Post 99

You may notice that there's a new design for the blog. All I really wanted to do was make use of the archive feature of Blogger's new templates (and it is a lot easier to access old posts now), but I also made the background black in order to show off the photos better. I don't know if I'll keep this format or not.

Time to finally post the rest of the photos from the fall. I went on a camping trip with my friends that was supposed to get us in touch with, you know, the other side of Colorado, and involved lots of Carhartts, dogs, chopping wood and firing the BB gun at beer cans. I appear to already have forgotten anything particularly interesting that might have happened there, so here are some photos. Hopefully you can get a complete mental picture of the weekend just from what you see below:

The overalls-with-tie look sums up our complicated relationship with redneck culture.

Before the warm weather ended I got to participate in a ride with the Denver Cruisers, who meet once a week simultaneously at many bars around the city, and each group is led via secret route to a central gathering point for music and food. There was a nautical theme to that week's event, so here we are:

And here is a "map" of our route:

I had never done one of these before and had thought they were just a nice tame community event, but apparently the group is somewhat known for breaking traffic laws, terrorizing cars, cycling drunk, smoking pot, and littering. Ha! Cyclists. The cops did show up when we were at the cul-de-sac of death. Below is a video of the cul-de-sac, in which people rode about at high speeds and sometimes in the wrong direction, mostly managing not to crash. There were a lot more people in it at most points but this video was taken shortly after the cops drove through.

Before the leaves all fell off the trees, Kris and I went to the botanic gardens, where I got these lovely photographs. Click on any photo for a larger version:

And these are from trees on my street:

That second one is crazy, I can't believe there was something that looked like that ON MY STREET.

I also had the wonderful opportunity to go horseback riding for the first time. The lovely woman I was seeing, who knew I had never ridden a horse and wanted to do so, set up a surprise date in which I was taken to the mountain home of a friend of hers who owned horses and given quick lessons on brushing, saddling and riding the horse. Here I am on the horse.

I didn't ride the horse all that long in the end because it was difficult remembering all the things I was supposed to do to make the horse do things, or not do things (such as run downhill at full speed), and the experience was more about teeth-gritting concentration than carefree fun. But it was still a very cool thing.

On another day, I went for a hike at Barr Lake State Park. Here are some pictures.

White-tailed deer, which are more rare out here than back east.

Then I went to the Grand Junction area to do some camping before it got too cold. Here are some pics from that:

This is the road that winds through Colorado National Monument, seen from a cliff high above.

Inside this old shelter were books with pages and pages of comments left by hikers, below.

This looks like a beach. It's actually ripples preserved from the time of the dinosaurs.

I'm off to California at the end of this week, so I'll have some good photos from that, I hope. Which I will eventually post, years hence.

Nothing is happening

I am writing to you from downtown Denver to tell you that nothing is happening. Today I just sent off a signed lease for the next six months to my landlord. This date had hung in the air before me for half a year; I'd originally asked for a six-month lease at the end of last summer, rather than a year, because I was hoping to find a job that would allow me to move downtown. And I got one. And so I told myself, I will wait and make sure the job is a good fit, and that I can afford it, and then I will move. In February.

But the job was too strenuous and too hard on my back, and so I went down to part-time, and now I cannot afford to move. So I have signed another six-month lease and we will see where I am in August. It was hard sending out the papers as it was the tangible evidence that my goal hadn't worked out. But soon I'll have forgotten.

Nothing is happening. I now work a paltry 2-3 days a week (long shifts, often on weekends, so that I am gone from 5 in the morning till 7 at night), and the sudden onslaught of loose time has left me confused in the same way that going from unemployed to full-time at a high-pressure job had also left me in some shock. Unfortunately it's difficult to take a volunteer job right now, as I work different days each week. I often need to be going to bed about the time my friends are free. I have been left in the clutches of the demon of free time, a commodity I only ever want when I'm unhappy with whatever is making me busy. Whenever I have it I seem to be trying to get rid of it.

I have coped with this situation by working out at the gym a couple hours a day, which I am sure is going to make me a stunning physical specimen, but my usual time-killer--hiking--has been made less appealing by the fact that it's freezing out.

Still, I have gone out on a couple adventures. So here is what has been happening when nothing has not been happening. A hike around Barr Lake state park, which hosts a great deal of avian life:


Ice in the foreground, mountains in the background.

One of several bald eagles I saw.

The west side of the lake was very calm at dusk.

My brother, who is now a truck driver, made a stop in Denver and I went to see him at the truck stop.


One day I went snowshoeing at Berthoud Pass. I went up to a ridge. It started snowing.


So then I came down.

On Valentine's Day a friend of mine got me flowers because I'd been talking about never having spent a Valentine's Day with a significant other--I was always either single, or they weren't around.


This was very nice.

That is all that has happened since my last post.