Hold On There Just One Minute Kenny Chesney!

Cruisin' Around In The Hoop de Art

A Most Unusual Encounter

The guy must have been seventy, maybe seventy five. He sat across the bar from MJM and I and was staring at the 3-day passes we still had dangling from lanyards hanging around our necks.

"You two went to the Comic-Con today?" 

The question wasn't directed to either of us specifically. It was just thrown in our general direction.

"Yep," I replied, "Comic-Con is my jam. Started attending Comic-Con when I was eleven. Not here in Denver of course, in San Diego, where I grew up."

MJM chimed in, "He's a geek! This was my first Comic-Con, but he went when we were kids! He even stayed at the El Cortez!"

The gray bearded man across the bar looked at us both and said, "So you're into Sheldon's thing."

Which stunned the living shite out of me. I looked over at the old man and asked, "Do you mean Shel Dorf?"

The old man looked up from his drink and said, "Yeah, Shelly. Growing up in Detroit, Shelly was always into spacemen and superheroes. He was a weird dude."

I was taken aback, to say the least. In my entire life I'd never encountered anyone outside of Comic Fandom who knew who Shel Dorf was, much less knew him in Detroit.

"Wow," was all I could muster as a reply, "You knew Shel in Detroit?"

"Yeah," the old man answered, "I knew him when we were kids. Weird but smart dude, always drawing."

The idea that I'd run into someone who had been a childhood friend of Shel Dorf was stupifying. The fact that I'd run into him at the Rose, as dodgy a dive bar in Wheatridge as it gets, was incredible.

The old man and I talk a bit longer before he had to go - all the while dealing with interjections from MJM regarding how geeky we both were.

*I'm still kinda stunned by the encounter.



*This conversation actually happened. 

The Colorado Department Of Transportation Wins Again

Traffic was backed up on Hampden (285) far worse than usual this morning. Sure, the morning rush hour in the Denver metro area has become quite nightmarish over the past few years, but this morning was worse than nightmarish - it was Hellish.

The usual thoughts raced through my mind as I muddled along with the few thousand other cars doing what seemed like 10 minute miles: 

"Man, I hope it's not a serious accident," and "Man, if it is, I hope nobody has been injured."

I always address myself as "Man" whenever I'm contemplating congested traffic.

But low and behold...it wasn't a traffic accident that was impeding the flow of traffic on Hampden (285) this morning...it was the Colorado Department of Transportation.

        That is a Colorado Department of Transportation truck - see the decals on the door and bed?

Just about 8:35 I passed this Colorado Department of Transportation truck alerting morning rush hour drivers that street sweeping operations were underway.

About ten minutes and half a mile further down the road I encountered the street sweeping operation itself. 

Three trucks in the far left lane of Hampden (285) - the one in the rear again alerting morning rush hour drivers to the street sweeping operation, the street sweeper itself, and in front of both of those, a dump truck.

                               Apologies for the dirty windshield - it rained on Sunday

                            Gotta make sure the morning rush hour commuters have clean streets

I tried to contact the Colorado Department of Transportation Safety & Traffic Engineering offices to find out why in the wide, wide, world of sports they had determined that the morning rush hour was the best time to be sweeping one of the main transportation arteries, but the phone number listed for that office on the CDOT web page (303-757-9662) was answered by a recording that stated the number was not functioning at the moment, and to try again later.

So I rooted about the CDOT website for other numbers to call, and I found one for the CDOT Commission Secretary, one Herman Stockinger (303-757-9077) but he wasn't answering his phone. Listed right below his number however, was the number for the Commission Liaison, and when I called that number (303-757-9025) it was answered - by the Commission Liaison, who proceeded to tell me that CDOT did not conduct street sweeping operations, and that she had no idea why the Hampden (285) street sweeping operation was going on, but if I would give her my name and number she would look into it and have someone call me with pertinent information.

Maybe an hour or so later I received a call from a gentleman who told that A) CDOT only conducts street sweeping operations at night, and that B) If there was a street sweeping operation going on this morning it may have been due to crews cleaning up after an accident.

I looked at the pictures I took of the street sweeping operation and told the gentleman that it was rather apparent that A) a street sweeping operation was going on during this morning's rush hour, and B) there was no accident, just a street sweeping operation.

I also mentioned that this was the second time I'd encountered a CDOT morning rush hour street sweeping operation.

See this post of 07/17/2017: -https://cbakunasart.blogspot.com/2017/07/the-colorado-department-of.html

To cut to the chase, this gentleman told me he'd get back to me with the reason the street sweeping operation was being conducted during the morning rush hour...tomorrow morning.

Stretching The Limitations Of Family

There are people who believe that the only family a person ever truly belongs to is the family to which they are born, and that family by birth should always come first.

Then again, there are people who believe that a person's family of choice -  that is, those people a person meets throughout the course of one's life who become important to them on a level that transcends friendship, must take precedence over relatives that are only known to one another simply due to the random accident of being born of the same bloodline.

I'm somewhat straddlin' the fence on this. While I value my birth family beyond measure, I feel the exact same way about my family of choice. 

Hop In Fellas, We're Going For A Ride

Yet Another Example Of Great Tree Sculpture In Lakewood

A Passing Glance Back At The 2018 Denver Comic Con

Remembering The Woman Who Called Me A Blessing

It was a year ago that my mother passed away

Most everyday this month I've thought about her

How simple she was, and how brilliant she was

She never had more than a high school education

Yet she knew things, things that people with degrees

People with titles 

Multiple letters after their names

Failed to grasp

She knew how to keep six kids fed, clothed and sheltered

Without a husband to pitch in

She knew how to press on

When she knew it was neccessary

She knew how to concede ground

When she knew it was neccessary

My siblings and I

We were never the angels she wanted us to be

But she made damn sure we never became

The demons the neighborhood wanted us to be

2018 Denver Chalk Art Festival Part VIII

Denver Chalk Art Festival Part VII

Denver Chalk Art Festival Part VI