Seems as though I have missed another day or two. Sorry about that, but it is bound to happen once in awhile with me. I sometimes feel bad about not being more prompt or stable in my writing, but then I realize that if it is a choice between writing about some activity I've done and going out and doing more fun activities... well living life is always going to come first with me.

    That being said, it has been a busy couple of days. Have been scurrying about trying to get everything together for the river trip that is coming up in two days. I spent an hour or so yesterday morning 'stand up paddling' with my friend Tom on his boards here at the lake. Then it was off to pick up a new paddle I had located with the guy, and company, that I had bought my last solo canoe through. Of course when I got all the way up to Arvada to pick it up Jerry told me that he thought he must of left it in the back of his other pickup. But..... he did have this older, never used 'Barton' graphite-carbon fiber paddle and he would go ahead and sell it to me for the same price he had set on the other one. So now I have a very nice 53" bent shaft that I can use as a spare or let others who paddle with me use. At a whole 13 oz's, it is super light and should be fun to use.

    Went and had lunch with my friends Maggie and Paul afterwards since they lived in the same area. Nope, didn't have Mexican food for a change. This time I talked them into going over to this little Vietnamese dive of a place for noodle bowls. I really love those things and if I could ever find, or figure out, the recipe to the sauce that goes on to them I would be a happy camper. I know it has rice vinegar, sugar, water, fish sauce and a few other things in it, because I once spent all evening trying to figure it out. But the ratio's I used never came out right. So if anyone out there knows how to make it.....

   Went on up to Longmont to grab my mail afterwards. Had hoped my season tickets to the Arvada Center had arrived, but not yet. Picked up a few other minor items out of the trailer and dropped off a whole bunch more stuff I didn't need to carry all the way to Montana and back.

    A quick drive back to south Denver as I was meeting up with Tom and George for Boys Night Out at the Movies. On the agenda for the evening was the latest Marvel Comics production, 'The Wolverine'. Starring Hugh Jackman as the lead again it was a 2+ hour romp through Alaska and then Japan. Filled with violence of course, most was rather muted compared to some movies these days. No gory details of heads and limbs being lopped off in other words. A pretty good script over all and some very fun 'mutant' characters of course. Afterwards it was over to the Red Robin for our usual meal and conversation. Emily was there to fulfill our every culinary need before we even told her what it was. Good times.


    Up pretty early this morning as Steph and I finally got together to go do our grocery shopping for the two and a third dinners that we needed to come up with. Steph was kind of funny with all of her excitement at finally getting to go on a trip. She has watched as Tom and Donna and I have gone on a dozen or so since she moved in across the street from them. So we got all of the food and then stopped off and picked up some beer and wine to go with it all. Stowed it all at her place with all of our other gear for the trip. She is wondering how it is all going to fit into the canoe we are taking, a good question, so we are going to take the boat over later this evening and dry load it all to see where we are going to stow everything. I know it will all fit in okay, it's just a matter of finding some new places since the dog will be taking up a bit of space on this trip.

    Time for some hot pizza and cold beer on the deck right now. It's nice to be able to look out over the water and watch the sun as it starts to sink in the west. Right now though, enjoy a few photo's from a trip to Washington Park I took last week.

Washington Park Boat House, Folk Dancing and Flower Gardens in Denver Colorado - July 2013 

The west side of the boat house at Washington Park in Denver Colorado. I pretty much grew up right here at this building in the park. From the age of 15 until 19-20 I would hang out here in the summer, either teaching canoeing and sailing lessons for the park system or, when younger, just being one of the many boat groupies that hung around the lake. This handicap ramp was only installed last year. On the bottom left hand corner are the doors where I carted dozens of canoes, kayaks and sailboats out to the dock every morning and evening.



The east facade. They did a complete restoration on the building a couple of years ago so the color palette is a bit different than what I remember.

Another view of the east and part of the south side. The concrete slab on the south side has always been there, but they poured a newer, much more level slab a few years ago. I can still remember how one Thursday evening 43 years ago, at an age I'm not going to disclose, I heard music coming from up on this patio and poked my head around the corner. What I saw was about 8-10 people holding hands in a circle doing this simple line dance to the music. The leader, a guy everyone just called Sugar, saw me peeking around the edge of the building and called to me to come over and join in. To this day I still have no idea why I went over and joined in. But it was that night that started me on a lifelong journey of dancing for fun.

 

Some of the original detail around the boathouse. The tile work is fun as are the cut rafter tails. To finish it all off they replaced the old asphalt shingles on the roof with slate shingles like those it originally had.

A closer look at some of the tiles and dentile (sp) molding.

From that very first night Sugar showed up with his portable card table, record player and stack of record's there has been free folk dancing in the park on Thursday evenings during the summer. I have managed to make it back for at least one dance per year every since he started doing it. There are only a couple of us who were there that first night, still around, but it is fun to go and see others who have been coming for many years. And of course there are always a few new dancers of every age who show up every summer.  This is a Romanian women's dance, though men do it also, about making and baking bread. Here we see the mixing and kneading phase.

The dance starts at 7:00 and goes until 10:00. Early in the evening the dances are simple line dances for the most part and the group size is smaller. Later the dances become more difficult and more of the hard core dancers show up. These days a crowd of 50-80 is pretty good, but I remember nights when there would be between 250 and 300 people dancing. That was before big screen TVs, DVDs and the Internet of course. On the left of this picture is the guy who started it all, Sugar. Well into his 80's he still dances some of the dances but I think he likes being the ambassador of dance better.

Sugar, across the circle, his wife Bettina, in blue with her back to the camera, and their two daughters, age 2 & 4 at that time, were four of the original park dancers. 

Some friends of mine, Catherine and Tommy stopped by while I was taking pictures and stayed around long enough to try a couple of the dances. Tommy seemed to really like it for some reason. He sort of reminded me of myself at that age.

Simple dances that everyone can do. If you don't know the steps it doesn't really matter to anyone but you. Just walk in the same direction and you'll soon get the hang of it.

One last dance photo before I took the camera back to the truck so I could come back and dance.



Just up the hill from the boat house is one of the first Rec Centers the city of Denver built new back in the 70's. This is where I got my first real job at the age of 15 1/2 years old. I started out as a pool attendant, or glorified basket boy, and ended up as a life guard teaching swimming lessons during the winter. Of course in the summer my friend Tom would be teaching at the boat house and they finally gave in and let me go down there during the summer months with him, since I was always down there anyway. Along the way I also coached a couple 8-12 yr old girls soccer teams, taught x-country skiing and grew up. It was an amazing place to be at that time in my life and those years there, more than anything, put me on the course my life would follow for the next 35+ years.  

The front entrance to the Rec Center. It has gone through several remodels since it was built, but it still has a 50 meter swimming pool, weight room, basketball court and arts and crafts wing. It, of course, costs a lot more to play there these days, since nearly everything was free or close to it when they first opened.

Another view of the entrance.

A rather large park, maybe 20 blocks long x 6 wide, it has a lot of wide open spaces as well as two decent sized lakes. ( Or ponds, as they call them back east). They also have several formal and semi formal flower gardens that they plant every summer. The rest of these photo's are just pictures of some of the flowers.  

They use a lot of ornamental kale and such to set off some of their flowering plants. I like the texture and color it adds to the flower beds.

 

I really liked the color combination and the texture in this one.

 

 

The smell while walking through the gardens is wonderful. I am glad that most flowers don't seem to give me an allergic reaction. But then, the smell, odor, is not the same as the pollen in the plant, so it makes sense that I don't have much of a reaction to the smell of most plants. I'm glad, I would sure miss the smell of lilacs and iris and even petunias.