Saturday in the Mile High City

Saturday morning in Denver!  We awoke to a beautiful sunny day!  It was nice to look out the hotel room window and not see corn!  Unfortunately, we have a view of Mile High Stadium. 

The hotel restaurant has an awesome breakfast buffet!  The even have sausage gravy and biscuits!!!!  Unfortunately, they loaded the sausage gravy with jalapeños!  Wow!  Surprise!!!!  That's just mean!

After filling our bellies we saddled up to do some exploring.  We headed up to Central City and Blackhawk.  What a beautiful ride!  I had the ol' GoPro camera going to catch some great video!  We stopped along the way to don our jackets and I'm glad we did! 

...jacket stop...

As we were heading up I kept seeing signs for a beer fest in Central City!  They even had painted the lanes on the road every few hundred feet.  "Lager" with an arrow pointing up the road, then "IPA" with an arrow, etc...  Pretty funny!  Hooray!  Beer fest!  Boo! I cannot indulge because of motorcycle!

We arrived in Central City with it's tight, hilly, twisty streets.  What a cool little town!  It reminds me a lot of Deadwood, both the terrain and the cool old buildings. As the signs promised, they had a beer fest going on!  They had the Main Street closed off for the vendor tents.  I was sad that I could not partake. I love beer tasting events!  

Ron thought they were giving away free samples!  He stood in line at one of the tents and was surprised when they asked him for money!  Hahahaaha!  We were hungry so we made our way over to the Dostal Alley Bar, where we split a pizza and I had one of their house-made brews. Some kind of summer ale.  Not bad!  While we were waiting for our pizza Tom & I occupied ourselves with some bartop video poker. Tom was playing Deuces wild and ended up hitting 4 Deuces!  Hooray!  He ended up playing it down to $265!  When he went to cash out.....QUARTERS!   Bahahahaha!  Old school! He drained the machine and had to wait for the bartender/waitress to refill it.  If course by this time it was starting to rain outside and we wanted to get going and make our way back down the mountain!  Ron left ahead of us to meet up with some buddies at a biker bar.  After finally getting our loot and a fresh cup of coffee for Bill, we saddled up to head on down. 

By this time the rain picked up quite a bit.  Bah. It was a cold rain with big raindrops. My glasses were starting to fog so I was having a hard time seeing. Bah again!  Finally the rain eased up a little and I remembered to turn on the GoPro again.  I think I got even better footage on the return trip. Rain, sun, tunnels, river, more rain, lightning, more sun.....  Finally the weather settled on "sun"!  At the base of the mountain we split off from Bill & Sue.  They headed back to the hotel and we set off to find Ron.  By this time I was hot out again!  Amazing weather out here!

We met up with Ron and his pals at a place called Piper Inn Bar. Lots of nice bikes were parked outside. They had 2 outdoor patios in front.  One allowed smoking, the other did not.  Pretty cool!  We stayed and chatted for a bit with Ron's pals and then had to say goodbye.  But not before one of his friends spilled his drink in my lap!  Gaaaaa!!!!  And I finally had just dried off after our soggy ride!  Crap!  

We had an uneventful ride back to our hotel to get showered and changed. Tom, Ron, and I were heading to Ted's Montana Grill to catch up with the other Terwilligers, Tom & Dawn.  Bill & Sue had plans to catch up with one of Sue's high school pals at a Celtic song & dance show in Arvada, so we parted ways for the day.  

The restaurant was walking distance from the hotel.  Hooray!  It's in a really neat section of downtown Denver.  It kind of reminds me of East 4th on steroids!  It was great seeing Tom & Dawn again.  And the food at this place was fantastic!  I had a buffalo filet that melted in my mouth!  After eating and chatting, Tom & Dawn had to leave to head to a birthday party. We took some pix before saying goodbye, of course!  

Tom, Ron, and I wandered around looking for someplace to stop in and grab a drink.  Most of the places were too high-end for my state of mind and attire.  When you're traveling by bike, it's hard to get fancy!  Tom consulted the trusty Yelp app and it told him there was an Irish pub on the next street over called Nallen's Irish Pub.  Perfect!  We headed over there, got carded, (yay!) and got the last available table right by the font window!  Yay!  People watching!  The Broncos had a pre-season game at home that had just finished so the crowd was really picking up.  Lots of young people...I felt old but didn't really care!  The bar was perfect for us. Loud and a little bit gritty. I had Guinness and Red Breast Irish Whiskey, of course!  

 Red Breast is delightful!  

After having a couple rounds of those while watching the post-football crowd, we decided to mosey on back to the hotel.   Our plans for Sunday were more riding, dinner with the Beliveaus, and laundry.  It's been a crazy week and I needed some sleep!  

Stay tuned for Sunday's happenings!