lafayette

I left the PRETTY SWEET demo early to get to Lafayette to skate with these guys

I found the smallest obstacle and did a few tricks

big or small - the pivot to fakie is a fun one for me

slept outside SESSIONS' pad and we hung in the morning

caught the tale end of breakfast w/ the kids at ILLYA's

the flowers in the garden are gorgeous

a little Denver ComicCon press coverage in a local magazine

I sampled some snap peas!

the zucchini is looking up!

google earth helped Illya show me where his MT swimming hole is

I was anxious to split so I wouldn't be late to meet LZ in Boulder. He asked if he could change and catch a ride into Boulder with me. I said, NO PROBLEM, and went to wait in the car.

pretty sweet

thought I'd go check out the chaos

Guy leads the way across the street to 303 for the signing

Koston, Rick, & Marc - legend status

chris casey & meza are working on PRETTY SWEET PARKING LOT

Raven, Eric, Rick, & Stevie - birthday boy Beibel is just out of frame

Parris' melon made the wait at Arvada bearable

 A. Rick Howard - pivot fakie

B. Guy Mariano - back D

C. Cory Kennedy - bean plant

D. Raven Tershay - fs 5.0

Guy ollies to fakie

I bounced a bit early, but surely had a good time....

so lucky

Milo met Rachel on my last full day in Denver

went to Cheesman Park to teach Pass the Pigs

she took right to it..... double razorbacks

the action on the marble floor was intense

cute puppy alert

we tried on a few things at REI

we put our feet in the Platte River

I'm standing in the Platte River

I'd had my badminton racquets with me for the last 3 years

was waiting to play with the right person

we had some tremendous rallies

the playing surface was uphill so we had to adapt

bikes back to Rachel's to look into some dinner

we get home & Scott offers to make us stirfry

we left the snap pea stems on & it was SO GOOD

end of the day we finished the PIGS & I got to try salsa Lizano!

one hell of a day!

what remains of DENVER

gonna miss MILO time on the porch

paid a visit to the Denver Zine Library

 A. welcome sign - come on in

B. the stacks

C. who we are

D. re-purposed zine holders 

we could only find one copy of my fav zine, EVASION

took the bike path to Food Not Bombs and scored

bananas & berries had me in free smoothies all week

Hit up the NEAT MARKET pig out fest... gyros!

the juice ladies

BBQ scallions!

found a mini Eiffel Tower on my bike ride

love the signs at the Mercury Cafe

 I did yoga at the Mercury Cafe and it was so surreal to do yoga in the same room where 25 years prior I'd seen Quicksand, Jawbox, & Seaweed. Some of the best shows of my life went down in this room and here I am doing yoga. Piper the instructor was great and inspiring.... so glad I went.

definitely bugs me when smokers stand right next to the door

kicked it with neighborhood icon, MICHAEL.

self filmed a few tricks at the DENVER red park. blunt

boardslide transfer

I think this is my favorite spot to wallie in the USA

MRF

 A MRF is a materials recovery facility - in this case one of the biggest in the country with a massive automated sorting system. They receive and sort material from as far away as NM and WY.

Katie gave me a tour of the Waste Management MRF

Ft. Collins & other municipalities bale their commingled items and truck them to this MRF

safety first!

this is the tipping floor where all the city trucks dump the commingled items

that's all aluminum on the left. each cube weighs about 1500lbs

 Aluminum is the single item that is the easiest to make back into another can. 100% recyclable. These bricks represent nearly 53,500 crushed cans and it will sell for about $1200-1500.

most often all the non 1&2 plastics get baled together and sold as mixed plastic

Learning that 3-7 get baled together was a bummer. The reality is that markets for this plastics are either non existent or highly volatile. The best thing to do is NOT to buy any product made from #3-7. Or take it one step farther and challenge yourself to not buy any plastics. #1-2 have much more reliable markets but only are getting down cycled and not made back into more plastic containers.

inside the MRF I followed Katie around as she explained the sorting

even though it's automated, human sorting is still a big part of the process

glass is rarely made back into glass again because of contamination issues.

 Since it comes out at the end of the overall sorting cycle, there ends up being a lot of plastics and caps and other bits of stuff that prevents most glass buyers from buying this quality of crushed glass. Container glass in general is easy to make into glass again if it's properly sorted by color and not run through the MRF.

can you spot the two glaring contaminants in this photo?

Katie said that plastic bags of all types and VCR tapes cause the most damage to the sorting system and are NOT accepted at their facility. So it's best to not put your mixed recyclables at home in plastic bags and then put those in your curbside bin. I learned a lot and the one lesson that was reenforced is to BUY as little as possible. Recycling is going to save us. Cutting our consumption is the most effective way to reduce our footprint on this planet.

Cardboard & mixed paper bales go to market by rail.