Main Street, U.S.A.

I'm sitting on a curb with about a thousand of my closest new friends. There is a smell in the air of pending rain, popcorn, funnel cake, and cotton candy. The main street is closes to everything but foot traffic. The parade starts in 10 minutes. Small town parades aren't just about making cool floats and winning prizes. This is a place for the bigger family that is the small town to get together, to connect, to catch up on who's doing what. This is a place for the city to show off not only it's shiny new police cruisers and vintage firetrucks, but they will also parade the new snow plow and the new street sweeper. The trash company will slowly roll out their best trucks. Kids will ride bicycles. Shriners will ride Goldwings. Police will ride horses. Hippies will ride rafts. Beauty queens will sit in the back of 90s era Mustang convertables.

This is small town, USA, and I have a front row seat on main street.

Live Action Yakkin

I'm pretty sure the title sums it up, but just in case, the idea is that there's a "play hole" where the water flows over a bunch of strategically placed rocks. This gives kayakers and canoers a chance to play and do some gnarly tricks. Nothing super big going down right now, but it's always cool to watch. Like my friend Ryan says, I don't feel guilty staring since it seems people are always staring at us climbers, too.

Salida

The simple statement of pride in one's small city...

The Tunes

I love it. I believe (not certain at this point) that this is Lubriphonic, featuring the keyboard talents of Kyle from String Cheese Incident. Quality in a beautiful park by an awesome river is job one here at FIBArk.

Kayak-Tastic

Here at FIBArk, the kayak freestyle is the thing to watch. These guys are doing cartwheels and flips and all sorts of crazy stuff. Good times.

The Rebirth of Childhood

When I was in high school, I worked at an old movie theater. The Unique Theatre was the place where I first saw Jurassic Park, and when I worked there, it was $5 to see a flick, usually coming out weeks after they would in the city.

I did lots of things in that theater, starting with making popcorn, and ultimately ending in running the bohemeth 60s era Super Simplex movie projectors. I had a key to the place, and my buddies and I would go in there and play football and hide and seek in the ancient, dark auditorium.

The building itself was built in the late 1880s as I recall, and towards the end of my high school career, it was definitely showing its age. A few years ago, the fire department closed it as a hazard. It was bought by a new investor, whose intentions are unknown to me.

They are stripping the stucco, and I can only hope that they restore the Salida Opera House to it's original glory. If so, it would be, in a way, a rebirth of my childhood.

A River Runs Through It

Last night, while meeting up with old friends and reminiscing of the old times, I snagged this picture of the Arkansas River flowing through downtown Salida, framed by tall cottonwood tries, an evening thunder cloud, and Mount Antero in the background.  It's a simple shot, but a quaint reminder of the things we miss out on appreciating.

After this, I realized a life-long dream: I sat in a dentist chair in a dark alley, drank a Mickey's tall boy, hung out with old friends, discussed politics, and listened to an OR nurse talk about assisting in pulling a sausage from a vagina with tongs...

...these are the things that make life worth living. I love Salida.