Brace Yourselves, Summer is Coming

          For those of us in the Northern Hemisphere, we've spent the past few months complaining it's too damn cold, and now we can spend the next few months complaining that it's too damn hot. After all, summer is here and it's in full swing, especially in Colorado.
          Now here's the thing about Colorado. People seem to think that snow hits us like the Antarctic, that we all have to hike up snow-capped mountains in our parkas just to make it to the grocery store, and that we all ski or snowshoe to work. But that couldn't be any more incorrect. In winter, it only snows a handful of times, and the cold is fairly mild. In summer, it can get up to 100 degrees Fahrenheit and higher. In fact, as I type this, it's 98, the AC is maxed, and I'm trying not to spontaneously combust.

Poor Ned Stark probably shouldn't have been wearing all those thick wolf pelts in 100 degree heat, but then again, spontaneous combustion is a better death than public beheading, amirite?

          So summer is our chance to get out and enjoy the sun after 6 months of sitting inside doing this.

The Blue Footed Booby. What did you think I was talking about?

          So now that it's nice out, what fun summertime activities do you have to choose from? Well, frankly, not a lot, because most of the activities labeled as "pure summertime fun" really aren't all that fun.

The Public Pool

What's even more fun than splashing off in cool, refreshing water when it's hot out? How about soaking in the urine of 100 noisy children?

So maybe you don't want to take a salty pee-bath. You can at least sunbathe and ogle the lovely young ladies/men frolicking around in their tiny bathing suits, right?

WRONG. Because they all look like this.

Oh, and let's not forget that suntanning is a terrible idea, unless you want to look like an old leather purse that has skin cancer.

So unless you like looking at obese girls wearing bikinis they clearly shouldn't be, swimming in pee, or getting skin cancer, the pool isn't probably your ideal summer hotspot.

Amusement Parks:

If you feel like plopping down $50 per ticket, you can always go to the amusement park and engage in the nonstop, fun-tastic thrill ride that is... waiting in line. Sure, everyone looks so happy in those amusement park commercials, like they're smiling so hard their head is going to explode, but how much fun can you have waiting 45 minutes to ride something that's over in 45 seconds?

Oh, and don't forget, while you're waiting in line to get a 45 second plunge down a metal box car, you're also waiting for a lifetime of skin cancer.

Camping

Living in Colorado, we're lucky to have the mountains. It means that at the drop of a hat, we can leave the burdens of the real world behind, shuck off our electronic leashes, and go camping off-the-grid. But is it really all it's cracked up to be?

The scientific term is "Snakedick."

So maybe camping isn't the best idea for a fun summertime activity.

Movies

We all know what summer means for us filmgoers: a blockbuster barrage of epic spectacle and explosive (yet meaningful) proportion. Ahem...

So maybe seeing a movie isn't ideal either, though I've heard Jenga: The Movie has a lot of great action sequences (spoiler alert: the blocks all fall over but everyone's still smiling really hard).

In conclusion, summer is a tricky time to find fun things to do. But hey, even if the season is a wretched time full of deadly animals, scalding heat, noisy children, urine, bad movies, and skin cancer, at least you've got other activities to fall back on... right?

Al Gore approves!

Cheers and stay classy, friends,

B&B

Beer: Breckenridge Vanilla Porter

Music: Alexisonfire