Old North Longmont — north  of 9th Avenue, west of Main, south of Mountain View, east of Gay

I chose this area to walk today because of one reason — the new Taco John’s restaurant opens today!  My favorite fast food restaurant.  The one at the same location closed about five years ago, so I’ve been missing it.  In today’s Times-Call there was a big article about it’s history, and said it will be open 7 days a week, from 6:30 am to midnight.

When I walked by at 11:30 am, there were cars backed up on Main St. about 4 or 5 cars deep!  I stepped  into the lobby for a minute, and it was only about half-full.  When my wife Jennifer came by with me toward the end of my walk, about 1:00 pm, the cars outside were not backed up quite as far, but now the lobby was standing room only!

Jennifer walked with me part of the way today… probably a little over a mile.  I think she enjoyed it, and kept noticing different things than myself.  She is also MUCH more outgoing than I am, so we had a few longer conversations with a few people we met along the way than would have been if it was just me.  So it was a nice change.  Maybe she’ll join me again every once in a while.

I saw maybe 8 tree houses today, many more than I’ve see in other areas.  It’s almost like one kid got a cool tree house, and other kids in the neighborhood kept begging until they got one too!

Major tree trimming was going on at Bross street today… 3 or 4 ‘cherrypickers’ (is that what they’re called?) all up in the branches at one time on the east side of the sidewalk.  At first I thought I would have to skip that block today and come back to it later, because there was a ‘Sidewalk Closed’ sign there.  But fortunately it was only on one side of the street.

I went past a house that was nicely remodeled by Robert Hutyra (spelling?) about 15 years ago.  It’s just about a block from Jennifer’s office.  He had a very interesting story — there was a big article in the Times-Call about him back then.  He escaped with his family from Czechoslovakia in a home-made balloon during the Soviet occupation.

(I haven’t tried this yet, but I just googled his name, and see there is a People magazine article archived about him.  Let me see if I can put a link here so you can read more about him if you want…)

http://www.people.com/people/archive/article/0,,20090314,00.html

 

(I think it worked…. YEAH!!)

Mountain View cemetery takes up the north-east quadrant of today’s area.  Although this is a little bit outside the purview of my ‘street-walking’, I did make one sweep around the interior of it.  I wanted in particular to take a picture of the front and back of the gravestone from ‘Suitcase’ Jones.  It looks like he must have led an interesting life too!

The west side of the cemetery shows up as Cinnamon Street on google maps… but between 11th and Mountain View, it is really more of a one-way alley.  There are no houses facing on to it, and no street name sign to encourage people to drive through.  North of Mountain View it appears to become an actual street.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Home business?

((( Update on 6/30/13  === added the following two pictures from the Lost & Found Theme Gallery yard…

 

I was intrigued by the ‘Oil Spill 420’ sign.  To tell the truth, I did not notice the swastika on it until I got home and looked at the photo on the computer.  I decided to try googling ‘oil spill 420’ to see if I could figure out what it was referring to.  Apparently the BP gulf oil spill started on 4/20/2010, so that explains part of it.  But there are also sites talking about Queen Elizabeth II, Canadian currency, Egyptian gods, marijuana, and other complicated stuff.  Not sure what to make of it!!?!

That’s about it for today.  I’ll mention the book I finished reading recently… “Flowers in the Attic” by V.C. Andrews.  I used to see this book in the grocery store checkout lines back in the 1980’s, where the paperback version had a haunting picture of a girl looking out of an attic window.  It’s certainly an interesting, gothic-but-modern type novel.  At the time I thought it was for junior high or high school age kids, but it deals with some incest topics that made me realize it’s really aimed at an older audience.  Don’t know if I’d actually recommend it, but it is a different and memorable novel.

Total for today:  22,150 steps, 4:16 time