JUN-B-10
TRAVEL BY AIR THROUGH STORMS FROM SAT VIA STL TO DIA
THEN BY SUBURBAN THROUGH COLORADO AND WYOMING
TO DAYTON TO THE BIG HORN CANYON WILDERNESS
JUNE 14-15, 2001
It was not easy getting to where I would have to be to do what I would have to do. I had watched the NBA playoffs with Michael after we had gone out to dinner at an Italian pasta place called Zio’s. The rest of the day was spent trying to send a message that had been so bedeviled as to have been lost or buggered up in two different computers until it was finally sent out on its last attempt by cutting and pasting a message trying to integrate the travels of August and September into a meshed set of itineraries, with no assurance yet that I can pull it all off. One thing I did get done during the quiet stay at home and indoors with the A/C in record San Antonio heat is that I got all the photo albums labeled up to the most recent at Album V complete through the Steamboat Marathon. At the rate that pictures and the experiences of which they are composed accumulate, if I did not get them organized and field away appropriately recorded in print and picture, the cascade of influx would overwhelm into a chaotic mess.
That is what I thought that the next visit to Michael and Judy’s might be like, which is why I wanted to be here at least once before eh main event. Since having a newborn is one thing, but a pair at once is going to be an even bigger disruption, and it seems like the competition for attendance around this event will be very high. I was surprised to learn that Judy’s grandmother was coming this week to stay for several weeks until after the babies were born, while her husband is rather forgetful and requires continuing care in Florida.
I got a chance to see Michael’s new place of work at the Health South facility of which he is now the supervisor. It is a large open space with a lot of equipment, and it seems that a lot of what is done is OT with work related assessment. A lot of testing goes on for injury related functional residual capacity, and there is some kind of course called “work hardening” that Health South has contracts to supply for employers like police and fire department. This was also the first item Judy had seen this place where he works, but she was mostly interested in sitting down rather than touring very widely. Michael took me from there on to the SAT airport, where we said goodbye, and made plans for a few visits, at least one of which will be in November around the time of the San Antonio Marathon.
My flights from there out were not uneventful. Big thunderstorms had piled up over STL and lightning had struck hard around the time I should have been boarding my flight to Denver. The flight to Denver that should have gone out two hours earlier was still there but was overfilled, so I could not move up to get on a flight that would arrive before midnight. When the heavy rain and lightning moved in, even after we had boarded the flight we were kept at the gate an additional hour, since they would not let the luggage be loaded by the baggage handlers in the lightning storm. But, now, I am enroute to DIA with an arrival about one AM which will mean I will have a difficult time finding any kind of transportation to the Moore’s house in downtown Denver. But, we will see, since the next land transport is also coming up for a long haul across the two states above Denver by the big white Suburban.
AND YOU THOUGHT GETTNG THERE WAS HALF THE FUN?
The hardest part of this trip you thought might be the run from Porcupine Ranger Station to Dayton Wyoming. Well how about getting from DIA to Gene’s house?
On arrival IN St. Louis, the sky had darkened and a number of storms came to fours on the STL airport. There was an announcement that a number of flights would be delayed, including a flight that should ha left for DIA about two hours earlier, which left an hour later. I tried to get on it, but I knew they would balk if they knew my bag was checked on the later flight. It turned out that it did not matter since there were about twenty standbys on a flight already fully loaded. So, I sat and typed. An annoying thing happened at one [point which was a surprise, but I did not think anything further about it until it happened again later. My computer had been acting “buggy” but then refused to type the3followoing keys 8/*, I/I, K/k, ,/< . Now, if you can imagine any text without an “I” in it, it was annoying, but the spell check could fill in a few of the missing letters if the word was recognizable without the letters, but that, of course, was not the case for such words as :”I” and others it did not even see if there were two or more parts of the word missing. Ah, well, we will have to return to this problem, since that problem has returned to me---and I hope they do recognize this lethal problem as among others of the “bugs” being under warranty.
Now, for my “Perils of Pauline” saga of getting to Gene’s house:
I boarded the St. Louis plane, and got into my seat, when an announcement came over that there was a very severe rainstorm coming over, which was obvious from my seeing the suitcase outside on the ramp ass rain pelted down on it and they left it out in the rain (there is a rubber “O-ring” in it like scuba gear and my underwater camera, so that I was less worried about it than the tags on it getting soaked and two had pulled off. But, the real problem was the lightning. They had recalled all baggage handlers from the ramps because of the lightning danger. I was in the plane, but it was not going anywhere until the lighting danger had subsided which was about an hour past takeoff time. That meant my 11:48 pm arrival would be well after midnight----2:00 AM to be somewhat more precise.
So, what does that all mean? The Super Shuttle, and all other van services at DIA close down at midnight. This left me with a taxi se3rvice, and I went to the cab rank and waited behind about 150 [people for one hour at that time in DIA for two taxis to arrive and depart. I could not expect to get to downtown Denver even by later in the mid-morning, by which time I should have been already enroute to Wyoming.
I pulled my heavy bags to a bus stop---the only bus running from DIA. This bus is the one that takes contracted airport employees---and me, for four dollars—to the old Stapleton Airport, now converted to a parking lot. So, OI got in the bus and rode to Stapleton. There is no taxi anywhere near there, but I could see a couple of motels still nearby from the era when that was Denver’s airport six years ago before moving way out to DIA. I almost thought I should try to get a room for the three hours I might be able to sleep, but that would mean that we would have to divert out of our way to get my bags out here. I asked if I could get a taxi, and they said “No luck.”
I got back on the same bus labeled “AF” when he told me that there was one further stop he could make all the way downtown at Market Street Station. Off I went, grateful that I had taken out a light jacket to add to my T-shirt, when I had been looked at strangely for wearing long pants rather than shorts in leaving San Antonio. I was now shivering in the fifty degree “delta” of Denver at 4:00 AM when I got out in downtown Denver in a rather seedy part of town. I was told there is only one bus running at that hour in all of Denver, and that is the #15 bus that goes the length of Colfax, the equivalent of 16th Street “Main Street” Denver—mostly used car lots, John Elway car sales, fast food and tenderloin strip joints. I sat on the b stop bench next to my big bags and photo albums, shivering as two very drunk guys came to snore and reek next to me. I got on the #15 bus, and told the driver I wanted to get as close to 2909 E. 7th Ave as I could, and he had told me he could get me there within a dozen or more heavy blocks to walk, but that was more likely than trying o find a taxi at this hour anywhere around this part of town. I kept looking out for a motel at which a taxi might be parked, but saw none..
When we finally arrived past a sign that said Fitzsimmons I knew that I was a long way out of town. The bus driver apologized and told me he had forgotten me—no matter that I was the only one on the bus at that point, since every other midnight security guard and the drunken folk that they are supposed to be guarding against had got on and off the bus in the long drive out to the RTD end of the line. He told me to leave the bags on the bus, and sit in the cold shelter across the street—there is nothing else going on so that it will be the same bus, and you don’t have to worry about missing it, so when it has been re-fueled and he had his break for fifteen minutes, I would ride the same route backwards and get off below Colorado Blvd which I had recognized as we passed it on the way out.
All through this time I declined to turn on my cell phone and call Gene or Sarah, which they later said I should have done—but I can imagine getting a call at five AM asking to be rescued bag and baggage in a tawdry part of town, so I kept on the bus.
When I saw St. Paul, I pulled the cord, and hauled my heavy bag behind me and set off up Milwaukee Street through a tony part of town in the dark, leaving the few sleepy men drinking from bottles in paper bags on the bus. I ran into a few hazards in the first few blocks, since automatic sprinkler systems would go on as I hauled the bag on its worn wheels behind me and strained under the bag over my shoulder, one block at a time. Only when I got to the intersections did I ha enough light to stop and see what time it was and what the cross street was. I also thought it was a better idea to stop to rest under the light so I did not look like a prowler lurking in the high rent district. It was 5:30 AM when I hauled up in front of the Moore’s house and saw a sign pasted on the door by Gene—“Come on in and pull up a bunk downstairs—‘Pleasant Dreams” I went downstairs and crawled in leaving the big case upstairs as a signal that I had arrived when anyone might come looking for me into the morning—that is, a half hour later. Before I nodded off briefly, I thought I heard large rodents gnawing along the basement—which is what I learned later in my introduction to a pair of very non-rodent ferrets—the new denizens of the Moore household and the plague of Duchess’ (the big friendly German shepherd, due for her annual coiffure next day) existence.
The forty miles from DIA to Gene’s house was a lot tougher than the following day’s four hundred miles drive across both Colorado and Wyoming—a piece of cake and a half gallon of Gatorade by comparison!
Welcome to Denver—on my night of rest that is the significant one, twenty-four hours before an extreme endurance Ultra event!