Two weeks ago some spots opened up for the Red Dawn 100 weekend up in Colorado, hosted by buddy John Steele. Jenks had been telling me about it and asked me to go but I wasn’t interested and I told him to shut up and go away.  I’d never seen the original Red Dawn (saw the 2012 over though), so I bought it on Amazon and then signed up for the event. Not because I wanted to do the event so much as it was a chance to hang out with my peoples. 

As soon as I was confirmed in, I got invited into another group chat (yay…?) and was inundated with packets and guides. You need to do this, this and this. Learn this. Acquire that. Wear 80s clothing. 30 page PDF full of information and I went “nope, not reading that” and proceeded to ignore it save for the packing list. 1″ tubular nylon webbing, paintball mask, paintball gun…no patches? Not your average GORUCK event, that’s for sure.

After coordinating travel arrangements with Brian and Jenks and Jon by basically latching onto Jenks like the liberal leech I am, we fly in Friday morning to Denver. Brian, living in Arkansas and not near a major airport, drives down and we have dinner with some local GRTs but not before he got to experience rush hour in the Dallas area. We get up at the crack of dawn after my fifteen alarms wake Brian up (but not me) for ninety minutes and head to Denver where we meet one of my work bffs, Megan.

She was kind enough to pick us up at the airport and take us into downtown Denver where we had lunch and I may have had a beer. We  have like 6 hours to kill until Jenks can get there to pick us up, so we went to a movie theater and take a nap. We chose to watch The Nice Guys, which was an excellent movie but it had the problem of us not being able to nap on the reclining chairs in that sweet, sweet air conditioning (important later). Movie being over, we head to REI where Brian and I discuss our common love/hate of the place. It’s awesome because well, it’s REI and it’s terrible because, well, it’s REI and you can rationalize buying every piece of gear in there because you “need” it. Then we went to Proto Pizza which was delicious but perhaps had too much cheese on it (more importanter later) and then we went and chilled in the park until Jenks could pick us up.

We meet and Jenks gives us a stinky shirt hug (he was at Firearms Day all day) and then takes off his shirt to change into some new freshness but a bus comes by and Jenks gets worried so we pile in the Fundra (Tundra) and head toward Black Hawk. Damnedest thing happens next, it turns out that we’re in need of beer and water so we pull into a 7-11 where Jenks parks front and center. Jenks climbs out (still shirtless mind you) and hops in the bed of his truck to look for a clean shirt. As he’s searching, a very attractive lady walks by and Jenks says “oh don’t mind me, just changing my shirt” and she looks away, slightly embarrased. Fifteen seconds pass by and another pretty lady walks by and Jenks says “dad bod by Jenks” and flexes a little…to either us or her, we’re not sure. She either heard him and ignored it or was afraid to say something. Thirty seconds after that, still-shirtless-Jenks-is-still-standing-in-the-truck-bed-desperately-looking-for-his-shirt when another hot chick walks by and Jenks starts to panic. He can’t find a shirt because it’s buried in the bottom of his luggage (where he put it) and he can’t get to it quick enough. He finds a shirt finally and says “what the hell, do hot girls just hang out at this 7-11?” 
Yes. Yes they do, Jenks. 

Eventually, we get to Jon’s cabin where he creates some delicious burgers which I skip in favor of Bud Light. We meet some other teammates and then begin to prep for our ruck in 6 hours. Paintball gun, US flag, food, glow stick (untz untz untz) and bunch of other things I don’t need but bring anyway because I have to overpack and carry it around Golden Gate Canyon State Park because I hate my life and want to make it more difficult. All packed, we settle in for the night only to wake up 4.5 hours later to get out of the cabin at 03:15. 

At 03:08 I feel a rumble.
03:10, some gas escapes.
03:12, “hey uh…I gotta use the restroom. I don’t think we’re leaving at 03:15”
03:13, “oh! gotta go!”
03:18, I think I’m done.
03:21, I’m definitely not done.
03:22 I’m done. Someone walks by the restroom and asks what died inside me.
We head to the start point and as soon as we stop I gingerly get out and start popping Immodium AD like it’s going out of style because I’m afraid. 

Very, very afraid. 

Stupid, delicious pizza.