Dear Mr. Welker,
How's it going? Chris here. First time, long time. First time writer, long time guy who occasionally watches you on tv. First off, let me apologize for the public nature of this letter. If you played basketball, I might've been able to use a more discreet backchannel method to contact you, basketball being my sport of choice
(I once met Jason Biggs at a three on three tournament in New
York--humblebrag!), but alas, I am not as hooked into the world of football,
and as such will have to rely on the magic of the internet to get my message across.
I believe I am in a unique position to provide you with some guidance regarding your recent decision to move to Denver. I have never played football myself; my parents wouldn't let me. However I, like you, am a short, white guy who, when it comes to feats of athletic strength, relies on his quickness and strong work ethic. If this were some alternate universe where my parents had not been concerned with my safety or well-being or the possibility of me living a long and happy concussion-free life, and I had been allowed to play football, I like to think I would be a player pretty much like you (unless of course this alternate universe is also one in which water polo is played while riding around on the backs of giant seahorses who also happen to be able to fly. If that were the case, I imagine we would all just play water polo, all the time, because I mean come on--flying seahorses!).
So yes, Mr. Welker, you and I are very much alike. Add to this, my wife is from Florida, where I'm pretty sure you once played football for the Dolphins maybe? Also, I have been a Patriots fan for the past 10-15 years as a result of living in and around Boston after college, though I am originally from New York (hey, remember when the Giants beat you guys in those two Superbowls even though you were heavily favored both times and that one time it ruined what would have been a perfect 19-0 season if you had won? Thank goodness those wounds are all healed up now and we can just laugh and laugh about it. Ha-ha!).
As if all of this isn't enough, my wife and I just moved from New England to Denver! This was like eight months ago. The move is still fresh in my mind! So much so that if I were to close my eyes right now and attempt to contemplate the sheer magnitude of all the changes our seemingly innocent decision has wrought, it would send me spiraling down into an endless sea of malaise, despondency and regret! Who better to provide you with a few pointers about what to expect from your new Mile High city?
So just to let you know, there are many reasons why this move will go poorly for you, and none of them will be football-related (unless you want to count trading Bill Belichik for John Fox, or Tom Brady for old can't-play-in-the-cold-my-neck-is-held-in-place-by-bubble-gum-and-used-up-Papa-John's-napkins Peyton Manning. The unwieldiness of his nickname alone is enough to silence fans during the games).
Everything in New England just seems...better. The one exception to this is if you have a dog. If you have a dog, you really should check out Cherry Creek State Park. They have this giant off-leash dog park that is just spectacular. It's sort of like the Grand Canyon--how people say not to miss the Grand Canyon when you go out West because it's the one thing that doesn't disappoint? That's the off-leash dog park at Cherry Creek. Also, I guess Denver is pretty close to the actual Grand Canyon. So if you're already coming out here to see the dog park, you might as well swing by and check that out too. I don't know if it's dog-friendly though. You'll probably want to check that out.
By now I'm sure you have a number of questions running through your mind. How can I find out more about this dog park? Are there other things I should know about Denver? Why can I not stop thinking about flying seahorses? Well Wes, I'm glad you asked. Here are a few more things you might be interested in knowing about before your big move:
1. The mountains, they ain't so special. Do they look majestic during sunrise...sunset? Absolutely. But as the bard once wrote, there are more things in heaven and Earth, Wes Welker, than are dreamt of in your ipod's Fiddler on the Roof showtunes, no matter how timeless or classic those showtunes might be. At the end of the day, the mountains are not your friends. Are they going to come over to your place, split a pizza and watch the game on Sunday? They are not. Will they go out in the backyard with you to toss around the old pigskin, or pick you up at the airport after a long road trip? Sorry, no. Will they help you eat everything in your fridge because the power's out and everything is about to go bad? Unlikely. They're just big piles of rock and dirt that sometimes have snow on them. And I guess that's ok if you're a skier, but my guess is if you just signed a contract for a boatload of non-guaranteed money, activities that regularly cause people to break multiple bones probably aren't very high on your to do list. Speaking of snow...
2. Denver does not deal well with snow. I know this seems counter-intuitive, because Denver gets more than its fair share. But there's a catch: it's usually so damn sunny out here that everyone just assumes the snow is going to melt within a couple of days. And while they're usually right, this philosophy tends to discourage anyone from doing anything to deal with the snow in the meantime. Like say, plowing and salting the roads. This can be an issue if it has just snowed and you have to be somewhere sometime in the next 36 hours (a football stadium, perhaps) and can't necessarily wait around for Mother Nature to make everything all better. It also leads to an interesting dichotomy on the highways. Local drivers overreact to a light snow and go much too slow, which infuriates transplants from other cold-weather cities who can't understand why a little snow would make everyone freak out. But then when it snows a lot, those same transplants go way too fast thinking that Denver is like Chicago or Boston or some other snowy city where they actually give a crap about their citizens. The transplants aren't prepared for the horrendous road conditions and end up playing bumper cars or spinning out while the locals putter along, content in the knowledge that their city has forsaken them. And while we're talking about driving...
3. Every time you get onto the highway, prepare for a drag race. There's a stoplight at every highway entrance ramp, with two lanes side by side that quickly merge into one. When the stoplight turns green, one car from each lane is allowed to go through and immediately engage in an all out Thunderdome-like scramble to the death to reach that one lane merge before the other guy. There are no signs to instruct you on appropriate motorist behavior, nor do there appear to be any social norms with regard to which car has the right of way. It's a bizarre and sadistic ritual that repeats itself over and over again throughout the day. If you lose, it will gradually chip away at your fragile sense of manhood throughout the day. And if you win, you are left feeling like a jerk for secretly enjoying the small piece of pride that you gain from your ultimately useless victory.
Then there are those people who just blow through the stoplights altogether while you're sitting there waiting for the light to change and you want nothing more than to catch up to them on the highway so you can run their car up into the cement divider. On second thought, you might be able to use that anger out on the field. I guess we can put this one in the plus column after all. Unlike say...
4. Denver has pretty much any food chain you could ever want, but they don't have any Dunkin Donuts. You know how New England runs on Dunkin? Well Denver don't. I have a plastic DD mug that fits perfectly a Dunkin Donuts medium coffee with milk and sugar. But out here, my mug is completely useless! I try to use it with my Keurig, but that only fills the mug up a little more than halfway. If someone at a Starbucks were to leave that much room for milk they would be fired on the spot! It is way too much room left for milk! And so I am left to drive to work in the morning with 40% less coffee at my disposal. Is that fair? Is that right? It is not. Also, I don't get to eat donuts anymore. When I was living in New England, if I happened to grab a boston creme or jelly every once in a while to go along with my Dunkin Donuts coffee, that was fine, because I was there mainly for the coffee. But to just go into a donut shop for the sole purpose of buying some donuts? That doesn't seem right. What am I, a glutton? I am not a glutton, Wes Welker. And neither are you. Neither are you.
5. Sure, the time difference is great for watching sports because everything starts and ends earlier, but the benefit is pretty much moot if you don't have cable. I know, I know, you're a rich football player who just signed a lucrative football contract, you're probably going to spring for cable. But you also might be on the fence about it. Maybe you like to spend your money on other things, like backyard bird fountains or inspirational Knute Rockne bronze placards that are bolted to the walls in strategic locations around your house to keep you motivated in the offseason. Maybe you've got most of your money tied up in seahorse levitation technology (the water polo revolution has to start somewhere). The point is, maybe you're taking stock of all the things you want in your life, and maybe you think you can get by without cable tv. You'll get Hulu and Netflix, you think. You'll watch shows illegally on the internet. That's fine, Wes. I get it. But live sporting events are a tougher needle to thread. You say you'll go out to the bar if you really want to watch something, but you never do. And then you think you'll be covered for most stuff because ESPN has this online mobile app that shows games and you can just plug your laptop into the back of your tv and voila! Instant sports! But Wes, you can't watch the mobile app unless you have a tv subscription that includes ESPN.
Suddenly it doesn't matter so much that all these games are starting two hours earlier because you have no way to watch them anyway. You end up scrolling through the ESPN podcenter at three in the morning--up way later than you ever were to watch a game back East--feverishly downloading audio files of Around the Horn and PTI just so you can feel something like the sweet, feverish joy that used to come from following sports in a normal way like you used to back in your old life.
Then again, they've probably got tv's at the stadium. You can probably just watch stuff there. Hey speaking of which, if they happen to give you an extra key to the facility, or maybe there's a window you could leave unlocked so that someone could, say, sneak in at night when there's no one there and watch one of those tv's that no one's using... Or maybe we make things simpler. Maybe you could just splurge and get cable for your house after all. (Come on, we both know you can afford it.) Then you can give me a key and I can swing by and let myself in to watch stuff in your living room. I mean I don't think it's too much for a person to ask. Especially when that person is already providing a bunch of insightful tips about the city to which you will be moving. It would actually be sorta rude if you didn't offer to let me come into your house to watch tv whenever I want. And I don't think you want to start off your grand Denver experiment by being rude to the first person you meet. Nor do I think the Broncos would appreciate the possibility of your rudeness getting picked up by the papers, potentially casting their new free agent in a negative light. Besides, it'll be fun. We could watch tv together. Look, March Madness is coming up. We can give it a trial run. I'll bring over a nice casserole; we can make a day of it! Just let me know what kind of casserole you'd like and I'll start looking for a good recipe.
So in summation, I guess moving to Denver won't be that bad for you after all. I think you're really going to like it here. Godspeed for now. Good luck with the move, and feel free to drop that key off in my mailbox whenever you get a chance.
Yours in future television-watching and casserole-eating goodness,
Chris
