Take a cool summer evening, with a nice breeze. Add your favorite drink. Maybe you're at a sea resort. Or in the mountains, if that floats your boat. Your sipping your drink on a comfortable chair, watching the sun go down. Now compress that whole evening into a few minutes. That's what it was like meeting Joe Sakic yesterday. And Joe was gracious enough to take time to have a few words with everybody, shake hands, sign things and take pictures, without looking like a bored superstar. It is unreal that some people get to be amazing celebrities like Joe and still have their feet on the ground. And seeing Joe coach is like seeing him play. A quiet presence on the bench, no shouting – that was the prerogative of his assistants – having a few words with his squirt team players as they were coming off the ice. A gentleman if I ever saw one.

So the highlight of my trip was the morning of my 2nd day here. Kind of anticlimactic... Still, in the evening I saw my first ever Avalanche game in person. And it is all that is cracked up to be, even more. If not only for the minor detail that they were beaten by Gaborik, that would've been so nice! But still, there was the hat-trick, you don't see that every day, right? Too bad it wasn't an Avs hat-trick, but you take what you can get. In this case, we get a pretty poor performance by the Avs, topped by some unlucky bounces. I predicted a 5-1 record while I'm here and apparently the boys have to win them all from now on... Yeah, that's gonna happen... Plus, it's the first time this season when they lost three in a row. Great time to be in Denver!

Next, we'll be going to a practice facility that's like half way around the world from where we're staying. I thought Denver was not supposed to be a huge metropolis. And basketball in the evening. Nuggets. I personally like the Bulls, but an NBA game is after all an NBA game. And by that I mean the tickets are cheaper than the Avs ones. And the crowds are bigger.