DENVER, CO. my 1976 toyota chinook truck shakes itself to a stall-out at stop lights. the altitude! of course… i’m a mile high in aurora, a suburb of denver. i ask for some advice at a local auto garage and we figure out how to tune the engine for high altitude. later, i drive into the city and waste gas looking for some way to get aquianted with this place. i stop in a few coffee shops, most are closing by now (8pm), but i get directions to St. Mark’s on east 17th. i talk to a couple strangers. copy info from a flyer for a house show at “le crunk manor.” not much to denver, i think to myself. i sleep in my truck parked across the street and wake up the next day with an email message from someone in boulder who needs demolition workers. good bye, denver.

the drive into boulder is nice… mountain backdrop, small(er) city. the demo is lots of excavating, knocking down walls, and removing old insulation in a historic-register house. i find old newspaper in the walls from 1892 and split wood slates from old crates. they had such a way of building back then. at the end of the first day, i express to the other two workers how i didn’t find anything i liked about denver. eric, another worker, recommends i check out Water Course, a vegetarian restaurant in the city… there’s good people there, he says. i work another day, and quit after that to return to denver for a painting job i had found a week before leaving Chicago. i drive the long route along the foothills to the Rockies and through golden, colorado–home of Coors beer. i saw the giant factory looming over the small, antique city of golden. i slept in a hotel parking lot that night, but couldn’t get a wireless internet signal from the two hotels in the vicinity. i videotaped the moon and the dark blue sky and fell asleep with my window open and the curtains shifting back and forth.

the next morning, i walk into one of the hotels and eat a hearty continental breakfast (complimentary!) and then head to the hardware store to rent a ten-foot ladder. painting… i paint from 11-7pm. lots of cutting and rolling in the stairwell of this cozy townhouse in Lakewood, another suburb. i received a voicemail from my mom about a friend of her’s about 30 miles outside denver, but tomorrow i have to return the ladder in the morning. and what about this Water Course place? i drive into town. my old truck rolls downtown and parks conveniently right in front of this hip and comfortable looking restaurant with giant floor-to-ceiling windows. i am excessively bubbly, not a characteristic i display very often except in occasional care-free moments. like this one. i’m happy. i’ve spent all day in the zen of painting. i’ve made some money. i’m traveling without a real end in sight. and now i’m back in denver with a tip that this place is decent. and decent, it is.

i sit at the bar instead of a table. here, the workers all compliment my mood. i’m not a talkative person around strangers, but suddenly i feel like i live here. the workers are so great, talkative, sweet, funny. i fall in love with everyone. erin, the bartender and dessert artist, spends the most time with me, decorating dessert plates and asking me about chicago. another server comes over after we talk about her Circle A bike parked outside (i saw it coming in.) rachel, the woman who greeted me at the door, sits down to my right after her shift ends and orders a glass of wine. she’s as old as me i guess. she tells me about her past travels to portland, wandering indefinitely. she didn’t know anyone there, but met good people and stayed three weeks. she gives me contacts to people i should meet in denver, particularly the Villa Villakulla house, where the Derailer bike shop is. this night turns my trip upside down. denver turns into something new: and i stay for another week, find mel, an old friend from five years prior, finally fix my bike, and ride a super chopper tall bike. i meet courtney and see her documentary, Living Room, on infoshop culture, in mel’s backyard with fifteen others on a giant projection. and, most notably, i begin my documentary in denver, a project on bike spaces, collectives, and community. perhaps another city could have offered the same catalyst, but denver was it for me. that night changed the course of my trip for good.

i woke to a brightening sky in Last Chance, Co. i discovered my battery-powered alarm clock does not make noise, therefore it is not an alarm. but i awoke anyway at 6am with a dim morning sky seeping through the windows of my mobile home. i hurred into warmer clothes, turned the ignition, and pulled out of the church parking lot. this tiny church is one of only a handful of buildings in this crossroads town, mearly a dot on the map. i turned west, but it was a mistake for west was up a rather steep hill and my truck couldn’t handle the steep grade, the cold temperature, and the high altitude all at once. even in first gear, it creeped to a halt only a hundred feet out and died right there. i put the shifter into neutral and let myself roll backward, turning back into the gravel church lot. i started the engine again and, with much choking and stumbling of the engine, i rolled east, slightly down hill, then flat. i built up some speed, some heat, and made it up the oppisite hill heading east. you see, the tiny town of Last Chance is sort of in a valley between two hills. a road runs north and south along this valley, and Route 36 runs east and west, down the hill and then up the hill either way. i made it up the east hill chugging up it’s slightly softer grade and reached the top in good time. only five minutes or so. i pulled over–my car has seeds and weeds stuck all over it’s undercarriage from pulling over on grassy shoulders so many times–and turned off the truck. i pulled out the tripod and video camera. the sun was still behind the horizon waiting for me, patiently wondering when i would get my act together and film it’s magnificent rise. i drove late into the night yesterday and this morning just to get to a point where i though the mountains would be in view. but fifty or so miles was not close enough and Last Chance has no view of any mountains, only tall grass and rolling hills the locals call bumps. i decided since i could not tape the mountains set aflame by the rising sun, i would just film the sun itself. there were clouds scattered, which made for something interesting. i would have to get the other shot another day.