November

Started: 2007-12-27 10:49:59

Submitted: 2007-12-27 11:43:45

Visibility: World-readable

In the first partial week of November, I accomplished two key objectives on my list of things to do before moving away from Boulder.

(I should point out that there is currently no plan that calls for me moving away from Boulder, but I still maintain the list of things I would enjoy doing that I wouldn't otherwise do.)

This year, thanks to Congress' meddling, the last weekday of Daylight Savings Time turned out to be the latest sunrise of the year; on Friday, 2 November the sun rose in Boulder at 0730 MDT. (That compares to 0719 MST on the Solstice.) I took advantage of the late sunrise and climbed Green Mountain at dawn. This involved waking up entirely too early and heading into Boulder and up Flagstaff Road before dawn, then heading up the Greenman trail to the summit with my head lamp in the pre-dawn chill. I didn't get to the trailhead as soon as I had planned, so I pushed myself to climb faster than my usual pace. I didn't quite make it to the top by dawn; I arrived a few minutes late, but I had a great view of the Continental Divide in the pale pink morning light. The light was sufficiently shallow to project my shadow on the boulder that makes up the summit:

The next day, on 3 November 2007, Kiesa and I took advantage of the monthly free days at the Denver Art Museum. I vaguely recall visiting the museum on a free day in 1997 (Willy tells me our visit was concurrent with the G8 summit in Denver). It occasionally amuses me that I spend time on vacation in other cities seeing shiny buildings and art museums but I don't spend very much time doing that in my own back yard. Kiesa and I started in the shiny new Frederic C. Hamilton building (which itself looks like a piece of modern art), looked at the strange multi-floor installation featuring seven-segment LED displays counting up or down at precise speeds, and made our way through the galleries. The collection of modern art wasn't as extensive as the first-rate national galleries I visited in London and Washington, DC, but I did enjoy my visit. We crossed the sky bridge into the older "castle" building but skipped the extensive Native American art in favor of the Asian art. I saw a series of Japanese drawings that reminded me of anime and portrayed peaceful snow scenes in Japan.

When we finished the museum, it was early afternoon and we began to think about food. We crossed under the concourse into the nearby Denver Public Library, walked through the main hallway (which looked a bit more like a shopping mall than a library), briefly investigated (and rejected) the on-site cafe, and headed down Sixteenth Street in downtown Denver. It struck me as a poor imitation of Pearl Street in Boulder, but we did manage to find an Einstein Bagels to eat lunch before wandering through The Tattered Cover (where we managed to avoid spending any money) before heading home.

Climbing Green Mountain at dawn and visiting the Denver Art Museum leaves only one item on my "do before moving away from Boulder" list: Use my GPS to map all of Boulder Mountain Parks. I confess I'm not really any closer to achieving that objective than I was at the beginning of November.