After Easter brunch, I went home and got everything done which usually doesn't get done until the end of the week. Dishes. Clean the bathtub, which is once every several weeks. I wrote a check for the phone, once a month. I oiled my bike chain, once every few months. I decided to do something which I never do anymore. I rode my bike on a Sunday. After a buffet breakfast, I had a lunch/dinner later in the afternoon, riding down to a favorite place of mine and my lady. Lately, I've been riding the sidewalk of my boulevard, as opposed to a parallel side street. I actually encounter less traffic on the sidewalk of a busy boulevard than any residential street in my neighborhood. So I don't usually ride this way. I pass a restaurant, a nice brick building with a big front window. Ou in front of the entrance is a middle-aged homeless guy. He's in a tattered black leather jacket and has a cane. He talking to himself. I pass a gas station. Out front, in a wheelchair, is a guy in his 30s. He's in skin-tight pants with a cheetah design, and what appears to be a white bullet proof vest over a T-shirt. When I get to my neighborhood clinic, I watch a homeless woman in what appears to be workout gear. She's not in bad shape. She carries two full garbage-bags.
Areas with lower tree cover and greenspace tend to also have lower property values, leaving residents vulnerable to urban renewal displacement. "...folks who don't have much political clout...being relegated to...areas of town that also don't see much development." - Washington Park Profile, 4/2024
...a quadrant roadway...that operates as a path for all left turns. ...the first of its kind in the metro area... The city has put out videos to explain how to use the new roadway. The intersection is one of the busiest and most congested in [Littleton, a suburb of Denver. I haven't commuted to work through there in some years, but I recall the active intersection.] ...50,000 cars travel through it on [the highway along the river,] and about 25,000 cars pass through [the busy intersecting avenue.] At peak traffic hours, vehicles can stack for over a mile... "There's a lot of development still being constructed down south" [in the metro area's most expensive suburb, where an old coworker lived. Her husband was a part of the administration for a big maintenance company, and earned six figures. Regardless, they were priced out of the enormous municipality.] "...places like that...are coming up" [the highway] "in the future." The project also includes a bike path...along [the street along the river,] 8 feet away from the roadway, separated by landscaping...for bikes to ride in both directions... "It's about bicycles, pedestrians, transit use and vehicles..." - Littleton Independent, 3/21/2024
"People see a busy restaurant...and they think I'm rolling around in money. I have not made a profit since 2019." ...the sharp increase in minimum wage... That move "wasn't for us. A $1 increase in hourly pay costs $60,000 in my operation... ...people won't pay $5 for a cup of brewed coffee, so I can't rely on just raising prices. I have to constantly react. It takes twelve employees to generate every $1 million in restaurant sales versus roughly three employees at grocery, general merchandise and clothing stores. ...homeless fentanyl dealers...scare away customers 24/7... Everybody in expansion mode is expanding outside of Denver." Brand new concepts are opting for the suburbs... "So many of us have leveraged our homes. We've walked away from higher-paying jobs." - Westword, 4/25-5/1/2024
"There's going to be a brief period of peace and calm. Optimistic cleaning up, I suppose, and a lot of free money around. A lot of goods to be used up. No more future to save for, no virtue in thrift after all." The bone-dry streets had been cleared of the dead and other debris by a kind of pressed militia... - The End of the World News, by A. Burgess, 1983
Monday. I awake with only 3 or 4 hours of sleep. I know I won't get back to sleep. This means I have time to ride all the way, even if I'm opening. I work open to close, and in the afternoon some light wet snow turned to light rain. The rain is on and off. It's off when I leave. Along the way, is comes back on. I'm closing in on my street when I pass a home with its trash out on the curb. It includes a couple of lawn chairs. The frames are aluminum and the seat is clear plastic. They are light enough that I pick one up and realize that I can balance it on my back. A woman comes out of her front door to let me know that she has two more on her back patio. I tell her that one is all I can handle. Tuesday. I wake up after 6 AM. I don't recall the last time I slept this late. I get the call to come in two hours early. Again I am headed for a bus to work. I'm asked to come in a couple of hours early. I head for the stop, and am coming down a residential street off a private university. Up ahead in my lane is a homeless cyclist riding toward me. No helmet, big backpack, camouflaged gear. I move next to the curb, and he gives me a toothless grin as he continues past, headed the wrong way. I'm sitting on the concrete at the stop when I hear what I think is a vehicle in the distance behind me. It sounds as if it's doing doughnuts. It turns out to be a homeless guy steering a dolly with a bad wheel. On the dolly is a big blue plastic container. On top of the container is an empty long and skinny cardboard box. He squeaks his way along the sidewalk. The bus arrives with a new driver being trained. AS a result, the bus is late. I'm putting into the fare box my two dollars and seventy-five cents. Someone on the bus says out loud, "Let's go." I get to work twenty minutes late, and in the afternoon I end up staying two and a half hours past close, finishing everything up. I find a route from work to the train home, which takes me fifteen minutes less than the one I've been using. Now I have one of those moments which are rare anymore. I'm sitting on the train platform as the evening closes in on 8 PM. It's about 60 degrees F with a slight breeze. I'm watching the sun set behind the Rockies. At a bench a couple of yards away is a young homeless guy. He's surrounded by his own bike, a canvas cart, and piles of his belongings. The train collects us, takes me three stops to where I disembark and head for my boulevard. I'm in a takeout pizza place behind where I live, listening to the manager and a driver discuss a suicide yesterday. North of here, perhaps fifteen blocks, is a highway overpass. Another overpass sits a city block to the west. Someone threw themselves off the bridge. I saw this confirmed by a post on Nextdoor, where someone asked why the highway onramp was shut down. When I get home, I have a message from my coworker. Can I either work for her tomorrow or come in at 9? In her message, she tells me she's going to bed. I do the same.
In the morning, I'm up early enough to get to work when we open. I leave her a message that I will do so. Again, I head for the bus. The same new driver is being trained. It's somehow an even busier day than yesterday. A late drop off keeps me at work long enough to just get out a half hour after we close, and make the bus. During my early morning shifts, I've been stopping into the doughnut at the opposite end of this strip of shops. Walking into a doughnut shop full of local Caucasian residents takes me back to some other decade. Keeping their kids close, they apprehensively ask for specific flavors. I get the impression that their lives are like rail lines, onto which they as families are locked and compelled to stay within the singular direction of the rail. As they are perpetually propelled forward. They are customers as no others I can recall. When a group are in there, the last thing any of them would ever do is browse. With specific flavors in mind, they recite these lists directly from memory. Back at my home, my toilet is backed up. When I show up to work on Thursday, I call my boss who gives me a recommendation for a drain guy. I had first called a major plumbing chain, who my old landlord used. I work so much, they are not available when I'm home. Interesting turn of events. Been using them since the 1990s. They've been to my current home before. Left a business card. But time marches on. But I need to wait before I make an appointment. My coworker tells me about one of her sons. Last year I believe it was, he was outside a strip club. He carries a gun. He and his wife are licensed. Outside this club, he shot someone in the leg. he claimed self-defense. He was out on bail, and I assume there have been hearings between then and now. His court appointed lawyer recommended recently that he take a plea deal. Sixteen to thirty-two years. My coworker wants a few days off next week. I don't know when she will be back this coming week. She already wants Monday off. The son asked the other son, who was released last July, 'Who do I hang with, the blacks or the Mexicans?' The way m coworker tells it, her son honestly has no clue how he got here. I go in at 9 AM on Friday. She's going back to court with her son. He fired his first court-appointed lawyer, and he has another one. And she must get up to speed on his case. She's going to ask the judge for an extension, so he isn't yet stuck with the current plea deal. And I'm opening again on Monday. She will let me know sometime then if she needs more time off that week.
...in the meantime, I'm headed for the bus again. Last night I caught upon sleep. I'm climbing the bridge over the train and highway. Traffic is bumper to bumper. Along with the line of vehicles, a flatbed tow truck comes over the hill. He honks as he passes me. Is he honking at me? Is his bed too wide for the lane and in danger of hitting me? If so, I don't see any oncoming edge of a flatbed. If I push it, I may be able to grab breakfast at the diner across the busy avenue from the bus stop. I'm over the bridge and coming down the residential street near a private university. It's the street where homeless cyclists like to come at me in the wrong lane. This morning, I weave around a family crossing the street. I pause at another crosswalk for a throng of college students. I hit the diner twenty minutes before the bus is due. I ask how fast they can make me eggs to go. Ten minutes I'm told. I get them in five. I make the bus and am at work when requested. After work, the sister picks me up. She wants to go to dinner, back at the place where we had brunch. It's in a neighborhood north of the one in which I work. Along the same boulevard. Instead of the Caucasian retirees and their extended families down here, the restaurant is in a neighborhood of young Caucasian couples. They live in brick and brownstone. With an officer patrolling the streets for cars of non-residents, illegally parked. The couples are out on bicycles or walking hand in hand. Saturday. 'Tis early April and the cherry blossoms are blooming. This week has seen our first days in the 70s F. And the trail has seen its first gaggle of neon Lycra-clad cyclists. This week, I was approaching the trail where some of them were racing along, coming to the bottom of the bridge back over the train and highway. Just before entering the trail with its springtime racers, I passed a homeless cyclist. Black clothes, stringy mop of grey hair, no helmet, and something hitched to the rear of his own bicycle. It's a makeshift trailer, converted from a wheelchair. The ride home from work takes place during an approaching windstorm. After I get home, I go out for dinner, and it's a gale force wind. I hit the hay and awake at 2 AM to what I think is the sound of gunshots in a howling wind, both of which appear to have subsided by morning.
The sister is off on her last slate of weekend cultural outings before her last joint replacement next month. So, I'm on my own getting to and from the gym. And this is a good thing. Because, for I don't know how many months, I've been working extra hours and open to close. It has completely collapsed my diet. It's time for me to return to it. This includes riding my bike at least to the transit system. I leave the house without breakfast, and I have both that and lunch at the Irish pub-like restaurant with Hispanic kitchen staff. The place is full and very loud. Not with sports fans or drunk guys. It's really loud families. The loudest are a couple of adjoining tables with what appear to be sorority girls. The noise actually rises above and then falls below the pain threshold. Outside, on a bench in front of the place, is a middle-aged couple. The guy is telling her, "This country used to have everything. Everything. And we threw it away." It's a short ride to the gym. After a workout and a hot tub soak, I decide to take the bus back home. It drops me just down the street from home. It's a quick ride there where I throw the bike inside and grab a bus back down the street to pick up some groceries for work. I just haven't had the time to grab them at a supermarket on the way to work. I take the bus back home with the usual assortment of late afternoon Sunday characters from my boulevard. Sunday late afternoon, it's usually crowded on this bus. This is the very route, between here and the few blocks to my home, upon which a grandfather was shot by a fourteen-year-old. At the stop in front of the supermarket when a woman with a cast on her leg and a walker approaches me. She tells me that she's debating whether or not to attempt to cross the street to catch a bus to a train station crosstown, or take my bus up to another train station. She can barely move, even with the walker. She appears to not want to put any weight on the leg with the cast. I watch her sit down on the eat of the walker, and I'm waiting for her to fall over. She tried using her good leg to pull herself forward, but she makes no progress. She stands back up and decides to attempt a crossing of the busy avenue at the light on the corner. The bus turns through the intersection and collects all of us and our bags of groceries. Down the avenue and around the corner is a busy stop. Passengers pile on. At the next stop, four youth all dressed in black, pants slung low, come aboard. At another stop, more passengers climb the steps. The last one alerts the driver that a woman is yelling for him to wait for her. A young woman is at the front of a shopping cart, keeping a couple of rollaway suitcases from falling off. A middle-aged guy is at the rear of the cart. he carries her suitcases on, the exits to carry a big wicker hamper on. He then tells the driver that he's not joining her for the ride. He exits again as the driver lets off the brakes. The guy outside yells for the driver to stop. The driver opens the door as the guy brings on one more smaller shoulder bag inside of a white plastic trash bag. Okay. That's it.
Monday. I awake after 4 hours of sleep. I know that I'm not getting back to sleep. I get up, and 4 or 5 hours later I load all the groceries I purchased last night into several bags, which all go on my back. I'm out the door and yet again headed for a stop for my bus to work. I whip down dark streets. A cat crosses in front of me one way. A young woman runs across in front of me the other way. At the bus stop, I'm worried. I'm catching the first bus of the day on this route, and the first one likes to come early. I make a call to the transit system, to use its automated information service. I put in the code for this bus stop. Instead of telling me if I've missed the bus, an automated female voice replies, "I'm having trouble processing your request. I'm having trouble processing your request. I'm having trouble processing your request." Fortunately, I myself am not having any trouble processing my eyesight. The bus is coming. If you're reading this, please let the automated voice know that the next bus is here... Regardless of lack of sleep, eleven hours pas as a blur. I awake Tuesday and, Jesus, I've had a full night's sleep. Just like that, I step out of yesterday's stupor and back into consciousness. I still am expected at work an hour before my usual shift today, and I will come to find out I'm also expected at work an hour early tomorrow. I'm out the door to the clinic a few blocks down my boulevard, to pick up a couple of prescription refills. Then it's down the street to the bank, for more quarters for the bus. Then I ride crosstown to the diner across from my bus stop. Again my only hope of being to work early is the bus. In the diner, I only have 20 minutes before my ride shows up. I'm sticking to my diet and only order a diet soda, instead of a burger or an omelet. Bus still, here I am back at this diner, regardless of my change in eating habits. This strikes me as funny. Then I'm across the avenue and on the bus, and shortly I'm at work. The day flashes past like a runaway downhill boulder. I stay just late enough to grab a salad from across the street, polish it off at the bus stop, and grab a bus to an avenue with a stop for a connecting bus. Along the way there, I'm seated across from a guy in a jersey for the city hockey team. He spends most of the ride with his face down in his phone. I hear his ask me something, and I look up to see his youthful face. His bristling beard. He notices the visor on my bike helmet is from another helmet. It's held on by a sophisticated employment of rubber bands. he wants to know if the visor is "from a motorcycle helmet?" The stop for my connecting bus is on the same corner as the diner. I'm off one bus and across the boulevard to this other one. College types wander past. An Indian guy gives me a wary glance as he walks past me on the bench. Waiting to cross the avenue is some guy with styled hair and a vest over a buttoned-down shirt. The bus arrives in no time to rescue from this young adult mass self-consciousness. I'm out in front of my neighborhood supermarket, in and out with yet more groceries for work, and unlocking my bike. I notice a young woman approach me. She's wearing a blanket, and pulls a cart with some kind of scarf trailing out of it. She asks me, "Do you have any blues?" I reply, "What?" and she repeats the question. I know blues are narcotics. Blues used to refer to downers. How I deal with street people, who assume that I understand them, is to reply as if I have no clue. I'm interested in how they react to those who indeed have no idea what they are talking about. I ask, "What the hell are blues?" She looks away, looks back at me, and says, "Never mind."
"We've had a homeless issue for quite some time but now for the first time we have an organization that's there..." "They have no idea what the day-to-day actually brings to the surrounding blocks." ...food assistance, day shelter support, mental health services, community events and outreach, personalized navigation, employment programs and communication skills training. - Littleton Independent, week of 3/28/2024
...according to the Denver' Auditor's Office which...released a report on homeless encampments just last year...didn't like what it saw. ...the city was not tracking expenses...for homeless encampment-related contractors... "...not fully compliant with...equitable access to services or their stored personal belongings." [One program to end homelessness] was a failure. "The whole focus [has] changed. - Westword, 4/11-17/2024
...Applied Behavior Analysis (ABA). ...reinforcing specific behaviors with the hope that...neurodivergent individuals...will continue to repeat them. ...this approach...puts the agency in the hands of the client. - Colorado Parent, 4/2024
Wednesday. I get the call. Never mind coming in to work an hour early. My coworker wants me there two hours early. Then she tells me that she forgot today is her birthday. Had she remembered, she would have taken the day off. I race to a stop for my bus to work. Again. Jesus. The bus will be here inside 15 minutes. I run into the diner. How fast can they make me a couple of eggs. Not a burger or omelet, no more of that. I'm told a couple of minutes. And the place is as good as its word. You bet I leave a tip. When I get home after work, I get another call. Can I work for my coworker tomorrow? I call a number for my doctor's service, and i cancel my appointment. And just like that, I'm in bed. I wake up Thursday with more sleep than I had Monday morning. Making appointments and then cancelling them. I'm not sure there is a joke here, this is simply my life. I'm out the door before sunrise. It's still cold out here at this hour. I'm impressed with how many people are up at 5 AM, driving somewhere. Soon, I'm turning onto the block next to an open field. Actually, I turn onto a new concrete path from one street to the sidewalk of an intersecting street. I pull in behind an electric scooter steered by a guy obviously listening to music. He's bouncing his butt up and down in the dark. He jumps the scooter off the curb onto the street. I don't know if this is good for the scooter, or what kind of suspension it has. He scoots up the steep hill I used to take home. On the way to a stop for my bus to work, I'm on the trail for just a few short yards. In that short distance, I pass two cyclists. It can't yet even be a quarter after 5. I catch my bus, get to work, again grab breakfast across the street, and the day goes past in a flash. For perhaps only the second time this week, I ride toward home. I first need to stop at a supermarket along the way, for a product available only at this grocer. But first, I stop into a Chik-Fil-A for dinner. There are employees here with I don't know how many different uniforms, all working here at the same place. One colored shirt is worn by a teenaged employee sitting with a friend. They converse in Spanish. Sitting across from him is an employee with his face covered in acne and buried in his phone. He's in a different colored shirt, the same as a pudgy young woman at another booth. Another male in the same shirt as the last two comes over to hang out with the pair of teenagers. A tall customer with grey in her hair is limping around the store. She approaches the male who wandered over to the teens. She asks him if anyone is in the bathroom. He enlists the help of the female in the same-colored shirt. At a table on the other side of this place are a couple of employees who appear to be a few years older than the others. Each is in a shirt which is a different color from the others, and each a different color from the other. The male is in a shirt the same color as other behind the counter who appear to be management. The female of the pair is in a shirt, the color of which is to be seen nowhere else in this place. She must be the big boss. The pair appear to be having an upper management level conversation.
I awake after 6:30 AM. This is the time I'm usually at work on the days I open. Friday is a big morning. I'm headed for a station crosstown, where I need to stop into a branch of my bank close to the camera shop. I'm on the platform of my usual station. A woman wanders up in a knit cap and winter jacket over her purple scrubs. She's singing along to music from her headphones. She wanders off before my train collects me and deposits me a handful of stops along the line. I stop into a deathburger for breakfast, across from the train station. I used to live on this boulevard almost twenty years ago. Then I ride a handful of blocks to my bank, where I haven't been in years. This branch has grown. The guy who withdraws my cash tells me that it's the second busiest branch. My coworker keeps putting more money into my paycheck, from the hours I work for her. I ask for cash in Spanish. The clerk laughs and tells me he's studying Spanish, as is girlfriend wants their kids to grow up learning it. From there, I reach the camera shop a half hour before thy open. I could have done this trip with only the bike and still made it here on time. I decide to venture across the street to a shopping center. I stop into a confection store which arranges and delivers. I'm handed me a brochure with all the details. This will be perfect for my lady, perhaps for Mother's Day. Back at the camera shop, another ten minutes to open. I watch a delivery truck drop off crates of processed film and other orders, fresh from their lab up in Boulder. As he leaves, the shop opens and I'm in and out. From here, I could simply ride back to the train and go one stop to a bus to work. Or, I could ride straight to the boulevard with my bus to work. I decide instead to ride straight to work from here. And I make it with two minutes to spare.
This month has seen the return of golfers to the golf courses, and on a couple of days, the river surfers to the river. Friday is the first day this year that I ride home from work in shorts. And the first time this year I put sunblock everywhere, and as soon as I leave work, the clouds roll in front of the sun. On Sunday, my lady lets me know she's on her way to pick me up for lunch. I wait out on the sidewalk in front of my place. A guy wanders past. He's carrying an empty wooden spool, the kind around which one may wind wire, as in a WW II movie. He has an unlit cigarette in his mouth. He asks me for a light. I still don't smoke. She arrives and e go down the boulevard to a diner, where she likes the coffee. It's just about noon. The place is packed. A couple leave and I ask the manager if we can grab their booth. She directs us to a list, of which there is only one person ahead of us. The manager sounds Greek, and she's clearly in charge. During lunch, my lady tells me about upcoming surgery on both shoulders, requiring her to be out of work for nine months. Which she can't afford to do. She's suddenly looking at reorganizing her finances. Across the street is a supermarket., and she mentions she needs to do some grocery shopping. Suddenly, I'm shopping with someone who owns a car. Afterward, I'm back home. I plan on calling this drain guy to find out when he wants me to be home tomorrow. I've called him twice. The last time he told me he would be out my way tomorrow. Twice he asked me to text him my address. Twice I did. He has yet to respond. But first I decide to bail the filthy water out of my toilet bowl, where it's been for a week. Then, even if the clean water won't drain, I can put it into the bowl. I pull the handle. For the first time in a week, it flushes just fine. Mine is not to question why. I text the drain guy. For reasons I probably will never understand, his services are not currently required.
It finally happened. My portable Smith-Corona, with its familiar stuck 'h' key and its jet engine takeoff noises, has been retired, and a sleek, silent home computer/word processor now squats in its place. It's a handsome instrument, more like a rocket console, I think, than a typewriter, and it gives my words a certain austere notability as they glow... But...I hadn't reckoned with my old technophobic brain. ...how is a low-tech writer to feel at home in a universe [of] metaphors, oxymorons, and epigrams... An entire "file" of written material...could exist...the result of an...electrical surge while another file...might remain lodged in the computer's brain... [As for] computer games. ...asteroid belts and black holes... ...cave-dwelling gnomes... ...what's so very fascinating about conversing with a...gnome that has a 100-word vocabulary? - OMNI Magazine, 2/1983
To buy or not to buy, that is the question... ...if you wait six months or so, the same machine will probably be cheaper, and far more powerful ones will be available. ...this year, the...dilemma...is at its peak. ...new computers are appearing on the...market...about one a day. ...bits are assembled into units of 8, known as bytes, or 16, known as words. One byte is roughly equivalent to one letter of text. "Look for a bunch of new portables. They'll have...two micro-floppy disk drives... They won't weigh more than ten or twelve pounds, and they'll cost only three thousand to four thousand dollars..." Five years from now...computers will shrink to the five-pound range... - OMNI Magazine, 3/1983
Monday. I'm glad my toilet is working again, regardless of however mysterious is the return to full function. My coworker let me know Friday that I could come in at my usual time. Monday, she calls to ask me to come in 3 hours early. This month, she had shown me video on her phone of her two sons doing wheelies on motorcycles and 4-wheelers. She made it sound like a hobby. Tuesday evening, she calls me at home that one of her sons wrapped his motorcycle around a tree and was in surgery. Can I work for her? Sure. Before I leave for work, I put my recycle can out. When I get home from work, for the first time in my recycling history, my recycle can has been stolen. I ring the bell of another resident in my complex. He's one of two people running the HOA. He tells me another resident had his trash can stolen. He'll order me another. I also mention my possessed toilet. He tells me that the city is putting in new water pipes, and silt has caused some blockage. My coworker calls me. She's going to take one more day off. Thursday. I'm up before my alarm and out the door for a ride all the way to work. Shortly after 4 AM, a light drizzle falls and continues all day. On my corner, a woman yells somewhere in the dark. An old pickup stalls at a gas station. I turn down a street which I follow past my neighborhood supermarket. A few blocks down from there, the street jogs a few blocks before it continues. Where it jogs, the other direction is one working class home with a big bay window. It's all lit up. I detour that way, and when I'm in front of it, I see strings of lights, red, white, and blue. They form a US flag in the entire window. I'm down and across, and down a street and across again, this time to the trail. Down where I change trails, the garbage trucks at the dump are starting their engines. Drivers are all honking good morning to each other. The drizzle has abated by the following morning, when my coworker has returned to work. Her son has been released. I stop at a supermarket off the trail, for items I decided not to pick up yesterday. My coworker expects me at work two hours early. I first stop at the bakery across the street. I can see outside that the drizzle has started up again. At work, my coworker tells me about her son's motorcycle crash. He was sure to collect from the crash a special bag he wears when riding his motorcycle. Which many riders such as he wear, she tells me. It holds his gun. Toward close, the rain turns to snow. I grab dinner at the same bakery and take the bus to the train, from which I ride home.
...at Subway...he would pull out his own bottle of ketchup... ....lived unhoused....a fixture around...Arapahoe Village shopping center. ...drinking hot chocolate ...at Starbucks, watching television at the Garlic Knot Pizza & Pasta or greeting visitors at King Soopers. ...March 25...he was struck and killed by a car... ...the roads and parking lot near where [he] was killed are dangerous... ...many didn't even know his name... ...a pillar of the community. "The guy's presence was a fire hose of good vibes, like the Buddha reincarnated into Santa...from a more enlightened universe." ...he never accepted any...food or money. ...on very cold nights, he [slept] in someone's garage. [He owned a] shopping cart full of...a miniature car collection. ...had money... ...even had a condo [purchased by his family, with whom he] didn't share much... ...instead of living in it, he [made] his shopping cart his world. [Perhaps] because of complicated family dynamics - or...may have just preferred a simpler life [allowing] him to build a larger family in the community... '[In the supermarket] he's sitting there because it's raining outside... I'm telling you what, in [municipalities closer to downtown,] they wouldn't let him do that. They wouldn't let him sit in Starbucks and sleep in the chair. They wouldn't let him go to the Garlic Knot and feed him. This community, I love [how] this shopping center...took care of [him]. - Littleton Independent, week of 4/11/2024
Sunday is productive. I do the week-old dishes in the sink. I put out my handful of lawn ornaments in my front garden plot. In the evening I get the call. Can I start at 9 AM? Monday morning. I wake up at 3 AM and roll over. I don't recall that it was much later when I decided to take another glance at the clock again. It's now 6 AM. I've had plenty of sleep. I'm up. A half hour later and I'm out of the shower and repacking the bag I take to work. There are fluctuating temps in the forecast for the week. I'm out the door. I've seen the homeless camper from the 1980s around this month. Including yesterday in the sister's car. This morning, it's along the curb next to an open field. It's in front of the literally falling apart pickup truck. I have no idea how it moves under its own power. The bed is weighed down by the junk piled high. I'm on and off the trail, up and across the bridge over the train and highway. The next boulevard is busy. The one after that has a stop for my bus to work. This boulevard is choked with traffic. The bus is unusually packed, full of students. I grab the last seat I see. This bus uncharacteristically crawls along. We stop in front of a supermarket and pick up a middle-aged guy in an apron. He doesn't see his hat fall on the floor, and a student alerts him to it, picking it up for him. He's appreciative. Some students get out at a Catholic school. We pull up couple of yards from my own stop. The driver lets more students out, closer to the corner than the stop. Across the street is another private academy. The long day at work is passed in a flash. I ride home but make a stop before I get home, at the clinic down the street from my boulevard. I want to find out when they open tomorrow morning, so I can get blood drawn. I had an email alerting me that it's time to check my PSA level. It's after 7 PM. I step inside, and but for the pharmacy, everyone is gone. I wander over toward the receptionists' windows. A tech wanders out of a door and motions me into the blood lab, which is still open. And just like that, I get my blood drawn. Tuesday. I got the call with a request from my coworker. She proposes a schedule for myself for the rest of the week. Eleven AM this morning and of course Friday. Eleven tomorrow. And she would like me to work all day tomorrow. I'm out the door to the bank for more dollars for the bus. Parked at the back of my townhome parking lot is a pickup truck with a hand grenade window sticker. Along the way, I see that the '80s camper has moved to the long street a block from my own. Further along, I get behind a dilapidated pickup truck making its way around the corner, its bed piled high with junk. This can't be the one I saw earlier this week. I'm in and out of the bank and decide to take the train. I'm on the platform when I watch a young guy come off the train tracks. Grey pall over his T-shirt. Over his jeans. Over hid dreadlocks and skin. The train drops me a couple of stations along the line, from where I ride the rest of the way to work. With the wait for the train, I'm not sure how much time I actually save together with the wait for the train. This is how you roll the dice with the transit system.
Afternoon of the Black Clad Cyclists
When I get home after work, I have a message from the camera shop. My phots are ready all ready. Jesus, has it already been three effing weeks gone past in a blur? This means that I'm headed crosstown before work. I've also been trying to get to my investment broker's office to drop off a check. If I hit the photo shop when they open, I can be at work before I'm expected and hit my broker's office. It's another mad cap bike ride. As of yet, I have no idea how mad... I make the three city blocks with time to grab breakfast at a deathburger. I get to the camera shop with three minutes to spare. They claim that they can't find my order. It turns out that it was put in a random location, because it has a small box with it for my negatives. Then I'm off down the boulevard sidewalk. I run into a branch of my bank to find out if my paycheck has yet cleared. It appears to have done so. I continue down the sidewalk, stopping to take off my long pants. Underneath are my bike shorts. The morning is warming up. I come upon a country club, the late married former owners of which used to be customers of mine some 25 years ago. This is where the sidewalk stops on this side of the street. I follow a walkway from one parking lot into another. From there, the walkway leads onto a golf course. I can see a bike trail, but it's behind a fence. I go off trail, onto the grass, and along a narrow strip between the boulevard and a drop down onto the trail from the top of a tunnel. I make my way down the slope to the trail and I'm back on track. Through another tunnel, I turn onto the boulevard with my store. halfway there, a couple of fighter jets race overhead. They must be headed downtown to fly over some kind of sports event. Baseball game? Soon, I'm at the bakery across the street from work. I order a salad for lunch. I mention to a new employee that another employee I know is fluent in Spanish. She tells me she's seen him effortlessly cash out pickups for Uber drivers who don't speak English. Hmm. I wonder if they are newly arrived immigrants who found work for which they don't have to wait to learn another language? Interesting. I tell the employee I will be back in a few. My broker's office is around the corner. Sure, it's there. For some reason, it's closed. I collect my salad and cross the street. Another day flashes by. I leave work and make my way to a parking lot behind where I work. There's a big flower sale set up. I spend $60 on six flowers and put them into a plastic trash bag which I then affix to a backpack. Then it's off for home. The trail is a collection of the usual cyclists come out of the woodwork, now that temperatures have risen. But instead of the typical neon Lycra, everyone is dressed in black. Black is the new neon. Okay. After the Caucasian Lycra cyclists are others, also in black. There are a pair of kids on bikes. The younger is in a black T-skirt. The older is in a black buttoned down open shirt and black knit cap. They are followed by a grandmother with a red bandana around her head. She's in black as well. Her weathered face is sunken. I wonder if the three are related? I make it home with my new flowers. I was told by the seller that this weekend will be a freeze. I'll keep them indoors and in front of the sliding glass door.
Friday has turned into a dark and stormy evening as I write this. It began at the stop for my bus home after work. There were broken rain clouds among the blue sky. Another passenger and I huddled each under our own tree as the first drops fell. We passed through a shower on the bus and it had stopped by the time we reached the train. I rode home from the there, and made it before the downpour. Coming down the long street a block from my own, I watched lightening blots strike the ground ahead. My flowers are getting all the water they could want. Twenty-four hours ago, 'twas threatening rain then as well. Threatening a lot of rain. Before I left work, I spotted a flash of lightning in a thunderhead. First lightening of the season. I decide to head for the train to avoid the rain. Also, I have a day pass which is still good, which I was mistakenly given on this morning's bus instead of a time limited transfer. When I get there, I watch my train go past. Fuck it. I cross the highway to a deathburger, and a salad for dinner. Then I run into a supermarket and collect a couple of groceries for work, before I head back to the train. Either I just missed another one, or if I'm lucky it's late. I call the transit system info line. It's not late. The last train was cancelled due to no driver available. Well, I'm glad I didn't miss it. It's just that I don't recall ever hearing about a missing driver causing a particular train or bus to be "cancelled." I have a half hour to read my book which I seem to avoid on a regular basis. Then when I do crack it open, I end up enjoying it. Talk about passive/aggressive. The train collects me and drops me three stops down the line, where I grab a free newspaper and a bus for home. I step out back on my boulevard. A guy in the bus shelter, with a beer in his hand, nonetheless asks me if I have a beer. Now I know I'm back in my neighborhood. A couple of hours after I'm home, it begins raining. I put my flowers just outside my back door.
In the morning, I get a call at ten to six AM. Can I come in at seven? Not with a shower and brushed teeth. I can be there at eight. I'm halfway to a stop for my bus to work when I'm coming down a residential street toward a private university campus. I'm joined by a middle-aged female cyclist with a bendable brace from her thigh, over her knee, and down to her calf. She turns down an alley. I run into the cafe across from the stop. In less than five minutes, they make me two eggs and toast. At the stop I make it into a sandwich. I'm next to the bus bench, where a young guy sits in conversation on his phone. It sounds as if he's speaking to one of his parents. "I can't do that. You won't fucking let me use your car!" There's a handful of us waiting for the bus. From a distance, a guy coming down the sidewalk stands out. He has the craziest grin on his toothy mouth. As he walks slowly past, he holds the plastic rings of a six-pack with a single yellow can of Coors. Another can is in his other hand. He doesn't wait for the bus. Just as well. Again at this hour, it's packed. When I get home from work on Friday, I bring my flowers back inside. They stay there until I get home from work Saturday. The rain doesn't stop into Saturday, and in the afternoon it turns to snow. The snow has turned back into rain when I'm home. I decide to plant my flowers now. The lowest overnight during the coming week is forecast to be 34 degrees F. But with the pots soaked, it's a snap to plant these things. And I don't have to water them. Sunday I am sans the sister. I make up my mind that I'm going to ride to the gym. No bus, no train. Instead, cardio. The rain has stopped and there's broken clouds. I leave in lined pants, long sleeves and a windbreaker. Balaclava included. I join the trail toward the connecting one. Along the riverbank are those who appear to be volunteers doing cleanup. Next to the trail, in a parking lot, is a tent with coolers manned by a single individual. On the top of the tent, it reads, "Save Our Rivers."
I know this trail goes to the train station past the station across from the gym. I remember that I don't want to go that far. I exit at a familiar boulevard and recognize the street the bus takes to the gym. I stop at the bar and grill just down the way. At the small bar is a young couple. The guy is in a white T-shirt. On the back is, "American Cowgirls love them rough hands." A pair of guys come in with helmets. They have a child with a helmet. I notice that one of the guys actually wears a climbing helmet. I find a wonderful dish for my diet. A BLT with egg and a small bowl of berries. I eat and I'm off to the gym. After a workout and a hot tub soak I'm back on the trail. I discover I can pick up the trail a couple blocks from the gym, right next to the sister's favorite breakfast place. By the afternoon, it's just warm enough to take off my shirt. I'm approaching the trailhead where I exit onto the street. I stop some yards away, with the river on one side and a golf course on the other. There's a big tree log cut into a bench where I stop and do what I never do, even on the weekends. I take a rest. I listen to the river swollen with three days of rainwater gently babble over rocks. The sun comes in and out of the clouds. I take off my sandals and sit in nothing but my bike shorts. I watch the scores of cyclists and dog-walkers, from back where I entered the trail, continue along up here. I close my eyes for a moment. If I don't get a call, tonight or tomorrow morning, to open the store tomorrow, I can finally get to the bank and swing by the supermarket for more diet sodas, and drop a check off at my broker's office. And in two days it will be May. And at the end of that month, the pools open. Or I may be getting ahead of myself. Enjoy the rest of today. One crisis at a time.
...a newer type of housing product known as "build-to rent," or BTR... "People like us don't want to go back into apartments. We are looking for that mov-up, quality product with size and space and some amenities." ...a community under professional management with other renters...shared services like snow removal, landscaping and combined utilities. ...build-to-rent offers them. "Forever" renters are a core market... [One such community of] 18 townhomes [may be found] just off [my] Boulevard [some 40 blocks north of me.] The faster a community can grow, the sooner...grocery stores, restaurants and service providers can come in. - The Denver Post
I Guess Ten (AM) Is Out of the Question Huh?
That moment on the log bench. Time had somehow stopped. I'd like to stumble into more of those moments. Right there. One day is on/work all day. The other is off/simply come in early. One is a day with not enough sleep. The other is a wonderful night's sleep. I'm home, a half hour before my bedtime. An hour and a half before I would otherwise be in bed if I knew I was opening the store tomorrow. This is when I get the call. Can I work open to close tomorrow? It's gonna be an on day. Though I'm up early enough to catch an earlier bus, I elect to head out for a bus which will put me there just when we open. This isn't how I roll, but it will make for a shorter day. It's approaching 6;30 AM as I'm coming up a residential street next to a private university campus. It's a street upon which homeless cyclists enjoy approaching me head on in my lane. Yet on this morning, as the sun just appears over the horizon, the elderly guy in my lane is going the right way. The only problem with him being in the street is that he has no vehicle. He is instead pushing a collapsible shopping cart. Slowly. The cart is just big enough for the full garbage bag inside. Oh, what's that you ask? Is the last day of the month a hopeful time of peace? This is my life we're talking about. Just when I get up with a wonderful night's sleep. At 6:30 AM, I've had eight and a half hours. I fantasize about stopping at the bank, about more diet soda from the supermarket, about finally dropping off a check at my broker's office. ...and I get the call. Can I come in an hour early? Sure. I can do that and still get everything else done. "I guess ten (AM) is out of the question huh?" asks my coworker. She's calling just as I'm leaving the house. If I leave now, there's every chance I can make the bus and be there at 10. But I will have to move my ass. No bank, no sodas, no broker's office. I'm out the door. Across and down, around and up. Down the incline and around, and then I'm on the trail for the few yards it takes to get to the bridge. I haul myself up and across the highway and train. At the crest I race across a pair of onramps and another pair of exit ramps during the final seconds of a green light. At the base of the bridge, a semi driver motions me across a street before he makes a left. Through a green light at a busy intersection. Onto the same street with the guy who likes to push his groceries down the middle of one lane. Since at least last week, a police speed sign has been parked along the curb. Other days, I've passed it doing between 2 and 5 mph. This morning, I'm doing 10. The campus at this hour is full of groovy college kids. Ahead of me is a young woman in calf high boots and a long flowing skirt who stepped right out of 1978. She takes long steps, her skirt flowing, right into the bike lane I take to one street with the corner with my bus stop. I turn into the parallel drive and sneak into the bike lane at an angle when I'm past her. A gaggle of students have hit a button for flashing crosswalk sign. I pick my moment to weave through them, as well as around another oncoming bike. More students on the sidewalk. I move onto a thin strip of concrete along the curb of an avenue, and follow it to an expanse paved with brick. And I'm at the stop, with four minutes to spare. The good news is I will squeeze an extra hour into my paycheck. The bad news is I'm some kind of a maniac.
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