Day and night gorillas

This year we participated in the 6th annual Gorilla Run in downtown Denver! It is actually a fundraiser for mountain gorillas. You pay your registration fee (a bit hefty) and get a gorilla suit to keep. All proceeds go to the mountain gorillas. Also we helped break the Guiness World record for the most people dressed as gorillas in one location!

This is Sandy in front of the starting line. The inflatable gorilla even had feet.


I took a while for all the gorillas to get corralled and counted. We took a moment to snap a shot of Denver's awesome light rail entrance at Denver Union Station - with Sandy the gorilla.


This is me, trying to look gorilla-like.

While waiting we did get to observe the some of our gorilla family and their costumes:


Bathing suits and/or underwear was a popular costume.

Behold, the banana bike!
Of course, people dressed up their dogs too. This one is a lobster.
This little guy was a banana - very appropriate.

Even more appropriate was this one dressed as a silver back gorilla. Before yesterday, we had never seen a dog express shame. This guy, Buddy, was visibly embarrassed by having to wear the gorilla suit.

We did not run - we were one of the many gorillas on wheels - we rode our bikes! There were gorillas on skateboards, on roller skates, inline skates, wheel chairs, razor scooters, trikes, and more. This is a shot of me on the bike on the run route. I was quite difficult to ride with the mask on - no peripheral vision and sweaty in there!


After the ride, we retired to Starbucks to get a caffeinated beverage. This fueled us through the rest of the day.
We walked around and enjoyed being gorillas for a day. The reactions were so varied from tearing up children to laughing old women to those trying to ignore. We did end up at a party at the home of some friends and then at one or two bars after. The gorillas got to bed late...