In Denver, fall 2022

We’re in Denver for Mark’s son Ethan’s big fancy wedding, and I am at our Airbnb finally knocking off work, and finally writing a post here, my first one in the month of September, and it’s already the 9th.

As the evil stepmother (well maybe not soooo evil) I didn’t have to go to the rehearsal; when the wedding party marches down the aisle tomorrow, I will be seated in the good seats reserved for family, watching. Mark’s the father of the groom, though, so he had to go, and then afterward the dudes all went to hit golf balls at some driving range. So we get a little break.

I’ve never really thought of myself as Ethan’s stepmom.  Mark and Ethan’s mom Mary did all the hard work of raising him, doctor visits and school and all that. I did go to a few of his soccer and hockey games. But mostly I got to be this other adult that got to hang out with Ethan and do fun stuff, like trips. And I think Mary’s partner Bob (Robert Hunter, but not that Robert Hunter) feels pretty much the same.

My gimpy knee is really cramping my style – I’m not used to not being able to walk as much as I want. Today we took a really short walk to a bakery recommended by our Airbnb host,  to get stuff for breakfast – aside it was really good – we got a bun with green chiles and bacon and mozzarella, and a blueberry scone, and a chocolate and raspberry Danish, and an almond croissant. The coffee was really good too. No indoor seating at the bakery, and it seemed still too early morning chilly and the bakery was on the shady side of the street (only light-wise – this is totally one of the upscale hipster parts of Denver) to sit outside and get my leg stiff and chilled, so we brought it all back to the airbnb and devoured.

I thought I’d go to the Denver Public Library downtown, a 48 minute walk Google says, too far for my knee, but a big chunk of the walk could be on the free 16th St. Mall circulator bus, so we went off to do that. The plan was that Mark would go with me and then maybe walk back to the Airbnb and summon a Lyft to go to the rehearsal, so he’d get a longer walk. The bus is actually going up 17th and down 15th right now because there’s construction on 16th, and maybe because of that, or maybe because I’m so slow right now, while we were waiting for the bus Mark told me no time to walk back – he’d have to summon the Lyft from where we got off the bus.

We split up at the turning around spot for the buses, and I walked over to the library only to find it closed. The library seems to be under a lot of construction, and also maybe still recovering from pandemic but it’s closed on Fridays and Saturdays, open 1:00-6:00 Monday through Thursday and noon-5:00 Sunday. Oh and I saw a sign for this – there’s a big project called “Elevate Denver“. It kinda needs it – downtown looks a bit apocalyptic, lots of fences and garbage and unhoused people.  The library is one of about 500 funded projects.

Anyways, I guess Mark made it on time to the rehearsal, and I took the bus back down to the end of its circuit where it turns around and goes the other way, but instead of walking the remaining 1.5 miles back to the Airbnb I want into a Starbucks and got a chai and ordered a Lyft from there. Just over 2 miles walking for me, and my knee said nope, that’s enough.

We were last here in fall 2019, the before times. Looks like I did a much better job of taking pictures of things back then. So far this time I only have the ice cream we got at the train station yesterday when we got here – see overleaf. I’ll have to get on it tomorrow, or maybe even tonight. There’s a Welcome Party at this place called the Great Divide Barrel Bar, and it seems to be just a taproom, beer and tour the brewing and the canning or bottling, but you can have food catered in, and/or maybe there’re food trucks – anyways it sounds we’ll be outside with decent lighting for at least the early part of the night. Good for pictures.

I do have some pretty nice Labor Day food pics. We had a picnic and I made pressed sandwiches. The recipe should be showing up in my new recipes, real soon now ™.