July 2016, Religious Cultist With A Weed Whacker

    Soon after...the third century.   Ezana, or perhaps his predecessor, accepted Christianity as one of the state religions.  While the Ethiopians developed their own strong Christianity, their neighbors remained pagan or accepted Islam.  Wars...became religious...  - Africa in History, by B. Davidson, 1974

   Preparations for Christmas Mass were still under way...  ...there was...a correspondent for..."L'Unita'...a couple of visitors from East Germany, two Russian correspondents...a very blonde and buxom young woman...to represent Radio Moscow...  ...Monsignor George Hussler...arrived in Hanoi...to demonstrate...that the Vatican was sincere in its declarations for peace in Vietnam.  ...to show...that...the Catholic Church was no longer playing sides.  ...senior bishop of North Vietnam...Trinh Nhu Khee...said that...it was the hope of the Americans to eliminate the Catholic Church in the North...  ...Rev. Ho Thanh Bien...had just been reading...or Cardinal Spellman's Christmas prayers in Saigon - prayers for victory of the American Army.  Many Catholic churches, he said, had been bombed in the course of the United States air offensive in the North.  He did not believe that God supported the American cause.  The price was the same for both Hanoi-built and Chinese bicycles.  The Hanoi factory had been scheduled to reach a production of 100,000 bikes in 1965, but the war had prevented it...  To buy one required a special permit, issued through your factory or organization.  The people...turn in their old worn out bikes for new ones.  The best present you could give your girl friend in Hanoi, I was told...was a new bicycle chain.  ...the SAM's began to go high in the heavens and the little kitchen helper...urged me to hurry into the shelter.  Then the ack-ack batteries close at hand began to fire...  - Salisbury

     ...the Taliban...set their sights on Dash-e Qaleh.  We quickly stopped our work on the girls' school project, because our workers presented tempting targets to Taliban fighter pilots.  ...planes, tanks, and missiles daily shelled the town and villages of Dash-e Qaleh.  Once other agencies realized that we were determined to maintain a presence in the DQ area, they began asking us to manage their distributions...  ...I noticed how few signs...that almost a thousand people had lived there.  ...worn circles where animals had been staked out.  I suddenly felt helpless.  I couldn't tell if I was more upset because the camp was empty or because terrorized people had been forced to live there in the first place.  On the way into the camp area each morning...I passed by two Northern Alliance mobile rocket launchers.  When launches were conducted by day, the gound throughout the camp shook...  A few seconds of ignition...followed by the metallic hiss...  - Inside Afghanistan, by J. Weaver, 2002

     Tanks  Hands down, the greatest legal firework ever made.  ...many a Fourth of July was spent coloring small flags from around the world...and sticking them inside a paper firework tank.  They'd spit, sputter and pop...until every tank was mangled and burning in the middle of the street.  Nobody wins the war.  But we sure did have fun.  - Mile High Sports, 7/2016

     ...GoFundMe pages hitting millions of dollars, prayer vigils, flags at half mast, support and compassion to the victims and their families, the Senate sit-in, and so much more.  The Good and the Beautiful will always overwhelm...  Every time you bring that level of vibration to those around you, it creates a bigger movement - a wave...  It might seem as if we are trying to turn the Titanic around before we hit the iceberg.  Yes, we are!  - natural awakenings, 7/2016

     ...the Aurora Police Department's first ever international and immigrant teen academy...exclusively for children of metro-area immigrants.  ...to learn more about police work, including use of force...   "...we know they have to protect themselves and they have reasons why they shoot."  "When there's so much going on around the country with Ferguson, Baltimore, Cleveland, ...everybody's got their preconceived notions about what law enforcement is."  - Aurora Sentinel, 7/7-13/2016

     We all say we want to know our neighbors better, and maybe...bring them together to improve the neighborhood.  ...the city is waiving permit fees and providing free barricades for Denver Days 2016.  Mayor Michael B. Hancock launched Denver Days four years ago to help forge stronger communities.  What better way to encourage...safety and camaraderie then by...spending time with those who share our...streets?  "...because of Denver Days...  Denver's culture and our heritage...are...celebrated..." says Mayor Hancock.  - An extreme community makeover project.  - A Somali Tamales cookout...  - ...Zumba...    - the profile, 7/2016

     This summer you'll find no shortage of guides to the best patios, burgers, and events in Denver.  They help us define a place -...here are the spots for locals, these are the things visitors must try...  But there are...many layers to Denver...  These...lists and tours...show one side of a city.  An invisible city tour shows alternate ways of interacting with landmarks and busy streets.  ...the Cathedral Basilica of the Immaculate Conception...hosted a mass led by Pope John Paul II in 1993,...former "VOICE" vendor Brian Dibley slept behind the Cathedral in 2015.
     These lost souls, this generation of lost people who were so undervalued by society...  The era in which we all came of age as homeless men has passed.  ...there was...no shelter for homeless kids/teens...and very few meals.  The people back then were even colder to us and the police were even harder.  When most of my friends were going to proms and driving new cars their folks had paid for, I was...thinking about ending my life so young.  ...these people came into my life...  If you ask me, these were the brightest stars of their respective times - these tarnished diamonds in the rough who...lived so worldly in terms of their vices, yet so godly in...which they were unattached to the material life...
     I feel like happiness doesn't know where to find me
     Feels like my life is an obstacle here to try me
     My feet are moving as soon as I hear the sirens
     The black and whites are attacking
     my peaceful life and nirvana
     It's been far too long and I'm still trying to get out
     Of this sinkhole I'm in called life
     And this gravity is much too strong and I've got no doubts
     That I'll be here 'til the day that I die  - Denver Voice, 7/2016

     The times were a deadly deal ... a time when...promiscuity, repressed for millennia, exploded, then literally stopped us dead in our tracks...a best fried lay vomiting, gasping, shitting, dying; when love, death sex, and God bubbled in a psychological pot...when a minority showed its blotched and cadaverous face, forcing...their fellow citizens to examine its national conscience...when serious talk about quarantine camps for the HIV-infected...our nation's president...his tacit approval of a plague that ravaged American citizens.  It was a time of great grief and great fear and great rage.  Underground secrets of the gay lifestyle stretched across newspapers and screeched over newscasts...  The 4-H  Club...homosexuals, heroin users, and hemophiliacs.  ...the first, mostly disposable populations who contacted the "gay cancer"...  Terror, judgement, suspicion, and ignorance reigned supreme.  It felt like like end of the world.  ...for many...disco provided a baptism...into gayhood with deejay priests...  Loosing...a dozen close friends...150 years of friendship - I've learned to assimilate grief;s ebb and flow, to ride its swelling waves.  - Out Front, 6/15/2016

     This urban running adventure give people a reason to look forward to Mondays, to meet other people, and to explore the many hidden corners of this city on foot.  "We always say that they show up for the art, but they stay and continue to show up for the community."  As group running with a social bent continues to grow around all kinds of lifestyle pursuits - beer, tourism, dating - art...  "It's part of the experience of an urban runner," says renowned art dealer...  ...to cater to a 21st century runner's needs and desires: it turns exercise into a shared experience; offers a chance to explore the city.  It seems to touch on many of the Millennial generation's stereotypes.  He quickly realized the need for help in keeping...a...crowd lawful and under control, and...cultivated a...volunteer army...  They're known as PulseKeepers, and each is outfitted with a glowing wrist or ankle bracelet and a handheld boom box to identify themselves and add a bit of ambiance.  Several minutes before 10 p.m....huddling in a circle with the PulseKeepers, going over the route and any dangerous sections...  The run starts...we pass...homeless people sound asleep on loading docks...  A guy in the group running...is feeling it; he's shouting, "...yeah YEAH!" over and over, in a call and response...  The PulseKeeper...is feeling it.  ...she's effusive with compliments and...fist bumps.  ...then a postgame group huddle...  "If you need to travel 7 miles to go get lunch, how many communities do you pass...?  Who's connecting these?  Through art and running, we're connecting each community."  "It's my city.  ...I just think there are endless possibilities in the land of sunshine and dreams.  The land where you can make anything happen."  - competitor, 7/2016

     July 4th.  I am home from some shopping.  Sitting in chairs in front of a neighbor's garage are a couple of guys I haven't seen before.  I drop off my purchases and head out to the pool.  The chairs in front of the garage are stacked up.  I take a shortcut behind my barber;s place.  There in a tiny alley are the two guys hanging out...as if they are homeless.  Late in the following morning, I am on a ride to work.  Across one boulevard, I smell someone cooking waffles.  Across another, the entire neighborhod smells like honeysuckle.  I come to a stop sign where cross traffic has the right of way.  A big school bus-yellow riding mower comes down the street.  The blade system is huge and the driver rides it standing up.  He motions for me to proceed through the intersection ahead of him.  In the driveway of a home is a middle aged couple embracing each other.  At the other end of the home is a guy with long white hair and a white beard.  He is in camouflaged pants and is pulling weeds.  Down the street and around the corner, I pass a woman in running gear.  She is on her phone discussing marketing.  After work, I am coming home on a short detour through an alley.  Coming up from the river is a guy in a helmet, carrying home a huge paddleboard and a single paddle.  Fifteen minutes later I'm on a connecting trail.  I come up behind and find my way around a young woman pushing a stroller.  She is on her phone, and I hear her say, "I can't live out of a car with a baby."  A short distance away, I come off the trail at the end of a cul de sac.  In the circle is a mom and dad with a daughter and son.  The dad has one tennis racket and a tennis ball, and the mom is showing the daughter how to bounce a tennis ball with a second racket.
     Wednesday.  After 1 PM I am on the way to the pool.  Coming down a trail through the park, I come up behind a guy with white hair and a white beard.  he's in a cap and olive jumpsuit, and he pushed a shopping cart.  There does not appear to be anything in the cart.  He is looking in a trash can.  At the pool is a middle school girl with hair which appears to have been spray painted forest green.  There is also a curvy, buxom, and tall girl with her hair in braids.  She strikes me as European.  A guy in his twenties with a hippie beard and sunglasses is playing with a group of small kids, who are hanging off of him as he moves through the water.  I have this fantasy about the guy in the jumpsuit taking his cart and pushing it into the pool, the laughing hysterically as he dances around the deck.  The following morning is a beautiful summer day with a breeze.  There is not a cloud in the sky, or even smoke from other states' forest fires.  I leave the house at 10:30 AM.  Down the street, I round a corner where a camper sits parked right up against a home.  Outside, a middle aged woman with braided hair paints a small shelf as her child or grandchild plays next to her.  She tells the child, "You're workin' way too hard on gettin' into trouble today."  Down the street, on the curb is a broken piñata out for the trash.  I take the bike on the train, to the supermarket and the bank before a dip in the pool, before I am back on the street headed to work.  It's a lazy afternoon on this gorgeous day.  The neighborhood has both old and new homes.  On the front lawn of one of the new ones is a real estate sign which has come detached from one of its hooks.  It hangs from the post, twisting in the wind.  For a year I worked in another neighborhood, at a different shopping center.  I became a part of that neighborhood, as I am becoming a part of this one.
     After work, I am off the trail home and climbing a hill along a crosstown avenue.  Up from the street, at the top of the hill in a park, is a bandshell.  It's a park through which cars enjoy cruising, perhaps a "make-out point."  For some distance across the surrounding neighborhoods, live music in Spanish can be heard out of the bandshell.  Along the narrow road up to the top of the hill, cars are parked as far as I can see.  Further down this crosstown bike trail, I again run into a neighbor and former co-worker.  Up the street from the trail, I pass the home of another neighbor and former co-worker as I do each time I ride my bike home.  She lives just down the street from me.  This evening, she is on her porch, and I stop while she fills me in on what she has learned about where I work.  As we converse, individual motorcycles and trucks rumble up her street next to us, one at a time.  Sometimes, we must shout to hear each other.  I haven't worked at my company's plant for a year.  She quit from there shortly after the change in ownership.  She tells me that her sister was let go from there a couple of weeks ago.  We all worked there together for a decade, along with a string of others who have quit or were let go.  I must speak with her, in Spanish, to find out what goes down there.  The next day I am headed crosstown to work.  I pass a home on a residential street, the lawn of which has just been cut.  A young man clears away the grass...with a leaf blower.  That evening, on my ride home, I'm back on the streets of my own neighborhood.  I pass a rare Caucasian couple.  They are young and on bikes.  The male holds a small dog in his arms as he rides.
     Sunday, around 6 PM, I am headed home on my bike, after spending the afternoon riding it back and forth across town in 102 degree F heat.  Back in my own neighborhood, I watch as a pickup turns a corner.  It has a big bullet hole in the passenger side door.  A square inch area around the hole is missing paint, and is now a patch of rust.  I watch a couple of guys on crotch rockets go buzzing past.  Each has sunglasses, but instead of helmets on their heads, each rider has his helmet hanging on the side of his bike.  Monday.  4:30 AM.  I am back at my old bus stop.  In the bus shelter, under a blanket, someone is laid out on the floor asleep.  At his feet is a shopping cart full of clothes.  Next to that is a walker with a cap on the seat.  When the bus comes, I hear him coughing.  From across the street I hear a noise like stones on a tin roof.  A guy comes out of a Dairy Queen parking lot, riding a ten speed.  The back wheel has no tire nor tube.  He comes through the crosswalk against a red light.

     This was, after all, the entire point - to raise the young man's profile, to meet key personnel...to hone those soon-to-be needed interviewing skills and to secure endorsement dollars...  - Mile High Sports, 7/2016

     Distribution groundwork begins with a survey.  ...family size and their specific needs allows a relief agency to more effectively...organize the distribution.  The personal interview equips us to treat them as real people, rather than just a set of needs.  ...we often discover valuable skills in the camp.  I was...distributing wheat.  We might just as well have been handing out bags of gold in the eyes of the people.  Afghans spend part of every day preparing it.  Bread in Afghanistan represents life, and it is often treated as a holy substance..  - Weaver

     The audience...took the tableaux with complete literalness.  They lived the little sketches of war - their war.  These were their heroes.  They saw nothing naive or made-up about these schoolboy vignettes.  They themselves were mostly schoolboys.  This, in large measure, was a teenage war.  Both of the Front representatives were from Saigon.  ...they were accustomed to being with Americans...  ...it was the atmosphere...  In talking to the North Vietnamese representatives, I was struck by...a kind of naivete', a wilfulness in clinging to positions when logic and reason dictated some modification.  But these were delicate and subjective shadings...  These differences might be put aside for the common goals of Communism.  But...Communism did not erase all regional conflicts or divergencies.  I had seen this again and again in the Soviet Union.  There were no sharper differences than those between the Great Russians, for instance, and the...Ukrainians.  In Eastern Europe this kind of difference had become more and more noticeable as time went on.  - Salisbury

     "Can I get in without covering my hair?"  I stepped out and showed her my shorts.  "Not everyone will want to talk to you.  Especially the older ones."  ...quizzical children pointed and whispered to one another; a group of teenagers sat...exchanging glances over their shoulder at me...  "...we turned you into tribes and nations.  Now the challenge is getting to know one another.  Now this man who came with a gun...he wouldn't have eaten suhoor.  May we bury the guns like we bury our children."  I asked about the Islamic State...and a young woman rolled her eyes, stating that it's always on the Muslim community to clean up after these guys.  "We're regular people.  They're terrorists."  - Outfront, 7/6/2016

     Our community is small and often not represented.  ...we would contact the local media and news channels about our Asian events, we would not hear a response.  Mainstream media were often disinterested in cultural news and events.  Half of our readers are not of Asian descent...  ...if you do not have an Asian family member, friend, or coworker, it may be hard to try new Asian foods or understand aspects of Asian culture.  - asian avenue magazine, 7/2016

     ...Aurora City Council tabled a...rezoning measure...that sought to...turn a mobile home park into a...light-rail station development.   ...no site plan was available.  "I'm going to give the developer some assistance tonight...until we get th developer's head out of the ground.  And I could use another place where the head might be, but...there are some kids here tonight."  - Aurora Sentinel

     Wednesday.  I'm headed to work some time around noon.  I'm off the trail and climbing a hill on a residential crosstown street.  A package of drama occurs all within the space of a single block.  I hear a noise, like the sound of the rabid badger in the movie Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.  I turn my head to see a resident taking his trash bin back into his back yard.  He is followed by a bulldog, growling and biting the bottom of the bin.  Appearing at the exit of an alley in front of me is a garbage truck.  It crosses the middle of the street to enter the next alley.  On the side of the truck, it reads, "Lies Waste Services."  Turning the next corner is a convertible Mustang, which then hits the gas.  A young Caucasian guy on the sidewalk asks me, "How are you doing today?"  Some seven hours later, I am on my way home.  At one intersection, where a car is stopped with its right turn signal on, the driver is texting.  A Caucasian couple on bikes signals a right turn in front of me.  Each has a helmet and a bar end mirror.  I follow them for three blocks.  They both blow through three stop signs without stopping.
     Thursday.  I decide that I am hungry today.  After grabbing a prescription at my doctor's clinic, I head over to a pizza place.  On one of several flat screen TVs is a flashlight commercial.  A husky Caucasian bald guy drives his truck over two flashlights.  Only one of them survives...  After lunch, I head over to the pool.  In the water is a groovy middle-school girl with heart-shaped sunglasses.  They have purple lenses.  I think I'm in love.  But the greatest personality in the pool by far this early afternoon, is a tall and handsome twentysomethng guy with a fine physique, and an enormous personality.  He's loud in a way which is contagiously charming.  He has perhaps 10 children hanging onto him as he drags them through the water, his booming voice yelling exclamations such as, "Oh no, I thought I got away..."  He's hilarious.  He should be on TV.  He has a following of teenage groupies waiting for him on the pool deck.
     Saturday.  I'm on my bike, on my way back from working a store as far west of the westside as possible.  Just down the street from the foothills, and one gateway to the mountains.  The ride back to the train is all downhill, and I go flying past spectacular views of hillsides full of mansions with hills behind.  The train takes me downtown, where during summer weekends the pedestrian mall is closed to mall shuttle traffic.  This is because the mall is host to local art and artisans.  I weave my bike past this scene before I make it to the bike shop.  I'll have to leave it until Thursday morning.  I take a bus to a mall shuttle which is detoured as it crawls through every light between here and the train, and the train carries me back to my boulevard.  On the corner where the station is, a small car and a motorcycle have collided in the middle of southbound traffic, and the path of my bus.  At this stop there is no shelter or bench.  There is at the northbound stop, but southbound, there is a liquor store in an old gas station.  Passengers wait under a roof which used to hang above the old gas pumps.  At the intersection are three police cars, an ambulance, and a fire paramedic.  Behind the waiting passengers are a handful of guys with their shirts off and over one shoulder, and tattoos.  There are also a couple of women, one of whom gets stabbed in the shoulder with a scissors.  The deed was done by another guy who actually is wearing a shirt, who is promptly taken away to one of the police cars across the street at the accident.  The bus makes its way through and picks us up, including a passenger who gets up and begins arguing with the driver.  "I'm not even from here," he tells the driver.  "How much money did I put in?"
     The following day, I am on my bike, on my way downtown to what I will discover is a nonexistent showing of a movie .  Down the street, I stop at a stop sign at a hill.  Flying down the hill are three guys who all have long hair, jeans, hats, and black T-shirts.  One has a cigarette in his mouth.  Upon discovering that the movie showing is two and a half hours after my arrival, I turn around and return home.  I decide to go swimming.  When I get to the pool, it is closed for "feces."

     ...Aurora City Council...members approved...a parking permit plan...   The program would provide each household...near a (new) light rail station with two free parking permits.  ...inoperable cars sitting...for weeks as well as auto shops operating in public right-of-ways...the city learned about when conducting research...  (If a resident) does not have parking garage (and) has more than one vehicle but only one parking space...(then the resident would have to move one vehicle) 100 feet every five days.  - Aurora Sentinel, 7/14-20/2016

     I and our community...are wanting our block party in connection with Denver Days to be great, but it may not due to the drug dealers hazmat and garbage...  I asked HOA for help, they passed me off to Denver County who in turn put it back on HOA.
     ...and little does DPD, [Denver Mayor] HANCOCK know that this portion of Denver will be a hot spot for their overtime enforcement to clean it up!  One day...  - Nextdoor Westwood, 7/22/2016

     But while the Trump name never graced Denver's tallest building, you can still see it on the Trump Plaza Apartments.  This...stands (in my neighborhood), an area with 3,290 households, 35 percent of which live in poverty.  Residents are 81 percent Hispanic and 40 percent foreign-born...  The apartment complex is quite far from a tower - and far from the glitz of downtown development, too.  - Westword, 7/21-27/2016

     ...in Bangladesh...  His friend edited the first and only LGBT publication...and is one of two men recently...hacked to death with machetes - for being gay.  ...after the... "rainbow rally" in 2009.  "...locals flagged me as a gay activist."  ...Islamic militants tried to cut off my fingers  so he couldn't write about gay rights.  ...extremists beat, kidnapped, and raped him.  - Out Front, 6/15/2016

     Tuesday.  The bike is ready.  I'm downtown shortly after 11 AM, and walking down the pedestrian mall next to a young, bearded, vagabond dude.  He has no shoes, but he does have a cutoff short sleeved hoodie as well as a child's pink cloth violin case, to go along with his woven water bottle holder.  I pick up the bike.  New brake pads and a new back tire.  I head off to skirt the north edge of downtown looking for a train station.  I find a train stop and hop on a train.  At the next stop, on a bench in the shade, is a guy with salt and pepper hair and a black and white Hawaiian shirt.  I watch for the few seconds during which the train is stopped here.  he wildly waves his arms as he has a conversation with himself.  On the ground next to him is a big trash bag full of clothes.  Seven hours later, I am ready to leave work to ride home.  Unfortunately, there is a thunderstorm with lightning crackling directly overhead, blowing rain and a headwind.  I have to be careful on wet downhill streets.  I may as well take shelter in a train ride anyway as the bus driver, for the second day in a row, mistakenly gave me a pass good all day instead of what I paid for, which was a three hour transfer.  It's so dark outside in the storm that I put on the lights which I usually use on winter rides home when the sun is already down.  The next morning, I am headed down a trail through an open space in my neighborhood.  There is evidence that the water along the creek came halfway up to the trail, and over it in spots.
     Thursday.  I'm at the pool before open swim.  For an hour is lap swim only.  It's been so hot this week that I'm cool in the pool, except my head which is out of the water.  When I see a lane open up I get in.  A guy in the next lane appears to be my age.  He is looking at a couple of moms on the deck at this end of the pool.  The pair have toddlers with them.  One of the toddlers is crying because another child got a penny and he didn't.  After a couple of laps or more, we are both back at this end of the pool.  I hear him say out loud, "This isn't a nursery."  (wtf?)  Out in the parking lot, a grey-haired guy slowly, slowly pulls in on a motorcycle.  On the gas tank is an emblem for Monster Energy Drinks, so I assume that he's not a Hell's Angel.
     That evening, it's too hot to sleep, and the following day my ass is dragging.  I'm so tired, I think it's still Thursday.  Too tired to pedal a bike, I'm on my way to the bus stop.  Along the way, I pass another bus stop.  At this one, the bus stop sign has a small sticker on it, for a local marijuana shop.  At this stop is a young guy who, as I pass, lights up a tiny pipe.  Across the street is my own stop.  It's next to a church parking lot.  Right next to the stop is a woman, in a dress which makes her appear as if she stepped out of some religious cult 30 years ago.  She is operating a weed whacker, trimming the curb.  Grass is flying in my direction.  Just about twelve hours later, I am at another bus stop from my recent past, this one at a light rail station.  I came home this way before returning to riding the bike to work again last October.  The station has a brand new condominium complex on top of what used to be the parking lot for those going to and coming from the train.  And being at their jobs all day in between.  On the ground floor of the condo unit, near the bus gates, is an even newer coffee shop/bar/I'm not sure what.  One entire bank of windows somehow opens up to the outside, as it has this evening.  Weird jams are playing from a sound system as a handful of residents hang out.
     From here, the bus whisks me to another stop I used to wait at before using the bike.  This stop was a hoppin' homeless place last summer.  I wonder what's crackin' here tonight?  A young couple sits at a corner of the restaurant behind the bus stop, under an overhang and out of light rain which falls.  They look blasted drunk.  The lady takes a swig from a 40 oz bottle of beer.  Open container?  I wonder if anyone should be arrested for any charge which they may not necessarily be in any condition to spell.  There is one drunk with grey stubble standing next to a bike parked on the sidewalk, talking to another guy.  The bicycle belongs to a lanky white-haired guy who appears to know the young couple, motioning to them to follow him on his bike in the direction of a liquor store.  I don't see them get up.  Instead, I watch a different guy with stubble pick up different empty liquor containers from under a tree; a crushed tall boy beer can, a plastic tiny airline bottle, a glass container in a paper bag.  One by one, he picks them up and takes them to the couple, I presume so that they may see if there is anything left inside them.
     Sunday.  I am doing the weekly walk from my favorite breakfast place, over to the supermarket.  Coming up a street at the speed of a car is what appears to be a huge ATV.  Riding on it is a young blonde is a bright green halter and shorts.  It's so big it appears at first that she is standing on it.  By the time I get to the supermarket, she pulls through the lot to fill up at the gas station.  A couple of hours later, I'm on a bus to a movie.  In one seat is one drunk, who moves to another seat with another drunk when a third passenger gets up to get out.  The two drunks begin reminiscing about past ice cream parlors and doughnut shops, the previous locations of which they spot through the windows as the bus rolls along.  When they turn in the direction of the window next to my seat, I use the opportunity to snap a photo of them.  The two stand up to get out where we stop at a red light.  The bus stop is on the other side of the intersection, but one of them calls to the driver to open the "back door!"  The driver obliges and the pair are on their merry way.  My own stop is at the train station up the street.  I get out and see a white-haired guy with his trousers 'slung low,' with his boxer shorts visible.  He's in a long-sleeved shirt, on the back of which it says, "Grand Canyon River Guide."
     Monday.  4:40 AM.  It's my turn to work all day today this week.  I'm back at my bus stop of old.  In the bus shelter is the usual guy with the shopping cart and walker, asleep on the ground.  Across the street is the infamous ex-medical marijuana dispensary, raided for laundering money for Columbian gangsters.  Just another American dream doomed to end with a visit from authorities in black masks and acronym initials on their backs. Morning in America. This morning, it's surrounded by a construction fence, and scaffolding and stacked cinder blocks surround one end of the building.  A small forklift sits parked in the corner of the lot.  From down the avenue and through the intersection comes a tow truck.  Up in the bed is an SUV which appears to have been in a crash.  The right headlamp is still on.  I watch this Cyclops as it makes its way through the dark predawn.  At another train station down the line, I spot a falling star burning orange toward the mountains.

     By 10,000 BC...of the hominids..."homo sapiens" alone held the field.  ...recognizably human in ways that older types were not: they bury their dead with care and have some use for paint...  They live in larger groups, and begin...regulating community life...  ...one can say that progress remains a fruitful interaction of environment and invention of...relations with nature and of...relations with each other.  ...populations...developed their farming and metal-using technology, worked out their characteristic religions, embarked on new social and political organization ranging from powerful states...to...tribal democracy...  ...draw its governing power and revenue from the control of water supply, from taxation of landowners and peasants and other forms of tribute, including military service.  - Davidson

     Each tribal chief needs to acquire recurring resources...  ...critical if he wishes to expand his domain beyond his kinship network.  If he fails...he risks losing to tribal rivals and will be discarded.  - The Wars of Afghanistan, by P. Tomsen, 2011

     ...took over and reshaped the administrative services...and developed a large corps of clerks and tax-gatherers, commanders and governors, artists and technicians...  ...'towns of masonry' of a...people who understand iron-working, wheat-growing, and cotton production, who raised temples to their gods...  Its rulers vanish from the scene.  Was the decline caused by dynastic dischord, by an 'over-militarization' of the state?  ...the decline affected urban centers while scarcely touching the villages...  ...this ancient and majestic polity...  ...consisted in a state system and politico-adminisative hierarchy, capped by a divinely-sanctioned ruler with his immediate family and flanked by holders of titles...largely parasitical upon the internal economy.  ...export of raw materials and primary products, including captives for foreign enslavement...  ...'under-development': to a "process" that is, of widening economic stagnation and...regression in...its external markets and suppliers, and...to their political and military power.  - Davidson

      Tuesday.  After work.  I'm on my bike, headed for home through the neighborhood across the street from work.  I watch a family of 4 or 5, all on bikes, as they all blow through a stop sign.  Across a boulevard into another neighborhood, a trio of grade school kids are all on bikes.  They are enacting their own invented drama.  Around the corner, someone else blows through a stop sign.  A young guy in a T-shirt with a crest on the breast.  Across another boulevard.  On a grade school playground are a handful of kids, swinging on a swing set, and a couple of adult women. A teenager and two younger girls.  Next to the swing set is a child in a wheelchair.  He appears to have a neuromuscular disorder.  The youngest girl falls off the swing and the kid in the wheelchair laughs.  The teen comforts the child.  I've stumbled, as I do on these rides, upon a moment in a local neighborhood drama.  When I get to the river, from across the bridge comes a guy on a bike who may be homeless, followed by a family of three on bikes.  The child is in a shirt which reads "Texas girl."  Families must have discovered just this evening that there is a bike trail.  They are all over the river trail.  When I get on a trail back in my neighborhood, there is a Mexican family on bikes.  I turn off the trail and up a residential street.  I am passed by an SUV at one cross street.  It pulls into a driveway directly, and then up onto the front lawn where it parks.
     Wednesday.  I am walking behind a shopping center down the street from where I live.  This is where the nearest mailbox is for packages, which I need to mail something which won't fit in my own letterbox.   Here in the back parking lot, sitting on the edge of a dumpster, is a guy with long grey hair, a rock concert T-shirt, and a chain with keys.  One leg is in the dumpster, and one is outside as he tosses garbage onto the parking lot; a bagel, an aluminium can.  Again the wall is another grey haired guy.  Next to him is a shopping cart full of stuff, and on the ground is a sleeping bag and a big red suitcase.  When I leave for work at 11 AM, I am met by a couple of women in the parking lot.  They don't appear any older than myself.  One of them tells me that she used to ride her bike all the time, until she "lost strength in my legs."  When I step out of work to go home, I spot a guy on a ten-speed in full spandex gear.  He blows through the stop sign.  On my trek home, I am passed by two moms in colorful blouses leisurely riding through the neighborhood.  On the trail, oncoming Caucasians on ten-speeds have serious expressions.  I am passed from behind by a guy in matching shirt and shorts.  He has neon yellow socks and neon orange shoes.  As I approach my street, a police helicopter makes tight circles overhead.
     Thursday.  The trailhead for the first trail to work is in my neighborhood.  Shortly before noon, I watch as a guy comes down from the mailbox of the home right next to it.  He has a red beard, British cap, orange construction vest, and shorts.  As he opens his letter, he stands on the sidewalk, right in the middle of the trailhead.  Out on the river trail is the first dog I've ever seen walking by itself.  I turn off the trail a short ways to a park.  In the otherwise empty parking lot, on a lazy summer day around noon, is a classic car from the 1940s, parked in the shade.  It's black with green flames, parked under the shade of a tree.  The driver is asleep...or dead.  At the end of the park is a small skateboard park.  This skate park has been full of skaters since I have been riding this way, beginning in May.  Until today, when it's void of anyone but a guy riding through it on a bike, with two collapsible saddlebags on back.  One of the saddlebags has inside what appears to be some kind of seat cushion, and the rider wears a fire department T-shirt.  Out of the lot and down the street, a young guy whizzes through a stop sign on a ten speed.  Along the way, a home has a "play house" for sale on its front lawn.  It;s just as tall as the real house, and otherwise looks like an addition to the home in a different color.  From behind a fence, a dog barks at me.  I hear its owner say to it, "Time out, time out."  I guess this is what you say to a dog in 2016.  At the pool is a young girl in the bottom half of a mermaid costume.  She swims right under me in the deep end.  From there, on the way to work, I suddenly hear a couple of other dogs behind another fence begin growling and fighting.  This owner resorts to, "Hey, hey!"
     Friday.  Yeah, happy Friday...  I'm up with the dawn patrol.  At a quarter to five AM, I am sitting at a train station a bit further that the one I usually frequent.  I am at another, where I would sometimes come to even earlier than this.  That was back when I would get a ride sometime after 3 AM, which would bring me part of the way, from where I would walk here.  Back when I would cover a shift in production beginning at 5 AM,, at the store where I currently work.  Where I now stroll in at 3 PM, and only once every other Monday at 7 AM.  Where, currently, there is no longer any production, nor is there the long time front counter manager who passed away, nor her crew, nor the production crew, all of whom I knew.  She passed in the summer a couple of years ago.  The company was sold that autumn.  And almost all of the employees from a short time past have left, and the rest discarded.  It's a new age for the company for which I work, and it's been some time since I have been this direction.  Two years?  Three?  I think about the past decade during which I came this way in the dark every so often.  In four days, I am going to be 51.  I wonder how long I will be allowed to continue doing what I do for a living?  This morning, I am headed to a different store, in a part of the metro area known for its commerce and gracious living and its upscale restaurants.  I will be at work long before any of the eateries are open for business.  I wait at this particular train station, which is underground, and next to an interstate.  Traffic roars past and echoes off the concrete.  A transit system security officer and I hop on the train.  When he comes around to my car, I show him my proof of fare.  There is a young guy asleep in a seat next to us.  The officer has difficulty waking him up.  The only ticket that this guy has expired three hours ago.  The officer asks him where he's headed, and informs him that he is on the wrong train.  At my stop, the trash cans on the platform have their lids opened or removed, but the trash bags have not been replaced.  'Tis a sign that the homeless have paid a visit here at opulent Arapahoe Station at Village Center Square light rail station.  An opulent sandwich sign alerts riders that, during the time I will be back here this afternoon, the electrical power will be disconnected to any ticket machines.  When I return, I will be unable to validate my fare ticket, rendering it effectively useless.  I purchase a pass, good for the rest of the day.  When I return here after work, the power is on and the ticket kiosks are working just fine.  I hop on the train, get out and pedal my way back to my own street.  On the way to work, my street ends at a park, and on the way home begins there.  At a concrete picnic-style table are a gaggle of drunks, including one woman.  She replies to something one of the m has said, and all of them begin laughing.  I can hear them down the park trail as I pass many families.
     This day began at 4 AM.  Some sixteen hours later, I come riding into the parking lot of my townhome complex.  Sitting on the ground in front of one of my neighbor's carport is a bald middle aged guy in pajama bottoms.  I don't recognize him, and if he is a resident, I have no idea wtf he is doing there on the ground.  He is on his phone, and he has next to him on the ground, a can inside of a brown paper bag.  A woman comes out of the back gate to bring him a plate of food.  It's a new weird...  The following morning, I awoke to find no texts or voicemails.  I was convinced for the first couple of hours that I was going to have a rare Saturday off.  Then the boss called.  At 3 PM, I am out of work.  On the ride home, I cruise past a lake.  It's full of pelicans.  On the other side of the avenue is a field, over which a couple of hawks are turning lazy circles. At the train station, Caucasians with weirdo hats and tattoos.  Crows fly among massive trees, upon the estates of the massive condominiums.  From the train, I ride back into my side of town.  I am coming up a hill as I pass a tow truck parallel parking, positioning itself to take away the vehicle against which it is backing up.  Across the street is a neighbor watching and enjoying this scene.  Laughing, he says, "Alright."
     Sunday.  It's two days before my birthday.  I am at the bus stop just outside where I live, waiting for the bus to the grocery store.  On the bench, next to the ten speed and the shopping cart, is a guy in a Polo shirt, shorts, and loafers.  When the bus shows up, he begins talking to himself.  When he turns around, it almost appears as if he has a shiner under his left eye.  We both get out at the same stop.  I watch as he heads over to a bar called the Cheerio Lounge.  At 8 AM.  With the groceries home, I take my bike to go see a movie downtown.  I stop for lunch at a new place just across the street.  I watch out the window as twentysomething hipsters walk their dogs up and down, and up and down the avenue.  As individual as they may consider themselves, they actually put a cap on the nostalgic air of these residential evenings and the urban signs and wonders.  This has been one long month, and so far it's an interesting summer.

June 2016, The Ho Chi Minh bike trail

     ...librarian in the Denver Public Library's community technology center.  ...helped design...the Hard Times Writing Workshop...  "I think everyone has stories that they tell themselves about their experience.  ...the stories can begin to shift inside of them."
     DO YOU OR HAVE YOU EVER KEPT A NOTEBOOK FOR RECORDING YOUR THOUGHTS AND EXPERIENCES?  WHY (OR WHY NOT)?  "...I will write a letter to whoever has my hackles up."  "...someone either found it or stole it.  I ended up in a mental hospital...  I guess my thoughts are better kept in my head, not on paper."  "...I've had head injuries.  I can think, but if I don't write my thoughts down, I loose them."  - Denver Voice, 6/2016

     ...there will always be a demand for story tellers and truth tellers.  - yellow scene magazine, 4/2016

     June 1st.  An auspicious beginning to a new month.  Yesterday, my boss told me that she is expecting someone to quit, and to open a particular store.  This morning, I'm am up too early again.  As it is raining, I check the schedule to find that the bus there only runs during rush hour in the mornings and afternoons anymore.  I have no choice but to ride my bike in the pouring rain.  When I get to work, someone shows up shortly before we open.  It appears as if someone will not be quitting after all. On the ride back home the sun is out.  Later in the morning, I'm on a bus up the street with a terse driver.  At one stop a woman comes on with her child in a stroller.  The driver lets her know that the stroller must be collapsed.  He has a full bus.  Also, he tells her that her monthly pass is expired.  The end of the month can creep up on you.  She looks at him as if she does not speak English.  Another woman behind her translates as some guy out at the bus stop is complaining, "Let the lady ride."  I hand "the Lady" a bus coupon, good for one fare.  She attempts to hand it to the driver before I try to show her it goes into the fare box.
     I get out at the train station, where the same grey-haired guy in a hoodie with a marijuana leaf on the back is announcing joints for sale.  The train whips me to the super-hyped super hub, where I run in for more of the ever-necessary transit system coupons.  Outside, Homeland Security police are standing in a huddle, with backpacks in a pile which have HSP on the back.  Inside, are collected the usual riff raff, down and out guys falling asleep on skateboards.  I grab a mall shuttle to the bank.  Back out on the mall, I get a copy of this month's homeless newspaper.  He lets me know that I may recognize someone in this issue.  He's this month's featured vendor profiled in the newspaper.  I hop on a train to work.  Sitting across from me is a young woman on her phone.  I am listening to her end of a conversation .  The father of her child is in prison, sentenced to "5 to 20.  Attempted murder.  He took a deal."  She mentions that she is a hustler, and that she tells him that he should be less worried about her living in a hotel "with a rapist."  She's never been in trouble, except "for alcohol.  If I hadn't got told on, I would never be on probation now."  Her child is named Junior, who she is worried about being exposed to alcohol.  I'm listening to this with six hours of sleep.  She has 3,000 friends on Facebook.  She tells a new boyfriend that she isn't planning on going down her list of friends and propositioning "all the guys."  She tells him that he "needs to stop being so insecure.  Social media is ruining our relationship."

     If you're over 21, finishing a run and having a cold beer seem to go hand-in-hand nowadays.  With the recent boom of beer and running, these new runner-oriented beers - and other like them - could be here to stay.  - competitor, 5/2016

     The economic opportunities...with having a light rail line running through the city of Aurora have city planners re-envisioning...  ...a real estate attorney in Denver, spoke at the meeting...  "...there's no reason to have fear at this point in the process.  There will be a very extensive plan for assessing and evaluating relocation if that's necessary."  - Aurora Sentinel, 5/26 - 6/1/2016

     Spring has sprung...and brews are getting lighter.  ...our cravings for ...heavier lagers and ales are shifting  to lighter, crisper offerings.  Or perhaps, you want a break from climbing fourteeners and want to jump aboard one of the beer trains that chug through the mountains.  - Thirst, Spring,2016

     On May 9, Schaffer Elementary School celebrated its first Leadership Day.  ...the Leader in Me process...is based on Stephen Covey's "7 Habits of Highly Effective People."  Students...spoke on their favorite habit...and...the hand signals that [sic] are affiliated with each habit.  - Columbine Courier, 6/1/2016

     ..."'infinite play" and "culture creation."  "Traditional schooling has become irrelevant for the world these children are growing up in.  The future of work is self-generative, collaborative and agile, o education needs to be that way too.  The current, mainstream school system isn't designed to support integrated, dynamic forms of community - but it's our community skills, maybe above most, that will help us adapt to a changing world."  - the profile, 6/2016

Open air is our home
Missing life before becoming homeless
Loneliness is a daily thing
Everybody looks away, wishes you would go away
Needing some human touch, but no one cares
In justice: more laws to hurt homeless people
Never feeling like you belong, because you have no home
Still waiting to see people say, "Yes, in my neighborhood!"

Wandering hopelessly...
My broken dreams are bottled up inside of me like a coke machine
I hope to see the day that I can start to cope with things
Cause my days are such a haze, I'm having trouble focusing
I know it seems hopeless, focused on the broken things
I'm cracked, scarred, and broken, hoping for the phone to ring
Every day is made to break or shake me up, or so it seems  - Denver Voice, 6/2016

     The dance floor...is ready to pop.  At 9 p.m. on a Friday night, the place feels like a party's about to break out, and the DJ clearly senses it...yelling..."Where my Beiber fans at?"  "The wolves are starting to position themselves."  ...a group of men...are toeing the edge of the dance floor.  "There's a drunk deer entering the clearing."  ..."drunk deer,"...means "drunk woman,"...clutching a brightly colored cocktail.  ...alone on the dance floor for just three seconds before she is latched onto by a wolf with a man bun.  ...some of the men...are left mate-less on the sidelines.  "They're probably from the suburbs...so they're still excited to be here."  ...we pre-game at a bar...  "Who's that?" the subject slurs, extending an index finger from a Bud Light bottle...  "He might have a wife who's letting him be here, and that's why he's so fucked up.  ...I remember...a series of articles about the men-to women ratio in Denver and how it made the city like "Menver."  After deconstructing her exchange...she ruminates on where he fits...and how he may have evolved...   "I think of it like the stages of moral development proposed by Kohlberg.  You've got the wingman bro,"...a guy...with multiple Coors bottles.  He hands one to a friend who...grabs the beer without diverting his attention from the woman he's flirting with.  "Then there's the ski bro,"...a tall, granola-looking guy with high socks...  The all-American bro,"...two men with Ralph Lauren polo shirts and slack-jawed expressions.  "You don't see older women creeping on younger guys in LoDo.  That's only in Cherry Creek, and even then you can't just be an older lady.  You have to be a rich older lady."  - Westword, 6/9-15/2016

     What if I told you that you could express your inner nerd and your outer sexuality on the same day?  ...this year Denver Comic Con and Denver PrideFest are collaborating...  (Can I hear a "woot woot"?)  ...this relationship has been several years in the making...  ...the opportunity to explore the "ideals" of both events...  "Practically everyone enjoys some form of pop culture..."
     Pride season is sweeping upon us faster than an American family Association "tester" ducking into the woman's restroom at Target.  Denver has a ridiculous number of transportation methods; you can get around easier than a fresh bottle of poppers at a bathhouse.  ...renew your PrEP 'script if need be.  ...don't forget to make a sensual playlist composed of Maxwell, Teedra Moses, daley, and Raheem Devaughn.  There won't be a dry crotch in the bedroom.
     Don't think the hottie who gave you molly at the clubs is looking out for you.  ...research...the trendy drugs on the scene...  You're...going to spend...an hour waiting for hotspots like Snooze of Jelly.  Book.  Tables.  Now.  ...they totally serve mimosas.  If you book early enough (like, weeks in advance), you might...walk in like you own the joint.  Bonus: Free valet.  ...a killer brunch spot.  Most brunch places don't draw huge crowds until 9am.  Just arrive earlier, start your bottomless mimosas...  Make sure...they'll seat you without your entire group
     ...she was...a featured designer at San Diego Comic Con, where she designed a Star wars-inspired look for Denver drag icon Ginger Douglas.  Among her Denver Comic Con costumes this year is a "sexy Gorn,"...from Star Trek..
     ...great job on saving cash that could've been spent on a hotel room.  Who needs complimentary breakfast with questionable eggs and coffee as tasteless as Hellen Keller's fashion sense?  - Out Front, 6/1/2016

     Thursday.  It's 1 PM and I am on my corner waiting to cross the street, on my way to work.  Along comes a SWAT vehicle with an unmarked police cruiser behind it.  It's the tiniest little SWAT vehicle I've ever seen, smaller than the police car behind it.  They turn up my street and race past.  Six hours later I'm on my way home as the sun is going down, through residential streets full of families on their bikes.  I turn one corner and a toddler in her yard yells, "Here comes a bike!"  She stands next to her mom, who is  in her thirties, beautiful, and an age I'll never nee again.  Down the street and across a couple of avenues, the street ends at a park where all the drama appears to take place.  At this park, I come to an intersection in the trail where I stop and wait for a couple of kids coming along.  From the other direction comes a thin guy in a cap, glasses, and a goatee like the late Ho Chi Minh had.  He's on a small bike with fat tires, and his gear make a noise so loud that you can hear the Vietnamese leader approach before you ever see him.  It's the bike trail version of the street-racing pickup truck.  He too waits for the kids to pass before accelerating away, only to hit the brakes for a woman with a child in a stroller.  Before I know it, he is ahead of me and out of sight, all but his linking tail lamp.  Some time after 8 PM, I am on a trail back in my own neighborhood.  Along comes a young guy walking.  He stops me to ask where he can catch a bus back up north.  He doesn't appear to be from around here, this asphalt trail marked in green with gang graffiti and his arms with their Colorado state flag tattoos.  I give him directions to his best chance to catch a bus, if he can get one this late as far north as he's going, which doesn't stop here on a bike path.  A little further down the trail are a homeless couple hauling plastic bags.  In the dark, they appear as if they may be in tie dyed gear.
     Friday.  I have a weekday off for the last time until whenever July 4th is.  I'm on a train in the morning.   Must be rush hour.  When we get downtown, I follow a middle-aged woman off the train.  She is dressed as if she may work behind a counter someplace.  She's on her phone, telling someone that her daughter is in jail.  I grab breakfast at my favorite place.  A couple of women who look as though they are office workers are at the soda fountain.  One tells the other, "That's the way it goes with divorce..."  Some ten hours later, I'm back in my own neighborhood.  My girlfriend is taking me home as a police cruiser makes a sharp turn and comes right next to us.  He turns his lights on to stop the car directly ahead of him.  Last summer (and fall and winter), no police in sight on these streets.  This spring, they are here out of nowhere.  The following morning, I am down the street and on the way to work.  I ride past an apartment building.  On a split rail fence is a tag for an El Salvadoran gang.  Only here in the Mile High City.  I reach the train station around twenty to 6 AM, where a guy is wandering the platform, asking passengers if they "shmoke shigarettes?"  In a short while, I smell cigarette smoke, and I turn to see that he got one.  On Sunday, I head downtown on a hot spring day to see what's up at this year's People's Fair.  As I was ready to leave, I went over to where my bike was parked, in front of the Colorado Supreme Court Court of Appeals.  Around the corner, listening to a three-piece heavy metal band, was a woman smoking a joint.  When I get home, I read a post on my neighborhood's social networking site.  Someone who lives across from a school was listening to street racers in the school parking lot.  The racers were doing jackrabbit starts and then immediately slowing down.  They had a parking lot without traffic, and they were doing the same thing they do out on the street.

     With the new bars that accompanied the ballpark came a new crowd, and...here was a real culture clash in LoDo.  ...tension between new residents...and those who were already denizens of LoDo.    At one neighborhood in the early 1990s...a new resident who had moved into...the first loft project downtown...stood up and said, "You're just like the farmer, Dave.  The town has grown around you.  It's time for you to move on."  - Westword, 6/9-15/2016

     "We have heard from an angry group of citizens who don't like anything being done, so when you do something, you have pissed them off immediately."  ...30 people...are anti-development, anti-growth and anti-progress.  - Denver Herald, 6/23/2016

     "I'm watching my family be displaced in Golden, where their rumbling trucks and muddy work boots don't fit with the new high dollar condos.  ...my hometown of Fruita, is a place that is very blue collar and feels like it has been written off.  ...know the meaning of hard work and having to hustle and always having to be better than everyone else."  - yellow scene magazine, 4/2016

     In February 2016, a new housing development opened its doors.  ...this one...had...103 units designated to house...currently homeless...previously...homeless, or would be homeless...  "If they don't return to jail and they stay in the housing, then that's a successful model."  - Denver Voice, 5/2016

     UP [University Park] has recently grown by the hundreds in apartments.  By Spring of 2017, four more five-story, half-block-long apartments will be completed.  ...the city...OK'd all this growth..."quality of life" (trees, lawns, quiet, healthy living) that developers say attracted them to this area.  The city...starting a two-year study...called DenveRight - righting the present Denverwrong?  The city is considering...to allow residents to come listen...
      With the national unemployment rate now at a level not seen since before the Great Recession, and with the economy having replaced most of the jobs lost since before 2008, Americans are returning to their usual routines, and a chief component of every American's routine is driving.  [Well...almost every American?]  ...CDOT..."hey have been changing the structure of the [public] meetings so that there's not a venue for public [sic] to speak out and inform others."  ...CDOT feels it has made room for public comment at several junctures.   - the profile, 6/2016

     Both before and during the housing boom, farmland around the country was bought cheaply and developed into houses, schools and shopping areas - a build-out that ignited homeownership.  Now, in a twist, many of those cul-de-sacs are occupied by renters living in homes whose former owners lost them to foreclosure.  - Aurora Sentinel, 6/23-29/2016

     "...we are trying to do something a little different that what's typically found in Frisco or even in Summit County with some of our cooking techniques."
     ...tucked away in an intimate setting...  Recently named one of OpenTable.com's Top 100 restaurants in the country for the second year in a row, its wine list also boasts an astounding 580 different wines.  ...sommelier...said the Torre dei Beati "rosa-ae" of Motepulciano from Abruzzo, Italy, and the Chateau de Paraza "Cuvee Speciale" from Minervois, France, (a blend of syrah, Grenache and Mourvedre) are shining right now...  ...a four-course menu for dinner that changes daily.  "...we live in such a prefect age for enjoying wine; technology in transport...  Some cocktails are even based off recipes from the Prohibition Era, such as the Violet Femme...
     MUSCLE RELAXATION  As the message progresses and the effects of the cannabis oil become prevalent...  ...all of your muscles...are relaxed...  A cannabis-infused massage...aids in the nourishment of the skin...  OUR NEWEST CREATION, is a match made in weed heaven.  ...it gets your head right for the day...  Take a hike or do your taxes...  ROCKY MOUNTAIN MAGIC...you can float and focus while you go about your day.   - Explore SUMMIT, Spring, 2016

     ...the City plowed under "The World's Most Expensive Dog Park, a sweet community garden and a UN-like convenience store (where I often would hear three or four different languages...)  If I had known...moving here for a legal high...rents would soar, homelessness increase...  While we have the bulldozers running, how about plowing under Cherry Creek North...  ...I vote for man-buns being outlawed and no more crispy Brussels sprouts of kale.  Enough is enough already.  - Life on Capitol Hill, 6/2016

     Monday.  The public pools are open for the season.  I begin this year's swimming with a 6 AM dip in the pool at the gym.  As I head down the hall with my sister, we are passed by a woman in her sixties, in a hurry.  The three of us are in the pool.  Two of us are swimming laps.  The woman is asking the lifeguard about the water temperature.  The water is heated during cold late spring mornings.  She tells the lifeguard that the water is supposed to be 84 degrees F, but it only feels like 81.  A short time after she begins her own laps, she informs the lifeguard that she found a rock at the bottom of the pool.  She holds it up, wants to know where it came from.  My sister and I do more laps as she easily eclipses me.  The woman is asking a new lifeguard about the water temperature.  Why is the temperature off, the lady wants to know.  The lifeguard tells her that perhaps the cool air is drawing heat from the water.  Ya know, high school physics and transfer of energy?  The woman asks her the same question a second time.  My sister and I are ready to make our exit.  Six and a half hours later, I arrive at another pool for a swim before work.  It's a middle class neighborhood across town from my own tempestuous barrio.  I ask for a season pass.  It was my first mistake.  Today is the first day this pool is using their new computer system.  The staff has to call the boss to manhandle the software.  He's the guy with the codes and the brimmed mesh hat.  While he's dealing with making my pass, a family with an impatient father and an apologetic mother comes along.  The father is in some kind of a state of indignation with the staff, and condescension to his kids.  When asked what he needs, the father says, "We were told that if we came down here at one, we could inquire about swimming lessons."  An entire team of tie dyed-uniformed staff is at the counter to help both myself and this jerk.  The father tells his kids, "Hey kids, here's an idea, why don't we go see what the Colorado Athletic Club is like?  Yeah, let's go kids, let's go."  He mentions a private health club with a swimming pool, up the street from here.  The head dude tells me to go ahead and swim and they will figure out my pass, which they do indeed.  When I head out to get on my bike, now surrounded by kids bikes at the bike rack, a mom is there.  She tells me that she is checking her kids' bikes, making sure that they have locked them up just as she so instructed.  She's here clandestinely, she tells me, as she does not want her kids to loose their trust in her.  I tell her not to worry.  Her kids won't begin to mistrust her until they turn 13 years old.  She mentions that her oldest is 13, and the rest of them are here under the supervision of the 13-year-old.  Some seven and a half hours later, I am coming home down a stretch of sidewalk in front of an industrial parl.  At a singular circle around an electrical box, a spot frequented by drunks, sits a teenaged girl.  Her legs are curled up inside of her big black T-shirt.  On the front of a shirt is the image of someone young who lost their life on the mean streets.  As I cruise past her, she asks me if I have a cigarette which I am willing to part with.
     Tuesday.  I am on my way to the pool before work, season pass on my key ring.  As I cruise down the street on my bike, a pair of tiny lemon yellow butterflies chase each other across a breeze.  On a crosstown avenue, I have my eyes on the sunny street.  I notice the unmistakable shadow of another butterfly overhead.  I look up to see a Monarch.  When I arrive at the pool, I stand in line before one of the staff kindly lets me know that...I don't have to stand in line, I simply scan my pass and go in.  I should know this.  I saw patrons doing this yesterday.  I sometimes swim with my sister, who does not enjoy being encumbered by crowds.  The public pool near where I now work is yet another one never short on children.  I can't imagine a pool without children.  I arrive there some time before 1:30 PM.  To one side of the pool is a group of boys all with big water guns.  One is yelling that another is a traitor to his team.  He then yells, "All guns out of the pool!"  A lifeguard asks them to "keep the water in the pool."  A tall, blonde, beautiful teenaged girl in a bikini is telling her friend something about her "ex's new girlfriend."  Before I left the house, I was watching the ladies on The View talking about being young and learning to navigate relationships.  Here it is in action.  After a short swim, I ride over to the doughnut place.  Sitting at an outside table are a middle aged father with his two teenaged kids.  All three came here on their bikes.  The girl is sorting through some landscape stones.  Dad is in a tie dyed T-shirt and is on hi phone.  His salt and pepper hair is trimmed short.  He looks like a mod professional.  When I arrive, he keeps shooting glances my way.  Perhaps he wants to know if I can dig him.  Dad has a styled helmet.  The kids have skate helmets (such as mine.)  When he is done with his conversation, his son asks him who the guy was who he mentioned in his phone conversation.  "He...is...my friend."  Cool it dad.  If I'm gonna dig you, don't be so self-conscious.  Don't be the heavy.  Then it's, "Let's go."  All three are into their helmets, on their bikes, and following dad away.  And I've got to get myself, back to the garden.

     ...someone had taken my sprinkler valve cover box and used it as a step to look into one of our windows...  - Nextdoor Westwood, 6/7/2016

     ...about 20 juveniles were at the heart of the spike in crimes in January and these persons are now off the street.  ...Officers know who the problem children are and closely track them, and ditto for problem known locations.  ...DPD is also working with landlords and DHA to evict those criminals.  ...a hit and run...  Residents...followed the suspect.  The suspect's car became disabled and the driver took off on foot (with one leg in a boot cast...)  ...he had left his checkbook in the car...  - (Police) Commander's Meeting Notes, 6/8/2016, Westwood Residents Association facebook page

     ...they are Americans and they are not Americans...  They are not alienated from America, they are alienated within America; they are aware, more aware, of the presence of the Bomb than most white people are, and sense that annihilation haunts the entire human race; they discern the presence of violence in a society which has lost its community, its humanity...  The violence will be spontaneous, without leadership, without control; the fuse will be the chains of depravity running from heart to heart...  Everybody will be a guerrilla - men, women, teenagers, and some children...  As the collective mind is superorganic, pitting itself against the mythological odds of an unsurmountable monster, this demon will rise, for only demons can destroy demons and thereby become human again.  There may be some looting at first, some rapes, and other immoral deeds, but after the first few days their madness shall reach beyond good and evil, deep into the mysteries of being.  Their madness will no longer be attached to any identifiable norm...  For having been purged of faith in all human values...their madness will be the only god in whom they can put their fidelity without being...betrayed.  ...the naked oppression of a minority race not only by the state but by the ordinary citizens of the master race...is the normal, natural way of life in this country.  ...the black revolt is now underway...  ...the historical and dialectical development of the United States, in particular, has made the blacks the chief social force for the revolt against American capitalism...  - Jones and Neal

     I reported...that my neighbor has someone living in their shed...  ...the young male has been very violent, yelling obscenities slamming and breaking things...I called the cops.  I was told by police that they can't...tell him to move out of the shed...  - Nextdoor Westwood, 6/11/2016


     Wednesday.  I'm out at my corner, on the way to work.  I watch another brand new Camero turn a corner.  This one does not take off like a racecar.  I notice that it has a Susan G. Komen breast cancer license plate.  An hour and a half later, I'm at the pool.  The head hat honcho greets me by name.  This is but my third day here and he already knows my name.  I wish that I was that good.  This guy is everywhere, all the time, keeping an eye on everything.  I spot him sitting on the pool deck.  I reach for my camera.  Don't move Hat Man.  This pool is a place of summer romance.  'Tis a local kind of dynamic which gives meaning to life.  I hear a young girl tell her grade school friend that a boy is here who she likes, but he goes to another school.  I watch three fifteen-year-olds arrive; two boys and the cutest girl I think I've ever seen.  She's even more cute than the long-haired blonde here yesterday, and again today, who mentioned her ex's new girlfriend.  Where was I 35 years ago when my own peers' drama was happening?  (And where were the girls who look this good?)  After my swim, I am at Starbucks, attempting to decipher its messages.  Any tasty treat from this case will get you GOLD STATUS.  $8 power lunch.  Some five hours later, I am cruising down the bike trail.  In a tunnel under the lightrail, I roll up behind a guy with greasy grey hair.  He is carrying a plastic grocery bag in each hand, full of what I assume are groceries.  He is walking dead center down the middle of the trail.  I follow him up a hill before I sneak past.  A short distance beyond, I happen upon a woman with a couple of small dogs on leashes in one hand.  I notice a cigarette in one corner of her mouth.  It's almost burned down to the filter.  Around the bend, a disheveled and forlorn-looking guy is shuffling along, carrying a full ruck sack in one hand.  His expression is one of bewilderment.
     Thursday.  I'm working a morning shift at a store in an upscale neighborhood.  A trim, middle-aged guy pulls up in an Audi.  He comes in and, while he waits, keeps an eye on his car.  He exits and opens his trunk. He gets out one plastic bottle and pours the contents into another plastic bottle.  It appears to be some kind of sports milkshake, which he drinks.  He then waits a minute before getting in and driving away.  During the end of my ride home, the sun sets as lightning flashes overhead.  Friday.  I wake up at 2 AM, thanks to a dream.  I don't get back to sleep.  Ten hours later, I am sitting at a bus stop, just up the street from where I live.  It's a hot early June day.  Along comes a thin young guy.  He tells me that, as of yesterday, he's just off the bus from Texas.  He wants to know if this bus will take him to a particular avenue.  He is headed south to Denver's most expensive metro area neighborhood, where his fiancée waits for him with a letter which will assist his welfare case.  He wonders if the train will be quicker.  I mention the station at the end of the train line, and he replies that this is exactly where he is going.  Except, he refers to the station by a name I don't recognize.  He tells me that, right after his arrival here in town, he found a job, a stranger who is putting him up, and a list of downtown shelters.  I don't inquire, but I suspect that he is not staying with his fiancée as this may be a violation of his welfare.  Or perhaps hers, though he claims that she lives in a neighborhood of homes the value of which surely rival the state's welfare budget.  He mentions that he is headed to donate plasma, and tomorrow will reveal his next "priority."  Two and a half hours later, after lunch, I am waiting for one last bus for a short ride to work.  The volunteers are out, registering people to vote.  One of them is standing in some shade.  He is in a black two piece suit, complete with skinny black tie.  He looks like he works for the CIA in the 1950s.
     Saturday.  Plenty of sleep.  I feel as if I have rejoined the human race.  Shortly after 6 AM, I am out of my door and down the street.  By the time I get to the end of it, I have a dog chasing me.  It's owner calls, "Stacy, come here."  It continues to chase me.  Who names their dog Stacy?  Twenty-five years ago, I lived in a college town in Kansas with a punk band.  One of the guitarists told me a story about a conversation with the other guitarist about their dog's name.  He told him that the dog's name is Doug.  He said, "Watch, here Doug!"  When he called the dog, their cat came running into the room.  Forever after, the cat's name was Doug.  This morning, around the corner is an SUV making a multiple-point turn.  Someone is picking someone else up for work.  The vehicle straddles the street.  The next turn is down the bicycle superhighway to the train station, which is the sidewalk on the north side of this avenue.  I come to an intersection where, coming from an adjutant street are a Caucasian couple on ten-speeds.  They have helmets and jackets.  They have smiles.  And according to city ordinance, they are riding on the street.  Sunday.  I go for a swim at a pool in my neighborhood.  It full.  At the break, when everyone gets out for fifteen minutes, I go over and look at a spot which has been plumbed to come up from holes in the concrete.  Children are playing in it as we wait to get back in the pool.  One small girl is sitting on top of one of the holes.  I can't put into the words the joy in her laughter.  When the whistle blows, and we all get back into the water, it seems even more crowded than the short few minutes before.  Teens are playing catch with tiny footballs.  One lands near me and I toss it back.  I hear one teasing his friend about his lack of athleticism, calling him a grandpa in Spanish.  It gets too full for me to swim.  It's like a party with kids, muscled teenagers, and overweight parents with tattoos across their backs.
     Monday.  It's sometime after 4:30 AM.  I am back at my old regular bus stop of yesteryear mornings.  The dawn breaks through broken clouds.  An urban (and therefore illegal) rooster crows from a backyard, across the street from my old deathburger.  I sit on a bench directly across from a medical marijuana dispensary, long since shut down by 5-0.  Even the owner's lawyer was prosecuted.  I guess that's what happens hen you launder Columbian drug money.  A Great Recession-to-groundfloor riches story gone bad.  I see a light inside, someone moving around.  Or is it but a trick of the traffic headlights, illuminating the ghosts of economic promise?  15 hours later, I am at the train station, on a bus back to my neighborhood.  I am watching out of the window as lightning arcs across the sky.  The following evening, I am riding home from work.  Just beyond my place of employment, I pass through middle class residential streets.  Young woman and kids are taking after dinner walks and bike rides  past manicured lawns.  There are long late spring shadows stretching over all the green.  A slight breeze blows.   It's mesmerizing.  In another hour, I am back on my side of town.  The Caucasians here are few and of a different stripe.  A young white couple walk along the bike trail with their dog.  The guy has sleeve tattoos.  Not the head to toe blue ink of the felon gangster, but the colored and picturesque, almost pastoral ink of the groovy employed homeowner.  Off the trail and on the street, I come upon another white young guy.  He has an unlit cigarette in his mouth and a mean face as he cruises a BMX bike.  When I arrive at the corner, across the street from where I live, I come up behind some Vietnamese family members.  Two kids are on bikes, a young women is on a razor scooter, and a grandmother is on foot.  It turns out that we all live in the same townhome complex.
     The following morning, I am out on the bicycle superhighway.  My front tire felt a bit low before I left, but I'm cruising along.  I approach an intersection where I'm seeing Caucasian ten-speed riders on the street.  This morning, stopped at the sign is a white woman in a black lycra top and bike shorts.  At the next corner, on the other side of the street, is a middle-aged white guy on another ten-speed.  I arrive at the train station, where a train driver is yelling at cyclists to dismount their bikes on the train platform.  I take a train for a few stations down, and I get out and over to a supermarket.  On the way inside, I pass a guy shuffling along is a haze.  He's wearing white striped pants and a white shirt.  He has a Rasta tam on his head and a cigarette between two fingers.  When I come out, I see him mumbling questions I can't make out to a couple who are unlocking their bicycles.  He asks me something I can't make out as I am unlocking mine.  I tell him that he has food on his beard.  It sounds as if he responds by telling he that he knows, as he wipes it off.  After another question I can't decipher, I ask him if he's going to work.  He has to ponder this.  I grab lunch and go swimming.  When I come out of the pool, my tire is flat as a pancake.  I walk it to work, and after work I try to put air into it.  It won't hold anything. This evening, for the first time ever, I will put my bike in a rack on the front of every municipal transit system bus.  My bike is on such a rack of a bus back to my neighborhood, shortly after 8 PM.  Down the route, we stop for a middle-aged couple, each with a bike.  The bus bike racks hold only two bikes, and mine is one of them.  I assume, as I've seen before, that the driver will allow one of this couple's bikes in through the back door.  Both each have a cigarette in one corner of their mouth.  The driver says that one of their bikes can not come in through the back door.  The woman says, "Fuck."
     Thursday.  I'm on the bus this morning, taking my flat to be fixed.  A woman in a wheelchair gets on with someone who is her caregiver.  The caregiver appears as if he could be 300 lbs.  He is wearing a tiny backpack, on the back of which is a McDonald's logo, with "I'm lovin' it."  After I get my flat fixed, I head up the street to a main transit system station.  On the way in, a young guy on a skateboard asks me if  have a transfer (which is not yet expired and which I am not going to use anymore.)  I point out that we are at the main transit system station, where he can purchase a multiple variety and numbers of fares.  On my way out of here, someone asks me for a cigarette.  The following morning, I decide to head to the Mexican restaurant across the street from where I live, to grab breakfast.  It's a colorful and informal place.  After I get my food, a middle-aged Caucasian woman comes in.  She's dressed in the kind of gear which someone the age of her potential daughter may wear, a halter and Capri pants with a jewelled and styled silver crucifix on each back pocket.  I watch her as she half-dances to the Mexican music before she impatiently wanders back and forth across the length of the counter.  She asks to see a menu.  She orders a soda before she sits down.  Then she is back at the counter.  She wants to know if she may borrow a phone, so that she may contact "a friend" who will pay for her order with his credit card number.  "He's a producer with Charlie Sheen," she assures the waitress.  She looks like a used up barfly.  "Is their anyone here who knows how to take a credit card over the phone?" she asks in English of mostly non-bilingual staff.  While she is on the phone with one of Mr. Sheen's people, she turns to ask anyone of us if we "know the name of the cross street?"  I tell her but she does not appear to hear me.  Before I leave, I watch her go and get a plastic bag, full of what appears to be clothes, and she heads to the ladies room.  Winning!  An hour and a half later, I'm at the bus stop.  After the bus pulls up, a woman in her thirties disembarks through the back door, which is behind the line of people waiting to board through the front door.  She walks with a cane.  She turns to us and asks, "Does anyone have a ci-gar-ette?  Ci-gar-ette?  Ci-gar-ette?"

     ...a fourteen-minute film called "The Denver Olympic Story."  ...was put together...around 1969.  "The American West.  Massive.  Majestic.  You can feel it all around you."  Denver, the...golden-throated narrator...explains, is steeped in the traditions of the West...but facing forward, "changing and growing with the country.  Denver will encourage an intimacy of man's work - of the mind and the body.  A festival of what man can do!"  Politically polarized and frustrated with the established order, the nation as a whole is in the midst of another popular revolt.  Just as in the early 1970s, Colorado residents are complaining about rampant growth...paralyzed traffic and costly mega-projects, green-lighted without the benefit of a popular vote...  - Westword, 6/16-22/2016

     In the twentieth century, the United States has advanced rapidly from semi-urban, semi-rural society into an overwhelmingly urban society.  The farms...employed nearly half the working population...  Their land is now the city streets.  The unemployed or underemployed...are a constant threat to the system.  Not only must they be fed in order to cool off their chances of rebelling, but they occupy the choicest  and most socially critical land at the heart of the nation's cities...  ...the need for...a positive and redemptive force in a society degenerating into a form of totalitarianism...  ...this "debate"...dependent upon, and at the discretion of, forces and institutions within the white society...  "Powerlessness breeds a race of beggars.  We are now faced with a situation where powerless conscience meets conscienceless power, threatening the very foundations of our nation.  ...violence which middle class America inflicts upon...he inner city.  ...Without the capacity to 'participate with power, i.e.', to have some organized political and economic strength...  ...until both we and America accept the need...to have and to wield group power."  ...not to develop...community as a...segment of the total society with its own cultural identity, life patterns and institutions, , but to abolish it - the final solution to the...problem.  ...people...feel that they are victims of...white power without...their needs represented...frequently simple needs:...welfare inspectors to...stop kicking down your doors in the middle of the night, the cops from beating your children...   - Jones and Neal

     In the past 10 years...an egalitarian vibe has swept through running as people in cities...establish running groups, known popularly as run crews.  They tend to explore urban areas on the run at night...  "...[group running] fulfills a basic need to be a part of the community.  Even though New York City has lots of people, it can actually be difficult to feel like you're part of something.  ...there's that collective energy that's shared...  There's an actual transfer of energy that happens..."  "...an amazing person to introduce people to what we do as a running community in New York City,"...  ...she often works with at-rick youth in her day job.  "...she gives off this heavenly energy.  ...found running the same way as many people do:...as a way out from a previously destructive - or at least unsatisfying - lifestyle."  "...you can't go out t happy hour and then go run."  ...the typical satisfying pleasure of altruism, and the contagiousness and zeal of gospel-sharing that self-improvement often inspires.  In 2013 she started...a mini running hub full of artists, musicians, freelancers and other creative types whose schedules allow for morning runs followed by coffee...  Then there's...a run club out of Samsung 837, the brand's new experimental digital playground...
     "...we'd just see each other in running gear...  At the Christmas party, everybody looked completely different in nice clothes.  That's when you could really start to see people were interested in being part of a community."  "...running is almost secondary to the community.  Running is...the reason we're able to...hold each other accountable."  - competitor, 6/2016

     ...cool, clear mornings, dramatic afternoon thunderstorms that quickly roll east to eave fresh, back-lit evenings...  Who could ask for more?  ...I KNOW you'll find fascinating...efforts...for Nepalese recovery; the new experience of "Pot Parings" with local cuisine...  - Boulder magazine, Summer 2016

     All around I felt the vibrant, pulsating city - traffic on the road, the railroad beside it, the hundreds of bicycles.  Every truck seemed to have a canopy of jungle leaves and branches and many of the cyclists had leaves woven into their sun helmets - camouflage.  It was the order of the day and of the night.  - Behind the Lines - Hanoi, by H. E. Salisbury, 1967

     On Sunday, I take a long bike excursion in 100 degree F heat, to a downtown festival and then to the swimming pool.    On the way back down the street to where I live, I stop when I recognize an alley leading straight to my home.  At the end of the alley, I see someone on a bike.  They are in long pants and a winter coat, and it appears as if they are waving me down.  I'm stopped at the alley entrance as they approach.  When he gets to where I am, I realize that he is not some old man, as his tired movements suggested.  He looks as though he's in his early twenties.  He wants to know if I have a phone he can use.  Tuesday.  I get home around 9 PM.  I watch a local news story about pandhandlers on the downtown pedestrian mall.  A short time ago, another story mentioned violence by some of these panhandlers.  Tonight is another story with video footage of panhandlers trying to fight...a guy in a buttoned down shirt and slacks.  A witness reported hearing one of h the panhandlers refer to him as "internet yuppie scum."  Yuppie.  Haven't heard that in three decades.  The panhandlers doing this are not the guys with the long grey hair, civil war beards, and clothes with a dingy grey pall.  Who can barely stand upright let alone swing a fist.  These particular panhandlers appear young, in fashionably dishevelled Goodwill clothes.  And they appear to be too young to have even been born yet when yuppies walked these streets.  And branding the internet as a kind of menace?  Are these guys sure they don't work for some Christian anti-porn organization?  They appear to be some kind of hobo rebel wannabes.
     After a customary open to close shift on Saturday, the sister picks me up for a mad dash to scenic Boulder, where she will be attending two outdoor plays tonight and tomorrow during the annual Summer Shakespeare Festival, on the University of Colorado campus.  Along the less than an hour drive, we grab some road food and eat it during the rest of the way.  I am deposited in a motel room along with the luggage before she runs out to this evenings performance.  Exhausted, I go to bed at 8:30 PM.  I only remember not being able to fall asleep and I relinquish any hope of feeling anything other than even worse in the morning.  Ten hours later, I am awake and somehow well rested.  We hit the buffet breakfast with a crowd of white, middle-class vacationing families before a quick dip into the pool.  The groundskeeper/mechanic apologizes for the hard water spots on the bottom of the pool.  Against one wall are four giant green vases belching water.  Afterword, we check out and head into the People's Republic of Boulder.  It's a new dawn.  It turns out to be, in spite of the blazing heat, some of the most fun I can remember on a weekend.  I go with the sister who grabs an early lunch before leaving me to spend the next four and a half hours exploring the throngs and shops of this self-spiritualized pedestrian strip celebration by myself.  I'm in and out of shop after shop.  The heat radiates down.  A trio of young Buddhist radical wannabes wander the mall, one with a burning pot of incense in his arms.
     Wednesday.  This feels as though it has been a long month.  And yet it's blown past.  It's late morning.  I am on the bicycle superhighway to the nearest train station; a sidewalk along a busy avenue.  As I approach an intersection where on a regular basis I see Caucasian riders on ten speeds.  Today, as many as ten grey-haired riders, all clad in neon lycra, are lined up at the light before they sojourn across across the street.  A short distance down the way, I spot another guy on a bike.  This one has a long white beard, and he has what appears to be one bike draped over another, which he is walking across the avenue.  An hour later, I am having lunch at Chilis.  A women's match at Wimbledon is on a flat screen.  Tsvvetlana Pironkova is serving against Belinda Bencic, not so much having her service broken as rather, as a result of faults, handing the game to Bencic.  Bencic is already up by a set.  The grass at both ends of this court is worn away.   Pironkova continues to fault into the net as Bencic shoots scoring balls past her.  Pironkova comes back with some serves that Bencic barley returns before taking this match in straight sets.  Seven hours later, it's after work.  I'm headed down a detour off the trail through an alley.  Pushing a shopping cart from Target is a woman in a black tank top, black shorts, and running shoes.  Cyclists are going past her.as she comes down the alley.  As  pas her, I see no groceries in the cart, onleya handful of clothes.  As she continues behind me, I watch as she stops to adjust her shoe.  She looses her grip on the handle, the cart heads toward the embankment.  A minute later, she is back in the alley.  Perhaps twenty minutes later, I'm on a trail back in my neighborhood.  Across the street the trail continues next to a big drainage ditch.  A kid on an adult tricycle appears to be waiting for something or someone ahead of him before he continues down the trail.  When I get across the street, I see a woman on the trail taking off her shoes and socks.  When I pass her, she asks me if I want a cigarette.  When I decline, she asks, "No?" 
     Thursday.  Sometime before noon I am on the same trail where the shoeless woman asked me, not if I had a cigarette for her, but if I wanted one.  From the weeds of a field, I watch a hawk take off.  I switch trails at the river and, a ways down, I am riding on the left side in the lane of oncoming traffic.  The right side of this part of the trail is covered with stones which washed down and setteled here from Tuesday's downpour.  Someone comes up behind me and clearly does not expect me to be there.  "Bike," he says, instead of 'On your left."  I am preventing anyone but the river from being on my left.  As he passes, he says, "Je-sus Christ..."  Around the bend, I am on a connecting trail, which takes me to a long crosstown residential street.  At one corner, I happen upon an SUV with a flat tire.  The father sits next to the flat.  His young son stands beside him.  On the road is an open athletic bag with a couple of soccer balls inside.  I cruise through a neighborhood of families and old trees.  A grandmother hold's her grandson's hand as they, on the lawn, race is older sister on her scooter, on the sidewalk.  I grab a buffet lunch before work.  On my final leg to work, I am making a last turn at an intersection with a church next to a small open plot of land.  On the plot is an elderly couple .  The wife holds a fishing pole as the husband stretches the line away over the plot and towards the street.  I watch as a mailman comes walking along.  The wife explains what they are doing to him.  All I catch is that they are going fishing next week.  The husband greets the mailman, "Hi John!"  What a ride.  What a month.