The Denver Nuggets-Finally!

Written on 6-15-23.

        I am sitting in back of our Alto.  I just had a snack of Dot’s pretzels and Fairlife milk.  Don’t tell anyone, but I drank out of the container and I licked the spices off of my fingers.  Boy, do I go crazy when I’m on vacation.  Those pretzels are addictive.  *Belinda did give me permission to drink from the bottle.  

I just watched a YouTube video of the Denver Nuggets and scads of their fans celebrating their recently won NBA championship.  The number of fans there was the most impressive part.  Even I am still glowing a bit from their winning their first championship, too.  I remember the 80’s when they had Alex, Dan, and Kiki.  They sure could score, but they could’t defend, and that was how other teams exploited them.  Then I remember the Dikembe Mutumbo years and the time they upset the #1 seed (I believe it was the Seattle Supersonics) when they were the #8 seed.  I don’t know how long they lasted after that, but they didn’t...

win it all that year either.  The word “finally” has come up often in many of my conversations with my longtime basketball friends.  Good for the Nuggets!  Finally.

We are here with the Edgertons, and we are having dinner at their RV in about an hour.  They came over for dinner at our place last night.  Where are we?  We are at Black Canyon of the Gunnison.  It is just 20 minutes outside of Montrose, and it’s gorgeous. Until this trip, I didn’t even know it existed.  

We had a fabulous lunch and visit with Sylvia yesterday.  She meant to buy organic turkey meat for our meal, but forgot to grab it, so we had Beau’s dog food instead.  That was much better, because Beau has grass-fed hamburger meat ground into his food.  We had hamburgers (without the dog food mixed in), and they were delicious.

Sylvia is nearing 90, and she has slowed down a bit since we saw her last.  She has given up driving, and she was wearing a wig.  It looked good on her, though, and we could hardly tell.  She is less steady on her feet, too.  Her memory and her storytelling were impressive, though.  She never struggled to remember a word.  She and Becky plan to have an estate sale to get rid of the extra stuff they don’t need anymore.  She is throwing in the car for this sale, and it all seems very familiar (and a bit uncomfortable, although I am not dealing with it for Sylvia) considering what we’ve just done with Mom and Dad’s house.  

We drove the South Rim here last night and then once more this morning.  We visited the Visitors Center, and I bought some postcards.  I have already written to James and Casey, Danielle, Mom and Dad, Bev and Curt, and Guy and AnnMarie.  After that, I went to a geology talk at 3:00, and I learned why it’s called Black Canyon.  It’s because the canyon walls are so steep and deep that it is full of shadows.  Sun only reaches parts of the canyon for only about 30 minutes a day, she said.  Makes sense to me.  It is really spectacular here, and I am reminded of Grand Canyon and Zion.

Kody came with us, and it’s been wonderful.  Eric and I plan to go play golf tomorrow, too, and it feels like a true start of our summer.

On to golf…

Like I just wrote, we plan to play at the Black Canyon Golf Course, and it’s the oldest course here.  It’s also closest to where we are staying.  I read it’s a par 70 course, and the two nines are very different.  I am very much looking forward to beating/playing with Eric again (wink, wink).  I believe he got all of the racing out of his system for the spring/summer, so he should be able to play more often.  I won’t hold my breath.

When I played with Herman (not his real name) the last time, he was able to fill up one of the spots in our foursome for the back nine.  He asked a man named Victor (not his real name either), an educator like me, to come play with us.  He taught in the Shiprock and Ignacio districts, and he was a principal for a time.  For someone who was 90, he was in great shape, too.  Herman said he likes to play from the blues, but he convinced him to play from the whites, because we were already doing that on the front.  He was pretty good, but I would say the whites were the better tees for him.  I’ll just say that when I am 90 years old, I would love to be playing at all, and playing from the white tees would be a bonus.  For his first shot (no warm-up), he hit a low shot with his driver just past the 150-yard marker.

We played with Jim on the front nine, and he is a twin.  His brother, Jack, is the better player according to Herman.  Jim did struggle, but he said it was because of his left shoulder.  Looking back, he had a lot of injuries holding him back from playing better.  He decided to leave after hole #11, because he was so frustrated.  He had a Spuds McKenzie type dog, and his golf balls had the dog’s likeness on them.  Never seen that before.  Often, the image of his dog would turn up after hitting a shot, but I guess it has a 50-50 shot of happening.  He just said it happened most of the time.