My trip to the Stop the Frack Attack Summit in Denver, CO in 2015

First, I got up in time to get in the car and drive it to the ramp downtown,  about 20 minutes away, park it on the first floor, or the second, then walk over to the Inter/intra-city bus building - see it to the right - buy my ticket to either NYC or to Syracuse.  Then wait.  Because I'm concerned about the Greyhound being late, getting out of NYC. I've done this every time I have left for Colorado or St. Louis.
It can be a pain to be not on the train-line but at least I comfort myself with guessing I'm in a fairly safer area.

The train leaves once a day from Syracuse, at night, around 9:30 p.m. or later if the train is delayed.  Depending on what train I'm taking from NYC's Penn Station, there's more choices.
If I'm going to Chicago, then it's Syracuse.  If I'm going South, like to Florida or TX, then it's NYC's Penn Station. No point paying extra just to take the train from Syracuse east then south to NYC.  The station at the left is of Syracuse. It's a very pleasant and not crowded at all even though it's a station that serves the city bus, the intra-city busses and the Amtrak.  Well planned. So I get on at night close to bed time and hope to sleep.  I'll wake up sometime the next day at around Erie, PA.  The stop there is a bit longer as they do something with watering the train.  With a hose.
So I just occupied myself with gazing out the window.  In preparing for writing this entry on the blog, I did a search and found some other blogs of other people who had made cross country train trips.
There's things I could write about the cities between Syracuse and Chicago, such as Rochester, Buffalo, Cleveland, Sandusky, Toledo, Bryan, Waterloo, Elkhart, South Bend and then Chicago.  There's other stops in between BUT the train has a choice whether to stop or not, depending on traffic.
Once in Chicago, with a 3 to 6 hour layover for the train to Denver (the California Zephyr), I had time to spare and needed to get outside.  The car's attendant commented about taking a ride around Chicago (not interested as who knows?) plus I needed to find wi-fi ASAP to connect with my students in my online course and also check email.
So, I headed outside to the Panera that's over around the corner over the bride, just past the Corner Bakery.  I know this as the train employees in the station kept saying that I did not know anything and that I should just go to the Corner Bakery.  So I went out into the sunshine away from the darkness and crowdedness, turned left, went over the river, then turned left again and found it.  It being lunch time, it was crowded and the wi-fi was limited to one hour of use.  So I then left and went back to the Corner Bakery, spent some time there and then retraced my steps back into the station.
At the select time, the train, the California Express, pulled out of the Chicago station.  The person next to me was friendly and talkative.  We talked about the car attendant, who was one of Amtrak's worst people.  It turned out she was a smoker as we saw her smoking with the passengers at the smoke stops.  Did I mention them?  If not in this post, the smoke stops are the longer stops scheduled more or less to take place before the smokers raise hell on the train.
We went from Chicago to Naperville, Princeton, Galesburg, then into Iowa for Burlington, Mount Pleasant, then Ottumwa, Osceloa, Creston, then Omaha, NE! We crossed the Mississippi River.

In NE there were other train stations missed after Omaha as it got later and then night fell and I missed the U. S. Air Force depot.  It's pretty boring to cross the plains there as it's flat and there's fields and fields and fields.

But inside the train, especially in the observation car, was kinda nice.

But as you go through IA then NE, a voice came on over the car's speaker saying to look out on one side to see the remnants of a tornado that had passed through a short time before.   So I looked and took photos as I could not see to determine and hoped I would catch it. When I checked my photos later I had!

After that, there were more flat lands and fields.

We arrived, worn out and tired into Denver, CO. in the morning. And not having had a shower with the train car being more hot than cold, I was kinda grungy.
So I called the hotel to check again if there was a cost-free shuttle.  There wasn't.  Only to and from the Denver airport  So I grabbed the first cab I saw.  It turned out to be a mistake. Driving from the station to the hotel, he took the highway and at one point, skipped from one lane to the next at the last minute.  I braced myself and looked at the meter, saying nothing. A bit tired and more, I checked into the hotel, found my room on the fifth floor, noted that my room-mate was away, then went down to the basement to register then went back up to the room to shower.  Then I was ready.

Things got very busy that Saturday and Sunday, especially with Prof. Tony Ingraffea speaking to a beyond packed room, then the session on media, then the session with the young LGBT lawyer from California, speaking about events in the agricultural fields of the Central Valley of California.  For the session with the young lawyer from California, she was passionate and driven and very funny. I could not stand to see Robbie typing and making mistakes while he typed but he was calm throughout. She was one of the four women who received recognition at an event towards the end where they spoke.
Later, I met my roomie, who turned out to have a bad deep cold.  That night I went to the hot tub.  I met there Hope ForPeace (her FB name) but it had no bubbles, just sitting in hot water. Keep those two points in mind.
On Monday, we piled into busses which took us downtown to a park to assemble for the big march.
From now on it'll be mostly photos, with some few comments:
This is a new friend,  We had lunch together, along with two other women.  She is so very friendly.  She's originally from the Fayette shale and because of damage done to her and her dog there, she moved away to another place.  I got a shirt like the one she's wearing.  It was very popular along with another shirt with a black background. 

She took a photo of me as we were getting ready to get on the bus behind me or the one behind that.  At lest two busses full of us plus some smaller vehicles.

Here's Alma Hasse and RayKemble from Dimock, PA.


Signs of the trouble we face with fracking, getting on the bus.

 
Robbie gave some last minute instructions and then we were off! We rode along the highway, then to downtown, past some buildings until we got to our destination.

Here, we were, getting off the busses at the park downtown, then spending a long time getting ready, but it was really worth it.
 
Now I see what those things were in the back of the pickups at the hotel! I do not know how the people wearing them managed! And there were lots of them.  Different types!  Very impressive!

  

And above, in the red shirt and the blue and white ganja hat is the famed Jimmy Betts who travels all over from California to Denver to wherever, fighting the good fight.
As we moved out into the streets to march, to the left of the photo above, first we went over (up wide steps and then down, making it really tricky with all the stuff we had to carry), we were mostly in good spirits.

Getting all the equipment ready before heading out onto the streets.

The sixth extinction

I became almost completely convinced of this a few years ago.  This is part of why I travel in a limited way to a few places.  Nowhere near the widely travelled.  Like my younger sister who's hiked in the outback in Australia, lived for a month in a tent in the Tsanga Tsanga National Forest in the Central African Republic where "ants rule," lived for a month in a tent on a high plain in Bolia where the cows came to check out her tent, drove across the U.S., camping in one National Park after another, from east to west. 

To experience places, peoples, views.
One of my goals is to experience the Canadian Rockies by rail.
For some years, I've whispered to myself that I look forward to the idea of collapse. As the pollution or capitalism and the rushed behaviour of those colonized by it are just too, too much. Plus the many problems and psychic assaults of living in the U.D. with its many delusions/illusions.
I go hiking in a woods nearby whenever I can.

Tipping Points and the Question of Civilizational Survival

Human Extinction by 2030

Going Dark

The return of the wolves

Wolves of Yellowstone Park

Lobster population is shifting north

A salute to those who bravely run for local office

At first, I though he was running for Sheriff, as I figured you would have to be tough to grow up with a name like that.  What were his parents thinking in giving him that first name?  If he had both names while in school, unless he went to a private school/Catholic school, he most likely would have been called Rock of Turd. I would love to meet such a survivor.

We from the tropics are way ahead in the green gardening movement in the U.S.

U.S. culture has a trained obsession with lawns.  Two of us in the development of 800 houses on a former farm have resisted this toxic behaviour.  We are both from islands in the Caribbean Sea. In my case, it could be that I grew this mini-forest in front in an attempt to shield myself from the hostility, ignorance and, yes, racism of those around me.
The development of this old farm tract on the side of a hill started with smaller one story houses now valued around $70,00 to $90,00, at the bottom of the hill, then later larger houses with more two story ones and some four bedroom ones, now valued around $100,000 to $250,000 in the midway up the hill (value varies on how much "upgrading" has been done to the interior, like newer kitchens and bathrooms and whether the house is 3 or 4 or 5 bedroom - mine has no upgrades to kitchen or bathrooms and is a 3 br/1 1/2 bath valued around $100,000 even though the plot size is almost 1/2 acre - a bit larger than most not on the creek which flows through the middle. The few on the creek can have a deep lawn sloping down to the creek). Further up towards the top of the hill and into the area where the electric lines are underground, house values can vary from $180,000 to $280,000 or more.  At the very top in the most recently developed part, the houses have deep lawns in front with very long driveways and even 3 car garages.  This results in values over $300,000.
In spite of the economy being in the gutter for well over two decades, with the departure of large corporations, the few people who move into the area do so because of the low cost of housing.

But, in any event, we both were way ahead of the movement to not have lawns.
Here's some photos of my place, in different seasons, in different years, held in respect for the original inhabitants, the indigenous people chased out and murdered and cornered into reservations.

 A crucial item for gardening is a pair of trusty Wellingtons, a bit large, so I wear two long socks which also help to keep the Wellies from slipping off.

 The 2014/2015 winter - aargh.

 Another crucial item for winter:

I planted two Blue Spruce years ago when they were babies of 12 inches tall.  Now they're huge, with nests and shelter for the birdies.

Photo taken while standing at the front door. 
See how you can't really see the houses across the road, thus they can't really see me standing or sitting there.  Nice. When I first started building this forest, the man next door with no trees marched up to my front door one day in a red-faced rage, waved his arm around and said "I don't know where you're from, but we don't do things like this around here."
Maybe they should have been  for several health reasons.

The front of my house in October

The house across the road from me

The house on one side of me.  The light pole at the left edge, whose shadow falls into the center, marks the line between my place and theirs.

Here's a photo of the front yard of the other family:

and a contrast with a lawn nearby: