Strange but True Stories From 2007

A seventy-year-old man on a thirty-minute flight from Denver to Aspen who desperately needed to use the restroom was refused three times by a flight attendant because the plane was in a holding pattern and everyone was required to stay seated. The man became very agitated, according to a February report in the Aspen Daily News, and took matters into, uh, his own hands. "He peed in a cup," Pitkin County deputy John Armstrong said. After the plane landed, the man was questioned by police, but no charges were filed.

But that story was just a drop in the bucket compared to other instances of air rage in the skies above Colorado. In July, a California mother who'd reportedly been drinking and hitting her two toddlers on board a San Francisco-to-Denver Frontier flight was arrested in Denver. In August, a Southwest Airlines flight from Chicago to Las Vegas was diverted to Denver after a man allegedly tried to choke another passenger and pushed and yelled at the flight crew. A Denver man was charged with reaching between a flight attendant's legs while she was collecting trash during a JetBlue flight. And in September, after passengers on a Kentucky-to-Denver Frontier flight told an FBI agent that they saw another passenger expose and fondle himself, police arrested 42-year-old Alan Michael Froula of Fisherville, Kentucky. "He was smiling and seemed to be enjoying himself," a fellow traveler reported.

There were so many instances of air rage in 2007 that the Association of Flight Attendants convinced United Airlines to create an internal review committee to analyze each incident.

By the Numbers

Just before Thanksgiving, a federal survey reported that Denver International Airport had the longest security-screening wait times of any airport in the nation. DIA also overtook Los Angeles as the fourth-busiest airport in the nation during the first half of the year.

But the city's number-one claim to fame was its number-one ranking when it comes to getting drunk. For the second year in a row, Men's Health named Denver the most dangerously drunk city in America, based on such factors as liver-disease deaths, drunk-driving arrests and fatal accidents involving alcohol.

And maybe that's because Colorado is now the nation's biggest beer-producing state, taking over from California. Colorado made more than 23.3 million barrels of beer last year, according to the Beer Institute, a national trade group.

Denver ranks thirteenth on the Texas Transportation Institute's list of the nation's most rush-hour-congested cities. Last year, commuters here spent a total of 65 million hours in traffic and burned 42.5 million gallons of fuel while idling in jams.

Sporting News

In November, two people were injured and rushed to a hospital after a chain-reaction bicycle accident took down at least thirty riders near Colorado Springs.

The only thing louder than the sound of the Broncos crashing and burning were the six car horns that Jeri and Larry Priest, of Adams County, repeatedly honked every time the team scored. In October, 69-year-old Jeri was cited for disorderly conduct after a neighbor complained numerous times about the Priests' loud contraption. "I love the Broncos. I don't care if they lost, I still honk the horns, I'm always a Broncos fan," Jeri told a reporter. But in December, as part of a negotiated agreement, she donated the horn to a charity, which will auction it off. Presumably outside of Adams County.

Who's your daddy? There's a good chance it's Broncos running back Travis Henry, who has fathered nine children by nine different women in at least four Southern states. This impressive statistic came to light after Henry, who has a five-year, $22.5 million deal with the Broncos, landed in court for failing to pay child support for one of his many offspring.

Henry's pot of hot water nearly boiled over in September when the NFL told him he'd failed a marijuana test and could face a year-long suspension. Henry appealed and won, but his troubles weren't enough for SAFER, the marijuana-activism group, which leased a billboard urging Miami Dolphins running back Ricky Williams — suspended by the NFL for violating drug policy four times — to come to Denver, "where people support your safer choice."

Mitch Cozad, 22, the backup punter for the University of Northern Colorado's football team, was convicted of stabbing the team's starting punter in the leg in an attempt to take over the job. Cozad was sentenced in October to seven years in prison.

In December, Denver Broncos punter Todd Sauerbrun was arrested after he allegedly smacked a cab driver on the back of the head. The cabbie, who'd picked up Sauerbrun at a Cherry Creek restaurant, stopped at a police station and ordered him out of the cab, claiming he was drunk and abusive. Sauerbrun has denied the charges, but was cut by the team with two games remaining in the season.