SE CO

surly monkey

Today I took off for La Junta. There's a pretty awesome skate park there, it's really big and has good flow. When I showed up there were these kids on ridiculous contraptions that were three wheeled scooters. No speed whatsoever and they ended up in the flats blocking flow. I had never seen such a thing.

I skated for about an hour. The local kids were super cool. They know how lucky they are to have a park like that there. It seems like they as opposed to the city are the ones that keep it clean and they were definitely enforcing the rules as far as park etiquette to the scooter kids. Not only that, but La Junta is one of the few parks I've been to in Colorado where the local kids actually skate the full park and take advantage of the pool aspect of the park. Those kids skate old school there.

This time instead of heading straight back to the Springs I headed down US 350 towards Trinidad. I stopped and took pics. Every town between La Junta and Trinidad no longer exists. It was pretty much the first time of seeing ghost towns for me (with the exception of Victor, CO which has no buildings whatsoever standing).

When I finally convince myself to leave the state of CO, this may be the thing I miss the most. Get in my car for a day and see the world change.

15 years

Today is fifteen years since I landed in Colorado. I guess it's an anniversary of sorts. I still vaguely remember getting off the Greyhound at the old Denver Greyhound station and walking down to the RTD station to catch a bus to Boulder. Strangely, I remember this Napoleon looking security guard that I would see the next few times I took the bus back to Indiana.

Sheesh, I was so much younger then. It's hard to remember what it was like back then. I know that I didn't really intend to move here at first, I was just coming to visit a friend for a couple of weeks. And yet I'm still here for the meantime.

Fifteen years later, and I'm ready to go back to the motherland. Even with the humidity and crappy winters. Don't get me wrong, I love Colorado but I don't love Colorado Springs. I could go on and on about why but I won't. And I'll miss it here when I finally heat back east.

And in fact I have this feeling if and when I'm back in Indy, I'll find myself looking to the west and putting mountains that don't exist in the skyline.