Fortunately, most of the world doesn't know anything about Colorado and much less about Lakewood, Colorado, where I live.

First, most people picture Colorado as being part of the wild west with dirt streets and people wearing six-shooters on their hips and American Indians hanging out on every street corner. When they hear that Colorado has gotten two feet of snow on their weather channel, they tend to think the weatherman is talking about the whole state, not just the west half of the state that contains the mountains. When our weather is moving east out of California, not much of it gets over the mountains most of the time. It's when it's coming counter-clockwise from the Gulf of Texas, a much rarer occasion, that we get the big storms.

I live less than $20.00 by taxi from downtown Denver. Imagine Denver as being at the bottom of your cereal bowl after you've finished off your Wheaties. Now imagine that if you were sitting on the beach in San Diego, the bottom of your cereal bowl is precisely one mile over your head. Heck, you wouldn't even be able to see that sucker.

Well, there's a marker in downtown Denver that tells you that you are standing one mile above sea level so almost all of the approximate 11,000 mile trip is uphill going from the west coast to Denver and downhill, after you get over the mountains, when your heading from Denver toward California.

Now I'm a little south but mostly west of downtown Denver and when you travel west from Denver, you are slowly going up from the bottom of the cereal bowl until you reach the rim which is the highest part of the Rocky Mountains. I live just a little ways up the side of your bowl but I can see the foothills leading up to the Rockies from the back patio of my rented townhouse. What I see are the little suckers with condos stuck to the side of them. For the next four or five hours driving west from where I live, you go through some of the highest mountains and greatest skiing in the world. And the first time you take a Greyhound through them, especially in the winter, they are unbelievable. It was on a Greyhound going west that I met Brian.

Lakewood is one of the larger of the seven or so pieces that form the Metro Denver area. And Denver is famous for its boom or bust economy. I lost a job I had for 14-1/2 years at the end of 1991, which was the middle of a bust cycle. It took me two years to find a part-time job. On October 11, 2006, I lost that job due to the fact that we've been in another bust cycle for the past three or four years. The longest bust cycle we've ever had lasted for something like seven years. So speaking from more than 50 years experience, don't come to Denver for the jobs. The housing is expensive, the pay is low, and Colorado's foreclosure rate has now led the nation for the past six months.

So, in less than 600 words, you now know a little about where I call home, living by myself in a small townhouse, toward the mountains west of Denver. Until next time, don't forget, whatever happens to you, blame it on the dog.

- Bob