Well THAT’s a relief…although it does sometimes make one wonder about the competition.

We kept on, kept foraging

until Linda came up with the Seventh King, end of the season,

like its predecessors quite delicious and adequate for two meals…

For a couple of days I was laid out with a cold, caught a couple of podcasts**, then managed to pack for a trip to Denver and, uneasily leaving house and dogs with Amanda from Rover, drove

in unexpected rains to JM Tire in Walsenburg where I collapsed for the hour it took to have

the Taco serviced and then could do no more – L. drove in occasional deluges all the way

to Wazee where we pulled in to the Robischon parking lot just behind Pard Morrison 

and walked three blocks down for lunch at

 The Kitchen, reliably good and a good way to kill time until we could check into the hotel.

Another good way to kill time was to stop off at Rockmount Ranch Wear and almost buy a shirt

but as it wasn’t in stock in my size continued on to The Maven for our three o’clock check-in,

staying on the premises for dinner outdoors at Kachina [took home the spicy Birría beef only to belatedly discover the room lacked a fridge] and a semi-comatosian couple of hours of truly offensive MSNBC propaganda before a restive night. Out in the morning in hopes of the croissants Linda

remembered at the Union Station and some sort of breakfast for me we discovered the croissant-erie gone and the half hour wait for breakfast ridiculous so returned to the hotel to settle for the [1] complimentary coffee the $27 surcharge provides and a breakfast burrito but, damn, the breakfast burrito-erie no longer existed either. The desk said there was a great sit-down breakfast place kitty corner from the front door so off we went, kitty cornering, to find a multistorey anonymous office building

with no such thing in sight; returning I asked the valet parking guy who said yes, it’s there, “just cut through the food court,” so back we went but after finding the food court dark and locked started around the block in glaring sun though by then, forty + minutes wandering hot sidewalks, I was feeling a little giddy so abandoned all hope and went up to lie down, L. eventually bringing me the $27.00 coffee. We killed time until lunch, again at The Kitchen, where I immediately if ill-advisedly

devoured an entire order of fries, then leisurely consumed a Black Caeser with smoked trout

until it was time for Linda’s debut with the Howard Hughes film crew back at the gallery. While they set up I explored the offerings, seeing small works by Omar Chacón,

Deborah Zlotsky,

Pard Morrison, Linda Fleming [not so small] and others.

As L. Fleming was settling in with the director and gallerist/longtime friend Jim Robischon

for her interview I retired to Room 316 for rest and recuperation until around four when things

wrapped up, then had another look at Pard’s exhibition before we wandered Wazee, looking at

some Plains Indian Artifacts [not shown] at the David Cook Gallery as well as pottery at Mudhead, these two contemporary Acoma intricacies being standouts…they also had a depressing plethora of shiny estate-sourced native American jewelry in cases, hard to look at.  At Jim’s

recommendation we’d made a reservation at a new [to us] Asian fusion restaurant for seven o’clock

so, after an interim overlooking [and hearing] some sort of bachelorette party at the wine bar across the alley, walked upstream through throngs of guys in t-shirts and gals in cowgirl boots heading for the Kane Brown*** concert at the Coors four blocks to Cholon where we were the only people

to sit outside and loved every bit of it – the colorfully lit pedicabs going by, the mango salad, exquisite fried squid, dumplings, Vietnamese noodles…excellent service and a scoop of Vietnamese coffee ice cream to go with a generous glass of port afterwards celebratory of a most successful trip…all that remained was to finally find that breakfast Saturday morning and head for Pueblo at 10:15.

 

*[to paraphrase the late indisputably great Kirk Robertson]

**All this time I thought the Metallica guys were into custom cars, but turns out there’s some surf in the mix [and history] too.

***never hearda ‘im but obviously quite a draw; Green Day was coming in Saturday but we were long gone, though might have seen some of their tour buses cruising the morning neighborhood as we sat out having breakfast.