Thursday is the 1st. Somehow, we're through half the year, and already the first month of the summer. This morning, I'm turning the corner onto the street with all the...which now has most of the campers, trailers, tents, vehicles, motorcycles, and bicycles missing. Spaces replace what has left. Parked along this curb and around the corner, where after work I climb a hill on my way home, are at least six white Jeeps and trucks.. Some have "Denver Department of Transportation Infrastructure" on their doors. The tiny trail, with its license plate and Porta Potty, stands with space in front and behind now. The following morning, I'm down this street and around the corner, into the bike lane of a bust avenue which leads to the trailhead. It's a cool morning which is warming up. On the bridge over the river, just before I turn onto the trail, a homeless cyclist is stopped in a space between the bike lane and the sidewalk on the bridge. Hooked up to his bike is a child carrier full of blankets. He's stopped and talking to two other homeless on foot. Just down the trail are another trio, this time neon Lycra-clad cyclists. When I get to work, I'm outside the door when a woman recognizes me. Somewhere between 2015 and 2017, when I was down here working for a company I did for more than a decade, I ate lunch before work across the street from here. She remembers waiting on me when she was a waitress. She tells me she's now in nursing. The day goes by quickly, as they do these days. On my way home, I'm rounding a blind bend through a park just before the waterpark. From a connecting bridge, a couple of cyclists turn onto the trail ahead of me. The cyclists following is on a camouflaged bike, and he's in long pants and long sleeves. Over his back rim are a couple saddlebags, each with some kind of pole. They might be fishing poles. The pair turn of the trail onto a grass covered baseball field, and the one following raises his arm to wave at someone before they return to the trail. I've never seen a cyclist do this. When I come around the curve, I see a couple on the trail with their dog. I'm onto a connecting trail shortly before I stop at my new healthy alternative snack place, Subway. I observe what appears to be the entire staff of a bank branch come out at once, the last one locking the door. They are all wearing blue pants and blue t-shirts. I'm in line behind a middle-aged couple, the wife instructing the husband about Subway. "Oh, cookies and chips," he says. A younger couple comes in behind me. I listen to the lady tell the guy about her membership in something called "Cycle City." The place called her to say how sorry they were to lose her as a customer. She's moving, with the guy to whom she is engaged, to Tennessee. Why they are moving there from here I don't want to know. I order and eat, and then I'm back on the trail home. At some point close to the trailhead, the back of my bike makes a "clang" noise. I don't feel anything. A short time later, I'm headed downhill and pick up some speed. My back wheel feels as if it's shuddering. I look down at it as I'm moving. The back rim is bent in one or even two places. I have no idea what happened. But I know I'm going back to the sporting goods supercenter tomorrow.
Saturday. After work, I take my newfound route between there and a swimming pool I used to frequent. It takes me through other neighborhoods of expensive homes, both old and new, and up and down hills. It's quite scenic. After a swim, I head for a train station just up the boulevard. Along the way, I stop for a Japanese poke bowl. I used to frequent this shopping center some five years ago, when I came back and forth through here on the way to where I worked at the time. There was a pizza and Italian and salad place in a building here, called Beau Jos. It was here forever. It's now a Chick-Fil-A. After a bite I'm soon on a train to the north west end of downtown, and the sporting goods supercenter. This train is full of unmasked Caucasians in jerseys of the city's baseball team. There must be a game late this afternoon. A recorded message comes over the train sound system. "Welcome aboard...be sure to wear a mask..." I one of a few who do. We all pile out at the end of the line. I'm over the bridge above the tracks and at the supercenter. A tech looks at my bike. I have a loose spoke. This is what caused the warp and wobble in my rim. The spoke must have had some kind of impact. It's $45 to repair and true up. I inquire about my long suffering other bike, which I brought in last Easter. I'm told that the good news is, the log awaited parts to repair it have arrived. So it won't be long now. Great. I do have to leave my new bike with the loose spoke, until Thursday. I probably will pick it up a week from tomorrow.. The bad news is, when I get home this evening, I have an email from the supercenter. The bike from last Easter is ready to pick up. Had anyone known, I could have ridden that one home. Ah, but that would have been far too easy, wouldn't it?
This week, I'm on my neighborhood's Facebook page. When my street was repaved and repainted, some intersections had new medians put in. Someone posts that a street racer hit one of the medians and blew a tire. Sunday is the 4th. Many have Monday off, including myself. In the morning, I'm off to the sporting goods super center, on what will prove to be the longest distance I've traversed upon my bike since I was furloughed last year. It's a crazy fucking 4th. The train, from the bus up my boulevard, is much emptier than yesterday. From the train station at the northwest end of downtown, it's another hike over the tracks and to the supercenter. The old bike, which is finished being repaired, has an old kickstand I asked them to put on. It was just laying around, taken off a bike from years ago. When I dropped off my new bike, I meant to bring a second old kickstand, which I forgot to do. I have it with me today. Indeed, after four months, my old bike has been patched up. New rear rim and tube and tire, new chain and cassette, old kickstand, new bottle holder, new brakes. That shit ain't bad for $371. When I get out onto it, it definitely ain't a new bike. But it runs. I don't know why I got a bottle holder. In the summer, I ride with a canteen which I carry, though sometimes I also take an additional bottle. I ask about the long suffering brake fluid leak. The tech report sez a search was done for a leak, none was found, and the brake system was tightened up. Well all right then. We'll see what happens. When I get it out on the road, the brakes aren't 100%, but for the moment I can work with them. I take off for a quick lunch before I then swing past the downtown yogurt place. It's closed for the 4th. I head over to a shopping mall in my old neighborhood, which is open. And does have yogurt. I reapply sunscreen while I eat, and watch the neighborhood trendsetters here in the state's #1 tourist attraction. I'm not kidding about that. It's a short ride to the camera shop, where I hope to drop off another roll of film. It's closed for the 4th. I continue down the bike trail, which I used to ride to work just about 20 years ago, when I first began riding my bike to work. I'm headed for a pool down this way. It's closed for the 4th...and the 5th. Really. The plan is to try to make it to the waterpark. Snaking my way down and through residential streets and business corridors, I end up at a hospital.
Toward the end of last month, my sister went in to see her doctor about a painful knee. She was first told she had calcium deposits, arthritis, and water surrounding the joint. She then had it aspirated, had it surgically cleaned out, and had a blood sampled cultured. She was told she had a blood infection which needed immediate attention. She was admitted Tuesday and today is her fifth day in the same room. I realize that I have stumbled onto this very place. I run in to see her before completing my journey to the waterpark. A piano in the hospital lobby has a sign sitting on top. It reads, Please enjoy the piano. Do not touch." (?) Along the way to the park, I stop at a bar and grill for a quick soda and to use the men's room. The guy gives me the soda for no charge. I have a quick swim at the park, and even get to see an emergency trio run out to the pool as I'm leaving. A kid sits with his head in his hands. I head out to a sports and hunting department store for an air mattress. Last 4th of July, our next door neighbors began shooting off fireworks when I went to bed, and didn't stop until after 2 AM. I never did get to sleep. I plan to go home, change bikes, drop off the swimsuit and pick up a bike pump. Then I will head back to the store where I work...to spend the night. Off the trail and toward the strip mall with the hunting store, I'm coming along the sidewalk of a busy avenue. next to an electrical box is a little middle-aged guy with a tiny kids bike laying on some grass between the sidewalk and the street. He's so small, he looks like he needs a bike this small. He has a small spade with the end adjusted perpendicular to the handle. Grabbing the handle with both hands, he's awkwardly jerking around the electrical box, smacking the edges of the ground around it. Just as I pass him, he yells "OW!" He immediate says, "A rattlesnake." Right after this, I'm at the hunting store. I ask the woman behind the gun counter where the air mattresses are. mattress in hand, I return to her counter, where I notice a machine which reads, "Take a number." There are three customers and a dog on a leash. I step between one guy and a young woman to ask where I may find bungee corda. The woman is sighting a small caliber automatic pistol with the slide back. Just another dinner hour on the 4th of July. I then grab a quick dinner before riding back home. Bike and suit are dropped off. I grab a blanket and bike pump and turn directly around, and head back toward work. As I was pulling into my parking lot, I was considering just staying home. Then I saw our neighbor had set up a tent in his driveway to watch however many hours of fireworks he has planned overnight. I feel good about getting the hell outta here tonight.
On the way there, I'm turning onto the street with whichever campers are leftover. A homeless guy sits in a parked pickup truck. he has some kind of high pitched whistle with which he gets into the holiday spirit. I hear out of the open window, "Tweet! tweet!, hey!" The tiny trailer with the Porta Potty now has a boot on each of its two wheels. At the end of the curb toward the trail, another small flatbed trailer is parked. On it is a camper shell. Interesting rig. Onto the trail, and then the connecting one. The sun has set and duck approaches. I ride through an underpass and run over what must be a discarded firework. The explosion rattles the concrete walls. Random explosions go off among the backyards on either side of the parks through which the trail winds. I sneak into work, and attempt to pump up the air mattress. I have nowhere near enough time to do so. I lay it out on the ground and lay down a couple of comforters which have been here in the store for so long that they smell. My slumber in the store, the first I've had inside a drycleaners, is a surreal experience. There is a nonstop electrical hum from some kind of transformer behind the back wall. I'm in and out of consciousness for the next four hours. It reminds me of my semi-consciousness during last month's surgical procedure. When I'm next awake, it's just after 2 AM. I decide that 1) I feel rested enough to go home and 2) that I won't get back to sleep here in the store. So it's off toward home. The few remaining fireworks are going off for the next hour or so. I pass one lonely soul in the dark, walking the trail. Out along the river, there's a junkyard. In recent months, I've noticed an area behind the fence and next to the trail. It's a kind of bar made out of an old bus. Much more recently, there a balcony covered in the material you see in a grass skirt. I've only seen the bar and balcony when it's empty and silent, during the late morning and late afternoon. AS I was coming past here on my way to a hopeful slumber, there were young women on the balcony. It's decorated with red, white, and blue streamers. The bar was open and a party was goin' on. The girls were looking out on the activity on the river, which on summer evenings appears to be the wrapping up of a days paddle boarding and surf boarding in front of a small waterfall. It's a kind of scene for those interested in whatever this surfing the small wake of a tiny manmade waterfall is. Here in the middle of the night, its dark and quiet. Just the reflection of distant lights off the water. Just before the last bridge over the river is a small lot where lovers, homeless, and street racers hang out. I spy a homeless guy silhouetted against a warehouse security light. He's shuffling along with a random piece of scrap metal in each hand. I get home to a peace and quiet. It's shortly before 4 AM when I get to bed. Again, as in the store, I'm in and out of consciousness. I get up around 7 AM, and in a few hours I do the grocery shopping I didn't do yesterday. I lock up my bike at the supermarket when I see a tiny thin middle-aged homeless woman standing in the drive through for the prescription window. She's going through her bag on the ground. She's still there when I come out. I hear her say, "I had a bike. It got stolen. I'm pissed." Then I head home, where I drop the groceries and pick up my suit and towel. I call the camera shop. It's open. I plan to drop film, see a movie at 1:40 PM and then get another swim in at the waterpark.
I'm out of my door and down my street. Along the park across my boulevard, my street becomes one way. The designated lanes become ridiculous. One full third of the street is parking only. Next to that is a huge third for the bike lane, and the last third is for cars. How is anyone supposed to street race past the new Caucasian tennis players which have inhabited the hitherto empty courts here in the park? Between here and the camera shop, all the way across town, is a big municipal park. I briefly get turned around the wrong way before I notice the mountains in front of me. I make it to the camera shop and then head off to the theater, buy my ticket, run across the street to a supermarket to grab lunch, and back to see the movie. I don't get out until after 3:30 PM. I don't think I have time to get to the waterpark. Instead I ride over to the downtown yogurt place, and the hit a supermarket toward home for some specialty items. Then a few blocks away, I grab a quick dinner. A guy juggles on the corner, competing with panhandlers for cash from the vehicles at the red light. Tuesday morning. Again I wake up too early. I have a clock radio which I was given for my 19th birthday. This morning, it refuses to turn off, and has finally reached the end of it's life. At some point, I got an email from the sporting good supercenter that my new bike is ready. The plan is to pick it up today and ride it to work. I'm out on a bus and then a train, with other people who do not appear to be planning on riding a bicycle. I'm so tired, I want to go back to sleep. This continues when I'm off the train and dragging myself over the tracks to the supercenter. What a past four days. Once I'm on my bike however, I appear to get a second wind. I still have to workout this week, Friday is my new patient appointment with a dentist, and I have film to pick up at the camera shop.
Thursday takes care of the workout, and Friday, I'm out of my dentist appointment. I'm tellin' ya, these young doctors. My dentist is quick and on top of everything. After another busy day at work, I'm on my way home. On the connecting trail along the river, I'm swinging around a golf course just past the junkyard with the July 4th tiki bar balcony. Approaching is a guy who, if he isn't homeless, I don't know why he's tiptoeing toward me on rollerblades. Or why one of his pant legs is missing a foot from the cuff. Or why he has a walking stick in his right hand...and a shorter stick in the other. Or why he appears to be searching the weeds for something, or for nothing in particular. I believe that it's his jacket and satchel up ahead, laying directly in my lane of the trail. As I swing around it, I say to both items, "On your left." I should have said, "Jacket and bag up." When I get up to an underpass before another golf course, I watch a street racer in his tiny hot rod. he's running up and down the thoroughfare across the river,. He's still going when I'm rolling along the golf course. I then see an ambulance turn onto the same street, headed his last know direction. I wonder if he crashed, or ran over someone. Just off the trail, I'm climbing a hill past the entrance to a big park, where free outdoor concerts are available to anyone with a ticket. Late this afternoon, the crowd is conspicuously white. They all appear t have their green folding camp chairs over their respective shoulders. I even see one woman in a black sleeveless dress. It's interesting watching this street, the one with the line of campers and trailers along one curb, now with concert-goers prowling for a parking space. I climb a hill as I watch Caucasians pulling their chairs and coolers out of their hatchbacks, parked in this predominantly Hispanic neighborhood.
Out on the trail, another Saturday morning, headed for work. Around 6:30 AM and the sun has risen. Where the last three shopping carts were some weeks ago, yards from the junkyard tiki bar, a pair of benches sit on the trail along the river. The benches are each made out of an old tailgate. Stretched between each bench is a hammock with a young guy asleep inside. On the ground is a small bike, along with a tiny bike trailer. Down the trail and around the corner and I'm on a connecting trail. Not far along is an underpass. Inside the tunnel, a bike is suspended by a cord along one wall. very near the top of the tunnel, another hammock is stretched across from wall to wall. A guy sits up and looks at me. It's another busy day at work. At work, I discover that one of my customers works at the water treatment plant where the giant homeless RV camp was last year. We compare notes. he mentions that some of them would cut a hole in the plant fence so that they wouldn't have to walk around it. After we close, I'm on the way to the camera shop to pick up prints. My tall, photogenic hippie goddess has some dark circles under her eyes. She says they're busy and when I come in they're playing catch up. I should have a couple of hours before the public pools close. I head for the one which was closed last weekend. When I get there, it's still closed. I should have time to get to the next closest pool. I get there and inquire about the other, and am told the other pool is having mechanical problems. The public pools were all closed last weekend. Well, I tell this pool that they rock, and the other pool sucks. One lifeguard tells me that the guards at this pool are having kind of a competition with those of the pool which remains closed. I tell her, they have to be open to even compete. I do a fast swim On the way home, I hit a Chick Fil La for dinner. Actually, I didn't have lunch either. The place is staffed with the most polite young teenagers I've ever met. The manager is young and impressive, and very clean. On the dividers between the booths are pictures of groups of young people, some with a single adult. At the bottom o the photos are websites which purport to explain what's happening in each scene. OK. Almost sounds as if...it's a blog. The way home takes me crosstown and hooks up with the old trail. I'm quickly on and off the last section before I exit. Soon, I'm approaching the corner of this street and the one with the homeless mobile dwellings. This early evening, it's another free ticket concert in the park across the street. More concert-goers, mostly Caucasian thirty- and forty-something couples, wait to cross this busy avenue. This avenue where no diesel pickup truck rumbles uphill in low gear, driver's arm oh-so-casually hanging out the window, with any time whatsoever to wait for anyone or anything to cross a corner with no crosswalk. Even if it's park concert-goers. Somehow all with matching green camp chairs slung over their shoulders. They have arrived here at this corner, and they continue to make their way along a street where they pass a line of motley broken down campers. At the end of this line, the one toward the park, sits a big orange tent issued by the city. These tents are meant only for those select few sites sanctioned by the city for homeless camping. They appear as if they were designed by Buckminster Fuller. The concert-goers continue to search for parking, even taking the spaces between the smattering of campers, trailers, tents and Porta Potty with bright yellow boots upon both wheels of the tiny trailer and complete with license plate. I don't know about any of the other vehicles in this rag tag rampart, which white couples are wandering right past with their camp chairs as if it's any KOA campground, but I'm sure that the shitter has a plate. What do the homeless think of the strolling people coming out of cars which appear more likely than the ones, here along this stretch of curb, to pass an emissions test? What do these upper-middle class outdoor music fans think of these vehicular corpses, the broken down Starcraft pop-up with it's two ends supported by two by fours, and the hermit occasionally visible behind a window? I turn and climb a hill off this street. This one is also lined with parked cars. I pass an asphalt path which stretches between this residential street and the next one. I've seen homeless vehicles use it to traverse between blocks. One side is currently lined with cars parked bumper to bumper.
In January 2014...living in the Denver Catholic Worker House... From there...an up-close and personal view of how the city was changing. ...the corridor along Welton Street - the city's first official historic district - has turned into almost a canyon of construction, and few Black-owned businesses remain in the Victorian-era storefronts still standing. ...Five Points has become "perhaps the model of gentrification. We're doing it faster, higher. What Five Points means today, and what it meant then, it's night and day. There's a lot of confusion about these symbols about names. And at the end of the day, I'm more interested in the actual control of the assets. [How] can you keep up with the...development that have been orchestrated by rabid capitalism?" - Westword, 7/8-14/2021
[The barber shop next to where I work] opened in February 2021... They chose [my shopping center] fir its diverse and large demographic of men who are family focused, career oriented and lifestyle driven. . These are men who enjoy the finer things and would appreciate...personal service and escape... - Greenwood Village Newsletter, 7/2021
On Sunday, I would like to do a swim each at the waterpark and the one public pool I like, which appears to be operational. Hey, it's closer than the other one. But I don't think I will have time. Time is a slippery thing which I can count on to outpace myself. Today, I want to pay a visit to the very first outdoor festival in the city since two summers past. It's the Colorado Black Arts Festival. After dishes, the rest of my laundry, grocery shopping, and the application of sunscreen, I'm out of the door and soon turning the corner onto the very same homeless camp street. It's a little after 1 PM and a homeless cyclist rides a bike with handlebars such as I had on my bike back in the 1970s. He pulls a tiny bike trailer. With his black hair and beard, he and his bike trailer appear similar to the hammock guy along the river trail, and his own bike trailer. On the street is a younger homeless cyclist talking to someone in a pickup truck. I make my way around him and back into my lane. He follows in the opposite lane. I get ahead of him and he dodges both oncoming traffic and traffic coming from behind us. At the corner, he shoots ahead across the busy avenue through a break in cross traffic. He follows the same road into the park as yesterday's music fans. Down the trail and onto the connecting one, both hammocks and their respective occupants have moved on. I do a short swim before deciding time continues to escape me. I head for the train which comes along in jig time, and drops me a short ride from the yogurt place. Another pack of Caucasians arrive when I'm there. One guy is with his grade school-aged daughter. Her pink tutu matches her bowl of orange yogurt. I'm soon out of there and down a tree-lined bike lane, along an old money neighborhood across town from my own. After some tactics to find sidewalks along these busy boulevards, eluding the visitors outside a botanical gardens, and other pedestrians who appear to really enjoy walking along the sidewalk on a hot summer day under skies filled with fire smoke, I pull up to the festival. Lots of flags from African nations. Afterward I head home through downtown. I mull over diner downtown as I shadow a shuttle down the pedestrian mall, and am chased by a pedicab. When I get to a train station on the mall, I decide to bail out and head for home. The train drops me at the same station where I got out for my ride to the yogurt place. When I step out, a bus home pulls up. It's appreciated.
...Denver Public Schools next superintendent...has been named... Board members said they expect...to take a collaborative, rather than competitive, approach... The school board...has moved away from...closing schools with low test scores, and has asked tough questions of the district's independent charter schools. ...reducing the school-to-prison pipeline is a priority. A long list of Latino community groups...raised concerns about the search process and the experience level of the candidates. - Washington Park Profile, 7/1/2021
[The "Manson murders"] made the general public aware there was something extremely dangerous about this new mixture of drugs and occultism. ...if you weren't safe in a $200,000 house in a chic canyon [in 1969 dollars] where were you safe? ...genuine feeling among Hollywood image-makers that the fabric of life was falling apart... - Freedland
Wednesday. It's overcast when I ride to work, and it's overcast on the way home. There are a few raindrops on the way to work, and I take out the poncho briefly before putting it away. When I leave work, a few drops show up, and I take out the poncho again. It's during my ride home when I take the poncho out and put it away more than once. On the trail along the river, I pass a couple of rare cyclists. This is because they are slower than myself that they are so rare. I pass them slowly, and I hear one discuss with the other whether or not I should have said out loud, "On your left." And these guys don't even have a dog. One has a fishing pole though. I exit the trail on a detour to my neighborhood supermarket. Ii want to add a dish to my diet, in an ongoing attempt to stop buying meals from places where I work. I take a route I stumbled upon recently when I was trying to reach my bank before work. I have my poncho on when, out of nowhere, it begins to pour with flash flood ferocity. A flash and then a loud clap of thunder is just overhead. I don't have far to go, but I'm doing this route for only the second time in a rain and wind squall. I'm riding along the supermarket parking lot when another thunderclap sets off a car alarm. I roll under a covered spot along the entrance. A guy who looks like a farmer is loading groceries into his pickup. He's parked next to the sheltered spot to stay dry. Under the noise of the rain and commotion, I roll in behind him where's there's space. He turns to suddenly see me there, as others out o the trail do. He says sarcastically, "Excuse me." Hey, on your left pal. When I come out, the deluge is over. During the short ride home, it begins to sprinkle again, and again I put the poncho on.
Friday. When I wake up, I know I've finally had a good sleep. I see light through the window. When I look at my clock, it's off. The power must be down. This means no computer, music, or breakfast before I leave for work. I go upstairs to the shower and by force of habit flip the light switch. It's a couple of seconds before I realize that the power has just come back on. When I leave the house, I spot across the street a little homeless guy walking a small bike along the sidewalk.. I watch as he pauses in front of the homeless camp a few yards from where he is. He tosses his bike on the ground and keeps walking. Then, I'm across my boulevard and around some corners on the way to work. I'm coming up a residential street when approaching from the other way is a homeless guy on an electric scooter. Electric scooters are everywhere. The one he is on struggles to pull a wooden cart hitched behind. Some eight hours later, it's after work. Along the way home, I stop at a Subway, where I recently discovered they will make you a salad instead of a sandwich. The employee lets me know that the lobby will be closing in ten minutes. They are short staffed. I ask if some people quit. She gives me the quick and insane details. A new hire was a no-call-no-show because he was found dead in his house. Another new hire got into a car accident. The manager is on vacation. My salad is delicious. Perhaps a half hour later and I'm climbing a hill off the street with the campers. I'm passed by a minivan which I believe is being driven by someone who is homeless. It's battered, and the hatchback is open. A full-sized flatbed trailer is hitched to the inside back.
Saturday. The route to the swimming pool from work takes me across the street from my shopping center, directly through the entrance of a walled rural and residential space. Down a road and I'm through the entrance of another walled neighborhood, this one of homes. There's a sign out front which alerts visitors, that the place is patrolled by private security. Great, just what I need. So far, I haven't seen any. Another sign lets vehicles know that there is "no thru traffic." Unless, of course, you're on a bike. Down a main road is the entrance to a crushed white gravel trail. It's a yellow brick road-like path which crests a hill, overlooking open space to the horizon. Location, location... It's also a straight line through the winding streets and large unfenced back yards. This route is a nice option to riding up the sidewalk of a busy boulevard. The gravel path lets me out at a corner where another street takes me up to the entrance for yet a third walled neighborhood, this one of older homes and trees. The street swings around to the one which takes me to the pool. After my swim, I head for a Christian chicken dinner. The scene, Chick Fil A. A couple of tables away from mine. Two middle-aged guys in caps. One is heavy set and in a neon lime T-shirt. He's speaking to another, skinny and in a Polo shirt. "One thing I learned at the show," he tells the skinny one. "It's all about the sauce. Your food can be sub-par." I've just ordered from a kid who looks as if he's twelve years old. In the first of two references to employees' hair, He reminds me of the old Dennis Miller joke. "Hey, 1976 just called. It wants it's hairstyle back." I wonder if his parents think it's adorable. For a seventh-grader, he speaks as if he's 20 years older. "How may I help you? Will that be all? What kind of salad? Is medium OK?" When I get my food and sit down, he comes around to refill my beverage. "More ice?" he asks. Jesus. Someone held this kid in a basement and kept him awake with a series of endless customer service seminar lectures. The front end staff are all in red Polo shirts, and the kitchen staff all have black Polo shirts. There are fewer of the latter, who appear to be on break out in the dining room. They all look Hispanic, and all sit together and don't interact with the others. One guy in a black Polo is off in a far corner. The manager brings him his food without saying anything to him. The manager appears as if he may be nineteen. He's in a buttoned down shirt, and his blonde hair could have come from the Golf Channel. Over the sound system comes what I'm almost sure is an organ playing an instrumental hymn. I order a bit more food. The girl refers to me as "sir." She appears to be perhaps seventeen, and among the older employees here. The ride home from here, a neighborhood I frequented when I lived here a decade and a half past, is mostly crosstown. Perhaps a half hour or so later and I'm turning onto the street one block from my own. It's a long residential street with a rotating selection of homeless campers and trailers. A homeless 90's car slowly pulls to the end of this street and waits for me at the stop sign. It has junk strapped to the roof. I wait for it to turn either direction onto the street perpendicular to it, but it waits. It then slowly begins to pull into the entrance of an alley, which I didn't realize was ever here. The driver has long blond hair and a long blond beard. He flashes me a peace sign before he and his vehicle disappear down the narrow asphalt alley. This sleepy street provides more interaction with myself and homeless than any other I can think of.
Sunday has made up its mind to be hot, like summer should be. But I wake up too early on Monday. I decide to leave the house at 4:30 AM. This will get me to the shopping center with an hour to spare at a breakfast place. This morning before sunrise, it's almost too cold for shorts. It will eventually warm up by forty or fifty degrees. I'm just onto the first trail to work when I spot a figure ahead in the pitch dark, standing right in the middle of the trail. It's a guy with no shirt, and what appear to be pants from a baseball uniform with no socks. He's rubbing his hair and head, as if he just had a cold bath in the river along the trail. I move around him and stay inside the curve to avoid the inline sprinklers. On my way home after work, with the sun setting through fire smoke, I will watch a homeless person in an orange vest pulling a shopping cart down the middle of a residential avenue. Cars will make their way around the figure and cart. This morning, perhaps an hour after the baseball guy, I'm almost off the connecting trail. I come up on a young woman with very short bleached hair., running along the trail. She's in a black short-sleeved blouse, black shorts, and black socks. I don't see any shoes on her feet. Some twelve hours later, it's after work. I'm coming home the opposite way on this same trail. I stop to take a photo of a shopping cart off in the weeds. It has a sign advertising "now hiring" for the supermarket from which it was stolen. A cyclist comes by with pink tinted prescription glasses. he wants to know if I am in need of assistance. Yeah. I need a new life.
Tuesday. The homeless camp has been vacated across the street from where I live. Nothing left but the trash. On the block with the campers. There's a pickup parked behind a camper with a middle-aged woman in the driver's seat. Her window is down. She's listening to another middle aged woman on a bicycle. This woman is in a black halter and black stretch pants. She has no shoes or socks on. With her is a younger woman on her own bike. I, along with the rest of traffic, are moving around the bikes. Out on the trail along the river, there is a solar panel mounted on a pole. At it's base is another oval mirror set up for use by a homeless person.
Some ten hours later, I'm approaching the trailhead just around the corner from this block. I have yet to go through my last underpass and can see the trailhead. I watch a motorcycle turn around there and come down the trail my way. No motorized vehicles are allowed on the trail. As the motorcyclist passes me, he says "Sorry." The following morning, I'm off to work again. It's funny, I can tell when my tire needs air, even if it's only ten psi. I worry that, for a second morning in a row, it needs air. I don't know if I have a slow leak Out on the trail, it's not uncommon to see homeless sitting or otherwise. I pass a guy on a bench who I believe is homeless. It on a bench next to a path up to a n outdoor mall. He's dressed quite conventionally, in a polo shirt and pants. But the expression on his face, with his grey hair and beard under a headband, is one which stares out to the horizon with sadness.
