As mentioned in an earlier Club Soda post, the Soda family went to Colorado’s state capitol to protest what it sees as an irresponsible and short-sighted U.S. Congress and executive department mortgaging our futures to pay off a political debt to their crony pigs at the trough.
Though we might be right-wing extremists, at least as the term is defined by the Department of Homeland Security, we’re not dedicated to deforestation and try to limit our carbon output to the occasional tire burning in the back yard.
As you probably guessed, we decided to use public transportation to get to the state capitol. According to MapQuest, we live 24.1 miles from the capitol building, but just a few miles from the nearest light rail station. So, we struck out for the nearest station only to find that there was nary a parking spot to be found. We must’ve spewed an extra million particles of CO2 driving around in search of a space.
Fortunately, there are at least three or four additional light rail stations between that one and downtown Denver. Lo and behold, there were no parking spaces at those stations either. So, after adding about five more miles of driving in search of a space, we gave up and parked downtown.
Of course when we got downtown, we put a 20 in the parking lot machine only to find out it doesn’t provide any change. No change! But that’s what everything is about now… Hope and change! At least I still had hope, and called Republic Parking to demand my change. No change for you, they said, because the machines don’t provide change; a fact clearly stated on the sticker placed at the spot you insert your bills.
“But there’s no sign or sticker stating there won’t be change provided,” I said to the polite woman at Republic. Still, she could promise nothing except that I could come by, bring my receipt, and make my case. The situation was becoming eerily similar to this past presidential election, the promises made during the campaign, and the reality thereafter.
Fortunately, Republic Parking HQ was not very far from the capitol. I produced my receipt and made my case for change. What I got instead was two days of free parking. It wasn’t change, but it would do, and I still had hope for future excursions downtown. And, it was much better than the friend of mine whose wife went to the hospital for food poisoning and was compensated by the restaurant that gave her the food poisoning with a coupon for half off the salmonella special.
But it wasn’t all bad from a transportation standpoint; the free buses that roll up and down the 16th Street Mall are fantastic. The photo I provided with this post was taken from the bus. Note the biker dude giving his dogs water from a bottle of pure sparkling Evian. Denver is also a great place to be if you’re a dog; not so great if you’re a right-wing extremist.
So if you’re ever in Denver and would like to ride the light rail from points south, get there early. Oh, and it’s kind of pricey, so bring plenty of change because change is hard to come by in Denver.
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