Life With Briana: Trip To Denver & Golden 2022

May 29, 2022

Trip To Denver & Golden 2022

Doug, Bri and I made a short trip to Denver and Golden, Colorado the beginning of Briana's spring break in April to visit Doug's side of the family.

We flew out on a Friday...

We had the cutest little girl sitting in front of us. I miss Briana having all these sparkly things...

In that little pink case above, the little girl had some cute animal figurines. One dropped on the floor under her chair and she didn't notice. Before we landed, I picked it up and handed it to her mom. Her mom was so appreciative. She said the girl had just gotten those figurines the day before. I know she would not have been happy to lose one of them!

We stayed in downtown Denver at the Ritz Carlton...

We stayed in a very nice suite...

The first evening of our visit, we ate at Elway's restaurant in the hotel...

The steaks were so delicious. And they had a jalapeno bread that was absolutely amazing.

Saturday morning, as we were heading out the hotel door to visit family, I had an unfortunate encounter.

Doug, Bri and I came out of the hotel and were waiting for our rental car keys from the valet. I noticed a huge bus sitting off to my right but really didn't pay too much attention to it. I had no idea why it was there. There was a crowd of people standing about twenty feet away in front of the hotel, but again, I was fixated on looking for the car and didn't really pay attention. I turned back to look at Doug (he was behind me) and asked where our car was. He was looking at the bus and suggested I snap a photo. I had no idea why. I turned back around and pulled out my phone to do what he asked. As I was doing that, I was hit super hard from behind on my right shoulder (my bad shoulder where I have done therapy) - someone had run into me very hard. Looking up, I saw a HUGE guy. He looked down at me and apologized for bumping into me. I was shocked and in the moment, I just said it was ok. He continued on and I realized he was a bodyguard and he was escorting someone to the bus. He wasn't paying attention to where he was going (focusing on his protectee) and plowed into me.

Did I say he was huge? Like 300 pounds of muscle huge. He hit me so hard, I was pushed into Briana. Thank goodness he hit me and not her.

I found out he was a bodyguard for the Pittsburgh Penguins. They were playing that afternoon against Colorado. The people standing outside were hockey fans. It was all lost on me.

I still managed to snap a photo and caught the bodyguard in my photo...

We got our keys and started to head out. Doug asked me if I was ok and I realized my shoulder was hurting a little. I was in a bit of shock and didn't feel it until then. We had some very important things to do that day, so we didn't want to turn around, so Doug called the Ritz to tell them what happened.

They told us when we got back to file a report. I was pretty sore and achy the rest of the day. He jolted me pretty good. Luckily, I woke up the next day feeling a bit better. I had to talk to like two different people at the Ritz about the incident. They asked if I needed to go to the hospital and I said no. I was not happy about what happened though.

I know it was a total accident, which I said several times to the Ritz people, but it was still very unfortunate.

I got through the rest of the trip and the Ritz said they would send me an incident report in 7 days. It took a month to hear from anyone. And then they said since no Ritz employees were involved, they passed my info on to the Penguins. Never heard a word from them. No accountability at all. Since I wasn't really hurt long term (thank goodness), I have let it go. But I did have some pain and suffering that weekend - so that sucked. Shame on them - I deserved a bigger apology for that.

Moving on though.

That Saturday evening, we spent with my brother-in-law and sister-in-law. We went to the town of Golden to see them and my BIL suggested a restaurant called "Colorado + 49".

It was SO delicious and we had such a nice time...