Moving Closer to the Mountians

Thankfully, February marks the end of my lease at The Golden Nugget Apartments. When we (my girlfriend Sabrina and I) moved from Illinois to Colorado six months ago, the only two solid requirements for our place to live were a cheap price and an immediate opening. So Golden Nugget, at Broadway and Belleview Avenue in Englewood, it was. At $555/month and less than two miles from Arapahoe Community College (ACC), it seemed close to perfect.

In May, two months before I eventually moved out to Colorado, I had visited the property and meet the manager. She offered to waive my application fee since I was going to be a student at ACC, which seemed nice but also gave me a pretty sales'y vibe. When I came back in July, she told me that they "can't do that anymore." Ah, sharky sales at its finest.
But I had the money so I payed it. Sleeping in my backpacking tent was getting old for Sabrina. And a place other than the car to keep food was necessary so we could stop eating all of our meals out.
We moved in on July 20th.
By August 20th, we had seen just about every person in our building intoxicated -including our landlady Suzanne. By September 20th, I had seen two people get arrested on our complex.
None of that bothered me in the slightest, but getting bit every night by mystery bugs got a little annoying -they turned out to be bed bugs in case you haven't read my other post about my living conditions. Other than those funny, living-with-the-under-class events, there were dozens of random events that happened almost too quickly to notice how strange they were.
One night a hideous, leather skinned, 40'ish year old woman that we were somewhat familiar with (we'd seen her most nights drinking and smoking in the courtyard) knocked on our door at around 7:00 pm. She stared at me for about five seconds before telling me that she must be at the wrong apartment. Yeah. Sorry. no drugs here.
One of the most quintessential fixtures of the Golden Nugget is the people who sit on the steps all day and night (smoking) and try to make you feel bad for asking for a way past them. There's the woman that came to our door, but also another woman who wears exclusively black pajama pants and a hoodie and sits on the staircase we use most often. Worse even than the smoke, is her backside. Presented to every person bold enough to walk down the stairs past her is her dark, dirty, cellulite clinging, ass crack.
Unfortunately, not all the people are totally benign. Take a minute to read this article, as sad as it is: http://www.denverpost.com/news/ci_19073450 -Deer Creek, where the body was found, is my favorite place to run. And I've been living here for six months without knowing any of this. I suppose the area turned around a bit after the Englewood Police "established a presence" at the Golden Nugget. -Score one for the good guys.
The worst thing I've had to put up with since moving here has been Suzanne's (my landlady's) male "friends." Just this morning I had a 30-some year old intoxicated man, he said his name was Bull, wanting to come into my apartment to show me where I must be leaking water into the room below me. As it turns out, it wasn't even his room, and he doesn't even live here. He was just there visiting a friend while Suzanne got some work done, and in his drunken mind he felt the need to show me the water dripping into the room below me instead of talking to maintenence about it.
The water was coming from a busted pipe -not my place. And, in my assumtion, the reason his friend, the one who was living in the drippy room, hadn't complained about it earlier is because he couldn't speak english. ...

Anyway, despite all the antics the reason where moving is mostly to get a better location. We're too far from the mountains, too far from work, and too far from our grocery store, and they're all in the same direction. So we're moving to Lakewood, Colorado in a month and I couldn't be more excited.

Purposefully Unprepared

this past wednesday i went out to Deer Creek Canyon Park with the almost-sub-conscious yearning to be on the trails at night without gear (headlamp, flashlight, etc).
since my junior year of high school, I've loved to nothingness that comes with runs on country roads at night. the endless roads, the cool and humid air, and the solitude. and also the occasional feelings of being watched/followed.

i set out just before 6:00 in the evening and headed toward the first peak. in the first 1.5 miles the trail goes more than 800 feet up before leveling off a bit for the next two miles, only gaining 400. that two mile section of the trail runs along the west side of the mountain and offers the best view of the Denver area that i know of. i watched as, building by building, Denver was covered by the shadow of the mountains.

this one wasn't taken by me, but its right next to where i was as the sun was setting on Denver.

the sun had set by the time i got the the top, but by making it over the peak i bought myself another 10'ish minutes of sunlight. i followed the Homesteader trail to the most remote part of the park: the Red Mesa Loop and the Golden Eagle Trail.

again, not taken by me, but in the right spot: the Homesteader Trail

i could feel where the sun had been last as i ran through the western part of Red Mesa: the slight breeze was warm even after the sun had gone. after the finishing the 2.5 mile loop on Red Mesa (and more than 7 miles into the run), it was getting hard to see the trail in front of me, and the moon wasn't high enough to provide any significant light yet.
looking down at the Denver-metro area felt like i was in a plane over the city at night. if you've ever flown at night you know that its probly the most beautiful a city can ever look. -the lights defining each street and each neighborhood all glistening and displaying human kinds vast development/domestication of the land we live on. it was a strange feeling to realize that the lights and buildings i saw were providing a safety and security that i didn't have where i was. all those people were in their homes and surrounded by people while i was alone with the trail and nature. i felt like a deer looking out of the forest at a Super Target...

after a quick out-and-back up a small foothill(on Golden Eagle Trail), i started the journey back. by this point i couldn't see the trail right below me which made the trip back very unique to me. as i ran down the rocky hills my feet followed suit with my senses and seemed almost super-human as the adapted to the rugged, uneven rocks below them. i had reached a point where i was actually looking around more than i do during the day because trying to see the trail wasn't helping in the slightest anyway.
it was the most intimate moment I've ever had with a running surface. the trail seemed to reach up to me just as i reached down to it with each stride. despite how jagged the surface may be, my feet adapted to each step and took it like they've taken millions smooth, stable steps on the roads. the rest of the run back was spent entirely in my own head, enjoying every individual second of it for all that it's worth, knowing that runs like this are rare for me and non-existent for most...

i would put up with months of bad runs to get one run like this...