Places have different meanings for different people. I’m not that big a fan of, say, St. Louis, as bad things happen every time I’m there.

Yesterday morning, however, I found myself in Denver, a city where only the most insane of things happen to me. On my first visit, I drank seven Long Island Iced Teas and ended up at a club where I was frisked by a masked man, because it was the venue’s policy to search all entrants for weapons. The second time I was here – for a business trip this time – I was told explicitly by my boss that I was allowed to have a good time, but that I needed to be ready by 9 a.m. the following morning, as it was my turn to drive.

So I stayed up until 5:15 and, when roused by my supervisor because it was, you know, my turn to drive, I believe I looked directly at him and said ‘What’s your problem, man?’

That didn’t go over so well.

In any case, I was expecting nothing less than the second coming of Christ while I was in Denver this time. While the Rapture didn’t happen, exactly, in the first two days I’ve been here I’ve experienced the following:

- a shooting at the state capitol, which is three-quarters of a mile from my hotel

- one of the people I’m staying with storming off at dinner on the first night and refusing to talk to us for the next hour, causing quite a scene in the restaurant;

- a tour of the Flying Dog brewery, which features label artwork by Ralph Steadman, the artist for Hunter S. Thompson. Nothing noteworthily insane happened here, but it was twelve kinds of hip.

- and the near-coup de grace, when a bicyclist weaving in and out of Denver traffic during rush hour was absolutely annihilated by a car. We’re talking flying, arms and legs akimbo, in the air and rolling up on the hood destroyed. The guy got up and walked away, somehow, but the woman driving our car was in no state to continue driving.

So I found myself in the non-enviable position of having the guy in the back seat run out and check on this accident victim, leaving me with a hysterical woman behind the wheel of my own car while I tried to frantically re-route us to find where this bicyclist (and the guy in our car, who chased this miraculously walking man to try and convince him to go to the hospital) during rush hour in a major city, all while trying to process what had just happened.

Don’t worry: It turns out the guy was okay and refused our entreaties to take him to the hospital. The rest of the night, thankfully, was low-key in comparison.

Day Three brings the end of the urban portion of this vacation, as we head to the summit of Pikes Peak (and hopefully get away from insanity). We’ll see, however, as with this luck there’s going to be a landslide or a mutant robot monkey attack.