Whoring Myself

About a week ago I got and email from my former rugby coach who made a fairly nice offer. I believe it was along the line of: 'Do you want to go to Aspen to play in the Ruggerfest tournament? And we will pay for you flight, hotel, and rental car and I'll buy you a steak dinner.' After getting a couple days off approved from my boss I was on a flight to Ruggerfest. I met up with some Austin players at the Denver airport and we headed off to Aspen. After feeling like I was in an episode of 'Flight of the Conchords' we arrived at the field. When we arrived, my Old Boys team was taking the field. Usually a strong team, they had only brought 7 players and 'borrowed' a rest of a team. I watched their game when I was greeted by my old coach. After catching up, we headed off to a bar to catch a World Cup game, but we denied by a full house. So we headed off to a restaurant with one server and one bartender. At dinner I learned a little about Aspen. First, the average home price in Aspen is around $4 million. And because of that Aspen doctors don't even live in Aspen, much less hourly workers, so the service is less than ideal. We enjoyed some slowly served beers and appetizers to later learn we were going to have a practice, as everyone seemed sober enough to give it a go. We went through a few dozen 'simple' calls and I was suppose to be all ready for the next day's three games. Then we headed back to our condo, it was nice place with a lodge feeling next to a stream and four bedrooms, two bathrooms, ten ruggers, and one guy who left his cot only once during the weekend. We rolled through our shortened Saturday games winning by fairly large margins and long breaks in between.

After our first day we were all set to face the Gentlemen of Aspen, who always seem to win their tournament as they seem to have enough players to field a fresh team for each game. So by the time for the finals they have a fresh team against a team that played three games the previous day. We headed back to our lodge to be greeted by an ice bath. After no more than 60 seconds, I decided that it would be best to cuddle up under a comforter and watch 'Heroes' on my laptop. We headed out for a team feed and I got my steak dinner. After picking up drinking supplies for the next night (Colorado does not allow liquor stores to sell on Sunday), we retired back to lodge for the evening where I watched a most interesting documentary about 'Deep Throat.' We woke up soar but geared to play. We gave Aspen their first test of the tourney with a hard fought game which we lead through the first 60 minutes, a missed tackle and penalty conversion later we held the second place trophy at our sides.

At this point, I started to make up for not drinking all weekend. I started with a slice of Domino's pizza, a six pack of New Belgian Trippel, and a couple of PBR and I was off. What exactly happened after that was a little hazy. I do know that I got lost trying to find the lodge, I stole a pumpkin, and I'm pretty sure that I walked into the wrong room when I did find the complex. The next day I was not feeling too well. Drinking an not eating is never a good idea. The Kiwis and I headed back to the Denver airport about nine hours before our flight. And if it were not for a delay I would have missed my flight, as we stopped in Vail where the Kiwis proceeded to run up a $250 tab at the Vail rugby bar, despite me not participating in the drinking as I felt like my life was ending. But on the plus side I did get to drive back to the airport. On the other hand it allowed the Kiwis to drink about a cases of beer, criticize my driving, get unreasonably loud, and even try to wrestle in the passenger seat. We arrived at the airport about 20 minutes before my flight was scheduled to take off, but thanks to an hour delay I made it back home.