The next day is my younger brother's birthday. Out on the trail to work, past someone's comforter hanging over a railing on a bridge, the colorful spandex cyclists are out in force. I pass a line of twenty riding together, and another line of six go past me. "Passing...a group of us," someone says. A little way along is a group of homeless, all sitting at a stone picnic bench next to a frontier-themed playground along the river. On the other side of the trail, on a gravel shoulder, are three shopping carts. One is empty. The other two are piled as high as myself standing up with an assortment of stuff. On top of one is a freaking sewing machine. Two wiry guys come slowly over to pull them down the trail. Another three homeless are seated at the table with bikes and bike trailers. I ride to a waterpark where I grab a swim before I arrive at work. Shortly thereafter the sky opens up and dumps some rain. Six hours later I am on my way home. As the setting sun casts long shadows across the parks, and the air has turned chilly, there are no more lines of brightly colored cyclists in artificial fibers. I pas but one lonely guy on a bike. He's in a brown hoodie. His face is covered halfway between stubble and a full beard. A cigarette dangles from a corner of his mouth. I pass the place where I had a swim before the downpour. A bell at the top of a crow's nest rings. Pirate's Cove the place is called. They may not have season tickets there (they are sold only at some recreation center down the road [?]) but they have a bell, and a row of giant cannonballs at the entrance. No doubt to inspire swimmers to jump off the diving board. (Get it? Cannonball...) I decide to take the train home; earlier to bed and hopefully more sleep to come back this way tomorrow.
The train whips me closer to home. Just out of the station, I'm rolling down a brand new sidewalk next to a fenced off and big empty field. There is a weirdo couple standing alone in the middle of the sidewalk, next to a busy avenue. The woman is in a blouse with a skull print design, and has mirrored teardrop shades. She appears to be anticipating dancing to music from the guy, who is holding an acoustic guitar in both hands, fingers on the strings. She kind of half spins around. He's in some kind of matching grey outfit and hat. As I pass them, I never hear any sound from the guitar. They proceed down the sidewalk, the guy still holding the guitar as if he's playing. The pair stops again at one point, as if anticipation of beginning a performance, before going to the corner and quickly moving through the crosswalk. No doubt they are headed back to their time machine, to return to San Francisco of just about fifty years ago. I hope they don't run into Inspector Callahan. I get across a highway and am walking my bike up a steep hill, the one which I'm sure ate the brakes on my other bike those days I came down this way. The hill is full of tiny post-WW II bungalows. In one gravel driveway is an SUV parked near the street. There is a sign on each back window. These may be folks who have trouble with English. Instead of putting up signs which read "for sale," they put up ones which read "yard sale." Or it could be that they couldn't find "for sale" signs, but I suspect that this is unlikely. The signs list the vehicle for sale at a mere $400. It looks in much too good of shape to let it go for that. Then again, I'm no mechanic...
The...status of these "cities" as sovereign. I say take away their mayors, city councils and home rules, and let Denver spread its wings and become the mighty empire it should be...annexing these faux cities. Then...podunks like San Diego and San Antonio will no longer be considered "bigger" than our great metropolis.
...crawl to the speed of the ever-present police cars. Life in the slow lane is what the government wants, even if it keeps the world away.
As Denver's population swells...residents...worry about...affordable housing...basic aesthetics subsumed... ...local historian...will address...'Denver's energy economy and...How does Denver's sports fixation affect its future?' - Westword, 6/1-7/2017
...came to the U.S. on a tourist visa in 1996, fleeing...Islamic extremists in Indonesia. A Lutheran who had been in Christian student movements in his native country. ...also a member of a persecuted tribe...his family who stayed behind was threatened. "...a known Christian leader...returning from the United States...could lead to much more than harassment." ...his request for asylum was eventually rejected, but he was able to stay in the U.S. with his family...until last week. ...in...less than two days - they deported him from Colorado... - Aurora Sentinel, 6/1 - 6/7/2017
...as tightly strung as a piano wire...in consequence of the Mau Mau rebellion which has completely dislocated the normal life of the colony. Mau Mau means murder among other things, and I have never met people so trigger happy as in Kenya. ...ladies...in diaphanous evening dress, carried revolvers in their gold mesh bags... A youth...said with...pride that he had shot and killed five Africans...and hoped that there would be more to come. The struggle for power...a coalition between government and the moderate white settlers...and...a plural society...on the other...white supremacy, no matter what the cost. Whole provinces of Africa were decimated to provide eunuchs for Turkish harems, or levies for Moslem armies all the way from Baghdad to Bengal. ...commercial exploitation "preceded" political acquisition. White settlement in Kenya began with... Hugh Cholmondeley, third Baron Delamere...who dominated the country singlehanded for almost thirty years. [His story is told in] Elspeth Huxley's White Man's Country. One must not forget how astonishingly new most of Africa is. Nairobi is a chic little city... Your doctor is a Pole, your manicurist an Italian, your tailor a Hungarian. It has...smart office buildings, night clubs of European genre, day clubs rigidly...colonial... This is not Benghazi or Addis Ababa by a million miles. Nairobi was, and is, the focus of an international smart set... ...it attracted the corrupt rich... ...seething forces were transforming Kenya minute by minute...to an arena choked with blood and hate. - Gunther
The day after is another sovereign Saturday, I keep doing Sunday's chores on my days off, such as going to the gym twice a freaking week, now laundry I'm doing during the week. Tonight I will go grocery shopping, all because this Sunday the plumber is coming. And I must pick up my bike which is finished being tuned up. The shop called to let me know that the cost will be closer to $300 because I need new bearings somewhere and a shifter cable is fraying. And I want to go to an outdoor festival downtown. And there is a library book sale in another county. As I get older, my life I hardly slowing down. Even with a schedule of two days off during the week and usually working afternoon shifts. Then again, I'm no mechanic... I'm out on the trail around 6 AM, later than I like to be on a Saturday. It's an hour and a half ride each way. With the tune up of my primary bike, I'm realizing that the other bikes I rode surely wore down just the same way. They were all much less expensive ones, and rather than spending money on a tune up, I would end up salvaging them for parts. Now I am spending money to have every part on my current bike taken off and cleaned, for close to the cost of the bike itself. I suppose this means it's not that much better than the others. To quote Woody Allen, it's amazing how relative it all is.
The afternoons and evenings on this trail abuzz with a parade of humanity. With the rising sun this morning, it's just me out here. Down the first trail, I notice a flat tree stump with a collection of cairns made of small stones from the river. I've seen cairns made with larger rocks on hiking trails, where there is no other distinguishing features marking the trail. I don't know what this thing is. I head off the trail and to the train, which I feel like taking today. I have an 18-minute wait. A middle-aged woman wanders onto the platform. When she gets to my end, she points at me and asks, "You don't happen to smoke by any chance, do you?" I give her the bad news, and she wanders back the way she came. She sure is up early on a Saturday, jonesin' for a smoke. The train comes along and whips me a short distance, where I take a road down to pick up the trail. I ride it to the end, where a woman is walking her dog. They are both watching a shiny blue star-shaped balloon, slowly rising just above their heads. It has no string. I ask and she says it isn't hers. "It's just doing its thing," she says.
...one school year with a black teacher can be so beneficial for black students. Make Your Mark got nearly two dozen teachers of color "in the door" for the 2016-2017 school year. ...it's a start. ...says Mayor Michael Hancock... "If we are going to build a world-class education system...we must have teachers who...are culturally responsive." "We want more high-performing seats..." says...executive director of the Office of Children's Affairs... Make Your Mark could best be described as a collective. "...collaboration...between district and charter schools." "When I spelled my name on the board, I threw the accent mark over the e, and all the students lit up. That last name went a long way in developing the culture in my classroom. People outside of Colorado don't necessarily think of Denver as a community with a large population of...color." ...building a brand that showcased Denver as a place where people of color can have rich, full lives. ...to recruit at national events such as the Alumni of Color Conference at Harvard. "..to capitalize off existing national efforts..." ...an amped-up digital marketing campaign... ...and..."a lot of myth-busting. People don't expect that we have an African-American mayor. ...are there salons for me? ...churches and spiritual communities...?" ...a city where low teacher wages are exacerbated by a high cost of living... "We can't just say 'diversity.' We need to have tangible practices." - Westword, 6/1-7/2017
Require every school to create an Equity Plan, "designed to strengthen relationships between African-Americans and schools,"... Ensure curriculum is culturally responsive ... The recommendations...have...not..."been evaluated for legal compliance"... ...required new teachers to take a...three-hour course on culturally responsive teaching... - Denver Herald-Dispatch, 6/8/2017
After the Orlando nightclub shooting last June, a gang of bikers rode its motorcycles from a local bar to the parking lot of the Metro North Denver Islamic Center in Northglenn. Women in the group flashed their breasts. ...most of the mosque's members...came to the U.S. in the 1990s to escape the Bosnian genocide. Bosnian Serb forces persecuted and killed some 80,000 Bosnian Muslims. - Denver Herald-Dispatch, 6/1/2017
...Moslem women...are...prisoners or drones...languid, pudding-shaped... - Gunther
I had to filter everything I did and said ultimately to make them comfortable... ...I had worn a façade all my life. ...I always had to be perfect and wear a smile. My dad was like, "I have nothing to say to you right now," and he got up and walked out. They compared me to murderers and pedophiles... ...the relationship continued to erode from there. There passive-aggressive behavior... When I got married, they realized I wasn't going to change. ...a few months after that we cut ties completely... - Out Front Magazine, 5/17/2017
Sunday. I got a call yesterday that my primary bicycle is ready to pick up. After grocery shopping, I take a couple of buses to the shop to pick it up. Unbeknownst to myself, I'm there a half hour before they open. I head up the street to find a place to get something to drink, with which to wash down my day's vitamins. There on a corner is a café. The outside says 1970s urban decay, but to step inside is to rush back to the present. I'm so used to eating in my own neighborhood, which is only a short city block away across the tracks. This place is full of Caucasians, and all their...culture. I'm sitting next to a table with a young couple, dressed as perhaps 'business casual.' In fact, every table looks as if it has a young couple like this. It's a business casual flash mob. The guy has red, white, and blue socks which catch my eye. Not from the U.S. flag, but more like from a Pepsi can. I hear him tell the lady, "Oh yeah, I remember I have a free haircut."
...a disabled peddler hawking snacks and beverages outside the ballpark,,, Over Memorial Day weekend, police issued seventeen citations to peddlers at Coors Field...described by city officials as part of an ongoing effort to improve the safety and security of..."soft targets" for terrorism... ...their wheeled devices were deemed uncompliant, they weren't moving around enough... "...they just kept saying, 'Tell it to the judge.' When we move around, that's when we get in people's way." Department of Excise and Licenses Public Affairs Director...notes that... "The whole point of a peddler's license is they have to be moving. The law is pretty clear about that." ...the police... "They are on heightened alert. There's no question about that. They are looking at taking appropriate action toward these soft targets." - Westword, 6/8-14/2017
...as white settlement spread, more and more Africans became displaced. ...it became impossible for [natives] to support life on the amount of land they had. ...four hundred to square mile... Their reserves became overcrowded to suffocation. A kind of plantation system developed. They...were a...tenant farmer class. ...as a result of the Mau Mau crisis it blew up. ...even before the Mau Mau outbreak. ...thousands of Kikuyus there led a kind of double life...a half life - with their roots still on the land... Because of lack of housing and intolerable social conditions in Nairobi most left their wives and children [for] their jobs in the town. ...and so became a kind of floating semi-urbanized black proletariat in a white city, This has...produced...a "spiritual convulsion"... Thousands upon thousands of families were broken up. The British fear...educated Africans [with] an educated Indian leadership... ...Africans have traditionally "known their place" and are less foreign. ...substantial white settler population...system is...unworkable... The countries getting along best in Africa today do not permit large-scale white settlement at all, even if...run by whites. Most white settlers...are frontiersmen, and resemble closely American homesteaders... ...where an African was just a damned nigger and an Indian a wog. ....they wanted "Africa" - its open spaces... They dislike...a governor who has no fixed residence in the country...an by a parliament in [England.] Two policemen steadily made their rounds...but...nobody knew whether they were to be seriously trusted or not. At dusk...the assembled company pulled out their revolvers and propped them next to their cups of tea. The guns, cocked, were actually laid out on the table. ...Europeans...were murdered by their own servants of by Africans in whom they had complete trust...knifing them...in a bath... After dinner, a puppy nibbled at a lady's handbag, and she shrieked; the loaded gun inside might go off. [The] Leader of the European Elected Members on the Kenya Legislative Council...does not think it will ever be possible for Kenya to have an exclusively African government. Every schoolboy knows the old maps, showing British areas in a nice rich pink all the way from Egypt to the Cape. ...Indirect Rule...transformed...Africans...from savages to civil servants. It also helped to preserve African institutions... The white settlers...will never tolerate a free African electorate... ...the Capricorn Society..."rejects both white colonialism and African nationalism in favor of...western culture and the Christian religion [as] dominant. The organization has almost mystical fervor... - Gunther
It's Saturday. I'm working at the shopping center with the pancake place which has the powder blue coffee mugs with a gold crest on the side. Shortly after 7 AM, there is a customer at the register. He tells a waitress, "I'm gonna get a little crazy." He orders a $100 gift card from the restaurant. He has a red crew cut and a T-shirt for a diner somewhere. He's in khaki shorts with New Balance running shoes. And New Balance socks, the short kind. An elderly couple comes in. A Mexican waiter recognizes them and comes over. The husband and waiter embrace, and the husband asks him about his daughter. On the trail home I pass a guy with a collapsible shopping cart full of stuff. I ride to the train and get on board. A couple of stations along, I can see on the platform a guy in a wicker sun hat tied with string under his chin. He's hauling his own cart full of stuff, with a dolly on top. The following day, I am headed to the pool in the afternoon, down the sidewalk of a busy residential street. Walking slowly on the shoulder, in the street, on the other side are three people. One of them is leaning on another collapsible shopping cart as he pushes it along. Earlier, in the morning, I'm at the stop for the bus to the supermarket. Around the new bench is a still life arrangement of the bumper from a vehicle, a whisky bottle, and a milkshake spilling from an overturned cup. I bend over to snap a photo of this arrangement when I hear a voice behind me. "Loose somethin'?" I turn around to see a figure who can only have walked out of the 1950s. He appears as if he could be my age with greased hair, a white T-shirt, jeans and black shoes. He could be from a prison movie from six decades past, except in his left hand is a big unopened can of beer. I let him know that I haven't lost anything. {And what if I had...?) "Are you sure, you look like you lost something." What do I look like, one of the squares? I reassure him and he makes his way back toward the direction he came, first on the sidewalk and then on the shoulder in the street. As quickly as he materialized, he evaporates with the temporal energies of his tachyon particle device.
...we're branching out into suburbia. I'm really excited and nervous... There's Hashtag [a restaurant]... People enjoy breakfast. They work from home a lot more or have no set hours, so breakfast seems like a no-brainer. And then there's...my take on comfort food that's a little elevated, with a rock-and-roll vibe. So it's really understanding the neighborhood. ...people thought I was nuts, but I sat and watched...and I could see this business clientele that wanted something a little more upscale. With Mister Tuna [restaurant], it was about doing something fun and edgy in the RiNo neighborhood. We need to...let the dust settle... Denver is going crazy. ...our partners...want us to do more in their buildings all over the U.S., and finding the real estate is half the battle. ...I can get to any restaurant right now in fifteen minutes. But that's what growth is all about... ...Colorado identity...makes up special and unique. Denver has grown to be very eclectic but very real. "Top Chef" is here, so you know we're doing something right. The growth of the city has been really cool; a lot of chefs have more than one restaurant... I think that's fun for...the city... Denver - they want that... - Westword, 6/15-21/2017
...cutting-edge social justice music education programs, and governor John Hickenlooper has launched...an initiative...that every kid has access to an instrument and music lessons. The scene is...exploding with festivals... ...musicians [are] feeling economic pressures from gentrification. "Denver had a downtrodden, dark vibe before developers tried to scrub it clean with their twisted dreams of 'urban improvement' and language like 'Aurora on the Rise.' We all remember when Denver had grit and a mood that meant you could find and even create your niche. Now the niches are being stuffed with the filthy lucre of opportunistic neo land-grabbers." "Most of the artists and musicians that made the neighborhoods cool can't afford to live there anymore." "Things are getting more and more expensive." "...local musicians who are moving forward courageously without the help of rich parents or an Ikea-style guidebook to the music business." - Westword6/22-28/2017
The morning of April 21, after the Annual Denver 4/20 Rally held in Civic Center Park, the city woke to a sea of unattended trash. Reports...indicated the presence of individuals opening and rummaging through trash bags and a man with a knife threatening cleanup crews. ...Denver Parks and Recreation Department wrote it is "imposing a...penalty...of $11,965, an additional $190in damages, banning the event...for three years, and rescinding their Priority Event status." ...the City now has...a new public event policy finalized Oct. 25, 2016. [The Overland Park golf course, which I ride past to and from work, will be host to] a multi-day music festival, organized by...Superfly (responsible for Bonnaroo...) ...how the city and her RNO handles the community outreach and consensus building efforts around the festival. ...everything seemed to be happening after a decision had been made. ...the City knew about the festival over half a year before [the Overland Park Neighborhood Association] report hearing about it. [It] feels the city used the runup to "manufacture consent' among community members before approaching the community. ...Denver City Councilman for District 7, which includes Overland, says [OPNA] asked for a level of notification that doesn't exist...the city does not go out and leaf and flyer every resident. - the profile, 6/2017
Tuesday. It's complicated. Yesterday and today I am working open to close. At a store with no air conditioning. Sunday night I got only 5 hours sleep. It didn't hit me until after lunch when I began dozing off. This morning, I've had much more sleep. You would think that my problems would be over. I leave my house some time after 4 AM. While I am still in my parking lot, I realize that I have managed to do something for the first time in the ten years I have been living where I am. I just locked myself out of my house. Which would not be an issue as someone will be here to let me in when I get home. Except the store key is inside. And I should probably have my wallet with me as well. This morning is the first time I've climbed over my back fence to try to break into my back door. The good news is that no one is getting in my back door. The bad news is that no one is getting in my back door. Panic in the dark at 4:30 am. This morning is the first time I've tried to climb onto the roof to reach the bedroom window to wake someone up to open my front door. This doesn't work either. I ring the doorbell. A light goes on in the window I was attempting to reach. My front door opens and I have my keys and wallet. I'm off to work. In the middle of the parking lot has appeared one of my Vietnamese neighbors. He's a young guy who I've seen silently walking slowly, slowly through the neighborhood. Saying nothing, looking at everything. I otherwise never see him going to or coming from work. Now, at twenty to five in the dark, he is standing there and staring at me. Motionless. He's dressed as if he has been awake. I wonder if he walks around in the middle of the night?
On the way to the train station I stop at a 24-hour diner for breakfast to go. I sit in an orange plastic booth as I wait for my order. Next to me is a guy so large he has to sit sideways instead of his legs fitting under the table. He listens to another guy at the table. The huge guy takes bites off a plate with his hand in between answering "Yup." to the other. His breathing is labored. His friend tells him, "They're goin' up to shoot their guns." "Yup," he replies. Two waitresses wait at the kitchen window and tease the cook as they wait for orders. They are both dressed in white blouses, skirts, and shoes with orange aprons. I feel like I am on an episode of Alice. Fifteen hours later, I am headed toward my parking lot. There is an unusual amount of cars parked on my busy street. Next to one of those cars, on the street side, are a couple of young and stylish bohemian Caucasian guys. One is in a tie-dyed T-shirt and a bandana on his head. He reminds me of fraternity guys I saw when I was in college in Oklahoma. The other is in a maroon sweater and a knit cap, in June. He appears to be vaping, blowing big clouds of smoke out into the air. If these guys aren't careful, they will be run over and stabbed, in that order. The following day I have off. I go to the gym and then to a swimming pool I used to go to fifteen years ago, when I lived in that side of town. It's the cleanest pool I've been to. I ride all the way back home. Headed toward my street, I see yet another Caucasian come out of a home. He's in a Polo shirt and has a laminated ID on his belt.
Business in the area has exploded over the past few years...taking over every available storefront and home prices in surrounding Baker soaring... ...affordable apartments, a rarity in this part of town where they were plentiful two decades ago. "I still remember robberies and some pretty serious crimes close to our doors. Now I see some young girl jogging with her dog on the same street. ...we were all helping out each other... Look at a picture in 2008 and look at it now. We saved that area in a lot of ways." ...a city historically in the middle of here and there that now has a light-rail line...thirsty for a comfortable, low-key place to get a nightcap. The new apartment building going up...seems to have driven out the drug addicts... ...while an epicenter for...alternative culture, he laments what he calls the 'homogenization of [Denver's] Broadway" [Boulevard]. "We're definitely seeing something detrimental happening...on Broadway, we want to keep individuality going strong. We're trying to build a community..." As you drive farther south on Broadway, the street's characteristically quirky string of dive bars, secondhand shops and auto garages gives way to Audi dealerships, pseudo-wood houses and neighborhoods with names like Mansion Pointe. This is it: You've reached the suburbs. ...the real suburbs of Denver: Highlands Ranch. ..you might as ell be in a different country. After miles...unfalteringly straight...Broadway begins to weave left and right as studio-quality green lawns and tall, rustling trees roll up on either side... And then, just like that, Broadway ends. ...you...find yourself in front of a large, opulent-looking visitor center adjacent to a pristine pond, where a pastel, polo short-wearing grandfather sits. Broadway has suddenly become Back Country Drive. Inside the Discovery Center, shining oak walls are ornamented with serene, black-and-white nature photographs of...river stones...fairy-tale phrases like, "There is still a place where sunbeams trace the land." The gated community boasts hundreds of large luxury houses worth as much as two million dollars...the information guide...proudly promises, this area is dedicated to "recreation purposes" and the..."enhancement" of open spaces. For a non-resident to hike...the private trails, you must fill out a form at the Discovery Center that indicated which homes you might be interested in and when you would want to move in. Broadway has met its long, lonely end: "It's serene...without fully disconnecting from the world you left behind." But the world of Broadway seems a million miles away. - Westword, 6/15-21/2017
Yes, I am familiar with Broadway Boulevard, and with what I've described as the kingdom of Highlands Ranch. I've written about it here. I first learned to drive a delivery van, by myself at age 39, on these meandering 45 mph parkways. I've worked at a store in the heart of the place. It can be fun, like some kind of theme park. When you walk into Chick-Fil-A, you know that the employees all go to church. The pictures on the walls are homogenized. The Whole Foods has cooking classes. You walk and you wonder.
Police in Denver are looking for a baton-wielding man [two blocks from my home on 6/6] who they say intentionally backed into the victim's vehicle...got out...and threatened the victim with a metal baton. He shattered the victim's rear window before the suspect took off in a stolen Subaru Impeza... - thedenverchannel.com, 6/13/2017
A 19-year-old man has been charged with two counts of attempted murder...in a parking lot near [my home] early in the morning on March 20. [Two or three people were asleep in the parking lot, and he a started kicking them. One was found unconscious in a pool of blood.] - kdvr.com, 6/22/2017
Marketplace Survey Information [for the shopping center where I work] 6/13/2017 Satisfaction Comment Comment: My sister nearly died from a ruptured aortic valve after a massage from your company. Would you like to be contacted about your recent experience? Yes, by phone Idiot Stupid - (printout found in the shopping center parking lot where I work)
Friday. 7:30 PM. Train platform after work. I will try to get home and get sleep before I turn around and do a full day tomorrow. Here with me is another cyclist who is engrossed in his phone. He has grey hair and no helmet, but he does have a tie-dyed T-shirt with the original Woodstock flyer design on the front. He is waiting for the train at the place for the door directly behind the train operator. Cyclists may board and stand inside at one end of each train car...except for this one spot, directly behind the train operator. The train comes and I get on with my own bike, and the back end of the first train car. He must have realized finally that he was at the wrong end of this train car. The doors close and I see him still out on the platform.
Illustrated propaganda leaflets were passed around, and, still squatting on the ground like school children, the Kikuyu read these intently. At last a truck drove up, and a witch doctor arrived. ...the native witch doctor...would administer the cleansing oath. "If I am forced to take the Mau Mau oath, I will report and confess. If I fail to do this, let this oath slay me. I will do everything I can to help the government suppress Mau Mau. If I do not, let this oath slay me. If in the future I do not supply to the government any information...let this oath slay me. I swear that I....always will be a loyal subject of Her Majesty's Government and Queen Elizabeth." British troops and - much later - RAF units - arrived, and have been in action ever since. The Mau Maus hid in the Aberdares and on the slopes of Mount Kenya, and were almost impossible to track down and root out. ...there must be...land reform...an attempt to build up villages and a middle class. ...white capital will not come into the country unless it is peaceable. - Gunther
...in late '67...those consulted in the Harris poll felt that militant protests hurt the cause of peace. But many of the young...could smell a cop-out... ...democracy...totalitarianism at the center. ...the disillusionment of the young quickly becomes cliche'...how many of them...find anything to live for? Meaning is among the rarest of our country's commodities... ...cut your hair, turn down the music. ...be suspicious of drug use if the child spoke of God, love, or peace. ...school psychologists...cooperate with the deans, and the deans seem glad to indulge the federal authorities. ...only the youth seem interested in rock music... That explains the popularity of the "underground press." ...written by the alienated for the alienated. Judges mutter about possible censorship when advertisers promote intriguing sexual devices... ...readers will...learn who's to be trusted, who's to be ignored. ...the war in Vietnam and the attacks on...dissent kept the papers alive, and the general trend in world politics encouraged others... High school students, prohibited from criticizing...in official papers...started mimeographed news sheets... [One underground newspaper] was removed from newsstands by [the] mayor...and the free-speech issue was void. Forty arrests later, [this paper] was still without a street permit and still in operation. ...it's...an attempt to legitimize dissenting reporting, to develop a constituency for radical politics and...an audience to well versed in political and cultural affairs to enjoy the mindlessness of mass journalism. ...the issues are serious, the alternatives few, and the political for genuine rebellion is omnipresent. - Notes From the New Underground, 1968, ed. by J. Kornbluth
Sunday afternoon, and the park between the state house and capitol is this weekend's host to the Pride Fest. The boys show off their underwear, the women go nude, and everyone wears the state flag as a cape. A couple of young women were in elaborate "costumes," though the characters they were portraying are themselves. Most festival attendees are young, as are the nude women. I watched one topless girl whose body was in complete command of a hula hoop. Another young woman I watched get up off the grass completely nude and put on a dress. The one image which stayed with me is of a woman closer to my age. Her nude curves are the ones I remember, as she stood behind a merchandise booth. Monday I was given the day off. At 7:30 am I am headed to a dental appointment. Along the gutter of a busy avenue I see a long line of discarded plastic forks and spoons. Coming out from under a train bridge, I turn onto Broadway, well north of the Audi dealerships. Across Broadway, I can see in the distance a group of colorfully clothed children on the lawn of an Episcopal church. As I roll past them, they are joined by as many adults, all in T-shirts with "Avid Adventures" on the breast. One young, tall, and thin Caucasian guy has a huge mop of dreadlocks down his back, under a wide brimmed hat. I make it to the neighborhood where I lived for 16 years, and still have my dentist. I head over to a favorite Breakfast place, just down the street from a couple of homes I lived in which no loner exist. I head to the dentist, and have lunch at the "world famous" shopping mall across the street. I have been here off and on when I lived here. My favorites always used to disappear. A Greek place is still here. After lunch I am on a bike trail to a pool I used to go to 15 years ago, when I also rode this trail daily to work, which is also another business now. Sprinklers splash the concrete as the water turns to steam.
I get to the pool as some kind of seniors' aquarobics class is finishing up. I take the time to apply sunscreen. It's an absolutely beautiful day. Hot. I ride to the train and take it on the way home. Back home around 2:30 PM, I turn around and go to the gym an hour or so later. Instead of stopping for breakfast along the way, I stop for dinner. When I get home from the gym, it's the end of a long, hot day. The following morning, at 5:30 AM, I am on the phone yelling at someone in Bangladesh who can't authorize my account without my giving him the right information. This means I can't find out why I haven't had internet for three days. he hangs up on me. I call the same number again and someone else suggest that I turn my modem on and off. This does the trick. Open the pod bay doors please Hal. My boss calls me three hours later to ask me to go into work early. I go to the bank to deposit the funds to pay for the filling to cap the root canal, which I paid for yesterday. I then wait for a bus which doesn't show up. The next one takes me to a stop for my connecting bus. From around the landscaping on a private university campus comes a young guy in jeans, a plaid shirt, and a cap with digital camouflage. He asks me when the bus comes. When I tell him I don't know he asks me how my day is. When I don't answer, he asks again. He tells me he will call and find out when the bus comes. He tells me when it will be here, and when I don't answer him he says, "Sir?" We both get on the bus when it comes and he begins talking to someone next to him. He works part time doing prep work at a short order place, where he "don't have to deal with the customers at all...", and works afternoons at a Chik-Fil-A.
...10 a.m.... Somehow (thanks Advil), I stumbled out the door in time for our rideshare. ...my hangover and endorphins began to do-si-do... Denver's post-WW-II zoning laws aimed to keep families in the city...so many were headed to the suburbs, so...unmarried adults were prohibited from living together. Capitol Hill...had the loosest zoning laws, due to its density...it...attracted queer people who wanted...discreet lives together close to downtown. ...attending coming-out classes together at First Unitarian Church. ...where the Mattachine Society met before the Denver PD...shut [them] down. ...alleys where trans women were...killed by police. ...acor-yoga...vigils... ...where people explored new substances, invented new kinds of relationships... - Out Front, 6/7/2017
...one of the most desirable communities in metro Denver to live, raise a family, start a career, retire, run a business, enjoy lunch with friends, or have a fabulous evening out. ...a high quality experience... - Kentwood Gallery (real estate brochure0
...164-unit, $165 million luxury, two tower apartment project...will also include 55,000 square feet of ground floor for retail uses. ...rooftop deck with pool and cabanas, a clubhouse and concierge services. ...will set a new bar for luxury living n Denver. - Denver News, 6/15 - 7/15/2017
They're the hip and the homeless and they're both facing...finding an affordable place to live! ...skyrocketing cost to rent an apartment or buy a home in Denver. ...thousands of people find themselves on Denver's streets. Others are on the brink...or being pushed out of the city. Studio apartments in Denver rent for $1,196 a month. A studio averages 507 sq. ft.... - Glendale Cherry Creek Chronicle, 6/2017
CitySquare...has...changed from its...role as a food pantry. City square now offers...physical and mental services, public benefits, lockers...computer access, and...a...bike sharing program. If the bike has mechanical problems, guests are welcome to bring it back and have it repaired. ...service...helps...not just those who are housing unstable. "We're creating a community where people can recognize faces and remember names."
...class certification...granted...to a group alleging the...camping ban...violated the rights ...homeless individuals. ...people who have been pushed to the outskirts can no longer access resources they relied upon... "A lot of people are really hungry because there's not a lot of food out there. It's hard to get to appointments that folks need to get to. ...Judge William J. Martinez...in his ruling...expressed concern [the plaintiff attorney] was so "thoroughly convinced of the moral righteousness of his clients' cause that he was suffering from "confirmation bias." Such a lawyer tends to...ignore...the opposing party's specific arguments and instead...shame the opposing party for choosing to oppose."
"There are counties in Ohio where...kids go to a court hearing and they're given a garbage bag to carry their stuff.." [Kids who "age out" of the foster care system when they turn 18 years of age.] ...many of them will become homeless, unemployed, pregnant or end up in prison. - Denver Voice, 6/2017
Whole provinces of Africa were decimated to provide eunuchs for Turkish harems, or levies for Moslem armies all the way from Baghdad to Bengal. ...as white settlement spread, more and more Africans became displaced. ...it became impossible for [natives] to support life on the amount of land they had. ...four hundred to a square mile... Their reserves became overcrowded to suffocation. A kind of plantation system developed. They were...a...tenant farmer class. The struggle for power...a plural society [vs.] white supremacy, no matter what the cost. ...a kind of floating semi-urbanized black proletariat in a white city. Thousands upon thousands of [native] families were broken up. Narobi...is not Benghazi or Addis Ababa by a million miles. ...the focus of an international smart set... The British fear...uneducated Africans [with] an educated Indian leadership... Most white settlers...wanted "Africa" - its open spaces... [One white settler holding office] does not think it will ever be possible for Kenya to have an exclusively African government. Every schoolboy knows the old maps, showing British areas in a nice rich pink all the way from Egypt to the Cape. ...Indirect Rule...transformed...Africans...from savages to civils servants. It also helped to preserve African institutions... Until the Mau Mau crisis...white officers but black troops, did the job. ...The Capricorn Society..."in favor of...western culture and the Christian religion would be dominant [in African government.] The organization has almost mystical fervor...
Came the April, 1953, general election. [In the nation of South Africa.] By removing the possibility or serious parliamentary opposition [as one party gained a majority of both houses] it opened the way to frank totalitarianism. Most Afrikaners are strict Calvinists...of the Dutch Reformed church... "Hate is their religion," I heard it put. ...the power of the state is given by God...to be against the government is to be against God's will. The Church...teaches...Negroes are...inferior... ...violently anti-Catholic. "Anglo-Jewish imperialism"... Women are nor allowed in bars... Dancing is frowned upon... ...scientists are forbidden to attend anthropological conferences abroad...that citizens will learn too much of...the world outside. "The Population Registration Act," 1950...people...identified according to race. "The Immorality Amendment Act," 1950...making illegal any sexual relation between Europeans and...non-whites... - Gunther
Wednesday I hit the annual library used book sale. As I am browsing the sale, no one attempts to steal my books this year. With books in tow after the sale, I head to the stop for the bus to work. It's at the edge of the park where the Pride Festival was last weekend. Lined up along a sidewalk there are a collection of homeless. They are spread out in a line as if they are waiting for something. Maybe someone is scheduled to come along with food or something. At the stop, I notice a street guy I used to see in my own neighborhood some five years ago. He goes by Richard Spotted Bird. Back then he was drunk on beer. I've seen him since, and he currently appears sober. Today he's walking with a limp. On the way home from work on Friday evening I am rolling through a tunnel. I hear music on the other side. Suddenly, rat the other end are a pair of skateboarders. One jumps off his board and grabs it out of my way. On Saturday, I am up and out on the bike to work. I wonder if I will make the 6:10 AM train. Where I turn for the station is a time and temperature sign. It reads 6:16. Funny. I think it was last Saturday, I arrived at the station and just missed the 5:40. And 6:10 seemed at the time like a long way away. Well, it's chilly, but an otherwise beautiful morning for a ride. It's been forever and a day since I rode the entire way to work. It isn't long before I pass a couple of guys sleeping in the weeds next to the trail, in the shade of the trees along the Platte River. Their shopping cart, or "buggy" as it is referred to on the street (or the trail), is full of a couple of wheeled suitcases with handles and other stuff. Just over a bridge is a couple, each one with a shopping cart of their own. They are awake and standing on the trail. The guy looks middle aged. Among the stuff in his cart is some long PVC pipe. The woman appears to be in her twenties, with heavy eye makeup, and... She is wearing a kind of cloth one piece outfit. Printed on this jumpsuit is the image of a stormtrooper uniform from the Star Wars movies. Her pajamas? As long as I have been riding these trails...I'm still being surprised. A father and his red-haired son come along on bikes. I warn them about the sexy stormtrooper. She looks like the son's age. What a morning. There are bikes and dog walkers all over the trail this early Saturday morning. Members of the Rebel Alliance, no doubt. After a short spell, I turn onto a connecting trail. I shortly watch the 6:10 go past. Looks like I beat it. Further on, I spot another pair of guys off in the woods, with their own shopping cart.
On the way home are a couple of logjams out on the trail within yards of each other. One involves a couple, a child, two dogs and three oncoming bikes. Up ahead is a guy hauling a wheeled suitcase uphill on the trail. I get around him right before three more oncoming cyclists. There are people all over the trail this evening. A girl with green hair and tattoos walking past the dog park, where a guy in a British cap flies a drone. Turning onto the trail along the river, there are fishermen and paddle boarders. And more cyclists. Over a bridge and along a golf course, I come upon a grey-haired woman in a denim jacket and ball cap. She is walking along the gravel between the trail and some woods. She is carrying a collapsible dolly and drops it onto the gravel as she keeps walking. A guy twenty years her junior comes toward her on the gravel. He says to her, "Don't let the bus fly into your eye. Don't let the bees fly into your head." ...and don't let the stormtroopes shoot you in the ass.
Tales From the Waterpark
Monday. The plan is to grab breakfast, go to the bank, to the waterpark, and then lunch before work. I'm headed down a residential street as a motorized wheelchair is coming my way. It's in the street on the wrong side. In it is a smiling woman. Shadowing her on the sidewalk is a guy on a bicycle. I stop at a small diner. Another woman in a motorized wheelchair comes in. She has a cat in a pet carrier. Behind her is a guy with a cane. They take a table, and get gets out of the wheelchair to go to the women's room. Just another morning, out with the cat. After I eat, I hit the bank before heading out on the road. I decide that I can avoid a huge hill by riding the short distance to the train, down the sidewalk of a busy avenue The sidewalk is eventually closed due to construction. I get into a turn lane for both directions of the street. I don't get a chance to make a right before it turns into a left turn lane. Mid-morning traffic in both directions is nonstop. Another car waits behind me to turn before I get a chance to go right through the intersection. Before the next block, I sneak through traffic to get back to the other side of the street before I cross the bridge over the interstate. What a crazy ride. I just make a train which drops me at a street to the trail, and a short ride later I'm at the waterpark. At the entrance, just past fifteen giant black cannonballs, is a group of teenagers and adults. They all have T-shorts on with "Firefly" on the front. The teens have yellow shirts with "Matey" on the back,. On the back of the adults' shirt is something about '"inspiring lives." These Fireflies, it appears, get in the pool with other kids and play with them. I see a couple of teenagers who I am convinced are autistic. Then a long line of entirely new kids comes along the pool, some in red T-shirts and some in blue. Then a third group shows up. These kids are in T-shirts which read, "Bison Buddy Summer Camp." These shirts have an illustration of a bison head on the front. During this parade of shirts, one of the buoyed ropes comes off one end of the pool and a couple of park employees arrive to repair it.
A handful of high school seniors in bikinis make their way to the pool deck, moving along with cool detachment. It appears that most everyone is in line for the waterslide. A fat guy does a backflip off the diving board. And high above it all, a couple of Blackhawk helicopters make circles through the ether. This crowded collection of signifiers points to an authentic nationalist kind of scene. If either Russia Today or an Iranian mullah were to choose an example of the animal pleasures of the West, it would surely include these very elements. Along with a dash of altruism, as conservatives refer to it, as well as faulty American hardware. Many shirts, but one sky, and one world... The open swim area is getting crowded and I slip under the end of the broken rope, held by a woman with sunglasses and a walkie-talkie, into the lap lane before I'm ready to call it a morning. I shouldn't have had lamb in my eggs for breakfast.. I think I'm seeing a parade of age groups segregated by color. It's like Brave New World on LSD instead of Soma. With Buddy Bison. I get out and head to the three lockers full of all the crap I haul back and forth to work. And I complain about homeless with shopping carts... I notice a teenager with no chin slowly walking with his arms crossed, near the entrance. He's in teardrop shades, a Star Wars cap, and his own T-shirt. On the front is a DJ at his mixing board. On the back, it reads, "Jesus is my Lord." I know a young woman on the buke trail he may want to meet... I'm back on the trail and off to the shopping center where I work. I grab lunch at a pancake place, on the outdoor patio. A chopper rumbles down the street. It has a pair of metal crutched vertically mounted behind the seat frame. At the table next to me is an elderly couple and a middle-aged guy. The husband mentions the crutches and says, "If your neighbor is going to own a motorcycle, it should be a BMW." Okay.
The ride home in the evening is solely for lovers. Every cyclist on the trail walks or rides in a pair. Two pairs of riders come at me, each of the pair taking up a lane before they move over. Standing at the end of a bridge is a young Caucasian guy in sunglasses, his arms folded on the rail as he looks out at the river. He makes it appear to be the cool thing to do. Four more pairs of cyclists pass me going either direction. The last of these I come upon. They pull off the trail. One of them has pants which are falling down, and no underwear. The other is pushing his bike. What's left of his gear assembly has come off the frame, and is being dragged along by the chain. I've had a flywheel go spinning off into the dark, but this is the first entire gear assembly I've seen fall off a bike. A fifth pair passes me. They are young, and the lady looks good in her black shorts and white top. The last pair goes by after I exit the trailhead. They appear to be bohemians. I suppose it's appropriate that they are headed toward downtown, and its bastion of hipsters. This week appears to be the beginning of bicycle season on this trail.
...the Dutch encountered...the Hottentots...a pre-Bantu people... Most were wiped out by...smallpox...in the eighteenth century... As to the Bushmen...they were a totally different people. The Dutch...killed them off like animals... ...settlers from Great Britain began, after the Napoleonic Wars, to stream into South Africa. ...the struggle for power became...between Boer, Bantu, and Briton. in 1836...to move into new lands...resentment of the British abolition of slavery... The Boers wanted...to make their own Native policy and they resented bitterly having to give up their slaves. In 1836 began...the greatest romantic event in Boer history. Several thousand Boer farmers and cattlemen with their families, traveling by ox wagon, struck inland... It cut the Boers off [from] the age of enlightenment that generally distinguished European communities...in the second half of the nineteenth century. In 1852, the South African Republic...was established by the trekkers... ...one of the indisputably great men of South African history - perhaps the greatest. As a child he went into religious trances. ...as a boy of eleven...fought against the Zulus. He wore as a rule a wide stovepipe hat, and had a face like a knot of solidified mucilage. He believed until the end of his days that the world was flat... Cecil John Rhodes...had a dominating idea all his life. ...that the English-speaking peoples were the master "race" of the world..."to hereafter render wars impossible and promote the best interests of humanity." The Rhodes scholarships have...rendered...a service of goodwill...among the English-speaking peoples... - Gunther
Tuesday. I'm late out of the gate, but had a great sleep. Woke up at 7 AM. Two and a half hours later, I'm hightailing it to the train. Just across my boulevard, I come upon a skinny guy with no shirt pushing a lawnmower down a residential street. His shorts have a flame pattern and he also carries a leaf blower. A short time later I hit the trailhead. Across the bridge, next to an open kind of metal shelter where homeless like to pile up their belongings, there is a group of six Lycra-clad cyclists with their bikes. I wonder if ever twain shall meet. There would be a diversity goal the mayor may not have considered. On an underpass is a single running shoe. In o time I'm on and off the train, and after a short ride am standing at the waterpark. A yellow school bus is full of yet another group of children in color-coded T-shirts. I looked up Buddy Bison online. It's an elementary school with a summer program, or "camp", located in the same county as the name on the bus. below this, the bus has a quote; "Learn today, lead tomorrow." As if leading by example, at the back end of the bus is an advertisement for Lakewood Plumbing and Heating LLC. The camp may require immunization cards, but the plumber has free estimates. The kids all have the same pirate-themed beach towel that I bought here. Over by the lockers is a grey-haired guy in a T-shirt with an image on the back of someone who could be him. The image is of a guy with golf clubs, and written there is "Happy Father's Day." He appears to be using all his golfing strength to shove his bag into the limited space of the locker. There's also a middle-aged Caucasian guy, who I wouldn't expect to have a popular Inuit kind of native tattoo on his shoulder. But, then again, what do I know. Learn today, kids, lead tomorrow.
On the way home I pass bike after bike, including a child on a scooter, which is not supposed to be on the bike trail. I ride past the waterpark, still going shortly after 7 PM. I don't by any means want to leave the impression that this is some kind of stinky little waterpark.. It has plenty of fun for the kids, and nothing from me but gratitude that it's here on my way to work. Last summer, I was working out this way the entire work week, and had planned to come here every day, before I was moved to another store for the entire summer. As I pedal the stretch past the waterpark, on a hill on the other side of a stream and open grassy field. I hear the bell on the pirate's crow's nest, lifeguard whistles, and the kids. I've been riding out this way since October of 2015, and this evening is the first time I notice that there is a part of the waterpark I didn't know existed. I will see this part for the first time tomorrow morning. It has a "lazy river" and a complex of three long waterslides...the slides which have been clearly visible from the trail for the year and a half I've seen them. They are right next to a couple of fake palm trees. I see bike after bike down this trail and onto a connecting one. I look up and see bicycle traffic in both directions. There are people out here! I pass a young couple walking strolling the trail, each with a dog. They appear as if they could have stepped out of 1979. I pass more bikes. More riders out here than I remember ever seeing. I round a wide playground. A guy sits on the grass with his dog. His T-shirt appears to advertise a biker gang, but is actually a ski club in Utah. Parked next to his is his motorized razor scooter.
All Africans in the western region of Cape Province (178,000) will be moved out...according to a government announcement early in 1955. This will be the largest experiment in geographical "apartheid" yet to take place, and will constitute one of the biggest forced movements of a population in history. Excuse for the measure is that the African population...is "too close" to the adjacent Colored population. The Zulus...are thoroughly docile now. ...they live on a reserve... There are Africans...distinguished... There are Africans who write sound English prose...also Africans by the hundred thousand who cannot read... There are tribes...sternly upright...and tribes greatly addicted to homosexuality... "...in order to keep the black mass submerged, the white rulers must inevitably become totalitarian. ...the only effective African answer to this will be to turn to Communism." ...there are hundreds of thousands...of Natives...not yet politically minded. - Gunther
...President Saddam Hussein announced a "full, complete, and final amnesty" for tens of thousands of prisoners [which] marks the first time Saddam's government has acknowledged imprisoning opponents of the regime... ...families broke through the gates into the prison... Several were killed in the stampede. As night fell some family members were still searching in vain... ...the underlying message is clear. ...life, death, and freedom are in the hands of the man who has ruled... ...work conditions...will remind me of the former Soviet Union, where raising a camera has the same effect as raising an M16... - Naked in Baghdad, A. Garrels, 2003
Wednesday. It's the third morning in a row I've slept well past 5:30 AM. I'm headed for the same bridge over the interstate, on the busy avenue. Coming from the direction underneath the bridge are three twenty-somethings, one of whom is pushing a forth with her legs crossed in a wheelchair. As he pushes her along he is kissing her cheek. She stares at me blankly. They all follow me over the bridge and to the train station. On the train and down the street, and I am back at the waterpark. A big school bus slowly winds its way through a tight corner in the paring lot. Three other vans and small buses are here. One is from Little People's Landing, another from Colorado Learning Academy, and one beat up little bus is from The Stanley British Primary School. None have plumbing advertisements. Inside the gate, bags are checked by twin girls. I ask them if they are sick and tired of being asked if they are twins. They laugh. I get some chicken strips from the concession. They taste as if they were processed from chickens which were run over on the highway. I'm not used to being around so many people at once. It's like I'm at a family reunion of someone else's family I don't know. I take a gander at the big waterslide complex before I opt for the smaller slide back at the pool. Perhaps sometime before the summer is over I will try the big slide. After a swim I am back outside. A guy comes to a fast stop on his bike. he sends off my 'homeless' alert. He asks one guy next to him, and then gestures to another farther away, and finally asks me; do we have a light. After striking out, he doesn't park and go inside. Of course. He takes off and disappears.
It's not a long ride to work. I head to a place for lunch where, before my current diet, I used to go all the time. I notice they have a tasty salad which works for my current diet. At another table is a couple. The guy mentions to the lady something which he says is 'fucked up." He tells her that his doctor prescribed various medicines in an attempt to treat his irregular heartbeat. After lunch I grab a sugar-free hot chocolate, and I sit outside where I can keep an eye on a clock through the window. Parked in the lot is a vehicle with "Do it for Derk" on a bumper sticker. Derk must be...the late Derk. On the ride home after work, shortly after 7 PM, I'm headed along some woods. Just off the trail sits a long grey-haired guy in a sleeveless buttoned down shirt. Next to him is a small shopping cart with tied grocery bags. He may have in fact just come from the supermarket. And kept the cart. An hour later the sun is going down, and I am back on my own side of town. Coming up a hill, I pass a woman in a beat up car. In back are a pile of clothes and a cat. She is parked in front of a flatbed full of scrap wood. Friday morning, I will pass this same flatbed and the vehicle will be gone.
Thursday. I have the day off. Some time after 6 AM, I awake to the sound of a helicopter above my street. I will continue to hear it throughout the morning. I get up and get out to breakfast and a workout. On the bus back up my street, a guy with a cane gets on at the bingo place. His pants are too long, and rolled and pinned into cuffs. Inside the cuffs he is carrying cigarettes and other stuff. I step off the bus on my corner. At a liquor store, a beer delivery truck appears to have attempted to turn into the parking lot at the same time as a much smaller car. The two have collided and are parked, the beer truck sticking out across both lanes of one side of the boulevard. On this boulevard, it's an opportunity for traffic to accelerate around yet another vehicle. In the early afternoon, I make up my mind that I will pay my first visit, in the 27 years I've lived in this fair city, to an amusement park which I didn't know has a waterpark. It's most likely the closest waterpark to my home. I have been to the big one, some hundred blocks north, with...a wave machine. Little do I realize that the closer one has its own wave machine. But I'm getting ahead of myself. It's a brief ride to the station for the train which will take me there. Crossing a busy street, I see a guy with caveman hair slowly carrying what appears to be his laundry. At the station is a guy in a bright blue felt Fedora, not an old guy but one in his thirties. He's with an older couple, standing and swaying before he sits and gets on his phone, tapping his foot. The hat comes complete with feather. Some more passengers show up. I'm sitting on the ground next to my bike when one of them alerts me, "Hey man, the train's comin'." It's going the other way than the one I want, but I notice mine coming shortly thereafter. Well then, let's boogie.
I take the train because there is a stop for the park, which would require some circumnavigation to otherwise ride to. And there is a pedestrian bridge with an elevator. So there. The livin' really is easy. The sunny day saw a sky-sized cloud move in, and it's now grey. A ticket to the park for the day is $50, while a season pass is $69.99. I opt to pay the extra $20. If I go one more time this season, it will have paid for itself. I'm thinking, 'all this just to swim.' But this is about expanding my swimming experience. I purchase the pass, which I take through the security gate where I put my bags on a chute. Someone tells me I need to go to another window to get the pass, and I exit through the metal detector which makes a low hum as I do. I fill out name and address, and phone number, "but not your email," I'm told. They don't have time to send me emails I suppose. They have enough to do. They take my picture...which appears nowhere on the pass. And with that, I am inside. The interior is like a small shopping mall. In this part is mostly keychains and shirts, Colorado booster stuff. Then you step out onto a street from the nineteenth century. The clapboard shops here sell "old time candy," swimwear, toys for kids. A sign advertises a soothsayer. There's an 'opera house which puts on a show of the "hits of Broadway." A big sigs announces, "If you haven't seen" this amusement park, "you haven't seen Denver." Okay...I've seen Denver. Thanks. Oh but, I'm just getting started.
As I step along what feels like the set of Gunsmoke, the people remind me of who you would run into at any state fair. There are no British primary school buses parked around these parts. It strikes me as more of a crowd after carnival thrills. I pass a couple of portly twin 6th grade boys. Each has a basketball, which one is dribbling, and each is in a shirt with the band KISS on the front. At 12 years of age, I'm not sure what they make of a 40-year-old band. My choices for lunch are pizza or a turkey leg. Or old time candy. The turkey leg is congruent with my diet. I keep seeing signs which tell me my pass is good for one free meal a day. I ask at the turkey leg stand. I'm told that I don't get any free food with my pass. The leg is greasy and perhaps underdone. I eat most of it and am off to "Adventureland," or whatever the waterpark is called. Lockers for your belongings rent for $11-$13. I have to pay at a kiosk and put in a code which "only I know" before I get my locker assignment. Open the pod bay doors please Hal. I have a dip in a big gradually deepening pool, which I don't recognize as a wave machine pool. After a swim I get out and have a look at several waterslides. They all have lines, and each person must wait forever before going down. I decide to get back into the pool. I'm at the deepest end when the horn goes off, when I immediately realize that...it's a wave machine. The crowd goes wild, as they say. This is the first time I remember attempting to swim in big waves. I almost don't make it, which I am able to conceal. Pay no attention to that man taking a breather at the side. Shortly thereafter, a lifeguard announces that we all must vacate the pool for the time being. I decide I've had enough "fun" for one afternoon. I take a look in the shops. The last one on the way out is the mini-mall, where I find a keychain of a skull with a U.S. flag design. It immediately reminds me of the cover of H. S. Thompson's Fear and Loathing On the Campaign Trail. It's a book which is even older than KISS. I don't go home empty-handed. So long for now amusement park.
No one was found inside a vehicle that was submerged in [a lake in the park with the swimming pool closest to where I live.] The vehicle was reported in the lake...just before 6 A.M. - kdvr.com, 6/29/2017
The following morning, I am called into work to replace another employee. Toward the end of my bike ride there, I pass under a bridge on the trail. Someone is asleep under a tarp, just off the trail. A hiking pack at his side. After work, I'm headed home. On a horse trail, I'm behind a young woman running. The sun silhouettes her figure, her ponytail shines. On the bike trail behind a thin young woman in mirrored shades, carrying a skateboard. Behind a guy with a bushy grey beard who holds his shorts to keep them from falling down as he walks. Approaching a young guy in a shirt which reads, "Get your Colorado on."
