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Now that I'm middle-aged and showing occasional symptoms of common sense, I no longer measure Colorado distances by sixpacks. With the new measures, Salida to Grand Junction last Friday took two Jimi Hendrix tapes, a George Thorogood, a Bob Dylan and a long Bonnie Raitt.
It should also require five refills of the insulated 20-ounce coffee cup, but I forgot to fill a quart thermos in Gunnison, so I wasn't prepared for the long coffee-free zone along the north side of the Black Canyon.
Along the West Elk Loop
, a/k/a Colo. 92, I felt
myself slipping back in time. Gorgeous late summer day,
scrub oak and aspen starting to turn, bare spires glowing
to the north, southward the great dark gorge of the
Gunnison with the jagged peaks of the San Juans rising
behind.
A trip back in time because I had all this wonder to myself, the way things used to be in outback Colorado. I confirmed my solitude when I stopped to drain some of that coffee. If there had been other cars on that road, they would have come by then -- that's how it always works.
Time reversion became certain in Grand Junction. A
notice said the Mesa County Democrats were hosting a fete
with cheap beer. I dropped by, and found only two people.
Both Mesa County Democrats are here?
I asked.
You came too early. It doesn't start till 8:30. And
besides, there are really seven of us.
I returned at nine, and she was right. There were only seven Democrats in Mesa County.
Saturday, time rolled even further backward, perhaps even to the Jurassic, for I heard men speak in reverential tones of the great dinosaurs who once ruled that vast land: John Vanderhoof, Wayne Aspinall, Ed Johnson. Uranium. Mining. Nothing wrong with the West Slope that about 10,000 miles of four-lane highway and a million acre-feet of compensatory storage wouldn't cure.
Of course this Jurassic resurrection was a Club 20 meeting. And if I stopped there, I wouldn't be fair, because Club 20 -- the chamber of commerce for the Western Slope -- is also aware new forces in the region.
Shock of shocks, Club 20 endorsed some public-land grazing reform, as well as a foot and bike trail from Glenwood Springs to Moab. John Scully of USWest talked about satellites and fiber optics, the connections that now matter more than highways.
Club 20 also gave a standing ovation to Bill Cleary, who just got sacked from the State Transportation Commission by Gov. Roy Romer.
Cleary wanted to hold Romer to his promises about the funding of roads to Denver International, and promises apparently don't mean jack when the Governor of Denver is building an airport. Romer's timing was perfect, because any uproar over this shabby treatment of a rightly esteemed public servant got buried in news about the special session of the legislature.
Brilliant hard-core Jurassic politics, and disturbing proof that not all the remaining dinosaurs prowl beneath the Little Book Cliffs -- you can find some of them under the Gold Dome.
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