Oh you must be Christmas!

So I am going home for the first time since I have been out west in August. Thats nearly five months. There are so many different things flooding through my mind.

The work I've been doing out here has not only kept me busy, but kept me sane and living a healthier, harder working life. I have had so many good experiences out here, at the same time I have been sincerely challanged in regards to my physical self and how much I have had to push myself mentally in order to do that physical work. At times I really feel so worn out, and then its other times that I need to remind myself how so much of my physical limits are everything I've ever been told about how I cannot do something but really really should.

I have also met some really great people out here. I am making new friends in a situation where I didn't necessarily think that I was capable of. When I first started it felt as though I was 15 all over again, and scared and shy and timid, though I quickly broke that away and now I'm all the better for it.

When I made the decision to come out here, I wasn't quite sure about leaving all of the activist work I had done over the past 6 years. All of the hours of volunteering I spent working in the Portland community with social activism, I felt like I might just be leaving it behind. However, being out here, recognizing the work that I am doing and the people I work with are doing, I realize now that this is activism and this is doing something, but a different kind than I am familiar with. Maybe I didn't quite recognize how seriously in need we are for environmental change.

So I'm headed home now for the next 8 or so days, and already I'm counting until when I come back, but this might have something to do with a new lady in my life. But I am excited and nervous to go home and see my friends and family. I think there is always the fear that things can never be the same once they've been altered. I'm sure things will be okay, but I am not going to lie and say I'm not that nervous.

Nomads land

Never in my life did I imagine I would ever be living in Las Vegas, Nevada. Ever. And even now living here, I am trying to figure out how one avoids the city of sin and maintain their dignity throughout the year, not ending up in some brothel or itching for a slot machine everytime I might drive by those sweet sweet lights.
This week I think I've done quite a fantastic job of doing just that.
Many don't know this, and honestly neither did I until I sat through A meeting on what exactly it is that we do at my job, but Nevada has more mountain ranges than any other state in the U.S. Impressive right? Considering Nevada is something like 95% desert.

The Desert is also something I never pictured quite accurately, and I would like to thank Hollywood for that.

So Tuesday was my day of rest, but Wednesday, two friends and I headed out to Red Rock Canyons. Red rocks is a state park full of trails and climbing areas.
When we entered the park we were given a map. Haven not been there before we decided to just pick one. The trail we chose, Turtle Head Trail, was about a 3.5 mile round trip at a difficult rating. Difficult ratings would probably be described as a trail you might have to "Boulder" a bit, or somewhat steep.

So while the trail itself was not that long, it was somewhat steep, and towards the end of it we found ourselves having lost the trail and made our own "social path", which is ironic considering our job entails demantleing social paths at state and national parks in this area. We also didn't quite make it to the exact destination because of that, and I didn't want to get so lost, or climb so steep that we couldn't get down or find our way back, and we got started late, and with most climbs you should definately start before 1 pm. Especially in a desert setting, because the sun can be cruel.


So I'm pretty content with the first hike. We are probably going to try an even harder trail next time.
I am trying to get on summer "Saw Crew" for my job, so for that I'm going to need to be in great physical condition with the steep hills I will have to climb should I get on said saw crew.

These small wonders

I just got back from an eight day trip to Lake Tahoe for the first official week of work.
Today I have just been relishing in how amazing the job I have is, and how awesome the people I am meeting are.
This picture I took mid week in South Lake Tahoe on the Nevada side.
What was pretty incredible I got to work in, or drive by areas like this. The average elevation we worked at was about 7000 feet. So the training is also great.

We camped on a ground site called Camp Richard on the California side. Right across the street from a beach site and a bar that plays all of the NFL and Baseball games. Every night we had the option of going to the docs and watching the stars, or going down to see the Salmon fishery and wildlife reserve. It was pretty incredible. My camera was not on me so I couldn't take pictures but wish I could have.

I got a much better picture of what it was exactly that we were going to be doing. Trail work yes, but what kind of trail work? What exactly were the conditions under which we were going to be working? What days would we be on and which would we be off?
This week we decomishoned a few illegal trails. The first of which was a pretty stellar mountain bike trail. Which involves taking apart all of the jumps or boroughs that may have occured in the process of creating the bike trail.
In the first case we had to take apart a bunch of jumps, that to me looked like they created for a great youtube video. Really insane jumps at that. Unfortunately it also seemed like a bunch of fifteen year olds may have infact created this trail on account of the type of wood they used which was all wood that was rotten from the inside out.

Aside from taking the trail apart you also have to complete a process of naturalizing to steer people away from the trail and allow for vegetation to be seeded and eventually grow, weather that be transplanting seeds or live plants from one area to another. And this also requires turning the ground over and keeping it soft enough to allow that vegetation proper nutrients.

So alot of the job involves decomishioning those trails, creating and cutting new trail, transferring native specie plants, some desert clean up, building fences.
And we work in crews of about 10 people on different projects. I am really enjoying hanging out with and getting to know the people in my crew.

I am also enjoying getting to learn how to work with bigger tools and how to build and destroy trails and gaining more comfortability and understanding about this kind of work. Being out doors is really giving me a better perspective on some things and is helping me build my own personal confidence and becoming more physically fit and active. I really look forward to this next year!

I guess thats why they call it "the Rockies"

A guy I am going to be working with for NCC picked me up on Thursday night to head out to Las Vegas, which is where I will be spending the next six months proceeded by 6 months in Reno, doing land conservation work and non native specie removal of plantlife.

We spent Thursday night about an hour off of Rt. 70 with a friend of J's. The drive up there progressed into the mountains. The roads were windy and icy. Kind of absurd thinking that just an hour away in Denver, it was at least fourty degrees warmer. When we woke up on Friday morning it was about 33 degrees and relatively gray. We did stop at a really nice breakfast and lunch diner that had a very broad selection of bagels and other pastries to choose from. We grabbed coffee and bagles and headed out.

Driving back down through the mountains and onto 70 the ride was continuously impressive. The scenery is amazing and it immediately came to mind why these mountains are called The Rocky Mountains. There was however, some pretty wet snow that I would imagine make it difficult to drive in.

On the way the different kinds of scenery we continued to see was nothing short of amazing.
And the types of landscape you see is all so similar but all so vast and differential at the same time. I have to say my favorite parts of the drive where when we were driving sandwhiched between giant mountains of rock and can barely see the sun from where you are.
Then again, I also really enjoyed the red rock mountains. However my absolute favorite part of the drive was in Utah somewhere just before Arizona (there is about a 20 minute drive through the bottom of AZ) Driving through these massive mountains of rock, starting at rough500 feet and winding down to about 1,000 feet.

Its nothing short of incredible, and I cannot say it enough.

It took us roughly 12 hours to drive from start to end. But I am so very glad to have gotten this opportunity to take that drive.

Pictures will come later, but I am very tired after my first day of orientation and have to be up in about 6 hours. Tommorow begins official training

What midnight feels like

I didn't sleep last night. I'm not entirely sure if my sleep deprivation was a conscious effort or not, it seems as though my nights become increasingly longer the closer I get to heading to Nevada. The closer I get to feeling more certain about myself, and the things I've come to know and realize within the last month since I've been here in Denver.

At about half past four this morning, after completing two movies, "Kids" and "Finding Forrester", neither of which I had seen before, I decided to catch a train and come in town, grab some breakfast and coffee.

Its a little surreal, that a town that totally thrives throughout all hours of the day, becomes something like a ghost town after all the bars close down and people go back to their respected places of dwelling. I experienced this once when I was living in Boston. I was awake early enough on a Sunday and walked into "town" to grab a cup of coffee. There wasn't a car on the road, or a person on the sidewalk. Even the park was so empty.

I sincerely enjoy things like this. It reminds me that even the restless need the calm.

I've been here a couple hours now and things are once again starting to pick up again. And I think I may sleep through the day.

Weekly Costumed Pub Crawl!?

I've been meaning to write about this. Every Wednesday night, Denver has a bicycled pub crawl, in costume!
Last night, coming into town on the train, we turned the corner of 20th and Welton and there were about 200 people dressed as Vikings on their bicycles. Three stops later, on 16th and Stout there was another whole trail of bicyclers again dressed as Vikings.
My first week in town was the first time I had witnessed this event, then they were dressed as Pirates.

But five stars for this impressive display of organization for the purpose of drinking and alternative transportation.

Most people just assume anyways

Yesterday was my first trip to Tom's Diner. I had asked several people if it was The Tom's Diner, based on the song, and most people could not actually answer this question because it goes in the category of you may be a lesbian if.... "you know that this may in fact be the Tom's Diner from Suzanne Vega's hit amongst folkys" but once I started singing the beginning of the song, which everyone knows, the response was overwhelmingly "I didn't realize that song had a name"
It was pointed out to me that Tom's diner, in the Suzanne Vega song might actually be based out of New York, however, for the purpose of self entertainment, I will consider it The Tom's Diner.

In any event, I am a sucker for diner meatloaf, and that happened to appear on the menu so I ordered it. For $9.28 this meal came with 3 very large pieces of meatloaf shingled atop of one another with mash potatoes on the side of that all smothered in gravy, a bowl that was well over a serving of veggies, I got peas that most likely came out of a can, two slices of garlic toast and a very generous size side salad. I could barely finish the meatloaf alone, in fact I'm having my left overs for lunch!

The one waiter, who was also the only one that appeared to be in the Diner, was very nice and served us promptly. I couldn't have been happier with my Tom's Diner experience.

So I was out and about last night to the cafe I spend alot of my spare time at LeeLas, which I had mentioned in a previous post. I decided to just hop the train and go a little later than usual out of pure boredom. At about midnight I decided to head home.

On my way to the train, roughly three blocks away, a very tall, large man, looks at me and says "Hey baby" and I kept on walking, because quite frankly it was midnight and a man twice my size just hit on me. The man then steps and front of me and stares me down and does that head nod thing and says "hey" and waits for my response, so I said back "Can I help you?"
"You gay?" he says
In kind of a rush to get away from this man my response was something like "Not really"
"Wanna give me a blow job?"
"Not tonight" and I walked away.
Luckily this happened on the 16th street mall and there are always cops and security officers and plenty of drunk people, other wise I think I may have been this mans dinner. Really I don't think I am meant for the live of sex work.

So I got to the train and had just missed the one I needed to grab, plus there were security officers on the one waiting and I dind't have a valid ticket so I had to wait for the next one...
I was then approached by a man who needed money, and while normally I don't give my money away, this man was seemingly in perril, on the phone with who I was assuming his girlfriend, so I gave him $5, feeling generous.
He then hands me 15 hits of LSD and says he would sell them to me for $1 each if I could give him $15 more, so his girlfriend could get in town.
The man would not leave me alone, so not only did I not buy his acid but I figured to get this guy who was not going to let up to leave me alone I gave him $5 more and said that was all I had.
He seriously did not let up the whole time and it took me 15 minutes to get him to go away.

Thats when a very nice lady, who happens to live a block away from me stood with me and we shot the shit to get this guy to go away.

Ahh my night in Denver.

On pissing in public.

Being a trans person, something that always strikes a chord with me, is the idea of public restrooms. While they are convienient to most, trans people every day have the unfortunate delay of bathroom use. A few great documentaries exist as a training of sorts on the troubles trans people face in the bathrooms. Such as Toilet Training, a documentary put together by the Silvia Rivera Law Project.

Being many years into transition, the problem I face is not access to bathrooms, but the idea of standing to pee, or rather in my case, not standing to pee. More often than not I will walk into a bathroom, and not only are there no seat covers, which I am entirely a fan of, but I find that someone has pissed all over the seat, or hasn't flushed and its an entire mess, one which I should not have to deal with, and it leads me to thinking that most men believe that a.) no ones gonna know it was them and b.) theres an underlying assumption that all men stand to pee, and are only using the bathrooms for the sole purpose to pee. c.) These men have a serious sense of entitlement

Along with immediate annoyance that my trip to the bathroom has been given barriers, some questions come to mind, for instance; "how in the world to you not only miss your target, but manage to hit the barriers on all sides?", "Were you intently aiming for something other than the intended target?" and "Why could you not clean up your own mess or not notice that you have just inconvienenced the next toilet user?"

While there are devices that allow one to stand to pee such as this or this or this even! (the last of which is actually pretty brilliant and the most comfortable of all of those products) Most of the devices are a combination of uncomfortable to use, messy, not logical to just carry around in your pocket. How exactly do you explain just whipping it out of your backpack? And what if you don't even carry a back pack?! Which brings me back to my dilemma of, what do we do about poor bathroom etiquette at the cost of others who actually sit down to use public restrooms?

While I have no proposals, I needed to get it out there, that peeing in public can sometimes be a little too much of a stress factor and I really wish that people were more considerate of those using the restrooms that are not them. And how would they feel if they found themselves in a situation needing to use the bathroom sitting down?

Food for thought.

Comparrisons

J, T, B, and Myself



B, T, Myself, and J


B, J, T and Myself


Change.

Pain in the neck

The last week or so at various points, doing various activities, or no activity at all. I have gone to move my neck, with no sort of sudden movement or anything and my neck has just tweaked out on me. Its like a sharp pain, followed by a more dull roar. It then extends into a full on headache. Now a person can only take so much tylenol or ibuprofen.
I do not have insurance, so getting checked out is not an option for me at this point. But I am thinking that recent stress is a big factor in this neck stuff.
I'm just not quite sure what to do about it. The stress is not going to decrease any time soon, until I am settled in Nevada, in an apartment and I've taken care of everything I need to take care of. This saturday is going to be chalk full of photo copying, running around and making various purchases of the camping variety.
I found a guy who is going to sell me an army issue sleeping bag for $2 and a woman who is going to sell me a sleeping pad for $15. That narrows my expenses down.

Still left, are two pairs of carharts (which I will be reimbursed for) and a pair of good work boots (which a friend out here says she has a pair I can have, and they should fit me. TImberlands) I also still have to buy my bus ticket there.

So I am there, its just taking some time to get there.


I need to stress less and maybe my neck/head problems would go away?



Also, I need to love myself a little better. Take care of myself a little more.

The Mile High City

So I arrived in Denver on August 1st, just under a month ago. The way the bus comes in I was greeted to a newer, "hipper" city. Where no one dresses anything above shorts and flip flops, and everyone is skinny with a tan.

My first thought about Denver was that all of the architecture was really interesting, like a modern, western style city. Really quaint.

The first couple of days here, my impression of Denver, was that it was the extension of two long roads, with a whole lot of commercialism. Before long I actually realized, this city is actually pretty huge.

(on a shorter tangent: I would like to say that Greyhound can kiss my rear.)

The "city" itself, is relatively small and runs about 2 square mile radius, but all of its outer limits are a bunch of smaller neighborhoods that have a lot to offer.
There are what I would say are scales of neighborhoods.. going from working class/poor to extreamly wealthy. And those neighborhoods rarely run into one another.

It also has quite an excellent transportation system. I have yet to experience a bus that was any more than 4 minutes late and there are four train lines that jut out into the four corners of the city and beyond.

Denver also has an excellent night scene to offer. Last call here is at 2 and between Thursday and Saturday, and even the days in between, you are more than likely to be able to find something to do, if you are over 21. Under 21 I have yet to research weather or not there is anything for those people. But even so, up until at least 11 you are more than likely to find something to do, like "retro" bowling. Oh and there is LeeLas European Cafe which I have come to spend a significant amount of time at, because a.) I don't know a whole lot of people yet b.) they have a bottomless coffee, iced coffee, and sodas and c) they have free wi-fi.
They are infact all ages, and on the weekends have different bands play. Also on Tuesdays, a local artists group meets and illistrates/writes there. I do enjoy it there, and the staff is pretty awesome.

The night scene aside, there is a collection of museums, restaurants, libraries one could visit, along with about a thousand day time activities including the gigantic park and several large parks to visit.


So with all of those good things, coming from the east coast, where it is humid, very humid, to somewhere polar opposite, like in fact how dry it is, I had a really hard time adjusting to the climate here. It has been sunny and between 75 and 90 nearly every day and it has only rained twice. I have come to also be informed that Denver is in the middle of roughly a ten year drought. So people water their lawns at 10:00 at night, no joke, because there is a city ordanence that you cannot water your lawn or use a hose for that matter between 9 a.m. and 5 p.m.


I head to Nevada in a month for Americorps for the year, I'm going to be doing land conservation. For The Great Basin Instatution .

Welcome to June (almost)

May and June are very busy months for me. Along with work, and finishing up things from spring, I'm also pretty involved in the planning of pride month events. For instance, I organize and put on a pretty big,hefty pride event. and during the beginning of the month. And there are so many small things that go into planning it and its sort of stressing me out in combination with just getting back into work and everything.

dd

So I'm taking a lot of time thsi week to get it all mapped out.

It has come to my attention:

That I might want to find alternative sources of clothing to make my ride to and from work a little less dreadful.
For example

So I am taking polls of what people think.. I'm pretty sure all of the femmes in my life would say no to spandex.. however I think if it makes my ride more bareable then I would so do it!

Hes so sweet he gives me a toothache

But really I do have a toothache. Its been there for a bit now. I broke a filling a while back and my left bottom wisdom tooth is acting up. So I called around today and hopefully will have it taken care of soon. There are a few places in town that do a sliding scale. Considering I don't have insurance right now It would be really hard to pay for a filling. But I also can get my teeth cleaned.

My previous dentist, whom I had to get a tooth pulled with was a bad experience all together. My first visit, I showed up on time and waited to be seen for forty-five minutes. Then, I waited another 45 minutes after they took x-rays to hear that they weren't actually going to give me a cleaning there because my gums were too weak.

So the next appointment I had scheduled happened to be on a day where the entire town lost power because of an ice storm. But I called and they said it was still on. I drove all the way out there and sure enough they were closed.

Finally when I got my tooth pulled it was a terrifying experience and they weren't so great at the comforting.

So now I hope to find a nicer, more efficient dentist office.

But, all of this mouth stuff has really given me a kick in the butt to take better care of my teeth. I was never really raised to take much care of my teeth, it wasn't harped on us, and we didn't have dental insurance either so I had a lot of cavities.

Now my teeth are better than ever, but I'm stll having this pain...

but eventually I can have a smile like his

I'm a working girl now

So I am finally working after two months, having lost my job in March. I am biking 5.4 miles each way. This is a lot for me considering its a very up and down hill ride both ways. Also, for the past two days I haven't had a helmet and while the ride there is pretty okay considering the time of day, the ride home is terrifying.

But I have it back now so I will feel a little safer... but drivers are still crazy and I get a lot of beeps. Because the roads are terrible and not meant for bikes.

Also

Maine has now legalized Same sex marriage. This is great news! I haven't been on the Marriage boat the whole time, however after seeing hundreds of people testify about how it being legalized would affect them I had a bit of a change of heart.

I do though, still strongly stick to my beliefs of giving other GLBT issues just as much attention and platform but I also understand that this is a now issue and needs to be addressed now.

We do have a ways to go still because until the next 90 days are up, we have to worry about the opposition coming up with a peoples veto, which they officially filed yesterday. They now have to come up with 40,000 signitures to introduce it on the November ballad.

So its a hold your breath time.

Today

Is a beautiful day. And despite the moon not quite being aligned to my personal likings and kind of throwing things off for me (maybe i should look to see if mercury is in retrograde or I'm just having an awkward day)

So I'm enjoying the Sun. Because I can.

Exciting right?

After nearly two months of making no income and loosing my job at Whole Foods, which I affectionately refer to as, " the hole". I now have a job, working in a kitchen at a local labratory that makes things for hospitals and such.

Maybe now I will be able to afford to pay my bills. Yesterday my phone was shut off and that was the low for me at which point I started to panic.

I would like to move to Denver in August but that won't be possible without money.

So I can breath again.

I totally want this as a tatoo

Ok lets make that happen.