Teleidoscope

Tue, Jul 03, 2007

Dead Truck

Posted at 10:20 pm MDT to Travel

I have Nanette's youngest daughter's car sitting in my driveway at the moment. Elsbeth is away for a 'semester at sea', and my truck is sitting in the parking lot of a Midas Auto Service place in central Denver, waiting to be looked at after the holiday.

This is really annoying.

I drove in to Denver to visit the Denver Art Museum, and when I got off the highway and stopped at the first light, the truck overheated again. I nursed it across downtown to the museum parking garage and left it to cool for several hours while I went through the museum.

I hadn't been to the DAM since before they built their new addition. It's an interesting space, with no perpendicular walls. I got a bit dizzy at one point in a narrow space -- the diagonals were disorienting -- but the large display areas were fine.

I had a wonderful late lunch in one of the museum restaurants. This was my second great restaurant meal in two days: Nanette took me out to the Brasserie Ten-Ten, a French restaurant in Boulder with great food and equally great service, for my birthday last night.

When I went back to the truck, it seemed OK, but it overheated again after only a few blocks. I found a parking place and called AAA (again) and Nanette. AAA recommended the Midas place as an AAA approved mechanic reasonably close to where I was stuck.

Nanette's husband Chuck, who was at work at their warehouse on the outskirts of Denver, picked me up at the Midas parking lot and took me back with him to the Mile High Comics warehouse, where some of his acquaintances from the New Mexico pueblos had come to sell him some new pieces for his huge and wonderful collection of pottery.

Some of the collection (only 4327 of the pieces) can be seen online at www.pueblotreasures.com. I tagged along as Chuck gave his guests a guided tour of the many display cases at the warehouse. It's been about 9 months since I visited the collection, and there were many new pieces.

I ended up buying a wonderful pottery bear, directly from the artist, Gilbert Sanchez. I don't think I can put up pictures that will do it justice: there are glazed medallions on the sides (most of the bear is unglazed clay ranging from gray to reddish) with images incised with very fine lines: heaven on one side (sun, stars and a comet) and earth on the other (a landscape including Black Mesa, which is near the pueblo where Gilbert lives).

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