What Now

BLOGGED ALONG THE WAY: ROCKY MOUNTAIN HIGH EDITION

June 19, 2011

It was another great day in the Mile High City!  Josh and Jeoff took me to a parade!

I knew that there wasn't a holiday or anything, so when I asked what the parade was for, they said it was for Denver Pride.  I thought that was really awesome.  I mean, it's always the little towns that have a lot of civic pride, but you never see the big towns going through the trouble of having a parade, right?

We got up early so that we could have breakfast at a local bar called Charlie's.  Josh said it was a cowboy bar that doesn't usually serve food, but on Denver Pride day, they have a buffet.  We got there pretty early. There were a lot of men there, but only a few were cowboys.  I also saw a man there dressed in leather short-shorts and some kind of weird leather strappy thing.  Wow, that couldn't ever be unseen.  My guess was that he was on a float or something, because I can't imagine anyone wearing a thing like that for fun.

The parade started at about 9:30 am, and it was so much fun!  It was loud, and people were throwing beads, and everyone was waving these rainbow flags.  I thought that was a nice touch, since Colorado calls itself "Colorful Colorado." I guess that was a nod to the state slogan.  There were a lot of beauty queens in this parade.  I mean, A LOT.  More queens than I'd ever seen in any parade before, really.  Honestly, though, I kind of thought that most of them were a little too made up.  Lots of make up, big hair and the gaudiest dresses you've ever seen.  There was also a lot of men walking in the parade wearing skimpy bathing suits.  I didn't see a banner for them, but I guessed they must have been a city swim team or something because there were a whole lot them in the skimpy suits and not much else.  That was weird.  I mean, who wears speedos in a parade?  There were a lot of floats that had music playing really loud, and most of it was Lady Gaga stuff.  You'd think there would be more of a selection of music for a city parade, but I guess her music is really popular now.  There were also a lot of people in costumes!  There were these women dressed as bikers and driving big motorcycles, there were men dressed up with these big feather things that spread out behind them and glitter on their faces, so I guess they were dressed as peacocks or something.  There was a group of men that came by wearing the leather and stuff, like the guy I'd seen earlier, but I didn't get a chance to read the sign that they were holding.   Maybe they were a cosplay group dressed as gladiators or something.  There were politicians and church groups holding up signs that said "God Loves Everyone!" and "Thank God You Were Born That Way!" which I thought was great!  It's nice when churches can get involved with city events, especially when they are promoting good self esteem.  Probably the weirdest thing in the parade was a float that went by that had some men walking beside it, and they were throwing stuff in the crowd.  I don't actually think he meant to hit me in the face, but a handful of the stuff he was throwing hit me right in the head and fell all over the ground.  I picked it up and put it in my purse, and when I got a chance to read the little packets, they all said 'personal lubricant." Why was that guy throwing lotion samples into the crowd?  Well, I ended up with a whole lot of them.  I'll probably take them to church and give them to the little old ladies.  They love stuff like that.

After the last float passed by, everyone followed the parade and walked down to a gigantic park by the state capitol building.  It was SO full of people, I was a little overwhelmed.  I've never seen that many people all together in one place before.  I found out later that there was over 300,000 people in the park at the same time.  This was the second part of the Denver Pride event. There were food vendors, merchandise booths, booths for charities and things like that.  We walked around the whole park and looked at everything.   I was so glad to see that everyone was having so much fun being proud of Denver.  It seemed to make everyone very happy to be there.  There were lots of people holding hands and hugging.  It was nice to see that the love for their city just seemed to bring everyone together.  As I passed one of the booths, a man caught my arm and asked me a question.  It was kind of loud, but I heard him say the word "straight."  Maybe he was asking for directions or something, but all I did was say "Yes, straight." He grabbed me and gave me a big hug and kiss on the cheek and said he was so glad I was born the way I was and that I was being very supportive!  It was very sweet. :)  I've never met anyone so excited about getting directions before!  I don't know what the way I was born had to do with anything, but I'm glad I could help him out.  We stayed there for a while, got a snack and people watched for a while, but we had one more stop to make before we were done with the event.

Josh told me we were going to a bar called The Wrangler to sit and grab a drink before going home.  He told me there were bears in the bar and I kind of got worried at that.  The building he pointed out didn't look very big, and there were a lot of people around.  I didn't think it would be very safe to have bears inside with all of those people.  I think he had just been joking with me, though, because there weren't any bears inside at all!  All I saw were a lot of big, beefy dudes with beards and stuff.  I met a lot of really nice guys inside, and so many of them were good looking!  Too bad I'm married, right?!

We finally headed home and Josh and I got cleaned up and changed clothes so we could go to Jeoff's mother's house for a cookout.  I also finally got to meet Loanne, Jeoff's best girlfriend.  She was really sweet!  We had a lot of fun!  We ate, talked, laughed, and watched part of the Daytime Emmy Awards.  Jeoff had to leave to head back down to his house in Lamar, so we all said goodbye and Josh and I came home and crashed.  It was a very good day!