Sunday afternoon. The month begins with it's fourth day in a row of wet spring snow. I am on a train pulling into downtown. Through the window, I watch a couple of middle-aged homeless guys is long coats lighting up some marijuana. Another pair come out of the station with lit cigarettes. They appear to be concentrating only on smoking. After running inside the station for new bus schedules, I come out and hop on a shuttle for the pedestrian mall, jumping out at the deathburger. This is a kind of grand central station for homeless. I watch out of a window as a kid with a long blonde perm sticks a spray can in his mouth. I walk across the avenue to the bus station at the end of the pedestrian mall opposite my train. Out of this station come the pair from the other station, with two brand new unlit cigarettes. After a movie and a three more buses, I am back at a bus stop just outside where I live. The stop is at the edge of a parking lot popular with both those who can't wait for the light to change, and with street racers who line up their vehicles here on Sundays.
Sundays will never be the saaaame...
Monday. 4:20 AM. The snow is gone but it's a little foggy. I am out at the bus stop across the street from where I live. My Friday routine has become my Monday routine. The usual older guy hobbles over from across the street. This morning he's limping. As we wait in the cold dark he paces back and forth. Another guy walks here from the side of the fire station, and a third comes along from the gas station. The two know each other. The bus swoops us up and as we head toward the all-important connecting bus on this route, we pick up a passenger for whom the driver waits as he slowly put his coins in the fare box. The obligatory passenger says, "C'mon, let's go. We're late already." Welcome to the Dirty 30. Not to worry. We all make the other bus, which takes some of us to the train. I stand under the light on the side of a building, writing this, as a guy with a leaf blower comes along. He's sweeping the platform and asks me twice to move.
Tuesday evening. It's been a twelve-hour shift at one our busiest stores. I went in and did the previous day's leftover work, due to a previous employee being let go, as well as most of today's. The employee was high and frightening the customers. At 7:15 PM, I am sitting on a sidewalk. As I wait for a bus, I'm staring into the sun heading into the west. Some 12 1/2 hours earlier, I was sitting on a sidewalk in front of my home. As I waited for a ride to work, I was staring into the sun just up over the eastern horizon. This evening, the bus takes me to a train, which takes me to another bus. It shows up around 8:20 PM. The driver of this bus tells us that he is 17 minutes late, due to a detour and traffic, "which is killing me," he admits. Along the way, we pick up a guy in an orange vest, jeans, clean wok boots, and a hard hat. It appears as if he is wearing sunglasses. After sundown. He's jabbering at the driver as he takes his time putting his fare in the box. A passenger behind me asks the driver to get going. This guy falls into a seat and his hard hat falls on the floor. He begins twenty minutes of non-stop prattling. He claims that, though he doesn't look like it, he is in fact a boss. The driver asks him how many employees he has under him. The guy claims it's 850. He gets up and down, moving back and forth between three different seats. Back on his original seat, he appears to be looking for something. A woman in another seat, who appears to be a lesbian, sees where it is and lets him know. He thanks her, says he's a "Southern gentleman," and gets up to give her a hug. He calls the driver "boss man," and begins a non-stop barrage of questions about where we are and where we are going. His hat falls off a second time. His inability to keep it on is almost more odd than his monologue. He gets angry before the driver tells him that he will take him where he wants to go. The guy goes back and forth between apologetic gratitude and anger before he appears to go to sleep. If this guy is a nut job, he looks just like anyone else in a hard hat and orange vest. Is he a tweaker masquerading as a foreman, or a foreman who is tweaking?
Wednesday. I'm back at my own store. The employee who was let go for his drug dance, his check has been left at my store. Presumably, because this store is closest to where he lives, I'm the lucky one who gets to give him his check. I get a call from him while he is on the bus. He wants to know where this store is. I tell him before I hear him ask the driver if the bus comes here. When he comes in and mentions his misadventure on the transit system. He got on the wrong bus which took him to the end of that route's line. That particular bus is the one I used to take to work, at the first company where I worked in this business, twenty-five years and a couple months ago.
...Wolfheals Shamanic Services...intro to Shamanic Journeying...and Walking in Light... ...the helping, compassionate spiritual realm, including nature and Earth wisdom. "Walking in Light workshop," says...Body-Centered Psychotherapist..."Is...through your empowered intentions and...spiritual light, enhancing your connection to self, Earth, your spirit helpers and your own essence."
The workshop...allows you to experience the "Empowered Presence" that functions as your Inner Mediator...
"Being in Nature can accelerate personal growth..."
10-12 people...meet twice a month to learn new paradigm for Wellness... One meeting is a "playshop"...and the other...put into action energizing aspects of community...moving, sensing and playing. Members...create a sacred circle of accountability...
Just One Light Gathering... The extraordinary shift in human consciousness can be stressful and isolating. ...explore guidance..and...create connection. Suggested $8. Light snacks. Galactic Dance & Mindful Movement... - natural awakenings, 4/2016
"We've seen crazy growth here. There are 1,300 homes going in nearby. Our dining room has a changing table in it. We finally surrendered. We try not to watch too much TV..." No surprise here: Spending a lot of time cooking in the kitchen isn't an option. "Nope, we don't cook. There are not a ton of restaurants around. ...still catching up on growth."
...moms...simply think of things that would never occur to the dads. Have you ever seen what a dad actually brings to the game? "Nothing!" The moms have "all" the stuff. ...and...all the power. Mom after mom rolls up to the games with a collapsible cart. Inside are umbrellas, blankets, chairs, sunscreen, bug spray, coolers, first aid kits, chargers, pens, markers, scorebooks, iPads, snacks, sandwiches, ice packs... Mile High Sports, 5/2016
...behind the rigid, staid smile of the white woman is often...an aggressive, and sexually deprived girl...behind the...air of the white man is frequently power-driven adult with a childlike mentality. ...threat of violence among the young breed...makes them a highly political group. ...certain of their actions have far-reaching political consequences. Their willingness to use force and violence...upsets the traditional socio-economic organization of American cities.
...everybody's front is broken and there is nowhere to hide. The white ruling interest can no longer hide behind their promises and declarations of freedom, democracy, and social equality. No one believes their declarations anymore. Now they stood fully exposed, resting on nothing but baked power... ...the preachers, lawyers, and entertainers...no longer impress people with statements of what they can do... They can't back up what they say.
The ceaseless...torture, lawlessness and killing that American white men and women have inflicted...in the country is now producing a species...who are possessed with the psychology of the damned. Their view of America is the view of those who have been made into monsters. For it is now obvious that they have been designed as permanent victims of America's madness. They are beginning to feel that they are the "anointed" ones. ...they will be more inhuman, more insane... ...America will be struck dumb, outraged. ...militia will be dispatched to the scene. But the scene will be everywhere.
Standing on top of the rest of humanity, from his upside-down position, the white man sees (W-W) The Wonders of the World. From the bottom of the heap, looking at things right side up, the downtrodden...in the street sees (M-M) The Madness of Mister Charlie. ...a lower-class...is never as carefree as you force him to pretend. - Jones and Neal
...there are issues with homelessness...
I'm not so much an issues person as I am a systems person. I was born and raised on the north side of Denver...in the movement of neighborhood activity. ...any individual issue, those usually come up through the neighborhoods. But the thing that's missing is what I'm really good at, which is...management. I have a project management degree...I have a master's in organizing people and being able to see systems... ..I became...interested in how you combine...systems thinking with business acumen and community mindedness... Any individual is going to be best solved if we have a system in place. ...I've been able to makes friends, whether it's through the board of directors or through individual committees... ...with the Environmental Protection Agency. ...me as a computer programmer I...generated 3-D models... It was grassroots; the actual data was driving decision making...
"...the 57,800 RTD riders who make less that $30,000 per year are struggling to afford new fares." ...one day of work just to earn the take-home pay for transportation to and from work. - the profile, 5/2016
This annual Festival guide is the lifeblood of what we do here... ...festival season is more than a time for hippies to argue over their two-square-feet of tarp space and ladies with far-away eyes to whirl in hula hoops. ...turn their parking lot into one hell of a party. ...a kid friendly zone, food trucks galore and a couple hundred of your drinking buddies. Be ready to go home with swag... ...Oskar Blues Burning Can festival... ...authentic music and vibe. Colorado's up-and-coming outdoor epicenter... ...the biggest outdoor sports and lifestyle happening n the West. Costumes are welcome! Join Lance Armstrong... Music, art and beer in the mountains. It's everything a Millennial tripster yogi could ever wish for. Riding a train across Colorado and drinking beer? The Build Your Own Boat Race... There will be pre-parties and after-parties... Yep, bacon. And music and stuff. DON'T MISS: Earn a "Bacon Diploma" at the Bacon Education Center. ...enlightened throwdown... ...it needs to be weird, or at least alternately expressive. JAZZ ASPEN SNOWMASS LABOR DAY EXPERIENCE Yeah, well forget about the jazz, this festival pulls in big-gun talent. ...Duran Duran... - Elevation Outdoors, 5/2016
Thursday. The trail is full of guys cutting grass and spraying for pine beetles. For the past couple of days, in a yard of the neighborhood of opulence through which I ride to work, Hispanic roofers lounge in the shade of trees. On the way home, I go back past a dog park. Three dogs case me along the length of the park. Closer to home, a helicopter hovers over my boulevard on Cinco de Mayo. What the helicopter will contribute to traffic patrol, I'm not sure. Friday. My own store's new employee is stuck waiting for his case worker in his own halfway house. I must go in to work early. He makes it in for the closing shift, and for the first time in a decade, I ride my bike from one store to another. I'm headed a short way down trails which, if I've been on these, I don't remember them. This morning, I dug out my old bike pass for the train. Years ago, a transit system security officer wanted to see it, only because he had never seen one before. After work, I'm on a trail which I've never been on, one that shadows the interstate loop around the metro area. There's a rainstorm between here and the foothills, and a bolt of lightning pierces the setting sun. I turn off onto an avenue, and I am careening down a bike lane before I realize that I have to turn back off of the street and into the train station. I hit the brakes and slide. And I'm on the train with my bike for the first time in ten years. And just like that, the next morning, I turn around and head back to the very same store for another nine hours. I go to and from work between rainstorms. I feel as if I've successfully navigated my day. On the way to work, I take an old route all the way down a bike lane. There, sitting in the middle of the lane, is a goose. On the way back to the train however, after work, I discover a trail which not only is quicker, but goes past a beautiful lake which I never knew existed.
Sunday. Mother's Day. This is the weekend during which Cinco de Mayo celebrations are put on locally. This afternoon, I am on a bus, headed downtown to partake in the family festivities. Along the way, a passenger gets on who recognizes someone in the back. As they shoot the breeze, he mentions that "I have a year or two before I get out." The other asks, "I wonder if" so-and-so "got out?" "It's harder to get out than it is to catch more time." The bus detours with festival traffic and I get out on the pedestrian mall. I pass a younger guy with a bottle in a brown paper bag. He stops to ask a question of another guy with a grey beard like a tumbleweed on his face. Sitting on something in the middle of the mall is another guy, this one in what appear to be hospital scrubs and an emergency rain poncho. I hop onto a mall shuttle packed with families. At one corner a homeless kid gets on with a couple of dogs on a leash. There is a method in painting of mixing both grey and brown, by mixing all colors together. The skin on the head of this guy is that shade of grey, along with his clothes and backpack. I get out and head over to Chilis where four young guys are standing outside. As I pass them I smell marijuana. When I go inside, they follow and sit at a table where there mom and two aunts are. I swing by the festival. Back on a shuttle to the train, a couple of guys get on, each of whom have guitars. The older one says to the younger one, "Back east, the trains go under the cars, or over them. Here, the trains stop for them. They stop for red lights. I get a kick out of it." He says that he's working on a strain of marijuana with psychedelic mushrooms.
Tuesday. Not much sleep Sunday night. Not much last night. I wake up in a hotel room, in bed with a lady who I've been seeing. She is of to her Digestion class for her LPN degree. I am alone in the room, trying to organize yesterday's leftovers and today's responsibilities into a bag. During breakfast next to a doctor on his phone, and on the way downtown for more damned transit system tickets, I have memories of her arms around me, and her firm body next to mine. I am on a train with a deaf guy who has a collection of bus transfers clipped to the brim of his cap. I hit the bank before the bus station for the tickets. I head for the men's room, where I watch a guy with a mountain bike and backpack go inside before coming back out again. When I come out of a stall, I see him with his bike, peeking inside the room. From the hotel restaurant, with its air of southern hospitality, to this typical weird bus station scene; I grab another train and land at a station on the campus of a private university, where every single person appears to be either a student or a faculty member. I sit on the ground, my umbrella between myself and a sky full of broken clouds, dropping a smattering of rain. Along strolls a guy in a gold corduroy suit, gold tie, and a hat with a brim and feather. He swings a closed umbrella as he speaks into his phone, saying something about "God's chosen people" and "cutting people's heads off." Some nine hours later, it's after work and I am on a bus home with a young guy in a shirt and tie. He also is on his phone, with a loud and excited voice. He recounts a conversation with his boss, who made him promises. "'We will tailor a suit for you. You get 50 people, we will arrange a party so that they know you are a financial advisor.' They want a go-getter who will do the job."
Friday. Sometime around noon. I am just of the train and on my way down the bike lane of a road on the way to work. Laying in the bike lane are two wrapped cigars, one right after the other. Shortly thereafter, I turn off onto a horse trail, where I am immediately hit by an insect which almost appears to sting me in the neck by mistake. Another bounces off by left bicep without incident. Eight hours later, I am almost home when I spot two police helicopters turning circles above my neighborhood. Earlier in the day, I was training someone new at work. I mentioned where I live, and she thought she had heard a broadcast news report about a street racer there who had crashed into a house.
...we had 12 hit and runs on (my street)
all on Friday or Saturday nights. People drive DRUNK from the bars...and hit cars...
Last time the guy was caught after causing $11,000 worth of damage. He was a drunk repeat offender with no licence and no insurance. - Nextdoor Westwood, 5/14/2016
Yesterday...someone...spray painted in large white letters "I SELL DRUGS" on the window of our car. - Nextdoor Westwood, 5/15/2016
Monday. My bike has a flat tire. Around 5 AM, I am across the street at the gas station. I go inside for quarters, for the air pump. The clerk tells me it's his last day. That this store is essentially an endless parade of customers out of a madman's visions. "You could write a novel about this place," he tells me. My sister tells me that this blog should be a book. When I get to work, I discover that, with the return of yet another recent former employee (under the new ownership, the company has been collecting its own former employees, not any from the previous ownership), I will be working at a different store from where I've been for more than a year. Tomorrow I will go and collect some odds and ends which I have at the old store, and say goodbye to a relationship with a strip mall and a neighborhood.
On Tuesday, I have a long day ahead. I am toting a dolly with an empty box (with which to collect said odds and ends) as well as a bike wheel which needs a new tube. And along the way, I hope to grab breakfast and lunch.
All on a Tuesday morning... Bus to bus to downtown mall shuttle, and on the mall shuttle is a homeless guy replete with Army surplus gear, complete with giant ruck sack on his back. He has bushy dark brown hair coming out from under a bush hat and a bushy beard. He overhears someone looking for directions and he offers his wisdom. He also throws in a story from his youth and his take on the growth of the metro area. "There's more than 30 (construction) cranes (downtown)," he mentions. Someone misunderstands him, and asks him, "There's 30 (marijuana) dispensaries?" He laughs and replies that there's plenty more than 30 dispensaries. If
Easy Rider was about two guys with gigantic backpacks instead of choppers, he would be the late Dennis Hopper's character. Back where I changed buses was a middle-aged guy in a hoodie with a marijuana leaf on the back. He announces from under the bus shelter that he has what sound like joints for sale. "Medical," he adds...
I'm out on the pedestrian mall at mid-morning, hauling box and wheel. I watch a guy pass another while he offers him some form of "medical." After I hit the bank, I grab breakfast at downtown's deathburger/homeless central. This place just wouldn't be the same if it didn't stink. Monitors on the wall show a video loop of pastoral mountain scenes while new age Muzak hangs on the odorous air. Down and out folks huddle at every table, looking at me like puppies. Guys in suits wait in line with people outfitted from the Goodwill. A young guy in a long wool coat mentions out loud that all narcotics give you the same high. A family sits at a booth. They have a collapsible shopping cart overflowing with clothes, and kids' toys on the bottom. One of the teenagers need nineteen more cents to place an order. The mom, a woman who has almost completely disappeared in a big wool coat, reacts with frustration as she must now retrieve change from an inaccessible location. One of the younger kids tell her that he doesn't like sausage. The grimy parents appear young, barely into their thirties. The father belches and chuckles before he asks a third child to stop running around. As I eat next to them, I read a local newspaper about Mormons at a metro area dinner honoring local high school teachers. On the way to the bike shop, I pass a young homeless couple on the sidewalk, flying a sign. They think that I am also homeless, and they ask me what time a nearby church opens for free meals. While a mechanic changes out my tube, the new community resource officer comes in to introduce herself to the employees. I listen as she tells a story about entering someone's house to find 50 stolen bicycles and being unable to make an arrest
With a new tube in the wheel, I make more connections to get down to my old store. I say goodbye to friends at the Great Harvest Bakery, including a lady I saw in a local musical, and I have one last lunch at the Wooden Table. So long old-money opulent neighborhood. Hello food desert neighborhood. I've worked at all the stores this company has left, as well as this many more which it no longer has. Every neighborhood where we had and have a store has it's own personality.
Many guises, many names... After work, I'm on my last bus home around a quarter to 8 PM. A curly, grey haired guy with a plastic shopping bag, who gets on in front of me, is asking the driver if he makes one particular extra loop around an apartment building, which only the last couple of buses on this route make. The driver sounds unsure of what he speaks. As we approach this loop, another passenger tells the driver he went past the turn. The guy yells, "You passed it! Fuck! I'm payin' this bill..." Wednesday. 7:30 AM. I'm on my way to the dentist. I'm at my old bus stop when a bus pulls up. The door opens, and out comes a grey-haired guy pulling a 55-gallon plastic drum liner full to the top of aluminium cans. This bus takes me to the train station, where I wait for another. An autistic guy comes along. He has a few words with himself before he begins rocking back and forth. Some four hours later, I am on a bus from the dentist to another train. In the front seat is a couple from out of town, here on holiday. They are getting some local info from a woman in a wheelchair. Underneath their seat, it reeks of urine.
...white people are doing these things, yet they claim ignorance of them...even while they are doing them. This denial...strikes deep into the very psyche of American culture, which...intends to vilify and maim the "ethos" of ...the objects of scorn, ridicule, caricature, and devaluation by the folkways, myths, values and ideologies of the white world. The junctures at which biography and society encounter each other determine the psychological nature, as well as the human nature... - Jones and Neal
Thursday. Around 8:30 AM, I make it to a store where the "operations manager" of my company was going to take me before she called to let me know that she overslept. Sheesh, operations managers. I came here flying down the sidewalk of a busy avenue on my bike. The store is not open, but the back door is unlocked. I go inside and meet the mechanic the owner hired, as well as his dog. He wants to know if the dog "attacked me with love." Friday. I've agreed to open a store today. I am up the street at a bus stop with a guy in a full length camouflaged coat. He lights up a tiny pipe and I smell marijuana. I've seen announcements about the closure of all train stations north of a main hub this weekend. I forgot that I am headed to one which is closed. I'm not there when a transit system employee pulls up to offer myself and another guy a ride to the transit hub. The other passenger is a middle aged guy in a woven hoodie and camouflaged pants. We get dropped at the station and I head over to the platform and have a seat. Shortly thereafter, I watch the camo pants guy quickly walking down the platform with another transit system employee. The station is full of transit system drivers, security, parked buses and supervisors directing traffic. Trains must be stopped here and redirected back south. On schedule of course. The camo pants guy is saying to the other, "Well, the dude just dropped me off..."
Saturday. It's going on 6 AM as I watch the sun rise on a pair of discarded women's boots on a bench in a bus shelter. I wait here with a younger guy with a bike, scratching off his scratch ticket. The bus comes as the dawn breaks, it's orange light striking the worn, black heeled boots. Down the way, the driver says "Hey." I look up to see that he is trying to get the attention of a female behind me. She has been directing him along this route. As we come out of a detour and head toward the chaos of the station, we roll up on a running passenger. The bus comes to a stop and the driver opens the front door to ask the guy if he wants the bus. The guy doesn't say anything. He's not a native English-speaker. The driver tells him that he can't ride without fare. "Show me a ticket," he tell the guy. "Ticket," he replies, "Oh, yeah." "You got a ticket? C'mon, these people are waiting," expounds the driver. A half an hour later, I am on a connecting bus to work, seated in front of a couple of ex-cons. It sounds as if they both work somewhere, unloading tires from a delivery truck. They get paid by the tire. The older guy has a call into halfway houses, looking to hire someone with experience. Tire experience I guess. One of the guys he has working under him now must go. "He does some things that kinda fuckin' make me mad." He goes on, "They get these tires. They hang onto them for 20 days, then they send them all back." I'm learning more than I ever knew about tires from an ex-con. I guess it's who you know. I move to a seat closer to them to hear more clearly. The boss is named Adam. The younger one says, "I was going to tell Adam, 'Fire Jaylin, split up what you're payin' him between the three of us, we'll take care of it.' That's $3 each. Jaylin says, 'Why don't you message me on Facebook?'" The older one says, "He doesn't answer his fuckin' phone." The older one mentions that he found his arrest record online. He also believes that he may have located his sister. "I called and left a message, 'If you're my sister, blah blah-blah.'" The younger one says, "The first time I went to jail, it was on 22 counts." The older one mentions a female at work. "I'd like to fuck her. That's how they dress down here." Welcome to planet Earth.
Sunday. I decide to take my bike to the gym. On the way back, I stop for lunch at a deathburger. At one table are seated three elderly folks and a young guy who appear to be here from church. In come a tattooed lesbian couple, followed by a family group with two members wearing blue handkerchiefs on their heads. Five hours later, I will be in the Vietnamese place behind where I live, for dinner. At one table are a Mexican family. The son and father are huge and overweight. The son is dressed in black and has long black hair with the sides of his head shaved.
A good deal of stress is put on success...good manners, keeping their hair trim, dressing pleasantly... ...aspirations of the master class...liberal paternalism... ...Billy Graham flies all over the world preaching about the...milky-white way. ...preaching the love of the white mushroom to...frustrated housewives... But for the unwed mothers, the hustlers, the vice-preyed upon youth, the hoodlums of the street, the unemployed and under-employed with families...Revolution is a mockery. - Jones and Neal
"I live right around here and I know going through the Target parking lot, you do see panhandlers because they are pushing them out of Denver. It's a problem confronting fast-growing cities...as affordable housing becomes scarcer, and developers want the valuable land. ...Comitis Crisis Center...has seen its Aurora shelter...able to provide more room...because staff removed tables from the dining room to put down mattresses and cots... Unlike Denver, Aurora is not enforcing a camping ban... - Aurora Sentinel, 5/19-5/25/2016
...attending the 138th annual Colorado Press Association Convention... Folks from the coal and energy areas of western Colorado have grim reports on jobs and the future of the fossil fuel industry. Somewhat surprising were reports from Pueblo about lack of jobs, tourism and industry... Housing is tight everywhere. Salida...new homes are being built, but not enough to accommodate the number of people fleeing city life for a less expensive home in the country. A new issue is...summer and winter vacation homes...off the job-oriented marketplace and renting them as seasonal vacation homes. It has long been an issue in many mountain communities as part-time residents and tourists...create low-paying service jobs with workers who have families... The Denver-metro homeless population is at record levels of poverty and people on downtown streets. Shelters have had great difficulty... - Denver Herald-Dispatch, 5/19/2016
HUNGRY FOR SUCCESS? If your answer is YES...then it's time to apply at your neighborhood [deathburger].
...the first step to a satisfying and successful career. ...our culture and objective is to delight our employees and our customers. - flyer from a deathburger on the way to the gym
Hit and run on the 23nd [sic] at 2:30 a.m. my car is probably totaled [sic]. My neighbors had two cars that were also hit. The runners car...has got to be close by. - Nextdoor Westwood, 5/23/2016
Monday. 8 PM. I am coming home from work, just off the train with my bike as I am making haste. I have to open a store tomorrow. Up with the damned pre-dawn patrol. I have my choice of ways home. I decide on the residential streets, which means climbing a hill. I turn at the base, and I see a paramedic truck from the fire department across the street from where I live, as well as an ambulance. I watch as a woman is wheeled out of the front door of a small bungalow. On the other side of the street is a guy blowing cut grass off his driveway with a leaf blower. Tuesday night. I get a call from the boss just before bed. She needs me to open a store tomorrow morning. It's going to be another night with six hours of sleep. The following day is already Wednesday. Working 12-hour days will make a week disappear. I'm at the train station shortly after 5 PM. A transit security officer wanders over to ask which train I need. It turns out that my train isn't running due to an emergency. I will find out later that it hit and killed someone. That would be the train which goes down the east side of town. "Bus bridges" to stations south have yet to be organized. My only option is to take the train down the west side, get out, and ride my bike east as the crow flies. With only an hour and a quarter to get there, it's wishful thinking. It turns out that I will go past my old store. As long as I will be late, I may as well stop and get breakfast at the bakery next door. From there, I rediscover a trail upon which I rode once a decade ago. The next day is another 12-hour grind. I listen to traffic rumble with diesel engine noise during morning rush hour, and I listen to it again some eight hours later.
From energy workers weighing in... ...we are meant to SEEK happiness... ...opportunities come your way because because you are in alignment with the energy of the Universe or God or Spirit or Source, take your pick. ...living from love rather than ego.
...professional bodyworkers...polarity therapists..."biodynamic style."
"Healthy living and conscious choices are no longer a 'privilege' but a...goal for betterment... Our nation's openness and readiness is stronger than ever and our event platform...an open invitation for positive integration."
If you can adopt the belief system that everything is here to help you. Happiness wants to unite with you... ...it's like an energy car wash... Whether you pray, meditate, or work out, you have the choice to move out energy. ...I work with people...that...worry about the future, which is not even here yet... ...Eden Energy Medicine...energy psychology... ...nine different energy systems. ...spiritual autonomy and spiritual power. Ceremony is built into ordinary life daily and seasonally. ...I often create ceremony for my community... - Natural Awakenings, 6/2016
Saturday before Memorial Day. Saturdays are open to close shifts, but they are shorter that all day shifts during the week. When the store closes at 5 PM, the sun is still up. I elect to ride all the way home instead of bailing out and taking the train. My route home is a lovely side street which eventually empties out into one of the city's many wedge-shaped parks. I am immediately off the street and riding up a path to a playground and picnic area. Some kind of biker family is having a party. I pilot around a biker tossing a football to a child, weave through some middle-aged folks next to the picnic tables, and follow a couple of biker women in low gear stepping toward an intersection of paths before I am able to continue down an underpass below the highway. Sometime during this weekend, I read a post on my neighborhood social network site. Over on the next major boulevard west, five teenagers, all wearing scarves over their faces piled out of a truck. This was in front of the home of a next door neighbor, of the social network member who wrote the post. The teenagers began checking the doors of all the vehicles parked at the home, to see if any doors were open. The neighbor who wrote the post mentions going out to chase them away.
