the last time that day.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4T2GmGSNvaM

When we arrived in Denver and found the bus to our rental car company the driver said “no cars” and refused to let us board the bus.  We explained that we had a reservation, but he still didn’t want to let us on.  After another bus for the same company, Advantage, pulled up behind him the two drivers had a chat in a foreign language.  Eventually they said they would take us to their manager.  Instead of driving to Advantage’s lot, he drove in a big loop and took us back to the same “ground transportation” area of the airport, but this time there was a man standing there in a small crowd of angry travellers in our same situation.  His solution was to give each of us a card with the Advantage reservation line and the name “Dickerson” to call to be reimbursed when we found a car somewhere else.

So, we walked down the line of rental car shuttle buses asking every driver.  None of the companies had any cars left.  Sam started calling rental companies that we found on the map using our cell phones.  Nothing in town was open at that hour (we had to remind ourselves we were not in Los Angeles, in Denver, businesses aren’t open late).  Finally, Sam found an open reservation at Avis, and soon an Avis bus rolled up.  At Avis there weren’t many cars left, and we had to choose between a BMW X5 and a Ford C-Max.  We chose the C-Max as we knew it was closer to our “economy car” rental at Advantage and would make a less unpleasant reimbursement conversation later.  The C-Max ended up being a better choice for another reason; gas mileage.  We ended up driving over 400 miles in the next three days and we still had a quarter tank left when we returned the car.  The C-Max was a hybrid with electric drive in most situations at low speeds, which we were constantly doing on our mountain drives, but more on that later…

Driving down from the airport we could see what might be a nice rainy sunset view, but eventually gave up on trying to find a place to watch it.  Instead, we went downtown to Larimer Square for dinner before heading to J&J’s place, where we’d be staying for the rest of the trip.

J&J have a nice new (or completely renovated, not sure) home in the “beverly hills” of Denver. Homeowners who are also planning to renovate their kitchen may look into these unique kitchen island ideas.

 Their neighbor across the street is a Colorado Senator (possibly Michael Bennet?)  The home seemed massive compared to ours and the neighborhood was filled with joggers and runners every day.  In general the entire state seemed to be more “active” that we’re used to seeing, with bicycles everywhere and racks on almost every vehicle.  Not sure what happens to all that when it starts snowing, but when we were there it was still 90 degrees during the day.

I didn’t take any photos that first night.  The gallery for the entire trip can be seen here.