75° Outside...Denver in Pictures

So I know I haven't blogged in 4 months...but today was grand enough that it prompted me to write. And all for one reason...

Today winter went AWOL. The first day of March brought us record-setting heat (75°) and a flurry of urban activity. It seemed like the entire city burst from their homes in a race to see who could get sunburnt first. (I ended up quite pink myself.)

So my spirits were lifted, and since Sarah had to work all day (so that we could buy silly things like bread and pasta) =), I decided to go on a grand but solitary urban adventure. I took the 120x bus to Thornton and began a 15 mile bike ride back to Denver. Riding through North Metro suburban hell was less-than-enlightening, but it made for a challenging ride. I then went to the Five Points neighborhood to play an hour of racquetball with a guy I met randomly on Craigslist, promptly lost 3 matches, and somehow won the 4th despite being utterly exhausted. I then biked downtown, people-watched on the 16th St. pedestrian mall, browsed the best used bookstore that isn't named Powell's, and set out toward the über-gentrified S. Platte River Valley. I hopped a train to the University of Denver, spent some time passed out on a random patch of grass, and finally arrived at Sarah's library just as she was getting off work...a 30 mile adventure all told, all without a car. =D

So here are a few pictures of the city I might just learn to love when the flowers start to bloom, the tomatoes redden, and the river starts rushing with snowmelt.

First, the State Capitol that sits 3 blocks from our apartment...


The Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception on East Colfax...


17th St...the cheesily-named "Wall St. of the West"...


My favorite 'lil coffee shop...it's the only coffee joint in LoDo that manages to remain unpretentious!


The underground of the old Union Station...one of the only places in the US where you can take a train up to 11,000 ft...straight to the base of Winter Park.


The E-Line pulling into Union Station...basically what Boston's Green D-Line would be if it were 10x faster and beautifully lacking in drunk college students...I love Denver's trains.


Only in Denver...give us one day of winter warmth and the kayaks come out in force at Confluence Park on the South Platte River...


A Highlands woman painting scenery next the the history Platte River Trolley tracks...


The Ritchie Center at the University of Denver...where I waited in line 3 hours to hear Barack Obama speak...


Until next time my long lost friends in Coeur d'Alene, Abilene, and Boston. I miss you all!
Zach

Resurrection Feels Good

When I last posted to this blog, I was lamenting the heat-choked, smog-laden streets of Denver suburbia and despairing over our future here. The last two months have witnessed Sarah and I retaking control of our lives and asserting ourselves as members of the urban community. As a result, the wonderful city that the suburbs insulated from view has come to revive us once again.

In early September, however, we just needed to leave for a few days, and leave we did...we jetted off to Southern Mexico, Zihuatanejo to be exact. Due to our frequent flier miles accumulated from our early-marriage commutes back and forth from Abilene<-->Boston, we had the leverage to get there for free, so long as we went to Seattle, Portland, and Los Angeles on the way. As ridiculously circuitous as that seems, it allowed us to (1. have dinner with my folks in Seattle, (2. have dinner with my brother Kurtis in Los Angeles, and (3. spend an overnight roaming the streets of Portland with our fellow former Bostonian Vanessa Patterson.

In Mexico we did everything we had been wishing to do in Colorado. We walked everywhere, patronized the produce market every morning, took public buses, and practiced our rusty Spanish until it was occasionally conversational. We shunned the tourist resort of Ixtapa, stayed in a cheap hostel directly above the public market, got sunburned beyond recognition, and generally tried to avoid touristy postcolonial-ish sins. What a wonderful respite it provided!

Once back in Denver, depression hit harder than ever, and I began to have panic attacks that frightened me, one of which sent me to the ER. The force of it all emboldened us to move out quickly, and three weeks later we finally left the suburbs for a small apartment in Capitol Hill, 1/2 mile from Downtown Denver. It's twice the size of our Brighton place for 1/2 the price, an equation we can definitely live with! And there's a fantastic vegetarian pizzeria a 3-minute walk away! Yay for tempeh bacon! =P

Our first night in our new place was my 25th birthday. Sarah took me out to one my favorite restaurants, Watercourse, we dressed up and went to the Symphony for a great Renee Fleming concert. The cultural opportunities have just kept coming...next came community theatre via a Eugene O'Neill masterpiece called A Touch of the Poet...next week, I'll proudly support my fellow Idaho native Josh Ritter in concert in Boulder.

Sarah started her Americorps work last week for Denver Options, an life-skills empowerment organization for the developmentally disabled. So far, so good. It's wonderful to see her spring out of bed in the morning excited about her day!

In short, autonomy, cultural engagement, and a human scale of living have instantly brought us back to life. We're struggling to be sure, finances, grad school plans, etc... but now it seems like we'll not only make it but thrive. In my case anyway, I've been a better person, friend, and partner to Sarah than I was able to be this summer. Tentatively, I'd say I'm happy at present. =)

(But damn I still need a new job!)

Denver and I Need a Divorce

A love affair too hastily entered usually ends quickly. Just a month ago, fresh off an exhilarating hike in the Indian Peaks Wilderness, I proclaimed that I was in love with Colorado. Our living situation notwithstanding, I thought the place was alright.



But I was horribly wrong. The incredible Front Range of the Rocky Mountains, those green and purple-hued peaks I hiked the first 5 Saturdays we lived here, now serve a contrastive role, primarily reminding me of the haste with which Denver (or more properly, its horrific suburbs Highlands Ranch, Littleton, Centennial, Ken Caryl, et al. ) has tried to ruin its magnificent natural setting. A few scattered ozone warnings later, I realized that my lungs won't let me bicycle to work through the smog. Twenty Wal-Marts later, I realized that Colorado's idea of development is to pave the foothills as quickly as possible. The fittest city in America apparently burns its calories washing its Hummers and Tahoes with imported river water that's drying up quickly.

It's all so tragic because this place has so much promise: the sunny, pleasant climate, 20 degrees cooler up at 10,000', incredible vistas, thick forests, formerly clean air, and a damn cool urban center in Downtown, LoDo, the Highlands, and City Park. And Boulder is fantastic. But I'm here to tell you that the overwhelming majority of Metro Denver is an ecological nightmare. Imagine the Charles River in Boston being lined with industrial parks and Costcos. That's the South Platte River through Englewood. It's a congested nightmare. I-70 through the mountains is a bit like the moon...stare at it and nothing is moving, but come back 6 hours later and alas movement has occurred.

Not that the liberal civic-minded types aren't trying. They have 6 fantastic light rail lines that run at 60mph and they are planning 7 more with their incredible Fastracks program, and their bus system is efficient and covers an area twice the size of Rhode Island...but they have entire "cities" without a single business, consisting entirely of single-family McMansions. Trying to live car-free here has been a frustrating failure. Our free housing with the parents, as you have probably guessed from this rant, is in one of those aforementioned suburbs.

*Sigh...we have to get out of here. Where's Coolidge Corner when you need it?

Finding Nederland

Yesterday Sarah and I had our first chance to fall in love with Colorado. A state that hitherto had seemed sprawly, overheated, and über-Republican finally showed us its better side. We drove up to the bluest enclave in the state, "The People's Republic of Boulder", and caught a glimpse of how the wealthy academics spend their days, vowing to return for further investigation (and possibly residence). From Boulder we advanced to Nederland, a reservoir town of 1,000 who had a DJ at the grocery store spinning Brad Paisley's latest. After beginning the day in suburbia, advancing through collegiate socialism and rural mountain towns, we at last arrived at our destination: Brainerd Lake Recreation Area. We had a picnic on a wind-downed tree, chock full of Herrington-Shaner essentials: nectarines, cherries, faux-turkey sandwiches, and of course Dr. Pepper.

Our carbohydrate count sufficiently replenished, we set out for a moderate hike to Lake Isabelle, a tiny glacial lake at 12,000 feet. The 2 miles each way were pleasantly verdant, saturated with mountain breezes that dropped the temperature from 95° in Denver to 75° in the mountains. The stunted trees were gasping for air just as we were, pressing on in their resilience. Above tree line the panorama opened to an alpine meadow full of Indian Paint Brushes (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Castilleja) and Columbines (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aquilegia_caerulea), while the lake remained tranquil save for the violence that my skipping rocks enacted upon them. Lake Isabelle sat surrounded on three sides by the Indian Peaks, and the vista put a jump in my spirits and recklessness in my feet. I scrambled up boulders, waded the glacial creek, and "skied" down the glacier with just my hiking shoes. I was officially a little kid.



It's been a stressful first two weeks in Denver. Living at 'home' always feels a bit stifling and defeatist, but being married is especially difficult. All the autonomy Sarah and I forged in Boston is mostly unrecognized by my well-intentioned, gracious, yet difficult in-laws. Boundaries are difficult. We want to be an autonomous unit, yet we are completely indebted to their hospitality for our survival. The balancing act we're all struggling with will work itself out, but the transition has been tough. Compounding the problem, we are friendless here, unless the amazing Denver Public Library counts as a companion! Where are Vanessa and Ian? Bret and Julie? Stephanie? Kurtis? Sarah's coworkers in Boston? We are longing for them, and we miss them dearly.

But there have been many bright spots. My job with Mercy Housing is turning out well, but eight months of non-profit data entry will no doubt get old very quickly. The light rail is great, giving me 25 car-free, stress-free, traffic-free minutes to read during my commute every (early) morning. I love downtown Denver, and working a block from the 16th Street Mall is definitely a bonus. Sarah's had several Americorps interviews and one offer, but she's holding out for something that feels right. (Her courage, or stubbornness, or both, humble me. I indiscriminately took the first thing I was offered here.)

So that's the latest dispatch from the Herrington-Shaner clan. We're partially employed, starving for friends, eeking out a vegetarian life in the land of the SUV carnivores, and pleasantly sore from a much needed walk in the woods. Here's hoping the next 8 months treat us well!

Rocky Mountain High?

Ok, so after all the back-and-forth, the ad nauseam repitition, the indecision, Sarah and I have a plan! And we're sticking to it, damn it! =) June 19th, at 9am, Sarah and I will board a shuttle bus to Manchester, New Hampshire to catch our noon flight to Denver, where we'll live for 4? 8? 12? months. Several pros determine this situation...



(1. We're getting out of Boston for free! Yay for frequent flier miles, people (hopefully) buying all of our furniture and thus paying to ship our mini-library cross-country.

(2. We can spend the end of June celebrating numerous family things...my sister-in-law's birthday, my grandparents-in-law's 60th anniversary, and to top it all off, a potential but not quite determined Hawaii excursion! Oh, Molokai, how I'd like you to inaugurate my 50th state experience!

(3. We can breathe financially and really prepare for Sarah's head-first dive in grad school in Portland. Living rent-free and hopefully job-full will allow us, for the first time as a couple, to really catch up. Credit cards? I have scissors with your name on them. =)

(4. More than any of that, Sarah will get a chance to be with her family in a way that she hasn't been in three years. One of the tough sides of marrying early and rushing to New England with me is that she never really got the "college summer at home where I can relax and take jobs at swimming pools or yoga studios" experience. And after two jobs here in Boston, one that has scared her away from library school and another that drains her soul with every freakin' photocopy...well, frankly Sarah deserves an existential massage or two.

(5. As for me? I applied for my dream internship (yes, my dreams are nerdy) at Transportation Solutions as a Public Transit Advocacy Intern. I should be hearing back within two weeks. If I don't get it? Well, I am completely at peace mowing lawns, brewing coffee, or leading hikes...whatever comes my way. All I know is I'm going to work as much as possible while still spending as much time as possible with Sarah. Of course, I'll be eagerly planning our Portland move...such a great city!

So we're set on something, and it feels gooood. Before we leave? We have quite an array of excursions planned. Tomorrow, we're heading to Symphony Hall to hear Brahms Symphony #3 with all the snobby Brookliners and Newtonians we can handle. Next Tuesday, we're flying down to DC to hear Barbara Kingsolver extol the virtues of bioregionalism and to tour the new Museum of the American Indian. Then, well this little thing called graduation! My family will be here, and I plan on exhausting them with the Museum of Fine Arts, the New England Aquarium, all the wonderful historical sights, the fantastic architecture, our favorite Mexican and Chinese restaurants, and introducing them to the joys of public transportation. =) The day after they leave? How about a Damien Rice concert in the Theatre District? So much to look forward to before a quiet, relaxing summer of love.

It's Time to Buy a Bicycle...

Thanks to a trusty Wikipedia article, here are various modes of transportation in all their efficient (or inefficient) glory...looks like I've overrated walking! It's time to buy a bike, or move to Switzerland, or both =)...numbers are given in "per passenger equivalent."

Mode of Transport
Basel, Switzerland Light Rail
- 950 MPG (per person equivalent w/regenerative brakes)
Bicycling
- 653 MPG (calorie consumption converted to MPG)
High-Speed French TGV Trains
- 506 MPG (per person equivalent)
USA Commuter Rail DMU
- 328 MPG (per person equivalent at 70% occupancy)
Walking
- 235 MPG (calorie consumption converted to MPG)
Boston MBTA Buses
- 231 MPG (per person equivalent at 70% capacity)
Long Flights
- 66 MPG (per person equivalent)
Short Flights
- 40 MPG (per person equivalent)
Mid-Size Car (USA)
- 24 MPG (highway/city average with load factor of 1.5)
Cruise Ships
- 18 MPG (per person equivalent, .009375 MPG overall!)
Full-Size SUV (USA)
- 14 MPG (highway/city average with load factor of 1.5)
NASA Space Shuttle
- .00923 MPG (Liftoff and Ascent)
- .5 MPG (descent included; but that's a bit cheap!)


Although, given Boston's notoriety for being a horrible city for bikers, I hope to avoid this kind of Southie-mob type problem...

Or given Boston's winter nasty iciness, I just think this is brilliant...

So Portland or Denver beware...a nascent eco-hippie bicyclist is coming your way in June!

And Now the Educational Hangover...

After a blissful week of vacation, I'm feeling profoundly panicky about the next 6 weeks. They're going to be absolutely nuts, and my inability to focus this semester has ensured that I will once again finish by the skin of my teeth. The rest of this semester, relative to Spring Break, already feels like a hangover. =( 80 pages of writing and a comprehensive exam must be completed in the showery month of April. Can I do it? Can I make myself want to? Here's hoping.

Coeur d'Alene & The Science of Timing Homecomings

So my 36-hour return to Coeur d'Alene - my beautiful booming hometown - has been wonderful. Despite manic development, I was heartened to see that the lake was still there in all its beauty, downtown was thriving even in winter, and (gasp!) it now has a public transportation system! (however puny, http://www.idahocitylink.com/)

I'm thinking that the success of a homecoming is dependent on timing: stay away a while, return, but don't stay too long. Having been away for 1.5 years has allowed me to breathe it all anew. It's a wonderful feeling: sweet remembrance and gratitude without the suffering of a longing to return. I'm content living elsewhere, and yet I'm so incredibly grateful for a hometown which has filled my memories with such greenery, wildness, hospitality, and fun. Remembering is so meaningful.

Nostalgia is a peculiar thing: play with it, tease it...and meaning is created; abandon yourself to it and you end up disappointed. Thus I live in constant tension, ever on the border between memory and creation. I think I'll ride the fence a while.

So I Guess I’m Not (Yet) Meant to Be a Duck

Sarah and I arrived last Monday in Eugene, OR after a long and multi-modal day that began at 4am in Boston. We took a cab to Logan Airport, flew through Chicago to Portland, took the MAX to Chinatown, walked to Union Station, hopped on Amtrak to Eugene, and finally took a Eugene city bus the final 1.5 miles to our oh-so-retro hostel (all told, a 14-hour trek from Boston). The middle-aged men that said they “lived” there were straight out of some past decade in which I had no part, but the place was decent enough. We had an sunrise-facing private room with a Camp Princes’ Pine style mattress, but with all the walking we did, getting adequate sleep was not an issue!

We absolutely loved Eugene. We arrived under sunny 60° skies, surrounded by greener-than-expected Willamette Valley crop fields and modest Cascade foothills to the south and east of town. The place was lush: cherry blossoms were blooming everywhere, grasses were green and soft, and the city arboretum (otherwise known as the University of Oregon campus) provided an old-growth canopy of green splendor. The city is mid-sized with a small-town feel, albeit with pockets of urban excitement. Downtown Eugene definitely looks its age, but seems to be revitalizing without gentrified snobbery, something that was incredibly refreshing. In short, Eugene is a gigantic contradiction: it seems to take itself very seriously without appearing pretentious. It has a deep commitment to civic quality of life, as its transit system admirably shows. Its politics are of course ridiculous, a comical caricature of liberal sentiments, but I’d honestly rather have liberal crazies than conservative crazies anyday. When CrazyCons get mad, they raise the flag and fire their guns. When CrazyLibs get mad, they pass the weed and poorly organize a protest. Eugene would be a fun place to live a while, its greenery indulgent, its cost of living low, its layout manageable without a car, and its culture rich and wacky.

So I guess there’s just one tiny little problem, damn it. I didn’t get in to UO’s Environmental Studies Program. I received an email the same day I was on campus saying that out of 80 applications, they were able to admit 8, and I was not among them. So with 10% odds, I feel only mildly depressed. Yet Eugene was so compelling to us that we may just move there anyway. If Sarah can work with their (amazing) public library and build language skills, we can spend a couple of years there before moving to Tucson or Denver so that she can go to library school. If I can find urban planning/environmental employment, what need have we of large cities?

In short, Sarah and I are beginning to think that compact small cities (with good transit and an abundance of nature) can satisfy in ways large ones can’t. If so, maybe Eugene is the place for us. We’ll see.

Hating Winter, and Other Discontents

Sometimes life stresses just mercilessly pile on, and it's easy to buckle under the pressure. Lately, Sarah and I have been struggling to tread water and keep from being consumed.

Factors in our recent struggles:

1. We've been sick and sore. 10 days of unrelenting throat infections, headaches, earaches, lost voices, and ice falls.

2. This past week, getting from here to there has been an exercise in suffering. We seem to have had extraordinary bad luck with missing trains, buses leaving early, or trains not coming at all (due to a bridge collapsing and electrical problems, among others.) In addition, we walk 2+ miles per day, and the temperature dropped 60 degrees this week, from 55 to -5, with -20 windchills. I was walking downtown yesterday when a 50mph gust blew me backwards with all the numbing force of hell, and I would have cried if I hadn't feared for frozen tears.

3. Sarah's leading a hard life. She hates one job (she runs errands for Harvard in an impossibly stale environment) and mostly likes another (although the demographics are a challenge...she needs 20-somethings around!). Our financial burden is resting on her, but working "12-days-on-2-days-off"(repeat ad infinitum) is enough to drive anyone crazy. I am so thankful for the countless sacrifices she's made to allow me to complete this degree, but I'd be willing to do anything to decrease her stress-load.

4. Academia has recently made me feel very small. I lost my backpack on the bus the other day (I was rushing off the bus feeling sick and left it behind), and I had important library materials that I was supposed to use to lead our doctoral history seminar for an hour. My subsequent presentation left much to be desired, and I was publicly chastised by the professor in front of the class. In addition, I am completely burned out concerning anything remotely theological, and I feel that I have beaten that horse to death multiple times. At this point, I just want to finish and get a job, not having to spend nights writing papers I don't care about anymore. If I were in a different program, perhaps I'd feel differently, but being here as I am I can only push ahead and hope May hastens its arrival.

So, in short, winter blue has become the winter blackness, and it's about damn time that Spring showed up! Here's hoping that Spring Break in Oregon will be a return to sanity, a chance for fun and relaxation =O, and some time when our brains can go five minutes without worrying about completing tedious tasks that we want no part of.

*Sigh