Category: Uncategorized

I have a “Bucket List”.   I did not call it that until the movie by that name put the phrase in our common lexicon.  Just in case you never saw the movie with Morgan Freeman and Jack Nicholson, it’s about two old guys who set out to accomplish life goals before they “kick the bucket”.  After seeing the movie I thought about some of my own: go to all 50 states (5 more), climb a 14er (done), go to Rome (2019🤞), meet a sitting President (no longer on it), go to an Indy 500, to list a few.  A…

Anyone who knows me well knows that one of my mottos is: ‘If it’s worth doing, it’s worth overdoing’. I certainly have ended up in more than one12- step group as a result of this gift of character/character defect/ anomaly of DNA. Friday is my drive-for-Lyft day. My son Mateo, describes my approach to Lyft driving as, it’s not unlike a 14-year-old who’s mastered a certain video game. “Yep Dad, you go out, you get points, competition, feedback, sound effects, and a never ending adventure… and unlike video games they pay you to do this”. It is often in that…

Around four in the afternoon on Friday I was parked in my driveway and had just turned my app back on. I got a call to pick up a young woman about a mile from my house. Remember, most live riders have a profile picture along with their name. I pulled up in front of the house and a young man carrying a tool bag came walking out. He smiled and asked if he could put the tool bag in the backseat. I said “sure it’s your ride”. He hopped in and we headed on a 15 mile ride. “My…

We took a little mini-vacation to Las Vegas early this week.  I find that about about three days in Vegas about every three years is plenty.  The people watching, a show or two, a donation to the Willie Wonka slot machine and some pool time and I am good.  We find that using Lyft is a great and inexpensive way to get around.  We shared our time with some ‘very long time’ (54 year’s)  Pueblo friends. We summoned our Lyft ride to the airport.  His picture appeared in the app, it showed a man with ‘Vegas Hair’ (Wayne Newton style)…

Yesterday I pulled up in a cul de sac in Golden.   The app showed me that I was where I was supposed to be.  I waited the allotted four minutes but no Rebecca, so I called her and let her know I was there.  She answered and said “Oh this #&@##*% app, I am standing out here on the curb on Indiana”.  I could see that I needed to pull out of the little enclave and go out to find her on the sidewalk behind her back yard.  We stayed on the phone until I saw her waving down…

So it’s Friday late morning and I am taking a Lyft break.  I haven’t driven for well over a week and I have decided to take my “day off” to ‘fire up my Lyft Ap’.  My decision to skip golf was based on the three-day weather forecast (which called for wind and cold) was rewarded with a Spring ❄️❄️❄️ storm.  I hit the road at 4:30am.  I wasn’t out of the driveway and I already had a ride.  I weaved my way down into the Golden foothills.  I picked her up and we were off to DIA.  She was a…

It was Friday and we had just finished 4th period Gym Class.  We were walking to the cafeteria when we ran into Coach Clay.  He was crying.  He looked at us and said “They killed President Kennedy”.  We went on to lunch… nobody really was eating.  November 22, 1963.  This began a series of moments in my life that change you forever.  I can remember exactly where I was when: April 4, 1968– Martin Luther King, assassinated  – riding in car with Silas King. June 6, 1968– Bobby Kennedy, assassinated – getting ready to go to work at piston factory.…

I picked her in a classic Victorian neighborhood just north of downtown.  It was a simple ride to LODO on a glorious spring day.   We began an affable conversation about “life in general”.  She was warm, articulate, insightful  and curious about my Lyft stories.  The often asked “What was your most interesting ride”? came up. I answered “Well, with almost 4200 rides, I have them in categories: ridiculous, sublime, bizarre, sad, common and mean, to mention a few”.  I told her of two back-to-backrides I gave a couple of weeks ago.  “I picked him up at a hotel close…

It’s no secret that I am a sports fan.  Some of my favorite kid memories are going to Runyon Field with my Dad and his buddies to watch the AA Pueblo Dodgers (The Brooklyn Dodger’s farm team).  It is for that reason I despise the Yankees and put them in the category with the Patriots, Lakers, and Red Wings—Evil Empires.  By the time I was four I knew all the basic rules of baseball ⚾️.   I grew up cheering for very young a Maury Wills and John Roseboro.  I still smell the cigar smoke 💨 and beer🍺, and the…

I thought long and hard about whether or not to write this today.  On March 17th 1979, my brother Don, aged 20 and a friend who was 16, were killed in a car wreck in Pueblo.  Don was legally drunk and that is a fact that certainly contributed to this tragedy.  An hour ago I was sitting with 117 other folk at an AA meeting where we were celebrating One Year of sobriety for one of our members.  It was a joyful time.  In that old Denver Mansion at 13th and York, every day hundreds of folk meet in its…