I'm on my way to work on another Saturday, across my boulevard and onto the street a block from my own. The street has had three or so rotating campers and trailers since Autumn of 2020. I began to recognize campers from the incredible huge homeless encampment, across the river from one stretch of the bike trail, right after its demise. This morning, I pass one camper, and then a street corner, and then a trailer. The street corner has a couple of young women in T-shirts and jeans standing at a curb. They appear as if they may live in any of the surrounding homes. Nothing about them suggests they are homeless. But I just know that, for some reason, the pair is out on the corner because they live either the camper or the trailer. As I pass the trailer, I spy the usual odd and ends. There's a ten speed bike near the hitch by the propane tanks, and some car tires stacked up at the other end. A pickup truck is parked in front of the end with the hitch. But there's something out of place here for a homeless trailer. Leaning against the propane tanks is a bare wooden sign, advertising flowers. I circle back to grab a photo. Before I can get my camera out, the door on the other side opens. From around the trailer comes a young woman. She's in a blouse and shorts, and bare feet with an ankle monitor. Despite the dark circles around her sunken eyes, she's still very cute. In a quite and demure voice, she says "Excuse me," and addresses me as sir. i ask her if I need to get out of the way. She tells me she needs to put the ten speed on top of the camper. I've seen many a bike o top of a homeless camper. It's then when he door to the camper parked on the other block opens. Finally, a character true to the homeless paradigm steps out. He has a cowboy hat with both side of the brim turned up, and a bushy grey goatee minus any moustache. He immediately begins rapidly firing pieces of questions at the pair of women on the corner. Then be begins walking toward myself and the girl. He asks her, "What's the problem?" Before she can answer, he asks me, "What's the problem? The truck...? It's...?" She tells him that I'm "just passing through." I suppose this accurately describes everyone else out in the street. He walks back to the camper, telling me, "Thank you, sir."
Around the corner, across a busy avenue, and around a couple more corners, and I'm approaching the street with a long downhill stretch. At a house near this corner, three thirtysomething Caucasians come out. A woman says goodbye to a couple of guys getting into a Jeep. The driver is in a Hawaiian shirt, and carries a snowboard. Aha! He must be headed up to one of the peaks. There's still snow up there, and this is probably the last week it will be around for the next six months. When I get to work, I take out the trash. A big thunderstorm is making its way into the sky. Over the distant neighborhood, a hawk is turning lazy circles on an updraft. The talisman's of summer are all falling into place. After work, I hit the pool before I head home. I contemplate heading home and taking a bus to pick up my new bike from the super center bike shop downtown. I took it in on Sunday for my free six month tune up, and I got a cryptic email. I called the super center for a translation, and they told me my new bike was ready. The bike I took in on Easter is still waiting parts. I decide instead to have dinner at a Chilis off the trail, and to pick up some groceries from a Target in the same shopping center. The sunscreen I put on during the last hour at work is due to wear off about now. Just now, clouds roll in and stay there, so I don't have to reapply more. Perfect timing. Dinner consumed and grocery items in a plastic bag on the back of the bike, I'm coming down the street with the trailers and campers. The wooden sign is gone. The following day, I pick up the slack of everything I didn't do when I got home the previous evening. Grocery shopping late in the morning, including those for my relative fast before my colonoscopy at the end of this week. I find some sugar-free Jell-o, which just may be a cure for my yogurt addiction. Powerful mojo. I pack my swimsuit and towel, and helmet and gloves, and I catch a bus toward the train station. I'm sitting behind a grey-haired guy wearing a plaid buttoned down shirt, and brand new black tactical pants, his keys and a couple of phones on his belt. He mentions something to a guy with a walker about a Dairy Queen being open. At the train station are the usual collection of derelict social cast-offs and down and out folk. Among them is one skinny young guy in thin running shorts and bare feet. His frame is almost waif-like. He looks at the ground and is constantly moving out of everyone else's way. He moves as if he's floating.
Instead of the train, I hop on a bus downtown. from there I hop onto a pedestrian mall shuttle to the steps over the train tracks. It's then a short walk to the sporting goods super center. There's a bit of a wait as the techs are busy with other customers. An impatient guy in his sixties shows up with his ten speed. A couple of kids get their tiny bikes serviced. One gets his training wheels removed and cleaned, before being replaced. My bike comes out, and the kid lets me use a coupon I got in the mail, even though it expired after the date I brought my bike in. I lean the bike against a steel beam as I'm securing the lock to the back rack. I watch it begin to move, and quickly grab it when I realize a young woman has her hand on the handlebars. She's absent mindedly holding them. She's in some kind of long '70s Halston-like blouse, and she looks at me smiling. She's not smiling at me, and she still hold the handlebars. She's teasing her male friend, telling him, "Don't buy that shit." I'm out the super center doors and back across the stairs over the tracks, back on a train to the trail. My oldest little bike has, as always, done me very well while this new bike was in the shop. But this one is big enough that i can stretch my legs, and it's tuned like a sports car. The shifters move like butter and I've got brakes again. I'm down the trail and at the waterpark in no time. After a brief half hour swim and trips down the drop slide, I'm back out on the trail home again. I'm headed through an underpass where a a sandbar along the creek is a popular place for homeless tents. there's one here now. What catches my eye (I don't know how I spot these things) is a vanity mirror. It's upright, framed in wood, and sitting among the weeds in front of the sand. I go down and take a reflected selfie as one occupant of the homeless tent comes along on his own bike. He heads for his tent. Perhaps an hour later, I'm rolling down the street a block from my own. At the camper are three people I haven't seen before. None of them are any of the four people who were here on Saturday morning. One is a middle aged homeless woman in the front passenger seat of a minivan. She smiling and scrolling down on her phone..
Monday. I'm out of work and headed down the trail. I'm on my newly tuned up new bike. I approach a guy with a skateboard, stopped on the trail. He asks me to slow down because his "dog is on the trail." This is the first skateboarder who I have seen ask anyone else to slow down. In my life. For the rest of my ride home on the trail, I am passed by cyclists going faster than myself. Some come from behind me. I assume they passed the guy and his dog. Tuesday. I see a Park Ranger on his bike out on the trail, on my way to work. Coming home, I'm approaching a roundabout in the trail. It's a place where golf cart traffic from the golf course along the trail intersects with bikes. It's also a popular summer hangout where river patrons load their kayaks, boogie boards, sunbathe, or in this afternoon's case throw a tennis ball to a dog which runs in front of my bike...again while I'm hauling ass down the trail. The owner simply says to me, "Heads up." After I'm home, I listen to a voicemail that my photos are ready. The next day I'm at work when I look up online when the photo place closes. They close the same time as my store. I realize I can hit the photo place when they open, and then ride to the bus and take it to work. After I'm home, around 9 PM, I begin to hear someone revving a car engine just outside. It's still going an hour later. Someone steps on the gas for some seconds, and then lets it go for a minute. And then begins all over again. Shortly after ten, I step outside to see where it's coming from. Whoever it is, they're parked right in front of the mailboxes for my townhome complex. There is another vehicle parked perpendicular to the one with the revving engine. The other one is at the entrance to our parking lot. Someone is walking back and forth between this other vehicle and one of the townhome residences. I can see the light on his phone. Soon, he walks toward the back of the lot. I notice another resident over their fence, on their phone and looking toward the revving engine. I hear the Caucasian voice of a third resident. She tells the guy in the vehicle goosing his engine to "knock it off, or I'll call the police." I go back inside and off to sleep.
The following morning, I'm on my way to the photo shop. I don't know how long exactly it will take me. It turns out I make it in a half hour. And it's another half hour until the shop opens. I decide to go around the corner to a place where an old friend works. We first met 20 years ago, when we both worked together. Last time I saw her here must have been last year. She and her husband live in the most expensive municipality around the city. She told me last time that even though her husband makes six figures, they are getting priced out of the neighborhood. It's insane. She said she wanted to move to Florida. She has a twin sister, and the pair have continued to work for the same company since I worked there with her. The two are also married to two brothers. When I go into her store, someone else comes out. She says that my old colleague has indeed moved to Florida. Not only with her family, but her sister and her husband have moved there as well. I missed her by a week. It's not long until the photo shop opens. Prints in hand, it's a short ride to the stop for my bus to work. The stop is right outside a shop where yet other women who I used to work with now are employed. I stick my head in and say hi to the two ladies. I am soon on the bus and arrive at work. For the rest of this day, I will consume nothing other than chicken broth, Jell-o, and popsicles. A half hour after I get home, I mix a gallon of diluted polypropylene glycol. By the time I go to bed, I've drunken only two thirds of the amount I am supposed to. I try to finish the rest the next morning, but again I leave a third of the gallon behind. It's Friday, and I have the day off of work. At a quarter past noon I'm picked up at home and taken the short distance to the hospital. I have scheduled early this afternoon my next colonoscopy check up. The merry-go-round chain of events which makes up the past five years, back when I had my first colonoscopy, I never would have guessed in 2016. That the company I worked for over 12 1/2 years would collapse, my year and a half adventure working in Arvada and then leaving there, working in downtown Denver for another year and four months and that adventure, the company's stores going on a month and a half hiatus during the pandemic and returning to work right back at the store I left some three years earlier. Same store when I had my first colonoscopy, different owner. Who could have guessed that?
At the hospital, I confess to a nurse my failure to consume all my prep. She tells me it's important to drink the entire gallon "because the colon is very long." Some patients, she tells me, are have physical issues which requires them to drink two gallons before their exam. Mine of course is not to question why. The issues I have are not physical, they have to do with having no fucking time in my day. Right after I'm in my gown, I'm wheeled into the OR. I get a breathing tube, I meet the doctor, and I turn onto my side. The rom appears to be attempting to spin. Then it's light out. I have what appears to be a thirty-second dream. I watch a little of my colon on the monitor. I think I feel the probe inside, just below my navel. Then one of techs is counting to three before he quickly removes three vital sign monitor patches from my torso. I don't feel a thing. It's back in the dressing room when I'm finally back on planet Earth. Though I'm fully conscious again, I have trouble speaking and moving my limbs. I'm moving like Hunter Thompson. A nurse with a wheelchair tells me I'm scaring her. It turns out my efforts to come in with a clean colon is considered "fair." It was good enough to do the exam. Though my exam is over, the prep continues to soften my stool into Sunday. On Saturday I'm off to work again. The day is busy and goes fast. The last hour I apply sunscreen to myself everywhere. Everywhere. Then I only spend 30 minutes at the waterpark. The mornings at the end of this week are in the 50s F at daybreak, but warm up fast. It's in the low 90s this afternoon, a perfect swimming day. yesterday was close to 100. I seem to like to hit Chili's on these Saturdays on the way home from the waterpark. After dinner, I'm just off the trail, approaching the park where the free concerts are going on. This weekend, it's African Americans who are making their way into the park.
Sunday. I've been hitting the waterpark after work on Saturdays, not only because I get out of work two hours earlier than during the week, but I'm not sure how much i will feel like swimming on Sunday. The place is open until 6 PM all week, and I can get there from work in a half hour, and could probably swim for a little while every single day. If I was that much of a nut. I will mention this several times in this paragraph. Experience has shown me that this would happen. A few short weeks ago, I knew we would all soon be complaining about how hot it is. Back then, there were still some chilly mornings. Today, it's hot enough that my home is hot. I don't have central air. I have an air conditioner upstairs, but I don't use it. Having put my years in at drycleaning plants, I'm used to the heat. And I like the low electricity bill. At one time, I considered that I had too many leftover electric fans which I collected over the years. Today, I've found rooms to put every one of them. Not including two downstairs ceiling fans. As this year the waterpark is once again selling season passes, and this year is the first in which I got one at a senior discount, I may as well make use of it. One of my past brokers with the state health care exchange once replied to my mentioning how many appointments I had been making with my doctor at the time. Though I would have been happy not to have to make appointments, she appeared to be happy I was making use of health insurance, as long as I was paying for it.
I'm out of the house shortly before noon, and at a unique favorite short order place in no time. The waitresses all in white, the booths in orange plastic, a real cash register. From there, I can see a thunderstorm just beginning to develop on the horizon. It's a familiar race to swim before it rains. Inside on this late morning, the clientele is a mix of derelicts, Caucasian hipsters from the hundred thousand dollar condos next door, Caucasian families off the highway, and Hispanics. My waitress has blue hair. Not that kind, senior women used to have. She's in her thirties and has it dyed turquoise. The guy on the counter stool to my right appears as if he may have awoken from under a wooden palette. I wonder how many teeth he has left. To my left has just been seated a guy in his seventies. He's having trouble annunciating his order. It takes two waitresses, including mine, to decipher his speech. He says "round bread" as they attempt to guess out loud what he wants. He's wearing a pair of headphones plugged into what appears to be some kind of digital radio. It has his name on it in stick on letters. Finally, he says "biscuits." He wants biscuits and Cream of Wheat. At the end of the lunch counter to my right is a contractor. he complains that there was snow on the ground just a couple of weeks ago. I don't know about down here in the city, but there was up on the peaks. "It's hotter than hell out now," he says. "And none of my day laborers showed up." He goes on to mention being "17 and in the military."
I'm soon out of there and onto the train. I realize that I didn't bring a mask, which is still required on the transit system. Off the train, I'm soon at the waterpark. After a while, I decide to head up the trail and swing past my rec center. They sell me a mask for a dollar. The contractor is right, it's hot outside. But the rec center is mercifully air conditioned. Then I run across the highway for a couple of grocery items before returning to the train. I take it back to the station where I got on three hours prior. I ride some blocks toward downtown and cross a busy intersection on a green light but a red had. I don't realize I'm crossing in front of traffic in a turn lane until I stare death in the face...and get a long car horn. Soon, I'm inside a yogurt place. More air conditioning. Delicious yogurt. And complimentary ice cold water. And then it's home again. On the way home from work on Monday, I'm rolling past a small parking lot for an old VFW hall. The hall is now a restaurant/bar/food education center. Don't ask me. Parked next to the curb along the bike trail is a station wagon which appears to be from the 1980s. The rack on the roof is piled with crap. The following morning, I am coming back past this very spot, on the way to work. The station wagon is gone, but just over a bridge here is a rare encounter out here on the bike trail. I don't recall a single one like it before. For months, the trick has been to figure out what to wear to say warm enough out in the cold. Beginning last week, even the mornings are warm enough for shorts. The days now are a ride through heat which can feel like an oven. The warmer it gets, the more cyclists appear to come from points unknown. Some travel by car to begin their rides out on this trail. There are also homeless pedestrians and cyclists in the mix. This morning, I will pass one cyclist with caveman hair and few teeth. He appears to size me up as he passes me. Once out here, almost every cyclist says "good morning." They continue to do so all the way to work. Except of course for the two cyclists who are about to meet each other at this fateful moment.
Not long past the bridge, I'm approaching a pedestrian walking ahead of me. I can see in the distance a very rapidly oncoming cyclist. I elect to slow behind the pedestrian and wait for him to pass. As he nears, another cyclist comes from behind me and whizzes around and ahead of us. The the oncoming cyclist yells at him, "WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU DOING!?" I can't say what his hurry is. The other cyclist stops and yells back, "YOU WANT TO SAY SOMETHING!?" he's on his way when I then come around the pedestrian. We both look at each other when I offer one of my one-liners. "I don't know either one of them," I say. I know, if you see something, say something. But this is ridiculous. She and I wouldn't know what to say anyway. Some nine hours later, I'm coming home from work. Just before the aforementioned bridge, a homeless guy with a plain T-shirt and jeans, and a grey beard and hair is just off the trail. He has some kind of square-shaped bag over a shoulder, and he has the face of a sea captain from some 19th century novel. He's standing on the grass at a corner of the bridge. It takes me a couple of seconds, as I'm climbing the hill to the bridge, that he's waiting for me to pass before he goes across himself. This is a real homeless guy. Just across the bridge, around the bend and along the former VFW, a young couple is walking the trail. She female has a single tattoo on a bicep. The guy is wearing jeans on this hot late afternoon. He is walking slowly and looking ahead or at the ground. He had hair ad a beard down to his chest. He looks like a self-conscious hipster, and I don't know, but he almost gives me the impression he's looking for a homeless vibe. Not long after, I'm off the trail and climbing a hill. At the top is a corner of a park, where a couple of vehicles are parked. One is a reissue Camaro. The driver side door is open and music is playing. I only ever see these cars speeding through these residential streets. But among the long shadows, there are two teenaged girls and a guy laying on the grass in the shade. They're looking at a phone, laughing, and enjoying the beginning of their summer break. It's a moment I can relate to. Just around a couple of corners is a street where I usually get up onto the sidewalk to avoid the endless traffic. I see a Caucasian woman approach with her dog, so I get off and onto the opposite sidewalk. When I pass her, she laughs and says, "We stopped for you [so you can pass us.]" I laugh and reply that I'm not supposed to be on the sidewalk anyway. She says I'm safer on the sidewalk. This strikes me as a conversation and a perspective which only happens in English.
On Wednesday I'm coming down the old bike trail to work. It's a stretch past a golf course shortly before I turn onto a connecting trail for the rest of the way. Coming up behind me are a pair of cyclists who have to wait to pass me. There is another oncoming cyclist and an oncoming rollerblader behind him. I was in a similar position yesterday. The lead cyclist behind me says to the other, "Cyclist up!" This is quickly followed by, "Skater up!" I'm not familiar with the verbal cycling signals out here on the mean trail. I am familiar with "WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU DOING!?" I turn down the street with the campers and trailers on my way home from work. This time of year, I get here a couple of hours before sunset. It's been almost a year since the giant homeless RV and camper love-in was swept and cleared out. Since then, I hardly see any of the occupants of these dwellings outside of their abodes. I first noticed, perhaps last month, that it's around this time that I see them sitting under awnings on their mobile homes. It's as if indeed they are on vacation. On Friday morning, I'm on my way to work. This is the first time I've seen anyone sitting outside along this block in the morning. A middle-aged woman sits in a camp chair, looking at her phone under the sunshine. A younger woman does some sweeping over by some propane tanks. At least an hour later, I'm coming through a wealthy neighborhood on my last leg to work. The neighborhood is having a garage sale. It's only going on from 7:30 AM to 12:30 PM. I've never seen one in this neighborhood. I've only seen housecleaners, gardeners, and remodeling crews among these wealthy homes. I wonder what such a neighborhood has for sale? One driveway has a few suitcases. Was it last month, I was coming home down the trail when I spotted a vanity mirror off in some weeds. It was very close to a homeless tent. I took a selfie in the reflection. This morning, I turn down the street out of the neighborhood. Among what appears to be furniture from a previous century, a vanity mirror sits in one driveway. I circle around and take another selfie in the reflection of this mirror. Then I realize the home owner is sitting under the shade of a tree. The owner doesn't get up from the chair.
It's an interesting Saturday. I'm on the way to work, down the street a block from my own. The street is currently clear of campers and trailers. There are a couple of small pickup trucks parked a block apart. the first one I pass has its engine running. The driver is either asleep or has committed suicide. Along the next block, the driver has his window open. It's a mercifully cooler morning today. The driver has a cigarette between two fingers, on his shaking hand. Soon I'm out on the trail. Lines of brightly colored Lycra-clad oncoming ten speed riders are passing me. As well as the homeless guy on a bench, his head on his knees. And the homeless cyclist pulling a makeshift trailer. I will see him again some ten hours later, a short distance from the trail. Shortly after I turn onto the connecting trail, I pass a small sign which reads, "Mile 5." There appears to be an image of a police badge in one corner. The sign is printed on one side, facing me. Less than a mile later, I pass another sign which reads "Mile 2." Less than a mile from here is a sign which reads, "Mile 1." This sign faces oncoming pedestrians and cyclists. It's next to a table where three people sit, and bottles of water are on the table. Just around the bend, I'm passed by a couple of police bicycle officers. They are in uniform and full gear. Behind this pair area line of runners with number patches on their shirts. Each number patch has a police badge image in one corner. When I do get to work, I will look up this occurrence on the internet. I discover then that, along the way, I'm moving retrograde to the 9th Annual Jeremy Bitner fallen Officer 5K/10K Run & 5K Walk. Police detective Bitner was killed on May 8, 2012 during a traffic stop. His name sounded familiar. Around another bend on the trail and I'm approaching a bridge onto the trail On the trailside opposite the bridge is a police motorcycle. The runners and occasional cyclist have just begun to cross the bridge. I wait for a break in the crowd to continue to work.
I had decided yesterday to begin doing my Saturday after work swims at a city pool, where I used to swim in summers past. I couldn't find a phone number for them. So I decided to go there. Their website claims that this is their first week open for the season. When I leave work I end up scouting out an entirely new path to this pool. This single trip, from point A to point B, turns out itself to be a new adventure. From the shopping center where I work, I cross the street onto a road which disappears behind a wall of trees. I'm retracing a path I used to take to work, from an easternmost train station, from which i would come after seeing my old doctor. From this road, I turn north into an unfamiliar "gated" kind of neighborhood. There's no physical gate. A sign warns that the neighborhood is private, and patrolled by its own security company. My nose tells me to take a main road east. It swings north and up to a bike path. The path takes me north. A pedestrian confirms I'm right about my direction. The path takes me to a corner. I'm familiar with the street. I continue north to the entrance across the street to yet another neighborhood behind a wall. Further north and then back east. I come to yet another familiar street. I could also use this route to yet another pool where I used to swim some twenty years ago. This is some wild shit. Yet another bike route across municipalities, committed to memory. More bike routes than any man should know. This is fun. I'm climbing a familiar hill now. At the intersection at the top is a shopping center where I used to work, off and on, for a previous company for some twelve and a half years. The pool is just across the avenue, and where I used to swim in the summer before work, toward the end of my years with the company. Straight ahead, past the pool, is a clinic where I used to see my doctor, some five years ago. Water under the bridge. I turn off the street and down a familiar bike path through a familiar park. And...I'm there. I made it in just an hour from work. Inside, I inquire about a season pass. They don't have season passes this year. They have just opened this week. I arrive an hour and a half before they close, and the pool is almost empty. It's a fine swim, and I strike up a conversation with a young life guard. She doesn't even look twenty yet. She says that this pool wasn't open at all last year, and that much of Denver county recreation facilities simply never opened. Many lifeguards she knows took last season off. She tells me she went to work in the municipality where I do. It was not a positive experience. She called the management inept, and she was working for two and a half dollars less per hour. "And I am, after all, saving lives." It's a striking statement from such a young woman, from a generation shaped by events of just last year. Denver county's software system, she says, is much easier to access and use. Interesting. I don't stay long. My ride home takes me along the same path I used for the summer which I worked down here. If I make this my routine for Saturdays, it's gonna be a wild summer.
Sunday is Father's Day. After morning grocery shopping is done, I explore how fast I can apply sunscreen before heading out toward the waterpark. I hit the diner for a quick lunch before deciding to swing by the yogurt shop downtown, before the park. I think the shop closes sooner, and I'm closer to it than the park. When I'm close I make it through last weekend's intersection, where I crossed in front of turning traffic, today without doing so. I get into the shop and finish my yogurt, just before a parade of multi-generational Caucasians come in, characteristically bewildered. Power to the people. Then it's back to the closest train station. Along the way, I pass a couple of young men walking along the sidewalk near a hospital. They both wear matching T-shirts which mention something about a Covid vaccine. One has his pants "slung low," or below his butt. He's not wearing any underwear and his bare butt is exposed as he walks along. Soon I'm on a train, to the street, to the trail, and then I'm climbing the hill to the waterpark. The trail I take to work and home again, past here where I can hear the pirate ship bell and whistle from the kid's train, which runs a loop through the long city park to and from a petting zoo. Even before and after the waterpark is open for the day, families picnic under trees and tents, and play in the creek. I'm locking up my bike when a lifeguard comes out, and gets into the waiting pickup of another lifeguard. The first tells the second that she was attacked by a middle-aged guy threatened her her inside the park. Hmm. Happy Father's Day. I do a short swim, a few trips down the drop slide, and I'm off toward home. Just down from the park, I turn onto the trail again. I'm climbing a hill when approaching are a trio of folks who give me the impression they are related. The "dad" is lumbering, as if he's drunk. He has a shirt which reads, "Hi Cathy!" The "son" is in a shirt with Snoopy on the front, as Joe Cool. Snoopy is laying o his back on top of his dog house. The shirt reads, "Nope, not today." Down and around to a connecting trail, and soon I stop for an early dinner at a Chilis. I grab a last grocery item from a Target in the same shopping center. I inquire about a certain vitamin I can't find here or anywhere else. The pharmacist recommends Walgreens. I take a route back to my neighborhood Walgreens. Sure enough, he's right. At the checkout, a woman is digging in her purse for loose change with which to purchase a Carmelo bar. She has a thin patch of skin running from her right earlobe to the bottom of her cheek, where it stops at an open sore. The patch of skin is whiter than the rest of her face. The cashier appears to be in her early 20s, and has small tattoos of handguns on the inside of her right forearm. The customer is in her early 30s and doesn't have the change. I pay for her candy bar. She offers me her change. I decline.
Tuesday. I'm headed to work from the gym. I decide to go straight to the avenue to find someplace where I can grab a snack. Snack consumed, I realize that I can enter the trail just around the corner. I'm o the trail and making tracks toward work. Along the climb on a hill, a skinny little young guy with khaki cargo shorts, no shirt, an afro and sunglasses is letting his dog wander the trail without holding its leash. I'm slowing down as I pass them. he tells me, "A bell would be nice." He's talking about for me, to alert those behind them...who for some reason can't hear an approaching bike. Here's yet someone else with a dog who I'm interrupting. Ahead, I pass more than one cyclist headed that guy's way. And they're moving a lot faster on the downhill than I was coming up. The last cyclist I pass, I look at his handlebars. I'm curious... Yep. The motherfucker has a bell. While at work, I step out for yogurt. At an outside table are a pair of women, each with a ten speed. One ten speed has a sign in the shape of a tin rear license plate, on the back of the seat. It reads, "Hearing impaired." After work, I'm back out on the same trail home. I've seen homeless before, wearing clothes or carrying bags with corporate logos or marketing slogans, presumably oblivious to the companies or products being advertised. I'm behind a homeless guy this afternoon, hobbling down the trail. He has his grey hair cut into a kind of 1980s women's bob. And he's in a filthy white T-shirt. On the barely legible back, it reads, "Innovative mortgage brokers." I'm swinging around a playground in a park. There are several young skateboarders out here. I'm behind a guy and a couple of girls, teenagers who look suburban, but appear to be talented with their boards. Another middle aged homeless guy is coming the opposite way down the trail. He's in a typically mismatched brand new bright blue pair of running shorts, and a dirty flannel shirt over another buttoned down black shirt, both open and exposing his chest. He stops one of the skateboarders to ask a brief question before he's on his way.
Wednesday. I'm still flirting with the idea that a straight route down the street will get me somewhere, in this case my bank, faster than the bike trail. This results in my making the decision to ta pick a street and see if it will take me there in something of a more straight path. In spite of leaving the house late. Of course, this does not happen, and I end up back on the bike trail anyway. This indeed demonstrates that there is no such direct path to my bank which is off the bike trail. So I follow a branch of the trail I've never taken before. It takes me right back to my own boulevard. Interesting, but not what I'm looking for. It's been a wild ride, but I still make it to the bank. A teller I like, from Pakistan, is here today. We get into a discussion about swimming. She tells me she can only swim with other women. I ask if she's Muslim and she confirms this. Then I'm off, and somehow, I still make it to work four minutes before I'm expected. After work, I'm just across the street from work. I'm coming down the sidewalk, waiting for my moment and a break in the traffic when I can cross to the other side of the street. I wear my rearview mirror on my left hand, and frequently raise it to look behind me, as I do now. A car passes with the passenger window open. I hear, "Fuck yooouuuuu." Then it hits me. Someone thinks I was raising my hand to make an obscene gesture. There's no dog for me to slow down for, and not only does the absence of a bell on my handlebars fail to make any difference, my rearview mirror is inciting road rage. And no one even had the time to ask me 'what the fuck I'm doing.' A little over an hour later and I'm climbing a hill back on my own side of town. In a Mexican neighborhood, a young Caucasian shirtless dad is in surf jams and sunglasses, out in his front yard. He's watching his kindergartener on a skateboard. in the street. Across on the other curb, a Mexican guy gets into his truck as his wife does yardwork, oblivious to the pale bro dad or trying to ignore him. Up another hill and down and around and across a busy avenue. I'm turning onto the long residential street a block from my own. A young Caucasian couple are turning off this street. They are both in what appears to be company uniforms. The guy has a bike with what appears to be a long trough in front of his handlebars. I've never seen anything like it, much less in this neighborhood. I'm headed down the street. A car pulls up to a sharp stop at a stop sign...and doesn't move. I come to a stop at the same sign and look at the driver. She looks like other derelict street people I've seen. I didn't see any rear blinker but I then notice the weakest front blinker. I turn up a street toward my own. At the next corner, a crazy looking guy runs out into the street from the park across the street. He's dressed all in black. The front of his T-shirt reads, "Is it Friday yet?" A few houses down from the corner is a driveway with a Porta Potty. Sitting next to it is a street woman who appears to be pretty weathered. She's speaking out loud to no one.
Thursday. I have my first dentist appointment with my Medicaid dentist. It took months for someone to tell me that Medicaid will cover an office visit. And none too soon. I originally scheduled a checkup, but on Tuesday, one of my crowns came off when I was flossing. In the waiting room, a Mexican 2 1/2-year-old twin girl came over several times and put her arms around me. Because of the dynamics of Medicaid, or perhaps this clinic, the dentist only has time to recement my crown this morning. She's young and knows her stuff. I make yet another appointment for my official new patient visit. I have so many damned balls in the air, colonoscopy & dentist & now a prostate exam which is another story, I forget that I'm out of the dentist with time to ride to a bus which will take me to work just a few minutes past the time when my shift starts. I was expecting a call at work this week from a nurse, but instead I get a call from an office employee with my hospital who tells me that my prostate exam is finally scheduled. My discussion about my prostate with my PCP, who is coming to the end, ended with her telling me the plan is simply to keep an eye on it. The young woman in the office tells me that my bloodwork was reviewed by another doctor overseeing my own doctor. He recommended I go onto a waiting list to see one of their urologists. But no one mentioned this to me. So, having forgotten about a bus I can catch, I'm headed toward intersecting my usual route to work. I turn the corner with the campers and trailers. The very first vehicle parked at this end of the street...is what appears a brand new hearse. On my way home, it will be gone. When I do get home, I see there is a homeless camp directly across the street from my home. It's next to the parking lot of the apartment complex across the street. I can see the camp from my window.
Friday. In the morning, I'm through the intersection on my corner, and down my street on the way to work. My block and this one past it have been repaved. Gone is the "broken concrete" with which I've read my neighborhood described in local print media. What the hell is the world coming to? Well, everything changes, right? But...my street? I had come to believe that the first concrete showed up already broken here. And this week, marks have been laid down for the painting of bike lanes on each side of my street. I'm waiting to see how bike lanes work on the way through the most dangerous intersection in the metro area...my corner. Soon, I turn onto the street with the campers, trailers, vehicles, a tent this morning, a Porta Potty on a tiny trailer hitched to one of the campers, a pop up Starcraft tent, at least one motorcycle, and the occasional brand new hearse. The first vehicle parked along this curb is the 1970's van I saw yesterday evening, where the hearse used to be. This morning, I have the opportunity to see the back end. The left rear door window has been replaced with a plywood frame surrounding a window air conditioner. The tiny trailer with the latrine has a license plate. I get a kick out of this because during the past winter, I saw campers with hand-written notes in place license plates. The notes attempted to explain that they were unable to get their plates because the DMV was not open due to Covid. Some kind of trailer is parked here. One rear door is open, and a red cross is painted on the inside of the door, almost as if this is some kind of makeshift medical trailer. On the sidewalk, a woman sits in a folding camp chair with a small dog on a leash. Soon I'm down the trail. I'm headed to a supermarket on the way to work, so I turn off the trail and take a path I haven't been down for ten months. It's the other side of the river from the bike trail. This path leads to the street, along which stood an enormous homeless RV camp for almost the entire spring and summer of 2020. At the beginning of this street is a single lone encampment. But all along the grassy space where this huge encampment was, large rocks have been dumped. Surely this is to prevent any further homeless campers from showing up. Across a busy avenue and I turn crosstown, and not long after I'm locking up my bike at the supermarket. A woman with a white perm comes along with a walker. She asks me if I am locking my bike. She tells me a shopper told her that he didn't lock his bike here and had it stolen. I'm in, out, and down the street. I'm up along a horse trail, around another corner and turning onto the sidewalk along the street with my shopping center. In the distance, I see a pair of strollers, each for two kids, being pushed abreast of each other. They take up the entire sidewalk.
During the afternoon at work, I can see the rain coming over the mountains. I ride home in a downpour which lets up along the way. Before I go to bed, I hear what sounds as if it's an even harder downpour. In the morning, I set out for work on another Saturday. The first trail runs along the river, which appears to have accumulated a significant amount of water above its deathbed drought level. As soon as I turn onto the connecting trail, along a small creek, I run into sediment across the trail and into the grass. Just around the corner is the first bridge over the creek. An insane amount of water has deposited a small tree blocking the entire bridge. I have to carry my bike over the tree. Every bridge along the way has branches and weeds piled against it, and each underpass has sediment piled on the trail. As closing time approaches, I contemplate going swimming. I brought my suit and towel. When I leave, I decide it's too cold to swim. Then another downpour opens up. I avoid the underpasses and eventually drag my soaked frame into Chilis. After an early dinner, the rain has let up. I make up my mind to track down a collection of homeless tents I've seen from the train. I wind my way through a small neighborhood between the golf course at the trailhead and the highway. I turn down a residential street. It ends in a cul de sac around which homes were never built. The cul de sac is full of a circle of homeless tents. I turn down a perpendicular kind of alley between the backs of the last homes and a field next to the highway. There are more homeless campers here.
Sunday is another example of this odd sudden appearance of rain at the beginning of the summer. Even more odd are the low temps. While I was out today, at one point the temperature drops to 63 degrees F. The day begins with a haircut from the reliable Mrs. Thuy, and a quick lunch next door of shrimp rolls and won ton soup. Then an application of sunscreen. The clouds are broken. I ride down the trail I usually take to work, leaving it before the connecting trail. I don't know if sediment still covers the trail along the underpasses. I'm coming along the sidewalk of a busy street just across a highway. The street is home to auto shops and lumberyards. The first guy I see walking my way is young, with a grimace and a silver chain with large links around his neck. Just after him comes a pair of guys on bikes who appear as if they may be mechanics. They trucker hats instead of helmets. Around a corner and I'm at the waterpark. Yesterday, on the way home at this spot, I passed one picnic birthday party completely inside a big tent pitched on the grass. Another party was taking place under a big covered picnic table area, and a third under a shelter with picnic tables. Today, the usual families play in the creek below the waterpark. I grab a at the park, which is considerably less crowded today. The lap lane is almost empty, and unbelievably, there's no line at the drop slide. After a satisfying swim I decide to depart as some dark cloud patches approach. I hear someone mention them on the way out. I'm down the trail as it begins to first spit more rain. I'm at the train station when thunder claps overhead. From the platform I can see the rain making it's way from the foothills, and i get into my poncho which I thought to bring along.. here I am, having just swam and am now in a rain poncho. Strange summer. The train collects me and drops me at a few stations north when it begins raining. I decided to take the train here and ride to the yogurt place on the way to downtown. Along the way there, the rain lets up. At the yogurt place I take off the poncho. After a quick yogurt, I head to my old downtown supermarket. I decided this week's shopping list is small enough that I can bring it home by bike, after my other stops. The yogurt place is near a popular downtown bike trail which takes me directly to the food store. This store was quite handy when I worked downtown. My strange patchwork of jobs in recent years. Downtown with my current employer, from December 2018 to the end of March 2020, when the stores shut down. I peruse the supermarket for my few items and pack them into the bag. Then I'm off. I take a street I discovered when I used to go to the gym when I worked here. Around a corner is a homeless camp, a few tents and a camper. One homeless guy comes out of a tent in pants and no shirt. He sees me, stares for a few seconds as I pass, and says, "Hel-lo." I reply exactly the same way. Down the sidewalk along the busy thoroughfare, and we all stop for an approaching train. More thunder. The rain has returned. I take the opportunity to put the poncho back on. Mercifully, it ain't a long train. I'm home again in jig time.
Have Helmet, Will Travel...Without A Bicycle
For the second Monday, I'm up too early. Mondays I'm now doing open to close shifts at work. The day is a fog. I arrive at a breakfast place in the shopping center where I work. As I wait for my order to go, I spot a guy who could be a white-haired version of the late Richard Daley of Chicago in the 1960s. He's in a white buttoned down shirt and a gold tie. Before 7 AM. I watch him with his breakfast on his plate and his ice water with a lemon wedge, as he meticulously places a to go box inside a plastic bag after meticulously working to open the bag. He's filling something out, a stapled collection of papers. When my order is ready, I go outside to the window next to which he sits inside. He's checking boxes on some kind of form with columns, the writing tiny. Some twelve hours later, I'm on my way home from work. I detour around the trail to a deathburger for a snack. I'm on one of the avenues which I otherwise ride under on the trail. From the overpass, I can see someone in a bike helmet and small back pack on the trail. Whoever it is, they sweep the sediment of of it. An hour later and I'm coming down my own street. The brand new bike lanes have been painted on the newly repaved street. I'm back out in one of them, just out the door the following morning. I turn for a short block before I turn again. Coming toward me in the other lane is middle-aged Caucasian guy, also with a bike helmet on his head. I continue to see the occasional person on a bike without a helmet. In his case, he has a helmet...but not a bicycle. He's running in the street...without...a bike.
