pedicab

It was cold yesterday. If I'm lucky it will be the last cold day like this of the spring. I can replace the plants that the night cold killed. Twice. This will be the third try. The cold didn't kill everything but most of it. I managed to dress inappropriately again. The sky turned gray in the west with a narrow band of brown light behind it all and above the mountain range that backlight the rain draining from the clouds back there like thin filaments and the whole dark sky advancing on the city menacingly with the wind kicking up all to break apart just as the storm clouds approached the edge of the city. I turn a corner and a man hails me from half a block distance. He is sitting on a retaining wall built for a short cement stairway cut into a three-foot hill, a side entrance for an old red brick school for girls presently under renovation. It is a collection point for vagrants and panhandlers. The man yells out, "Hey, nice day innit?" It isn't nice, it's cold, and as I approach closer "Say, can you spare a dollar?" I walk right up to him as if encountering an acquaintance and take a position on the opposite retaining wall for the stairs. We face each other across the cement stairs as I adjust my backpack and reach for my wallet. I set the handles to my wooden sticks into my crotch so they don't go sliding off.

I ask, "How you doing?"

"Not too well." He answered. I think, shit, here we go. " I got blood clots in my legs that are real real bad. They hurt like hell.  If I rolled up my pants and showed ya then you'd see veins and bumps all over down there it's ugly and you'd wonder how I even manage to walk around."

"Bummer."  I have the most sincere and empathetic way of saying that word.

He said, "These guys are all having a party back there. Have you been down there? I don't go over there. I stay away from that. That's not for me. I don't smoke any of that stuff."

"Here ya go." A shiny crisp dollar. I know he's going straight to the bottle shop.

"I would be interested in hearing more of your health choices but I must go now."

"ThanksBuddyyoutakecareofyourselfGodblessseeyaarounddon'thurtyourselfnow" etcetera etcetera.

It's April twentieth, marijuana liberation day, not just for Denver, and not just for Colorado, for the whole region and you should see the hippies converge on this place, and not just regular Colorado hippies, no, these are world class, old school hippies. They have a whole different air to them and they seem quite pleased to be here.

I passed a woman coming from the direction of the festival with four tiny children all walking, and two tiny dogs, most likely rescues. The dogs, although miniature, showed no sign of nervous suspicion as their type does, both dogs Chihuahua mixes came right up to me on their leashes as regular dogs do eager to investigate a new person approaching, and all four children were the exact same size and the exact same shape with the exact same oval shape faces with sparse hair, but not all the same sex and all dressed differently as if each with their own design and fashion expression with a definite hippie influence. The slight woman could have been Roma. The children looked like odd quiet a bit like exhausted little aliens.

"Hi little pooches. Hello Kids."  Nobody answered.

The woman sweetly instructed, "Say Hello."

"Hello Hello Hello Hello"

Bless their little hearts.

I've not seen these pedicars before in town, bicycle pedal cars rigged as rickshaws. This is a new festival thing and they've got a lot of working out of the details to do. Broadway at rush hour is not the place for such an awkward conveyance. It's just wrong.

How amusing, I thought. It is a four lane street not a park lane. And it is rush hour for working people who are not smoking pot and are eager to get home on a main thoroughfare out of the city. There were two people in the back if I read their changing expressions right both massively amused and deeply concerned. I'm certain they looked back behind them and saw the cars. 

One of the stupidest traffic-related things I've ever seen. The cars behind the pedicab  didn't know what the hold up was, but I did. They did lose patience one at a time and peel off but the line was still ridiculous in the central lane like this and only the central lane. I thought it was a one-time thing but a few steps later another pedicab appeared with passengers. Marijuana-related visitors, no doubt enjoying our unique for now marijuana-related liberty.