{"id":29753,"date":"2015-02-07T00:31:02","date_gmt":"2015-02-07T06:31:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.ancientrails.com\/?p=29753"},"modified":"2016-05-06T09:55:29","modified_gmt":"2016-05-06T15:55:29","slug":"advancing-to-mediocre-from-next-to-last","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ancientrails.com\/?p=29753","title":{"rendered":"Advancing to Mediocre from Next to Last"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Imbolc \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 Settling Moon II<\/p>\n<p>Left Shadow Mountain at 4:30 pm for Denver. It was 49 here. When I got to Denver a half hour later, the temperature was 73. There were guys in shorts and short-sleeved shirts playing golf at a course along Hwy. 285.<\/p>\n<p>After an errand down Santa Fe Drive to the south, I headed back north to Colorado Blvd. S. Went past shawirma joints, sushi places, Mexican of course, into the 1500 block where a 24 hour IHOP sat in a busy parking lot. It was empty.<\/p>\n<p>8 of us from the Sheepshead meetup gathered. I met a woman who grew up in Muncie, Ann. Another older, balder gray haired guy named Jim joined Jeff and me as\u00a0as the mature male contingent.<\/p>\n<p>My cards were mediocre, but I ended up in the middle of the pack for the evening. That&#8217;s up from next to the bottom where I stood last time. The trend is encouraging.<\/p>\n<p>We played until 9:45 or so and the restaurant was empty most of the time, but as 9:00 came and went groups of teenagers came in, Latinos mostly, laughing and looking shyly at each other, the usual awkward courting rituals.<\/p>\n<p>As I drove home, the almost full Settling Moon II moved across the southern sky toward the west, highlighting the mountains as I drove into them, going home.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Imbolc \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 Settling Moon II Left Shadow Mountain at 4:30 pm for Denver. It was 49 here. When I got to Denver a half hour later, the temperature &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.ancientrails.com\/?p=29753\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Advancing to Mediocre from Next to Last<\/span> <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1113,11,754],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-29753","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-colorado","category-friends","category-sport"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ancientrails.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29753","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ancientrails.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ancientrails.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ancientrails.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ancientrails.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=29753"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.ancientrails.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29753\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":38071,"href":"https:\/\/www.ancientrails.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29753\/revisions\/38071"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ancientrails.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=29753"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ancientrails.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=29753"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ancientrails.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=29753"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}