Old Route Home

Today I took an older route back home, down an old main drag, and discovered I still like me some Mason.  This was where I would wait with Crazy Frank for the train, catching short hops down to the end, then back to refill our cups.  That one time, going all the way to Amarillo, is the matter of another blog, but cruising alongside those tracks, right there close to campus, stirs that memory.  If you want to hop on the train now, after having children, you actually might be a hobo and dyed-in-the-wool tramp.  There is actually no place to run alongside the tracks now to grapple onto those ladders.  Hopefully that will prevent more people from leaving their feet in their shoes.

Mason was not as bad as it seemed when I first rolled down it in the bus, after the reconstruction - it seemed way too narrow, and I discerned I might actually not be able to observe the give-the-cyclist-3-feet-to-pass rule.  But on my bike it was fine.  A little swervy to the edge where there's no true lane, but all and all fine.

The old route has me hang a right onto Mountain, past La Creperie, The Rio, Mama Said Sew, left past The Lyric, right onto Linden.  What a bunch of cool shops we have in this town.  The Red Table.  Cafe Ardour.  Then down past those sad-eyed Buddhistic ramblers at Homeless park, and the shelter across the way.  Should I feed them?  Dare I show up in the Veggie Caravan with day-old bagels, only to be potentially hounded every time they see me coming - like zombies with an insatiable hunger for food and money.  Yes, I shall have to do this at least once.  What they need is a garden to tend.  What about that space across the street next to the tatoo parlour?  I come to the intersection past the tracks, and note the new digs.  There are great places to sit here now.  I arc onto the Poudre Trail, pass under the tracks behind the skate park, and remember kids scooting out over the middle of the river on that bridge, in summers past, trying to find the best place to jump.


Behind the engine lab

I see a guy twice my age, with insignia on the back of his jersey, something like Atlantic to Pacific Crew.  His calves are like small boulders.  He has a strained look on his face, like he's doing a time trial.  He's really moving.  It makes me realize just how lazily I'm really going.  I look about, there's no hurry today.

I see the blue heron in the pond behind Lee Martinez, waiting.  I wish I had such patience.  Just stand there and wait, ducks quacking all around you.  I realize that one of the voices sounds more human, then see a guy at the other end of the pond with one of those bazooka cameras, talking on the phone, sounding oddly like a duck.

Before the bridge at Legacy Park

The Poudre River here at the bridge is a family place, a place where baptisms have occurred, and where I have seen the most frolicking.  The water this summer never took on the mad torrent it did summer of last year, with record snowmelt in the highcountry.  It had a mellow, inviting flow, and I finally realized what all those river gypsies had known all along - a cold, invigorating jump from the ropes, a swim in these waters, is strangely purifying.  Tubing this holy river may be better than riding this trail.  Now I glide over it's placidness, but I know it's coolness, and there may be time yet to jump before the cold winter sets in.,

I ride behind the wildland fire depot, where they are sometimes out doing crunches just as the sun is rising, past the fox hole where I saw a mom and her three cubs last spring, behind the cabinetry shop and La Familia.  I have never been to work so early that I beat a few people arriving to these places for work or to drop off children.  They are a few of the places I love to pass.  The cabinet shop has a wonderful blend of pine and cedar, and sometimes shellac, if you ride at the right time in the morning.  I hook onto College, northward, past the old grocery store, then the new, then the stonehenge place on Highway 1. 

Right here is where I saw a ghost last Saturday, late, actually Sunday around 2:00, dressed in tye-dye, and, amazingly, cowboy boots.  I'd felt a leading to give him a ride, and then sort of regretted it after almost an hour and he still couldn't figure out the house where he's been partying at.  He was lost, headed in the wrong direction, and underdressed for the night's chill.  Finally, finally we found the gated community where he'd left the brother he was so worried about.  He never thanked us, but as my wife pointed out, he did thank God. 

 

Thank God for the health to make this ride, whenever I want, snow or rain.  I am home with my family, and the sunset is beautiful tonight.