The Denver Travel Show

As I mentioned in yesterday's blog, I spent the entire day this past Saturday at the Denver Travel Show.  In addition to speakers like Rick Steves and Peter Greenberg, there were booths throughout the convention floor promoting various countries, cities, resorts, and cruise lines.  It reminded me a lot of the National Association of College Stores annual conventions, which I attended when I was the general book buyer for the University of Denver Bookstore.  In other words, walking around there was just as tiring, and I needed to sit down. I wound up sitting in front of the Global Beats Stage, where the Flamenco Underground were performing, as seen in the photograph on the left.  The act opened with the Spanish guitar player and singer/ moderator performing a Spanish tune.  He asked if that made the crowd want to visit Spain.  They responded in the positive, and he said it did for him, too - it has been a long time.

Flamingo Underground, he said, performs up and down the I-25 corridor throughout Colorado and New Mexico.  The flamingo dancers performed a number of dances, and after each one three little children would run up to a statuesque Spanish beauty and to the head of the troupe, an older woman, before being shooed off back behind the curtain.  I wondered if they were the mother and grandmother, and if one of the men in the troupe was the father.  If so, what a hard life it must be, performing up and down the I-25 corridor, especially with three kids.  I bet they don't do much traveling, which is ironic, since they were performing at a travel show in order to get people in the mood for traveling.   The next dancer (in the photograph on the right) comes from India, and has taught in the U.S. for the past 20 years.  Considering how expensive it is to travel to India these days, I'll bet she doesn't back home much either.  I'll bet life might be a grind for here, too.

Speaking of grinding routines, there was a camel inside the exhibition hall, giving free rides to all the visitors.  It was just a short circular loop, past the men's and women's restrooms and back again, so it wasn't really too hard on the camel.  Considering that camels are often sold for meat, and often forced to carry both people and supplies through the desert, this gig must have been pretty easy for it. Which is probably why it was smiling at me when I took his picture.  It has actually found the good life here in the U.S.A.   I understand, completely, bro.