High Points: It’s September. WHAT?!
Someone said to me the other day that in these pandemic times “the days crawl by like snails and the months sprint past like cheetahs.” And I thought it was just me who was messed up by this new time and space continuum.
September is here. How can that be? I’m still waiting to get my summer groove on. It has been six months, half a year since the lift-served ski season ended in early March and I’m still not in sync. In just 84 days (estimated) assuming, the governor, the CDC, and the then-recently elected president of the United States all give their mutual blessings, and lift-served skiing will start once again — from this column to God’s ears. It all does not seem right, but what does?
This Sept. 1, I awoke shivering under my summer sheets to an unbelievably beautiful morning marked by snow atop the peaks. September snows? Sure, maybe at the end of the month that happens. But on the 1st? Pretty rare. A few years ago — OK, it was 2006 — there was enough September snow that people skied Aspen Mountain the last weekend of the month while the summer schedule for the Gondy was still entact. But like I said, it is pretty unusual.
And to make things even more bizarre, the forecast for the weekend has us flirting with record high temperatures, more like July than September. And then Labor Day, yes that’s where we are in life, sees a cold front start to arrive that will drop us into the 20s. My phone shows a big snowflake for Tuesday, Sept. 8. Go figure.
I don’t mean to go all weatherman here, but it’s more than just that has me flummoxed.
Do you know what’s happening tomorrow? The 146th Kentucky Derby! In September. The race is traditionally held the first Saturday in May, but this year it goes off on the first Saturday in September. Post time is 5 p.m. our time. ‘Tiz the Law will be the favorite but I’m leaning toward a long shot, Finnick the Fierce, the one-eyed, 3-year-old who will start from the rail position. Purchased for just $3,000, Finnick would be a hero for our times, a September superstar if he wins. Oh, and he already has beaten ‘Tiz the Law on the same Churchill Downs track that the two will be running on tomorrow. In November last year Finnick finished second in the Jockey Club Stakes, just in front of ‘Tiz the Law. You can thank me post race.
And instead of college football — the Karl Dorrell era at CU was supposed to open up tomorrow as the Buffs were scheduled to play CSU in the Rocky Mountain Showdown in Fort Collins — we will be watching the Nuggets and Avs this weekend.
Hoops and hockey. In September. WHAT?!
