Every year Nederland, Colorado, a little town near where I live, throws a festival because there's a frozen dead guy in a shed there. We call him Grandpa.
His grandson, Trygve, moved here a few decades ago and decided he wanted to start dealing in cryonics, so he had his grandpa, who had died skiing alone in his relatively old age in Norway, flown in and stored him in a shed on dry ice. When Trygve's visa expired, he was deported, and so for the past 20 years or so, he's been paying locals to keep his grandpa frozen.
What should we do about that? Well, for the past 15 years, we've been throwing a festival called the Frozen Dead Guy Days.
There's the hearse parade...
The coffin race.... 32 groups competed this year so check out a subsequent blog for a couple of hysterical videos!
The brain freeze, where contestants attempt to gulp down more slushed ice drinks than the person next to him.
The frozen tshirt contest that are so frozen contestants have to stomp on them to loosen them and by the time they're finished, the shirts are in several pieces. But yes, they still have to put on the pieces to win.
The film where the Boulder Mirror editor tells us what Grandpa might say if he woke up: "Aarrrggghhhh. Gaaaahhhhhhhh," because his "brain is mush, you know?"
The guy who makes sure no one smokes pot...
And...
I grew up in a little town, dreamed of escaping to the big city, then dreamed of returning to a little town. I ended up living on a mountain in a tiny town in Colorado. We don't have big production theaters or chain restaurants or traffic or fancy nightclubs or an endless variety of athletic clubs. We do have coffee houses where we know everyone, square dancing under the stars, mountains to hike through... oh, and crazy-fun festivals.
I don't miss or dream about the big city.
I'm finally and incredibly content exactly where I am.
Festival-y,
Mary