Nederland is frozen solid.
The snow is deep. A layer of ice caps Barker Reservoir. A forest of 16-foot-tall palm trees constructed from ice-blue cloth is waiting to be planted in the Community Center gym.
Conditions are perfect for Frozen Dead Guy Days, the weekend festival — Friday through March 9 — celebrating a dude who’s been on Earth for 108 years now, the last 15 of them chilling in a Tuff Shed in someone’s backyard.
The seventh annual homage to Bredo Morstoel — cryonically frozen at his death in 1989 and transported to Nederland in 1993 — gets going Friday around noon, when the first keg of 2 Below Winter Ale is tapped and the giddy madness starts flowing.
Think vindaloo-eating contest (5:30 p.m. Friday at Kathmandu restaurant). Think masquerade ball (9 p.m. Friday).
Think frozen T-shirt contest (5:30 p.m. Saturday at Bears Brothers Bistro).
And do not let the Tuff Shed-sponsored coffin races slip your mind.
The must-see event of the weekend starts around 2 p.m. Saturday at Chipeta Park. Participants include rival teams from New Belgium Brewing Co. and Planet Bluegrass, and top-tier coffin racers from Nederland and Manitou Springs vying for the traveling Coffin Cup. “We compete in their coffin race, and they compete in ours,” festival honcho and Nederland retailer Teresa Warren says with a laugh. “They’re much more on the ball.”
It’s not too late to build your own box and join the fun. (Entry forms and liability waivers are available at FrozenDeadGuyDays. There’s an event schedule there, too.)
And don’t miss the Cryonics Parade, around noon on Saturday. You’ll get an eyeful of frozen fun — folks primed to take a plunge in the frozen reservoir, of people piloting antique hearses and coffin-craft.
And while you’re watching, you can contemplate the question dogging Warren these days: “How do people know that Grandpa Bredo is really in the Tuff Shed?”
The question informed the festival’s decision to go “sustainable” with a zero-waste policy and the purchase of renewable energy credits. “If grandpa can sustain, so can we,” she says. “Life-extension is sustainability; sustainability is life extension. It makes sense.”
