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date Mon, Sep 8, 2008 at 4:48 PM
subject Trash at Foothills Swim & Racquet Club

Kent Cristy, Club Manager
Foothills Swim & Racquet Club

Dear Mr. Cristy:

I have a complaint to make about Foothills Swim & Raquet Club.

I am not a member of the club, but I am a neighbor. I think I’m a
pretty good neighbor, actually. I don’t mind the bright lights
shining into my window or the loud voices of people yelling in victory
at the tennis courts or the loud music playing at the pool. My
bedroom is on the other side of the building, so none of those things
keep me up at night. I even don’t mind the snow that turns to ice on
the sidewalk along the club property, the only sidewalk in the
neighborhood that doesn’t get cleared. Sometimes I even shovel it,
which I don’t mind doing at all. I knew when I moved into my new home
three years ago that all of this would be “par for the course” living
next to a swim and tennis club, and I really don’t mind any of it. I
think it’s great that there’s a place nearby where people can come to
swim and play tennis.

What I do mind is the trash. Right now there are dozens of empty
paper cups and sports drink bottles lying outside my window on the
south end of the club property. This happens pretty much every
weekend, especially during the summer. Sometimes I get so fed up that
I go out and pick all the garbage up myself. Sometimes I don’t have
the time and the trash gets chewed up by the next lawn mowing; at
least then I can’t see the bits of paper amongst the grass. Even if
the trash gets cleaned up in the middle of the week, I still spend
half my life looking at garbage.

This is a nice neighborhood full of nice houses with beautiful front
lawns and landscaping. Take a drive up the road just half a block and
you’ll see what I mean. But right now, living here in the beautiful
state of Colorado, my beautiful scene of trees and mountains has a
foreground of garbage . . . garbage dumped next to my backyard. It’s
disgusting. I tried calling just now (during business hours) and let
the phone ring 15 times, but no one picked up the phone. Thus, you
(hopefully) get this e-mail. (If any of you Cced on this message do
happen to receive this and happen to see someone who can do something
about the trash outside my window, could you mention this e-mail?
Thanks!)

Obviously, I know the club isn’t dumping trash outside my window. I
know that it’s done by selfish patrons who can’t be bothered to drive
their trash to a proper receptacle. I don’t know what the answer to
this problem is. Put a regularly emptied trash can in the corner of
the gravel parking lot? Have the groundskeeper pick up the trash on
Sundays? Inform the club patrons that it is inappropriate to throw
their empty drink containers on the grass?

All I know is that it is the club’s responsibility. It’s disgusting.
And I really can’t take it anymore.

Please clean up the trash in a timely manner. Be a good neighbor.

Your neighbor

—

It’s now 6:30, and there are two people in exercise-wear out there with garbage bags cleaning up the trash!

This was from our New York trip a year ago.

I managed to get to NYC yesterday and got to JFK about the same time Berck flew in. I didn’t think there was much hope of me getting on the Delta flight that left at 8 in the morning as there were 4 empty seats and 14 standbys listed, of which I was ranked 13th, but somehow I did. I had an aisle seat in the front bulkhead, which wasn’t unpleasant at all. I also had an individual TV and got to watch some Olympics! Berck and I met at the airport and headed back to Sydney’s apartment. Then the three of us went out on the town.

We went to a Sicilian restaurant way over in west Brooklyn called Ferdinando’s. Famous Fat Dave recommended their Sicilian rice balls, which were excellent. We also had a stuffed artichoke that was yummy, veal that was decent (Berck is a much bigger fan of veal than I am), some delicious penne in a bollenese sauce with riccotta, and, my favorite, some wide pasta with delicious mushrooms, tender eggplant, and sundried tomatoes (which really didn’t add anything the dish, but someone else ate all of them for me). We split a wonderful bottle of wine, and the whole meal wasn’t even too expensive.

Next we went up to the Lower East Side to our favorite bar, The Living Room. They have free concerts all night long with a one drink minimum ($6 for a Yuengling, is usually our choice). We saw an Australian that wants to be John Mayer and Ben Arnold and his band who want to be Van Morrison. Sydney bought the Aussie’s two CD’s he had on sale with the intention that we would share them. I asked him to autograph them, but he insisted on autographing to someone. So now one of them says “To Sydney and Joanna.”

We’re off to an Israeli brunch this morning, then Berck has a flight to fly tonight about the same time as my flight back home. I think we got up too late for Sydney to come to brunch… she has a Mets game to attend.

Eli had an issue with a horse in training last week. Here’s a link to a video of him talking about.

You can watch him live on the Internet, if you’re willing to stay up all night. This link is to the schedule for the 20th. And this link is where you click to watch him compete. Unfortunately, you can’t watch it without installing Silverlight first. It will automatically prompt you to download it.

He called me when he finally made it back to JFK last week, 5 minutes into his day off, to see if by some miracle the Jet Blue flight hadn’t left yet. I checked, and by some miracle it hadn’t even arrived in JFK! I told him the gate, and he hurried across the airport, getting to there right as they were letting everyone off. He got home at 5:30 Monday morning.

This was his one break with three days off in a row this month, so I took Tuesday off and planned our day. We drove up to Woodland Park, gassing up along the way, then headed north up 67. This is a wonderful driving road with twists and turns and few places to pass. If you’re stuck behind a group of slow-moving Harleys on the weekend, it can be miserable. But on a Tuesday morning, it was utterly empty.

At Deckers, we veered west on 126 to 285 and up through Evergreen on 73, then took back roads that Street Atlas promised would take us to Squaw Mountain Pass. It did eventually after turning to dirt and getting more and more narrow. We took Squaw Mountain Pass to Mount Evans, which is a 14er overlooking Denver.

At some point, Denver decided it needed its own highway up a 14er, since Colorado Springs already had one, so it built the Mount Evans Highway. While the Pikes Peak Highway is owned by the city of Colorado Springs and has a pretty high price tag, $35 a car, though they usually just charge us $10 a person (and if we take two Miatas, for one car), the Mount Evans Highway is a US Highway and is free, but you have to pay a recreation fee if you want to stop. They have a ranger at the entrance gate to try to talk you into paying the fee. “Well, you’ve got to keep in mind that it’s 45 minutes up and 45 minutes back. No stopping, no using the toilets, no taking photos. There are mountain goats and big horn sheep.” We told him we figured we could handle it.

The Mount Evans Highway is a beautiful drive. It isn’t nearly as steep as the Pikes Peak Highway, and it hugs the side of the mountain’s broad shoulders going up instead of switchbacking. This is useful for passing people who are driving slowly. The road is also paved all the way up. We found out why this isn’t such a good idea when we got to a high lake that was slowly draining down the mountain. The road had buckled to such an extent that the road resembled a series of monster high speed bumps. I decided the permafrost melting had to do with it. Fortunately, it didn’t last for too long before flattening out again.

The road doesn’t go all the way to the summit, like it does on Pikes Peak, so those who actually want to stand at the tippy top were snaking their way up a sidewalk to the peak. We couldn’t stop, so we just circled around the parking lot and headed back down again. We were in our t-shirts with the top down and didn’t get cold, even at 14 thousand feet, with the sun shining on us. Berck’s head was bothering him. He’s lost his acclimation to living at 6500 feet and is used to sea level now.

After descending back down, we took the other half of Squaw Mountain Pass into Idaho Springs. The diner I wanted to eat at was closed for a private party, but I had a back up plan. Berck got a delicious roast beef sandwich and I had a yummy breakfast wrap at Two Brothers Deli. Then we headed back out on the road and up the Central City Parkway to join 119. This is a beautiful but short drive up a canyon. Then we headed north on 119 up the Peak to Peak Highway. Unfortunately, there were doing some construction along there, we got stuck in a long line of cars behind a very slow cement truck doing about 20 mph. So we turned around and took a short cut up a dirt road that took us up over the ridge to the Golden Gate Canyon Road, which is another gorgeous drive. Berck was having all sorts of fun burning up my brakes.

We took 6 down to 470 and exited at 85, then veered off back on to 67 again. We’d never been on this part of 67, and I was looking forward to it. What I didn’t know is that 67 is dirt from just a ways away from Denver to just outside Deckers. About now our beautiful day had turned to Colorado afternoon rain, and we were going too slow around tight dirt mountain curves to keep the water off us! Fortunately, we were out of it soon, and it had taken the dust off the road. Much to Berck’s amazement, I think, the road finally did go somewhere, and we were back on pavement the rest of the way home.

My plan had been to drive up the Peak to Peak and through Rocky Mountain National Park, but we didn’t even make it that far. I’ll have to plan on taking some faster roads, I think, if we’re going to make it up there next time we try.