WSOP Road Trip 2014 Day 4

This is a continuation of a series of posts that starts here with an introduction to who these people are and why I’m driving to Las Vegas with them.

Objective: Drive approximately five hours from Hays, Kansas to a campground just west of Denver, Colorado.

Rigging and Hustling

Because we’d covered more ground than planned for the past two days, we had room to make this day a bit shorter if we wanted. I’d deliberately avoided making a reservation, though, because I wanted the flexibility to go further if the opportunity presented itself. It did not, and apparently a warm, clear Saturday night is a good time to make a reservation if you’re planning on camping in the vicinity of Denver. It sounds obvious when you put it like that.

Anyway, we once again got an early start and drove over an hour before the kids woke up. Jerica, her husband (my cousin), and Henry had actually driven across the country before, when Henry was 2 and they were moving from Oregon to Maryland. Jerica remembered that they’d randomly come across a really cool playground somewhere in eastern Colorado. She didn’t remember the name of the town, but fortunately her husband did and was able to text it to us, so we set our sights on Burlington, Colorado for breakfast and a playground break.

We found the park without incident only to learn that we’d arrived on the day of an annual town festival. They were setting up booths all around the park, but no one stopped us when we turned the kids loose on the playground and set up our cook stove on a nearby picnic table.

I made the kids’ oatmeal first, and then made the horrifying discovery that I’d left a piece of my Aeropress behind. I was devastated. After three days on the road, I finally had time to make myself a proper coffee, and I didn’t have the tools to do it.

Thankfully, years of farm living have given Jerica a knack for jury-rigging. She used a key to punch a hole in the bottom of a paper bowl and stretched an unfolded napkin across the bottom of the bowl. We used the Aeropress’ chamber to steep the coffee and hot water, then poured it into the bowl. The napkin absorbed a fair bit of the liquid, but I managed to collect a small cup of pretty decent coffee at the end of the process.

We were ready to hit the road when the kids spotted a huge inflatable attraction being erected as part of the festival. I’m not sure how to describe it exactly, it was kind of a mix between a moon bounce and a fun house, a huge inflatable obstacle course with slides, walls to scale, and even a pool of water to swing over on ropes. Even I had to agree that it looked pretty awesome, and the kids were really excited about it so we agreed to delay our departure until it was set up.

This ended up taking a while, because there was a lot to inflate it, and in the meantime Henry and Oliver befriended another kid who was also waiting eagerly for the attraction to be ready. This kid was about seven years old, and although he mentioned his mother several times, I saw her just once, very briefly, in about 90 minutes. Their brief interaction did nothing to change my assumption that she might not be mother-of-the-year material.

Finally, everything was inflated and though the hose was still running to fill the pool, the operator let the kids enter. It cost $3, and out little hanger-on had (or told me he had, anyway – he turned out to be a pretty smooth operator) just $2. With his mother nowhere to be found, I gave him a $1 and the three boys had a great time running through.

Jerica was off changing the baby and missed it, so Henry and Oliver went to get her and she gave them each $3 to go again. I gave their friend $3.

Henry and Oliver were talking about going through a third time while their friend stood by looking forlorn and mentioning how he sure would like to go again as well. I told him he should talk to his mother about that, and he disappeared for a few minutes, then returned to tell me, “She says it’s OK.” Since he apparently couldn’t or wouldn’t take a hint, I handed him $3 and told him this was the last one I was paying for. As Jerica was giving money to her sons, this little kid pocketed the $3 I gave him, turned to her, and said, “How about you pay for me this time and I’ll pay for everyone next time?” I had to respect his game even if I was more than a little suspicious about how he learned to hustle so effectively.

A Tough Afternoon

Emily found another playground for us in Denver, but when we hit the city limits the kids were asleep so we just kept going. They woke up in time for the drive from Denver to Golden, Colorado, and for the first time they expressed some interest in the scenery. Of course, they also expressed some interest in stopping, so we found a playground in Golden. They were well-rested and eager for us to come play with them, but Jerica and I, who had not slept in the car, were beat, and it was really hot out. Somehow she found the energy to play with them anyway, but I collapsed in the shade. Ah, the joys of part-time parenting.

After running around in the heat, the kids were about done, too. It turned out we’d gotten cocky about covering so much ground so effortlessly earlier in the day, because the last leg was a slog. We still needed to stop by a grocery store to get food for dinner, and the kids were whining and fighting about everything: who’s going to ride in the grocery cart,who is touching whom while riding in the grocery cart, what we are and aren’t buying, etc. I was still exhausted and basically just followed them around the store like a zombie while Jerica tried to keep them in line and figure out what to get.

Back in the car, there was more whining and general unrest, to the point where we once again broke out the electronic entertainment. This ended with Oliver vomiting into a bag in the back of the car, which to his credit he did a nice job of keeping it contained. Jerica may yet fade a cleaning fee when she returns the car.

As luck would have it, there was a liquor store just as we turned off the highway onto the road that led back to our campground. The kids, who usually wanted nothing more than to stop the car, didn’t want to stop here, but Jerica and I felt we deserved a beer. They extracted a promise from me to bring them a toy if the store sold any, and I decided that agreeing to that was a pretty low-risk play.

I emerged with two beers and no toys. “Did they have any toys?” Oliver asked eagerly.

“None that were for kids,” I told him. Jerica grimaced a bit, apparently recognizing where my little joke with myself was about to lead.

“They had toys for adults?” Henry asked.

“Yes.”

“Like what?”

“Never mind.”

“Just give me one example.”

“Just drop it.” Dropping things is apparently not an 8-year old’s forte. Thankfully years at the poker table have given me some experience ignoring people while they fire annoying questions at me.

Henry started wondering out loud what an adult toy could possibly be. “Guns? Swords? Knives?”

The campground was a small one with just 24 sites, no running water, and no reservations. Apparently we were lucky to get one of the last few spots, because later in the night we saw people circling and driving away.

Once the kids were out of the car everything was hunky dory. Jerica made dinner while I, who’d failed to purchase a bottle opener, wrestled the beers open with a key. After dinner we tossed around the Aerobie for a bit and went to bed early. It was a warm, still, and clear night, so I didn’t bother staking my tent or putting up the fly…