Tour Guide Screening

We had some friends from St. Louis is town this weekend. We hit all of the mandatory Colorado hot spots: the Bucksnort Saloon (if you haven't been, do it!), hiking in the mountains and the Coors Brewery. Seems to me that Coors needs to start a tour guide screening program. I know that I'm not one to judge. After all, I did take my 8-week old son on a brewery tour. But here's how things went.

We were seated around the yellow roses where our group was directed when our tour guide saunters up. He had on these slumpy pants that would surely be showing off his Coors boxers were that not against regulations. The pants were held up with what was apparently a belt and the BIGGEST south-of-the-border Coors belt buckle you've ever seen. I'm not sure there was a belt attached to the buckle because his belly oozed over the edge of the pants hiding any sort of strap that might be there. Apparently, the belt buckle was too big to be enveloped by even the largest of bellies though. Atop his head and partially hiding his face was a truck-driver Coors baseball hat. Picture those John Deere ten gallon baseball hats with a Coors logo. I'm sure that he thought the hat was part of his "look," but it also partially concealed scars and bandages all over the left side of his face.

Ned started the tour not by offering his name (I got that from his namebadge), but by describing in detail the accident that left him with road rash on his face, stitches above his eye and fifteen stitches in his shoulder. Thank God he didn't peel off his shirt to show us those. Ned, after ingesting a case or two of Keystone Ice, had his fateful accident while banking on an outdoor year-round luge course. Not that I have a problem with beer (although when you get nine cases a month at $5/each, you'd think he could spring for something better than Keystone Ice) or the year-round luge or even the combination of the two, but Ned wasn't exactly demonstrating responsible consumerism. And apparently, although Coors has thousands of drinking of driving messages posted throughout the building, they don't have any rules in the employee handbook about drinking and luging.

At the end of the day, Ned turned out to be pretty funny and a semi-competent tour guide. And I suppose it's good to know that the college kids that Coors is hiring are pumping their money back into the company. After moving here from St. Louis though, I guarantee that Anheuser-Busch would be firing that kid so fast for regaling us with drunken luge stories. But, this is the West, and we are more laid back here. Maybe after a few Green Apple Zimas, I'll strap Alex in the Baby Bjorn and hit the luge myself!