Happy Trails, Colorado!

Many times, I fear that in traveling and moving from place to place, job to job, I will fail to give due credit to the cities and people that I meet. After all, as a temporary resident, my sense of any town is necessarily partial. And as a writer, I may be tempted to toss out some hasty judgments, if only to get something down on the page. [Sorry, Mexico City. My apologies, Pizza Hut.] 

I also fear that what may be for me the perfect cut to yet another scene in the story of my life--a year teaching English in Mexico, say, or a year mentoring 3rd graders in Denver--might appear as a slap in the face to my dearest and best-est newly-made friends. Surely, they must be thinking: What a prick! Up and moves to New York! Graduate school at Columbia? WELL GOOD. FOR. HIM!  

Not true though! I have been wowed beyond my imagination these past two years by all the beauties of Mexico and Colorado and by all the wonderful people that live there. Although I must admit: while personally fulfilled in every sense, in Mexico I squeezed many oranges but not all, and in Colorado I ran many trails but really only some.

Happy trails, then, to you my "Colorful Colorado." I will cherish many things about your wonderful state, especially this time next year as I am choking on $12 martinis among the most dour black-clad twenty-somethings that New York has to offer...

• 300+ days of sunshine and the bluest of skies. 
• 17 open-space parks just 20 minutes away. 
• A geological feature that is not endless fields of corn or megatons of concrete.
• People who love to drink beer. 
• A casual dress code almost everywhere you go.
• Hearty dogs on city streets.
• Living in proximity to family. 
• Living with my lover.
• Friends with big, red beards.
• An unspoken agreement by all able-bodied males to grow a winter beard. 
• Baseball games sans the annoying advertisements and announcers.
• People whose idea of a night out is a midnight hike under a full moon.
• Rivers and streams that you can actually see through.
• People who wash windows, lay tile, and fix cars...and are actually happy. 
• Fat-tire bicycles. 
• BBQ sandwiches. 
• And much, much more. Obviously. 

It all began as a plaintive song, sung on a bed, somewhere in the middle of Mexico about a year ago. John Denver's "Guess He'd Rather Be in Colorado." What a treat and yet what sadness it also is to finally know what that means. 

Big City Mountaineers

Camping with 10 guys is a manly thing to do.  Do it with strangers for an entire week and in the Colorado backcountry, and you've got a beast of a totally different order. Mix in 5 of those males as prepubescent thug wanna-beez and...well, now it's a little something called Big City Mountaineers. 

BCM is a non-profit organization that, throughout the nation, sends "troubled" youth on week-long backpacking trips to learn a few skills and do some serious male-bonding. And this, because the majority of these teens have no father to speak of. In the rare case that a Dad does stick around, he is almost invariably drunk or in jail. To sit down and really digest the stories that, collectively, these kids carry around with them is just painfully sad. You're left to wonder: What's a boy without his Pa?

A boy without his Pa is one without a moral compass. An unfortunate prospect indeed: to be left without a map in the wilderness that is the media and peer influence. Can you imagine it any other way? Such a kid becomes easily lost, perhaps rolls fake doobies in his ears and thinks it's hilarious, says "Foo" just about every other word and throws up gang signs for group photos, teases his 13 year-old counterparts for being virgins and actually means it. My Dad, I can assure you, would have put a stop to all that in a heartbeat. 

Herein lies the irony to all this do-good deed-doing. For all the combined efforts over 10 years time of mentoring organizations such as the Colorado "I Have a Dream" Foundation and Big City Mountaineers, you can only accomplish so much. Your program will never fully substitute for the reality that is these kids' lives. And it will never achieve what the simple presence day-in and day-out would, of a father who truly cared, were he there. 

I realized as much on my own BCM trip in the Flat Tops Wilderness of western Colorado. Nearly every story I told that week referred back in some way or another to an experience I had had with my own Dad in the past. My Dad and I, we get up usually at about 5 o'clock, hit the road early and are somewhere new by noon. My Dad, he lets the air out of our mattress to let me know it's time to get up! My Dad says to walk like a mule. We cook Dinty Moore Beef Stew and brats with mustard. We camped in Glenwood Springs AND the Grand Canyon. We whittle sticks to roast marshmallows. We are quiet long into the night as the embers crumble.

How humbling it is to realize as much only now as an adult. The words are coming out of your mouth--perhaps over a campfire, you are sharing these stories as the most valuable you have to offer...and they are all, in their origin, the same. 

Camping with 10 guys is a manly thing to do. Giving of your time and of yourself to a young boy, especially your son, is of a totally different order. 

Cheerful Mail-Lady Pulls Out Disgruntled Tooth

Carol Mick is a cheerful mail-lady. And unlike many a carrier for the United States Postal Service, after 20 years, she is neither hardened nor oblivious to the evident perks of her job. This means that come Christmas time, you can expect to see her wearing festive sweaters and a Santa hat--on St. Patrick's Day, maybe even a green bow tie. 

At 55 though, Mick begins each day humbly--with a giant cup of coffee brought out to her in bed by husband Vince, a 30 year veteran himself of the USPS. The routine is patent. As Vinnie shines her shoes, Carol musters the courage for another day of government and family service. She ponders perhaps all the people she will see and yet wishes not to see, but then perks up at the thought of the full package lying on the kitchen countertop, ready to be sent off priority rate to one of her children. 

The transformation is inspiring. Fifteen minutes later, this dynamo of a woman is in full-gear: tossing barbells up and over her head, melting faces with her eliptical work-outs, and jiving to the latest tune by Fergie. She is one sexy Momma. And 2 additional cups of coffee, 17 squirts of Estee Lauder later, Carol Mick is on the move and ready for anything. 

"Just last week," Mick confides, "I was delivering the mail, and little old Ms. Follen...well, she needed some help starting her lawnmower. So, I crrranked it right up."

No bother that none of this is listed in her job description; the following week, Mick was doing the same for yet another neighbor--another old lady whose grass was, presumably, just as freakishly high until she came along.

Carol also apparently deals in dental work, as the following tale will attest:

"Yeah, well, one of my girls, whom I've known since she was little and have given presents to each Christmas...she had a tooth just hannnging from her mouth. She told me how bad it hurt, how she was going to have go to the dentist if it didn't come in 3 days, how she'd get Arby's if it did come. So, I told her: 'Bring me a piece of floss.'"

The tooth was out in 5 seconds. And Mick, well, she was left wondering: "What do I get?"

What does such a wonderful woman as this get in return? So often, not a whole lot. Having raised a family of her own, Carol is no stranger to everyday acts of service and hard work with very little thanks. Of the boys on her route, she recalls: "I watched them grow up, and they liked me...now they've hit puberty and ride their bikes by without even saying Hi."

Which is enough to stop anyone cold in their tracks, isn't it, and make them think: What kind of a son or daughter have I been? And Is my Mom, too, just as special? 

Warmed by the shared wholesome stories now flowing throughout the room, ole Vinnie decides to offer up one of his own. Leaning forward in his straight chair, and with a gleam of excitement evident in his eye, he begins: 

"Well, I have a 5 year old girl on my route, who everyday when I deliver packages...she says to me: 'See you later alligator.' To which I respond..."

"That's just stupid," Carol cuts in, all grin and sly-like, leg draped up and over her puffy yellow chair. "Nobody likes that."

Oh my God: Toes!

A friend of mine recently came to Denver to visit. And on this visit, while receiving the grand tour of my girlfriend and I's amazingly tiny apartment, she remarked in the kitchen that, strangely enough, in one of our displayed photos--an oceanfront snapshot of a recent family trip to Myrtle Beach--I was the only one wearing tennis shoes. "Weird," she said cocking her head as far as possible to one side. "Yeah...that is weird," I acknowledged and quickly changed the subject.  

The truth is I was sexually abused as a child by my father--who, in order to satisfy the dirtiest of his sexual fetishes, sucked on my toes until each popped off. He didn't really. I just made that up. But I am a freak as far as the lower appendages go, as you soon shall see. 

My own personal take is that what has become an obsessive compulsion of mine with feet all began, as most do, in the earliest days of my childhood. Mid-summer, my Mom would grab my sweaty little boy feet--one in each palm--and take a giant whiff, exclaiming: "Ewwwwwww, stinkytootsies! Ewwwwwww, stinkytootsies!" until I was sufficiently scarred by the experience never to go barefoot around her or anyone ever again. 

As a child, this meant taking a pair of socks with me into the bathroom each time I showered, so that walking out I'd be safe in just my towel. Summer nights, no matter how hot it was, I always wore socks; outdoors, I refused to wear sandals. Even on family vacations to the beach, as my friend was later to notice, I was the creepy pedophile guy in the tennis shoes muddy from sand and lapping water. 

Anything so closely guarded, so protectively hidden away my teenage libido soon learned could be quite easily super-sexualized. Looking back, I recall with much amusement erotic barefoot bicycle rides around the neighborhood as a 12 year old and horny trips to the YMCA to strut, of all things, my toes. 

Thank God, though, for college. Here at last was a place where no one knew my past; I could be my own person and start anew. Run around and play about, barefoot if I wanted, just like any other normal boy could. Wouldn't it be fun, though, I thought, to see where all this might lead? Yes, indeed. 

My first summer home I continued to refuse any and all privileges of access to my precious feet, hiding them now simply out of spite. And why not? The ball was in my court; it had long since become a "thing." And everyone, I mean everyone wanted, was just dying to see them. My siblings would stealthily sneak up, then try to rip off my socks. And my own mother even would attempt the same one night while I was sleeping! All this, until one culminating mid-summer afternoon when, idling in the air-conditioned car outside the Rossville Post Office--at that time where my Dad worked--my Mom got her chance. It was a simple bribe: 10 seconds in exchange for 2 king-size Kit-Kat candy bars. Of course, I squirmed and squealed the entire time--just like the freak that I am. 

Nowadays, my obsession with toes is all fun and games. For lack of anything better to do, this means every so often either smacking the soles of my girlfriend's feet, sniffing or kissing them...or alternatively, comparing them aloud to whichever tasty treats my fucked-up mind now thinks they resemble. And this, all to show my unending love. I have also come up with, in the event that you're interested, some pretty special names for the various parts that I admire most. The soles of your feet for example, for their pastry-like qualities, are your long johns. And the underbellies of each toe, well, those are your gutter-monkeys.

Having long since moved past this awkward stage of development, it is amusing I think for all of us in my family to still joke about it. On my mother's fridge even, to this day and for my everlasting embarrassment, there hangs a now fading photo of the Last Official Sighting of Ricky's Feet. It, too, was taken at Myrtle Beach, a long time ago when I was about eight. I am going head-first down a slide and into a pool, with colorful bermuda swim trunks on...and a huge smile.  

Evolution of a Bestseller...

It is hard to imagine it today, but at one time walking across America seemed like a novel idea. Mystery and adventure enveloped the land, beasts of unknown proportions lurked about. Pick any year, 1804 say, and you just know it must have been the most exciting time to be any sort of American, let alone an explorer. Those guys--guys like Merriwether Lewis and William Clark--now they must have felt like absolute rock stars. 

Unarguably, the work that they did was critical to the westering of our nation. For two years straight, Lewis & Clark trekked their way cross-country across the plains and up over the mountains, battling Indians all the while and killing inordinate amounts of wild game. As surveyors, too, they were also the first to set in writing the flora and fauna of that region, recording in their journals such eye-popping entries as the following: 

[22nd October Monday 1804] The hunters killed a buffalow bull, they Say out of about 500 buffalow which they Saw, they did not, see one Cow. Great Deel of Beaver sign. Several cought every night.

Plllease. Now, as a pioneering travelogue of sorts, this may very well be the first. But 491 pages? Has anyone ever actually read this heavy hunk of shit from cover to cover? It is completely and utterly insuperable, not to mention boring.  There are only so many rivers a man can read about crossing, so many deer and elk and buffalow that he can catalog as "shot" before eventually going insane. Myself, I made it to nearly the end of June of the mission's first year before suffering multiple cerebral hemorrhages--at that point, not quite even into the Rocky Mountain section of their trip. 

This is, of course, the benefit of being the first. You can write whatever you want however you want and people will think it amazing--even if it's hardly legible, rarely spelled correctly, and never entertaining. Millions of copies will sell, too, flaws and all. No matter, though. Those world-walkers who follow you, if they ever want to make a dime, will have to pick up the slack. 

Peter Jenkins' 1974 best-seller "A Walk Across America" is one such attempt to renew the American spirit for exploration and adventure. Fresh out of college and a measly 22 years old, the young and spritely Jenkins backpacks from New York to New Orleans on a personal journey of discovery that, while less comprehensive than Lewis & Clark's exhaustive journals, is nevertheless much more entertaining and altogether full of a number of excellent anecdotes. Jenkins living with a mountain man in Appalachia. Jenkins living with a black family in a trailer in Georgia. Jenkins almost getting shot and killed at various times throughout the Deep South.

Jenkins is, unfortunately though, not the most artful of storytellers. It is the novelty of his trip that intrigues, and the wholesomeness/simplicity of his story that endears us to him. All of which is to say that he's kind of a dork and a terrible writer. Writing of his dog and traveling companion Cooper: "He loved me and I loved him and that love grew with every experience we shared." Writing of his first serious girlfriend: "I watched every slight movement she made as she scooped out a dip of potato salad. Never had I been so interested and captivated in a woman." Writing of his conversion at an Alabama revival: "My soul had been like a wavering compass needle, but now it finally pointed to true north...now I knew what people meant when they sang 'Amazing Grace.'"

Kind of reminds you of that one kid, doesn't it, the one who was always getting massive wedgies and swirlies in junior high? Nowadays, it is no longer good enough to simply walk across America. That, my friend, is so passe. If you're gonna do it now, you've got to be not only smart and physically in shape, but also incredibly entertaining.  

Enter Bill Bryson. Now here's a guy who has, reportedly, left his audience in stitches describing dryer lint. His 1989 travelogue "The Lost Continent: Travels in Small-Town America" is everything that Lewis and Clark and Jenkins never could be for me. In his car all over America he is at once hilarious, informative, and searing in his cultural critiques. Really, from who else could you expect to learn the etymology of our country's most interesting place names one moment, then a few paragraphs later cozy up next to in the sleeziest of hotels with a 6-pack of beer and a stack of Reesee's peanut-butter cups? He is just that funny. 

Bryson on Gatlinburg, Tennessee: "A community that had evidently dedicated itself to the endless quest of trying to redefine the lower limits of bad taste." Bryson on the Pennsylvania Dutch: "The Mennonites are named after a well-known brand of speed-stick deodorant. They aren't really. I just made that up." Bryson meditating on which is worse in life--a childhood so boring you are easily enchanted or a childhood so full of stimulus you are easily bored: "It occurred to me that musing is a pointless waste of time, and instead I went off to see if I could find a Baby Ruth candy bar."  

And so, you see, the Walk Across America itself has covered quite a bit of territory in the past couple hundred years. What was more than good enough in Lewis & Clark's day, and could sell like hotcakes, would surely fail today. This, because the idea is no longer new; we must add some spin if we are to keep it interesting. And this, because of the demands now competing industries in the media have placed on books to knock it up a notch. 

As I see it, this is all good news. Never again will we have to suffer through another plumbing of the depths by one of the first expedition's pirogues. Nor will we ever again be submitted to such a sentimental tale as Peter Jenkins'. They have seen their days. 

For the rest of us, who knows what lies ahead? Something, surely. It is only a matter of time before someone else gets it in their head to yet again walk across America. 

Colonel Not Yet Retired...

No longer able to resist the allure of the eleven herbs and spices--the Colonel's secret recipe wafting out into greater Denver--I made my way this past week to the nearest KFC chain possible. Ostensibly, my purpose was to simply taste-test the company's latest product: the sexy, health-conscious Kentucky Grilled Chicken; in hand, I had a coupon for one complimentary meal. Actually, though, I was much more interested in the stuff outside the bucket. The stuff which, through years of branding and marketing, had created this classic, "finger-lickin" All-American food. 

For years, you see, my family had regularly brought home a bucket of the Colonel's Original Recipe. We would sit in front of the TV and feast away, happy til the bucket was empty. And in high school, it was always Extra Crispy. At one point, my older brother even worked there for an entire year. Why, then, had it now been several years without a single breast, thigh, or drumstick in this boy's life? Wheeling into the classy joint, I immediately realized fried chicken is no longer sexy. 

Perhaps in 1929 fried chicken was sexy. Harland Sanders was just then beginning to see some growth in his road-side cafe in Corbin, Kentucky. Neighbors would fill up on gas, maybe buy some supplies at his convenience store, then head on in for some mighty fine home cookin'. Chicken dishes, of course, were the Colonel's specialty. And dressing up as a true southern gentleman certainly didn't hurt the deal. He was the man with the secret recipe, a man that could cook! Even the finely trimmed goatee, I imagine, was sexy for some. 

Today though, although peak dinner time, the parking lot is dead empty. Not a soul inside except for me, my girlfriend, and two reluctant workers. The Colonel is still up on the wall, naturally, in vintage photos a man of apparent virtue and high character, a relic of simpler times. But the romantic connections between then and now must necessarily stop here. This is no longer 1929. And I am no longer chatting up buddies in a road-side cafe. KFC is a corporate beast.

One of 36,000 units now owned by the corporate giant Yum! Foods--the largest fast-food company worldwide and one which is present in over 110 countries and territories--the little KFC in which I now find myself unfortunately sucks as badly as its corporate brothers and sisters: Taco Bell, Pizza Hut, Long John Silvers, and A&W. Somehow, somewhere, somebody thought it'd be a good idea to mix two restaurants in one. Sell burgers, fries, hotdogs, and fried chicken all under the same roof--how democratic! And, as for logistics, just split the building down the middle...A&W on one side, with a jukebox and diner-style. The rest, well, just leave it as is and throw up a few pics of the chicken-master himself. Al fin: "Ring the bell if your visit was swell." 

My girlfriend and I's night out, however, was not entirely terrible. We were, after all, working quite hard to make the best of things. This, in spite of such hokey ads as: "Celebrate 90 years of A&W with merchandise as cool as our frosted mugs!" And this, despite such ridiculousness as pre-packaged packets of butter, or the horrific afterthought of what suffering these chickens must have lived through [The Colonel must surely be turning in his grave].

We reminisced and told stories. She, of 4th of July's past, spent with a bucket warm and ready amongst friends and family. And I, of a Dad who liked to spread the ketchup thick over his chicken and mashed potatoes in wandering rows. Our memory of Mexicans, too, who in our recent experience just couldn't get enough of the stuff, provided a hearty laugh or two. Invariably, they pronounced it as pollo Kentucky (POI-YO KEN-TOOK-KEY). Before we knew it, we were having a real nice time.

Of course, we now realize why KFC is no longer sexy. After years of having it our way, fast and cheap, Americans miss the old way of doing things. We miss cooking and being in the kitchen, eating with friends. And so we can't help but look at the wreckage now in front of us in some sort of disgust: styrofoam plates littered with greasy napkins, unused packets and paper cups, plastic silverware and plastic wrappers, and however many pounds of frozen food and carbonated drink...just sitting unsettled in our bloated stomachs. 

The Colonel is, reportedly, "not yet retired." This is something which KFC publicly advertises, has framed here on one of their walls, and appears to be wearing as some sort of a badge. And yet, it is also something which makes me wonder, makes it hard not to wonder, after even a cursory look around and just a single meal--though it be a free one--if maybe he shouldn't be. 

Single Red Male (Bike) Looking for a Loving Home

Single Red Male Bike in search of any and all attention someone might yet have to spare for a broken-down piece of shit. Alternatively, an excellent fixer-upper for the open-minded bicycle enthusiast!

Back tire's flat--slashed by some hoodlums at the North Lincoln Community Center. Sprocket's jacked, and so functional only through 6 of the 18 gears. And the breaks squeal like nobody's business--which may or may not piss off pedestrians as you approach them and the crosswalk.

History: an excellent bike for getting around town and commuting to work. It has been snowed upon and rained upon, and ultimately sat upon for months on end, always transporting its owner to exactly the places he wished to go--and this despite the owner's negligence to put air in the tires or even raise the mother fuckin seat above a height fit only for a child.

Memorable feats: once launched owner off and onto a concrete sidewalk after an unsuccessful attempt to hop a curb. Also, became successfully wedged--on 2 separate occasions--in the backseat of a '98 Dodge Neon.

Preferences: Looking mostly for a nice warm place to retire--Florida, say, would be ideal-- especially after two harsh winters in Denver spent in dark, cold basements. Also, no more jacknuts for owners. This bike has paid its dues and is ready for the good life.