I'm on the way home from work on Wednesday. At the homeless camp along the guardrail, there is now a Starcraft-type pop up camp trailer. This camp appears to be slowly expanding. The following morning, there are a pair of Starcraft-type pop up camp trailers. They are both deployed, and both appear to have seen better days. Friday morning, I realize that I have time to hit the gym before work. This will free up my afternoon after work on Saturday. On Saturday, I'm headed to work down the street with campers along an open field. A motorboat now sits on a trailer, between a couple of campers. On the way to work, I take what happens to be my last shot with a film camera. I know now what I will be using my extra time for after work today. It's just warm enough after work that I ride to the camera shop across town in shorts and a T-shirt. Later, after I'm home from work, I decide to take the bus to the supermarket. On the way home, on my boulevard are a couple of fire trucks blocking off a lane at either end. An SUV is flipped onto its side. Sunday I plan the now usual lunch with the sister, followed by another library used book sale. I consider doing the ride in shorts, but I've come not to trust the weather, and I take warmer gear along with me. After lunch, I decide that backtracking to the train from here is an idea I like less than heading to a station south. Which in fact I make in jig time. Today is quite temperate for December. Just a long-sleeved T- shirt and light riding pants suffice. It's a tiny book sale and yet I still manage to dig up a couple of books. Back to the train, and I decide to get out at a station before home, for some food. I'm off the train and at a restaurant, where I witness the in-ground sprinkles watering the grass around their building. Eating inside, I don't notice anything out of the ordinary out the windows. I come out to sunshine...and wet cement. My bike has drops of water. Did the sprinklers go haywire? It feels 20 to 25 degrees colder out here. Thank God I have gloves and head and neck gear. My windbreaker over the shirt and my pants are just enough to keep me warm. I'm back on the train and make it home before dark.
On the three stretches of individual streets where every day I pass a gaggle of homeless campers, there are sometimes SUVs. Many of these SUVs have one window which appears to be missing, covered instead with some kind of plastic. I wonder if these are all stolen? On my ride home from work on Monday, I notice that one of the two pop up tents at the guardrail homeless camp is gone. On Wednesday I have a consultation with an oral surgeon. It's in the middle of the day so I take the day off. My appointment is at 1 PM, so I stop into a deathburger for lunch. It's just down the street from the dental clinic. After I finish eating I use the men's room. The faucet does not work. There are no paper towels. The hand dryer does not work. This place doesn't have to worry about the homeless coming in to use the men's room sink. It's sheer genius. I wonder if I have time to hit the yogurt place, just a hop, skip, and a jump from the clinic. I ask an employee behind the counter if she knows what time it is. She does not comprehend. I ask again. Still no comprehension. I think she speaks English. I'm sure of it. I ask a third time. She goes and asks someone else to help me. He appears to have trouble comprehending her. She asks him a second time and he comes up...and lets me know it's 11:52 AM. I decide I had better head over to Denver Healt's Outpatient Clinic. I cross the busy boulevard which is an artery in and out of downtown, and I make my way north the few blocks to the clinic. I roll along past disappearing Victorian homes and brand spanking new-looking condo units. It's a busy weekday at lunchtime and I'm dodging traffic and pedestrians and dogs among the old streets of this outer ring south of downtown. The residents are a familiar and curious collection of characters who would, in some other neighborhood, appear mismatched. An oncoming twentysomething woman cruises past me on her own bike. Her straight hair is long and loose, and she rides with her hands off the handlebars. Very laid back. She lifts her left forearm and gestures with an index finger that she's making a turn. I do a convoluted dance through a construction zone, ending up momentarily stopped on the sidewalk. A guy with long salt and pepper hair slowly walks past me, in a winter jacket and pajama pants. Outpatient sheik. I hear the speaker on his phone. He's on hold with a business or institution.
I arrive at the clinic and head up to the 7th floor. The dental receptionists are all at lunch. There is a bank of empty chairs behind glass. I mosey down the hall, to the Primary Care receptionist, and ask where the dental department is. She's not sure and concurs that they must all be at lunch. My adventure from deathburger to clinic took just 23 minutes. I ask if there is a cafeteria. '2nd floor.' In the cafeteria are a handful of customers. Mostly medical types. A lone homeless guy sits alone at a table. He's tall and lanky, and gives off a rural vibe. He also gets on his phone. "I've been down here all morning," he informs someone. Is he waiting for a ride? After particular treatments or medical procedures, the hospital won't let you leave unless someone comes to pick you up. He has a 'service dog' which suddenly begins barking at someone in the cafeteria. "Steve, be quiet. Steve!" Yes, there's a dog named Steve. Back upstairs on the dental floor, there is now a line of patients awaiting appointments behind a sign. In front of me is a little guy in overalls with reflective stripes. He looks around at the elevators, out from which employees are returning to work. He turns to me and says, "Everyone coming back from lunch? If this was the emergency room, they would be returning to patients who would be dead." Looking at his head, there is one of the largest swellings on his jaw I've ever seen. I meet with a member of the oral surgery team. He laughs at my joke about the previous specialist I saw here, the root canal guy. When this other guy suggested I do nothing about my infected tooth, I wondered if he was really a janitor disguised as a specialist. The oral surgeon concurs with my regular dentist that, both my tooth with two previous root canals, and the wisdom tooth next to it should be removed. He describes a simple procedure. I have options for what to replace the tooth with, and I can replace it with nothing and decide later if I want another option down the road. Not a bad deal at all. Their office is booked up until the end of next March. On the way to another visit with the sister, holed up waiting for joint surgery, I grab some yogurt at the yogurt place. After my visit, I'm not worried about going home toward sundown, as I have my trusty lights. On the way out of downtown, I decide it's time to put them on the bike. And...I find I left them at home. I hope I don't get ticketed, unlikely as it is, for riding without lights. If I can just get back to my side of town, where no one gives a shit...
Thursday is homeless day out. I'm just down my street on the way to work. Before I turn the first corner, a little homeless Toyota truck goes past. It would not surprise me if it was from the 1980s. On the bottom left side, the metal is peeling off from the body. The body itself appears crumpled and decayed. It looks just like tiny Toyota trucks I've seen in videos, crossing the deserts of Iraq and Syria, driven by ISIS. The small bed is full of scrap metal. The driver should perhaps put his truck in its own bed. Soon I've entered the trail. On one side is a golf course where I enter. Across the other end of it is the highway, on the other side of which is the annual Christmas tree lot. Its long string of lights along its length are prominent all the way to the trail after sundown. On the other side of the trail this morning, parked off the road across the river, are a pair of much later model and bigger pickup trucks. A black one is parked with its hood up, nose to nose with a white one, which has a flatbed trailer full of its own scrap metal. The drivers are both outside of their vehicles and conversing. Then I am rolling along the long stretch of trail with trees along the riverbank. I get up to the growing homeless camp, at a damaged end of a guardrail along the road. I remember when I saw the very first guy setting up this camp. I first passed him yanking on the end of the guardrail, which was sticking up in the air. Then more recently, a mattress showed up, standing on one of its long ends. The was something spray painted on the side I approach on the way to work. All I could read was, "This is..." The rest was blocked by whatever junk was being used as a base to prop it up. I have no clue why the guardrail was being yanked on, or why a mattress is being used as a billboard. Two days ago, the junk at the facing side of the base had been cleared away, and what appears is, "This is liberal culture!" I attempt to take a shot of it from across the street as a cyclist with no helmet approaches, along an adjacent trail across the road. He takes an edge of one of the tents and shakes it, hoping to alert someone inside that he is there. He gets no response as he stands outside, before crossing the road to this trail. He accelerates ahead of me as I'm leaving. When I tun a corner, I spot him way up ahead. He disappears in the same place from where he came, into parts unknown. Then I turn my head and notice the remaining of a former pair of pop-up trailers. On the door is a printed sign, inside the window. It reads, "No stupid people allowed." The following evening, this pop-up trailer will also be gone from here.
This week, my Facebook news feed (now under the command of computer software advertising) has included two separate short local news clips. The stories are about homeless RV camps in other parts of the metro area. The mobile dwellings appear just the same as all the others. Friday evening I'm on my way home from work, after another day when I stayed an hour after we close. I woke up this morning to light snow. Most of it appears to have melted by evening. Out on the trail, I am approaching the guardrail homeless camp. On the street next to the trail, a scooter runs along toward the camp. It's pulling a small makeshift trailer. As I mention above, the camp has one less pop-up trailer. After I exit the trail, I'm across the tracks and turn the corner onto the street with the line of campers next to a field. A pickup truck, with body damage and covered in black spray paint, heads up this street past me. I've seen it parked on this curb before. As I turn onto a steep hill, I watch it turn at the end of another corner. Its bed is loaded with junk. I decide to get dinner at a Churches Chicken on my boulevard on the way home. As I'm waiting for my order, a guy comes in to say one of his wheels went over the curb, and he's blocking the drive through. He asks for help getting out. It would happen to be the one and only vehicle on this boulevard which isn't a pickup truck with its suspension jacked up to the sky. The entire place empties of its employees to come out and watch, including all the front-end staff, shift manager, and even the cook. Also this week, I noticed the big park across from the waterpark up on the hill. It's called Bellview Park, presumably because it's off of Bellview Avenue. One day on the way to work, I watched Parks and Rec guys doing something out it the park. I couldn't tell what. One evening on the way home, they had strung some trees with lights around the trunks and up into the branches. In the evenings, the park has become some kind of winter wonderland. Some kids roam through the park after dark to see it. Mostly, parents bring their brood to ride the train which I've only ever seen run during the summertime, along a track which runs the length of the long park. This month, the train begins runs all day, and after sundown its strung with its own lights.
Sunday. The plan for today is simple enough. And it ends up going the traditional direction of best laid plans. Throw into the mix that the plan is for some Christmas shopping and no one would really expect that a plan would possibly become simpler. Last night I got home from the gym after work, dead tired. I elect instead to grocery shop this morning, after which I head off for lunch with the sister. Grocery shopping required a coat warmer than my usual winter jacket. As I'm closing in on the sister's current digs, it's closing in on noon and I'm comfortable in a hoodie. The high will end up being 63 degrees F. The sister usually has odd tasks for me around her dwelling, as my body currently has working joints. She wants a photo of us in front of a pair of dolls of Mr. and Mrs. Claus, on a table in a TV lounge. Sitting in a couple of chairs in front of the TV are a pair of recovery center residents. The female in her chair is doubled over and apparently drowsy. After lunch, I'm headed back crosstown again, toward a downtown bookstore. It's an independent legend in the city. My annual obsession is a spiritual wall calendar. After I arrive, but before I lock up the bike, I notice that the place appears to be closed. When I look in a window, I can see that it's been completely vacated. I won't discover until this evening that this particular location has moved. As for now, I suspect the company may have gone out of business. Change of plans. I head to the next closest bookstore I can remember. It's a chain store on the pedestrian mall, on a multi-level collection of stores. When I get there, I find a lot of stores in this group are shut down. I inquire at another shop here, and am told that no bookstore remains here. I stop into some kind of boutique. I ask a sixteen-year-old if the second location for the independent bookstore is still open. She has internet access, but has never heard of this fifty-year institution. Such is the way of all things. She confirms that it is. before I leave, I spot a big gold Christmas tree-shaped installation on the ground floor. I decide to sit and take a selfie right next to it. I like what the sunlight is doing, reflecting on it from an office building window across the mall. A middle school boy, long hair which may be bleached, comes along and offers me some candy from a bag. I tell him not to be embarrassed that he thinks I'm homeless. He continues to offer it to me. I tell him I'm on a diet before he reluctantly continues on his way. I arrive at the second location shortly. The men's room now has a keypad. In no time I have my spiritual calendar. I head a bit west and then turn straight south, to grab a bite of yogurt. Then, I' head for a deathburger for my final shopping. I want to get my girlfriend a gift card to a place she likes. She doesn't frequent many places. I arrive there, only to discover that they are out of gift cards. I then make the journey straight west, back to my own boulevard. This other location does indeed have gift cards. Hmm. Two gifts, one man, and a bicycle.
Monday evening arrives after a long day. I was called into work to open for my coworker. I stayed an hour after we closed. The end of this year has seen a desire for more service industry service. Other businesses closed down, and their customers are discovering us, either by chance or word of mouth. At least a few things never change. I'm on the trail home, and it's closing in on 8 PM when I arrive along the guardrail homeless camp. The following morning, it will appear to have begun shrinking. But this evening, in the dark, there are a pair of pickup trucks parked nose to nose at the far end. I watch as a scooter comes down the road and stops where the trucks are. I'm back here the next morning, going the other way toward work. I'm past the camp, across the road from a power plant and building equipment and supply yards. On my side are the long line of trees between the trail and the riverbank. I watch as a young guy comes briskly across the road, from one construction supply yard and over to the trail. He has a blue plastic hardhat on. He's in a camouflaged hoodie and has his pants slung low, exposing his underwear. His underwear exactly matches the color and tone, as well as the camouflaged pattern of his hoodie. Just when I think I've seen everything. At first he's walking the way I'm going, facing oncoming bike and pedestrian traffic down the opposite lane of the trail. He must move into the trees when an oncoming bike approaches. It's some eight hours later when I am again just about at this same spot. It's after work and I haven't yet reached the guardrail camp. In the distance I can see someone on the trail. As I watch, it appears to be another cyclist. Even from this distance, I recognize the makeshift homeless bike trailer. Along this stretch of trail, streetlights illuminate it to some degree. When I get up behind him, I see his "trailer" is some kind of wheeled collapsible shopping cart. The connecting arm, which otherwise belongs between a child-carrier and the back end of a bicycle, connects cart and bike. In the cart/trailer are some items at the bottom and tree branches in between, presumably for a campfire. The very next morning, I am again on my way to work, back at this same spot. The same homeless cyclist, in his long winter coat and face like the grim reaper and shopping cart trailer, passes me headed the direction of the camp.
...5,530 people in the metro-area...were experiencing homelessness... But Denver has been moving in the right direction by implementing...the Safe Outdoor Spaces and opening hotels... - Life on Capitol Hill, - 12/2021
[Denver's] Department of Housing Stability (HOST) just enacted a Five-Year Strategic Plan to tackle the issues of homelessness and housing in the city. [Created in] April 2019 [, it was given] a full departmental budget. ...many service providers...believe the city's current trajectory is positive. It just took too long to get to this point... "Contemporary homelessness really exploded in this country in the early 1980s...when federal housing programs were decimated." In 2004, Mayor Hickenlooper's administration convened the Commission to End Homelessness... The administration really "embraced the word 'homelessness' as something people could connect with," Hickenlooper recalls. In 2005...Hickenlooper...created Denver's Road Home... "I wasn't ever going to completely solve it." Or as Hickenlooper puts it now, the plan was "aspirational." "The...financial resources weren't there to the degree they are today." ...the number of 'chronically homeless' in the city has dropped... ...Mayor...Hancock's....executive director of Denver's Road Home. ...and members of the Commission on Homelessness began to disagree on how the money should be spent. ...in mid-2012 Hancock started pushing an unauthorized camping ordinance. "...as a way of essentially forcing people into shelter and service." With the passage of the camping ban, Denver Homeless Out Loud emerged as a major force. [This organization] is unique in the landscape of municipal politics. "To me, it's always seemed...surprising why Denver and why this mayor have not been more supportive. ...in June 2014, Hancock announced that the administration would establish a Social Impact Bond...to provide supportive, permanent housing for hundreds of chronically homeless... ...it was a "remarkable success"... "That kind of dispels the false narrative around homelessness being a choice." In 2017...Hancock disbanded the commission that had been advising the city on homelessness [, instead creating] the new Office of Housing and Opportunity for People Everywhere. [Within HOPE,] "there wasn't in any way a clear chain of command to push an agenda forward. HOPE was just a political office designed to send a message, that was it. This was intended to be window dressing. ...Denver's Road Home and HOPE were essentially folded into [HOST. And more money for homelessness came from] emergency COVID federal relief money. "I think the conversation shifted in 2020 - specifically some neighborhoods and busniesses..." ...those...struggling with mental health...and substance-abuse...may be helped by...the Support Team Assisted Response...staffed by a paramedic and a mental health clinician... - Westword, 12/16-22/2021
...Golden mobile home...park's owners rebuffed the residents twice in their attempt to buy [it,] they ended up selling to...a California-based corporation...that billed itself as "family oriented" [and] operates 33 parks across the West. ...mom-and-pop...mobile home parks...owners...by and large kept rents affordable as red-hot real estate markets sent rents soaring in metro Denver and cities across the country. ...Corporations come in, raise rents immediately and often, while instituting rules and regulations... The company...said in a June interview with Authority Magazine that "(w)e pride ourselves on maintaining and expanding the affordable housing stock under our control. Seeing people experience homeownership for the first time..." - The Denver Post, 12/17/2021
He liked to say that the best time to be in a war is right at the beginning, when you can do whatever you want, before people get their shit together and start making rules. "It's just no fun anymore," he said. - I Lost My Love In Baghdad, M. Hastings, 2008
I checked my bag - one Yippie film, ten copies of "Fuck the System"; Mao's little red book; recipes for Molotov cocktails, electric Koolaid and digger stew; a children's game manufactured in Albania called "Kick the Yankees in the Balls"; five hundred YIPPIE! buttons and ten million dollars worth of pot... - Hoffman
Fast Food Follies
Shortly after passing the grim cyclist, I decide I'm hungry. I stop into a deathburger off the trail. I'm eating and looking out the window at a middle-aged guy slowly walking toward the front door. He's some kind of contract delivery driver. He has a cap on his head with an image of an eagle's head on the front. On the left side of the brim, in case there is someone who doesn't recognize the national bird, it reads "eagle." Some nine hours later, I'm home from work, and across the street at the Chinese takeout place. There is an elderly woman inside. She's not in line. She's standing next to her walker, which has a container of Chinese food on the seat. She's eating out of the container as she greets incoming customers and orders other food from where she's standing. She doesn't have a mask on. I order, wait for my order, and others get in the line. The elderly woman moves to the other side of the line and continues to eat and ramble on about building mobile homes. The young woman behind the counter lifts herself up to look over the counter. She tells the elderly woman she has to be on her way, who then replies, "Shut up." She heads toward another exit, continues to eat, and says to the rest of us, "They're supposed to be busy, but they're watchin' everybody." I will be back in here a couple of evenings from this one. The employee, whom she told to shut up, will tell me that she's around here almost all the time. The following day, I get t work. Sometime later, I notice that my front tire is flat. I know where I am going after work. I take the bus to the train, to downtown and over the bridge across the tracks. To the sporting goods supercenter. They don't have a tube with sealant, but they do have a thorn resistant one in my bike's size. It's on in ten minutes. I will be riding home. This morning, off the trail and around a corner, I'm rolling behind and then along old money dwellings straight out of Better Homes and Gardens. This evening, on the way to the supercenter, I'm walking my bike past downtown condominiums. I take a trail home from here and exit on my own side of town. And I'm pedaling past weathered bungalows which look like candidates for demolition. Many guises, many names. Many median income levels. I exit the trail where I do in order to shorten the distance between the supercenter and my old deathburger on the way home. I get there an hour before my bedtime...and an hour after the lobby closes. I wonder if this policy is more safe for the employees? I'm forced to get another $20 dinner from a restaurant behind my place. I'm lucky it's good food.
On Saturday, I stayed an hour after close. This is a first for a Saturday. This didn't give me time to get to the gym. So, the plan is to do so Sunday. I'm on the corner of a street out of my extended neighborhood and a busy avenue. Directly across the avenue, shortly before sunrise, is an individual smack in the middle of the crosswalk. He or she is standing next to what looks like nothing less than an adult sized version of a children's toy from the 1970s. It was called the Green Machine, and was a kind of chopper style tricycle. This chopper trike is right on the center line dividing both lanes, facing my way. Whoever it is simply stands there, tinkering with it. Down the avenue and across the highway, and I'm at the station. At the end of one platform are a trio of homeless guys. The bow-legged one I recognize. He and another, who has his coat unzipped on this frosty morning, are both throwing pieces of bread to seagulls. The gulls are riding drafts over the tracks. The first two have smaller backpacks. The third has a full camping pack, with a couple of sleeping bags on the back. He's looking at his phone, and when the other pair run out of bread, he wanders over to a woman on a bench. She has no coat, just a plaid wool shirt. I hear him tell her that he has three phones, or three sim cards, which he ordered. He gives her a story. His ex is trying to destroy his business, which he has transferred into the name of a friend. Hmm. A business owner with a camping pack and sleeping bags out of the train platform. He claims to be a single dad with more than one son at home. ...and he's left the boys at home, spending the morning hiking the train platform He also has an errant daughter, who doesn't respect him, and stays out for three days at a time. I wonder if she has her own camping pack? I hit the gym, and with time still on my transfer, I take the train back north. Soon, I'm crosstown for another lunch with the sister. On the way back home, I take a route past a lot which used to have a big homeless encampment. It was six months to a year ago. Or was it longer? It's between two streets which act as a on and an off ramp for an interstate highway. I pause to take a photo of another remarkable random piece of homeless refuse. It's a patent leather shoe resting atop a discarded bicycle tire. As I'm taking out my camera, I hear, "Who's that?" I turn to see a homeless guy, who then disappears behind a previously unnoticed little makeshift camp trailer. It's here on the lot. I'm next to a "no trespassing" sign. I consider taking a shot of the trailer and the sign together, but decide against it.
Monday. The curb next to the open field is once again full of campers and a huge trailer. And a boat. And, down at the camp at the guardrail, I see the first camper. It will be gone by the evening. Just down from the guardrail camp is a guy with a big backpack. He's walking along the bike trail with a broom, and he's playing with individual pieces of trash. Mondays we are open an hour later than the rest of the week. And I end up staying an hour and a half after close. That's around the time we stayed open before the pandemic. It's somewhere between 8 and 9 PM when I'm coming around the first golf course I pass on the way home. The moon is out and providing light along the trail. I come up behind a homeless cyclist. They reflect no light but remain completely dark, in what appears to be a long black down coat. And they ride the line separating the two lanes of the trail, cruising along at a greatly reduced speed coming off a downhill stretch. This week with Christmas at the very end is a bit chaotic. My hours are bouncing around. Wednesday. I work open to close. The guy who showed up this year where I work, the guy who works on customer shoes, he's been raving about his electric bike. He doesn't need his one which is not electric anymore. He offers it to me for just $100. I grab it. It's not bad at all. But the rear tube has issues. I take it home on the bus. Along the way, a couple of homeless are shouting at each other on the train. One pulls out a stun gun to show the other. The following day I get a lot done before work. I make it to thew bank to deposit my Christmas bonus check, and order more checks. On the way home I pass a pedestrian on the bike trail. He's a homeless guy walking toward the guardrail camp. The previous evening, I passed a couple walking from the camp the other direction. Tonight, this guy turns to look at me with a ghostly expression. After I get home from work, I head over to the Chinese place for dinner. I ask about the woman with the walker. I'm told that she's been in there with her three grade school kids running around. Grandkids? And she's been witnessed being dropped off outside. She can walk fine without a walker.
Friday is Christmas Eve. I went to bed early last night, because this morning I'm scheduled to open the store and work until only 1 PM. I'm out of the door at 4:30 AM. It's a dark and quiet ride with temps in the 40s F. I don't recall how long ago the half block of campers, next to the open field just before the bike trail, was swept of all dwellings. Not only is the curb full again, but another camper is again just around the corner. I'm pushing it to get to breakfast before I must begin my shift. At the guardrail camp, I hear a female cough inside a tent. The mattress with "This is liberal culture!" spray-painted on it is now on the ground. Through a final underpass and I break out of the trees along the riverbank. Past another golf course and a junkyard is a storage yard for the traffic management department. Stacked together is an entire line of signs which spell words with lights bulbs. One of them is operating, spelling out words warning of road construction ahead. I make it to the breakfast place with some 45 minutes to eat, before I must get to work. The same hostess was here yesterday, late in the morning, when I tried to get a bite before my afternoon shift. They were full up then and it was no go. I order a side of strawberries with my meal, and I'm told they haven't yet had their delivery. Ah, I did not know that. I check the hours on my gym today. I won't make it in time to work out, even though I'm leaving at 1 PM. I elect to ride home and take my newly purchased bike to the sporting goods supercenter. All I need is a back rack for it, and I have some kind of dividends. I'm a member with this place, which is some kind of cooperative. I call and speak to whoever answers the phone, who tells me service will take four days. I ride home and arrive in a light rain. If I won't be riding home, I change out of my riding gear and take the bike on the bus, and then on the train. When I get there, I'm told that not only will the dividends turn a $70 purchase into $18, but that a new rack can be put on in 20 minutes. Shit, on Christmas Eve? Zero complaints here. The tech even moves the rear reflector, which would otherwise be covered by the rack, to the end of the rack. I also ask him to decipher one of the shifters for me. I can't figure out how the high gears work. Turns out, it a kind of manual slide lever. Sort of a "grind 'em 'till you find 'em" design. Shifting by sixth sense. I like it. He tells me to stroll the place until he's done. I ask where I can get some food and am directed to a street with some civilization on it. I grab a salad from a pizza place, again open on Christmas Eve, and take it back to the supercenter. When I return, he's done. I head back to the train, which arrives shortly thereafter and returns me to a bus home. I haven't heard from my girlfriend. I ride over to her place and one of her sons invites me in. I spend an hour with her and her family. She will be with them tomorrow, and she suggests we make plans for the day after New Year's. Tomorrow, I will spend with the sister. What a day.
Christmas Day. It doesn't feel like a long ride across town, to the sister's temporary digs. When the lab results of her shoulder biopsy come back, if they are negative for infection, she will be outta there and back home. The place she has been staying is a half a block from one of the streets which make up an intersection, which is the center of downtown. It's lined with small businesses which are boarded up. One claim to fame of this avenue is having been profiled in a long-ago issue of Playboy Magazine. Before the economic burdens of the past decade, this street was one of those abuzz with both danger and adventure. If the commerce has dried up, so too does it feel as though the crime has left for greener blocks upon which to get its hustle on. Like the pedestrian mall not far away, the wind which blows along its sidewalks has replaced the life which used to throw down and bust out here. It's not unlike my ride this late Christmas morning, out of my neighborhood. I take my old route to work, when I was going downtown. As I approach the bike path along this particular stretch of trail, with its own line of homeless campers, I spot a homeless cyclist. It's another temperate day. He's in jeans, a T-shirt, no helmet and a gold chain. His bike is hitched to a bike trailer. A few yards away, on the other side of an underpass, a couple of homeless guys sit on a low concrete wall along the path. I'm up the exit ramp and across a pair of bridges, first across the river and the last over the interstate. Then up the sidewalk along a one-way thoroughfare, and around a corner with an empty lot. When I come back home, along the other side of this street, I will pass into a homeless couple coming up the sidewalk. The guy is carrying what appears to be a take-out box. And he looks familiar. He greets me with something I've heard him say to me before. "Hey, Bub." The lot has the small trailer out of which a homeless guy came, last time I was here, who ask me "Who's dat?" A tent has now joined the trailer, only partially erect. Across the following thoroughfare, one way in the opposite direction, and then across the light rail tracks. I used to turn toward downtown here, but I stay on this street all the way to another main bicycle artery north. Another couple of turns take me to a park where many folks are enjoying the day with their dogs. I watch four adults all is red and white Christmas caps. Along the drive through the park, I pass a stone monument. On its steps and benches are a handful of homeless. I arrive at the center where the sister has been staying. A group of four women, also in red and white hats, are exiting a minivan. Some comes out of the building with a dolly. One of the women decides that they are at the wrong place. I have a delicious Christmas meal with the sister and she has some gifts for me. Then it's home again. I won't be doing any grocery shopping this evening, as the supermarket is closed. The Vietnamese place behind where I live, which was open yesterday, is again open for business. So it's there I will be having Christmas dinner. It's a hipster holiday kind of thing. Or if your culture doesn't drink eggnog. The place is usually full of obvious university types. Christmas evening, it's more families and local residents.
Monday. I'm back on my corner after work. I'm on the sidewalk as a trio of middle school kids come out of an alley and across the street. One is in a little hoodie, with his hood pulled over his head and tied. These are chilly evenings this week. The one with the covered head says to me, "You look all funny bro." They come up onto the sidewalk as I move into the bike lane out on the street to go around them. I look at the kid who spoke. He says to me, "We'll take your bike real quick, real quick." Instead, they mosey on their way and the bike goes inside the home. I come out to check the mail and see the HOA President. We talk about one of the residents, and I mention that I don't see so many cars parked in front of the townhome complex anymore. He says that, this is because a resident who moved out was stealing cars, parking them there, and selling the parts. What an evening. On the following morning's ride to work, I come upon a spot on the trail directly across from the homeless guardrail camp. The first thing I notice is one police cruiser with its lights on at one end of the camp. The camp itself is surrounded by a new chain link fence. There a couple more police cruisers, one blocking the trail across from the camp. Beyond it are some of the homeless from the camp, and some of their stuff. Five-0 is sweeping the camp. A young woman in a red coat observes at the other end of the camp. She's from social services? And it isn't only this camp. Every camper I used to see, between here and the next big avenue north, is gone. Some nine hours later, I am coming back after work past this very spot. The campsite behind the fence is thoroughly empty. Some of the stuff which was there is now along the trail. A group of five or so homeless stand around in discussion. A small SUV is parked along the trail before it drives away.
On Wednesday's Facebook news feed, I see a post from my neighborhood's association page. To the west of my neighborhood, there is nothing unusual about hearing gunshots. Some residents heard what they thought sounded as if it was a machine gun going off. One resident posted in the same sentence, mentioning "2nd Amendment (to the US Constitution) rights" alongside "young kids" and those with "mental health" problems. I'm on the way to work out on the trail. Before I get to the now unoccupied guardrail, I'm looking across the river, where all remaining campers used to be. I spot a tiny camper and a little trailer there along the side of the road. They will be gone when I look for them the following evening. Down along the trail, across from the guardrail, there are a couple of small piles of trash and a stroller with bicycle wheels inside. A garbage truck is at one end of the former camp. Next to the trail is a police cruiser. Someone is speaking with an officer. "...medical examiner came out. Couldn't even do an exam," I hear the guy say. At work, I stay three hours past close, I'm so busy. On the way home, I come back past this spot. I notice that the fence around the former camp also covers the trailhead for a trail which goes west of here. The entire fence will be gone the following morning. Which is Thursday. Just before I get to the trail to work, I turn down the block with the campers next to the open field. There is now a second boat in one of the spaces on this block. This one is spray painted psychedelic colors. On the bow is spray painted "SMILE." The first boat now has bicycles inside. At work on this evening, I stay two hours past close. On Friday, I am given the entire shift, which ends early. But I'm opening. The GM offers to give me a ride, but to call him and remind him this morning. When I do, he now asks me to ride to the plant and meet him there. Which I may just be able to do and still make it to work on time. But I have to change back into my riding stuff, which I packed in preparation to get a ride. I manage to do so in jig time. And I'm out of the door. Down streets and around corners. I'm pedaling past the psychedelic SMILE boat and the bicycle boat. On the trail in the dark and just around a bend before I exit, turn a corner, and climb a bridge over the interstate. A few more streets and I'm there. Bike and gear in a van, and we're off. And I'm at work with 12 minutes to spare. That's how this small team gets it done. I leave work as flurries appear. The second snow of the season, and the first real snow has been forecast, on the last day of the year. Three inches predicted. No one answered at the gym, and the website was no help letting me know if they are open this afternoon. I swing past to discover that they closed two and a half hours ago. I grab a train north and bike to a short order place to see if they are open. No luck. I put on a pair of small safety glasses because the snow is coming at my eyes. I bike the rest of the way home among the flakes. The Chinese place looks open shortly before 5 PM. I put the bike inside and come back out to grab a quick dinner there. They just shut down. I decide against grocery shopping during a snow squall and instead run into the Vietnamese grocery to get a pound of salmon. I take it home and step out again to eat at my last resort, the Vietnamese restaurant behind my place. Open, they are. The flakes are coming down now. But some won ton soup and shrimp rolls satisfy.
This year is ending well for me. I just can't help but wonder. Has the weather finally decided that it shall produce no more fifty-degree days until the spring? Can I finally put away my shorts? The following morning will be eight degrees F. And will the age of the homeless camper become the dawn...of the homeless boat? More questoins than answers at this year's end. The bow implores us all to smile...
