2 June 1999: Barefoot in the Park

I didn't ride my bike today but brought my rollerblades to work. They're annoying to carry; I wonder if a compression strap would be any good as a handle.

Usually when I ride to work, the only person who sees me come in wearing bike shorts and t-shirt is the receptionist (the shower is just off the lobby), and when I leave I change in the lav and scurry out. And lots of people run at lunch and make quick appearances in jogging shorts and tee shirts. Today I changed in the lav and brought my clothes back to my cube with a paranoid vision of any bra I left in the lav or shower making people snicker, and besides if I didn't get too sweaty maybe I wouldn't need to wait through several joggers' showers for my clothes. Then I felt additionally conspicuous in tank top, sweatshorts, and Tevas. Here is my epidermis and here are my grotty clothes. I beat a hasty retreat outside.

I wore a fanny pack full of protective gear, socks, a water bottle, and a snack, and carried my blades to the park, where I booted up (ha) and padded myself here and there. I don't know how anyone can cross streets safely in rollerblades, plus the road surface must destroy wheels, road surface plus road detritus like gravel and oil and litter.

Back and forth, back and forth, in Civic Center Park.* I saw a couple of drug deals, took a photograph for a pair of tourists, yelled at a crow plucking a baby Brewer's blackbird from its nest (to no avail), skated through sprinklers that the park service ran in the blazing noontide sun, and learned to stop (somewhat). Also I did slopes. There's a lowered section of garden with steps leading to it and a couple of latter-day ramps on either side. The sidewalk is narrow, so it took muscle to get up even that slight short incline. Then I checked for traffic and went down the other one. I had no idea how much speed I'd pick up, but I guess I didn't pick up too much.

*Do follow the Civic Center link. It's a 360û of Civic Center Park. Other panoramas of Denver on that site (denvergov.com is the silliest url I have ever seen) include views from the rotunda of the Capitol and from 1999 Broadway, one of many downtown Denver buildings I temped in. The west quadrant makes up for the north one. If you can't figure out which is the west view, here's a hint: it's a morning shot.)

I stopped once for a pedestrian walking a bike to cross the path, but he waved me gallantly along and asked if that was very hard, because it looked very hard, and he didn't have very good balance because he had had a very bad brain hemorrhage a couple of years ago. I complimented him on his ability to ride a bike after the injury then beat another hasty retreat. Poor man.

The tourists amused me. I saw at least three elderly couples with guide books and cameras. They posed in front of the City and County Building, which fails to distinguish itself in my eyes as anything interesting at all. They read the plaques on the cowboy and Indian statues, as I myself have not yet done. They were excited to visit the Mint.

We held a big bus summit at Alfalfa's later in the evening. As RDC and I stood in front of the deli, a man shoved me aside, excusing himself as he reached for an item in front of me. "Fuckwit" crossed paths with "whatever" in my head as I turned to look at whatever fuckwit this was. Then I bopped him back, "Oh excuse me pardon me," and introduced my bus buddy Jeff to RDC, and Jeff's wife appeared from the aisles and we met her too. RDC and Jeff started talking about Linux kernels or something and Adrian and I looked anywhere but at their conversation, met each other's eyes, and rolled our own. So I asked her how she did the Leia hair thing she wore to "The Phantom Menace" last week (which Jeff had told me about--she wasn't still wearing it).

Does anyone wonder why computer science still has such an imbalance of gender? It's because of Leia's hair.