Morning commute edition

Denverites prize their mountainouse backdrop just as the serious Urban Outfitter shopper prizes a vinyl-coated wall mural. An epic wall piece will spruce up the most forlorn piles of scatty mail, old banana skins and discarded underwear; similarly, Denver's Front Range provides a welcome distraction from the unceasing mattress warehouses, evangelical churches and DMVs that huddle across Denver's landscape.

I love the brief view I have of Mt. Evans on my morning commute (long ed.) while crossing I-25. It is pleasing to find myself out in the wind, puffing life into my pillow-imprinted face, while the poor souls below fiddle inside their SUVs with disagreeable coffee (espresso so disagreeable they invented the Americana - who waters down good coffee?) and the haranguing of drive-time radio and traffic.

To my earlier point, though, about Denver's no-frills infrastructure, the serene bike loop I pedal on early mornings needles its way through a tight corridor of greenery along the Platte, skirting the back-end of industrial factories, warehouses and construction sites. Above, the raw beauty of the Platte is offset by high retaining walls and thick traffic on the arterial routes. To me, it is richly evocative of the scungy Venice Beach canals, and it is difficult, blinded by sunrise, to tell if the river is concealing bodies, plague, dead fish, or merely a spot of trash or vandalism.

I do get a nice view of the Denver skyline on a little ways though (close in, the Capitol can be seen), replete with the spires of numerous abandoned power lines and old billboards.

Above, a mysterious purveyor of gases trades nearby the perennially on-sale Cal Spas hot tub outlet ("New! Salt water hot tubs"). The gas shop has a flashing display that alternates between the current temperature, time and "We sell nitrogen." Presumably the flashing call-sign was designed to pull cars off I-25 in pursuit of bargain liquid nitrogen at wholesale prices. To date, though, I have never seen more than a single truck parked outside the establishment, and have reached the conclusion that, like an old missile silo, the bottles of pressurized gas have been left to integrate with the landscape.

I like the idea that factories have been assembled purely on a whim by any spare bits and pieces nearby at the time. I imagine that were you ever to take one apart, no one would ever figure out how the pieces all go together again. This example, located in close quarters of Mile High Stadium, appears to have been constructed from old takeaway chopsticks, broken-down tractors and IKEA filing cabinet kits.


And my favorite, a view I title: "Six Flags Refinery at Dawn."