...Get on the bus....the party bus!

Have arrived in Denver...mile high city!  it is very odd and wonderful to be in a city where you almost touch the clouds!  Interestingly, there is no snow here.  Everything is brown and yellow.  We were met at the airport by a colourful individual, driving a very colourful bus.  Although the company had told our trip organizers that the bus was fully wheelchair accessible, when I asked the driver where the ramp was, he said there wasn't, but that he had "loads of experience" getting wheelchairs on and off his bus. So backwards up the steps I went, with him pulling, and a colleague holding the front of my chair for balance.  Not surprisingly, there was no place in which to anchor an  occupied wheelchair, so I got out of the chair and into one of the seats....now this is no ordinary bus, oh no.  The seats are arranged bench-style, along the windows, facing one another.  Down the middle of the aisle is a metal table with a channel running through it, and with holes cut out for bottles or cans to rest.  At the front of the bus are a series of day-glo posters.  On the ceiling are black lights (i am not making this up!).  There were no seat belts and there was a persistent aroma of stale beer.

We are all amused and bemused by our transportation.  Thankfully, my travelling assistant is 22 and was able to enlighten us.  We were apparently travelling by way of "party bus"....something used to ferry high school and college kids to prom nights and other big events. The metal table is set up so that they can play "beer pong"...apparently a competitive sport involving ping pong balls and cups of beer.

As one of my colleagues pointed out, we were in the middle of a teachable moment.  

Today, we are off to one of the big annual events.  It is the final day of the National Western Stock Show, so I expect to see a lot of cows!