You can’t get there from here

I work in the Denver West Business Park, in beeyooteeful Golden, Colo. (Actually, it’s not in Golden. It was in unincorporated Jefferson Co., but was using the Golden PO … but then got annexed by Lakewood. But since everyone’s been doing business here for a couple of decades, Lakewood didn’t have the nerve to insist on the change. Besides, they got their tax revenue, so who cares. But I digress.)

Across Denver West Blvd. is the Denver West Village Shopping Mall Place (not its official name). I go there to eat every day, at Tokyo Joe’s. (I am a creature of habit regarding lunches. The last thing I want to do at lunch is make still more decisions. Just ask my Mom about the PB&Js she packed for my school lunch every day for years.)

Across Colfax, the other direction, they’re building the FABULOUS Colorado Mills mall. Retail galore, which will be nice when I have to shop for something at the office, though I’d settle for a local Walgreens.

Anyway, in prep for the Colorado Mills opening, they’ve been widening every street within a three or four block radius. Including Denver West Blvd. You know … the one I cross to go to lunch.

They had the part from Cole Blvd. to Colfax closed for widening (two lanes each way to three, plus a pull-out for busses) for three months. That was kind of interesting to watch, but it closed off the normal way I walked to lunch: Down the backs of the adjoining buildings, above the lake, then up the stairs to DWB and over to the signal and cross, and there I am.

Now that way was closed off, since the stairs ran right into the humongous retaining wall built for the third lane. So then it was: Out the back, down the hill to the lake, climb over the spillway, up the hill, down Cole Blvd. to the signal, look at the torn up part of DWB as I cross, and there I am.

But now that part of DWB is open. Though the stairway has not been replaced. But they’ve closed off that section of Cole Blvd. So yesterday it was: Out the back, down the hill to the lake, climb over the spillway, up the hill, down Cole Blvd., cross because that side of Cole is now all torn up, walk along the grass because there’s no sidewalk on the opposite side, up to the corner, look at the construction, avoid the glares of the guys in the hard hats, cross DWB, and there I am.

Only today they had torn up all of that section of Cole Blvd. So it was: Out the back, down the hill to the lake, climb over the spillway, up the hill, down Cole Blvd., cross a lot earlier because that whole patch of Cole is now all torn up on both sides, walk along the grass, oops, cross deeper into the grass because they’re widening this, too, cross into the parking lot, oops, go further into the parking lot because they’ve torn up its entrance, head for the corner, oops, give the corner a wide berth because there’s a backhoe tearing up the sidewalk all around it, up the very steep hill to the sidewalk, look at the construction, cross DWB in the middle of the block, avoid the torn up areas on that side, and there I am.

On the way back, I tried to go around the other direction, up DWB to Colfax. Nothing doing. Just as torn up, cone zones everywhere, mounds of dirt, and general life-into-own-hands-taking.

Tomorrow I fully expect that they will have dug up enough stuff to have caused a rift in the space-time continuum so that it is impossible, thanks to the laws of physics, for me to go one block to get to lunch.

So, how was your day?