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.