Category: Applause

A month of Sundays and then some

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 7 Comments
The Colorado Mountain College running team’s 2024 graduates: bottom, (l-r), Brooklyn German, Aslynn Wardall; top: Nate Encinias, Harrison Walter, Adaline Fulmer, Paulo Aponte. Not pictured: Kenneth Obregon.

By Hal Walter

For the first Sunday in a month of them, there is no long training run on tap for cross-country or track. There is no homework. There will be no evening commute to Leadville to deliver Harrison Walter to Colorado Mountain College.

The Blur, it seems, graduated from CMC this past Friday with an Associate of General Studies degree and proficiency certificates in welding.

It’s really a strange feeling and I am still processing it all. For the past two years life around here has revolved around Mary and me supporting Harrison through college. We’ve put about 30,000 miles on vehicles in doing so, and untold mileage on our brains. We knew it was a big risk sending him to Leadville to live in a dorm, but anything worth doing is worth the risk of failing. We also didn’t have a clue what we were getting ourselves into.

Between the ages of 62 and 64 I spent about 150 nights in a dorm room. We traveled to six states to watch Harrison and teammates run for the CMC Eagles. As his academic aide I learned how to operate Canvas and Basecamp. I read textbooks alongside him and helped guide him through countless assignments. During both summers I coached him through his running workouts.

All of this was out of the belief that a person on the autism spectrum deserved a shot at a college education and experience. He graduated teetering on the brink of the Dean’s List with a GPA of 3.46 (final grades are not yet in). It wasn’t all rainbows and unicorns, as he is surely on another Dean’s List for the number of write-ups received, all related to autistic behaviors.

Harrison at Huntsville (third from left). Photo: Hal Walter

As an athlete he left CMC with the school record for the track 10K, and runner-up best times for the 5K and 3K. In cross-country he holds CMC’s third-best cross-country 5K and fifth-fastest 8K, which he ran at the NJCAA National Championships in Huntsville, Ala. He also won the 5K Colorado Cup Snowshoe Race, hosted annually by CMC.

He received the running team’s Most Valuable Runner Award, as well as an award for his GPA and a letter.

And when he wasn’t studying or running he worked part time at Community Threads in Leadville.

There are too many people to thank in this space, but we owe a world of gratitude to his teammates and fellow students, coach and professors, faculty, staff and administration for the patience, support and compassion over these two years. There is a book in the works.

Perhaps rather than a month of Sundays it was an era of Sundays. The future, as Tom Petty sang, is wide open.

Harrison Walter, come on down!

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 7 Comments
Harrison Walter, en route to graduating from Colorado Mountain College.

Congratulations and a tip of the Mad Dog mortarboard to Harrison Walter, who yesterday collected his Associate of General Studies degree from Colorado Mountain College in Leadville.

The big day kicked off with the traditional “Ski Down” of Dutch Henry Hill. Harrison — a letterman named Most Valuable Runner of the 2023-24 CMC Eagles’ men’s team — chose to leg it down on snowshoes.

Sen. Michael Bennet (D-Colo.) delivered the commencement address, after which Harrison, his family and friends adjourned to the City on a Hill coffee shop for what his father, Hal, described as “a gala soiree.”

En route to his degree, Harrison also collected certificates of proficiency in basic welding and cutting and welding design and fabrication, and earned yet another certificate from the Eagles for maintaining a 3.0+ GPA as a student athlete. So it was a busy couple of years for the young fella.

Today the freshly minted graduate was reported to be resting comfortably at the family compound outside Weirdcliffe while his father examined the upshot of clearing out his dorm room.

“My truck, which looked like The Beverly Hillbillies’ … has been emptied into the living room,” he confided via Messages. “What a mess.”

Beep beep

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 12 Comments
Santa Fe’s Deep State targets libertarian hunter Wile E. Coyote.

A tip of the Mad Dog’s ACME sun helmet goes out to Khal S. for finding this bit of signage along the Rail Trail in Fanta Fe.

With New Mexico being a hotbed of TV/film activity, I immediately wondered whether it had something to do with Warner Bros. shelving its live action/animation combo “Coyote vs. Acme” — and taking a writedown for shitcanning the $70 million feature — rather than simply letting it run heedlessly off a cliff, stop in midair, and hold up a sign that reads, “Yikes.”

I guess we’ll never know. That’s all, folks!

Oh, yeah; all right

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 10 Comments
A musical gag from Dave Coverly.

OK, we all could use a good laugh these days — These days? Most days! — and I got one texted to me late last night by a couple of guitar-playing pals in California.

The cartoonist is Michigan’s own Dave Coverly, and you can catch his act at speedbump.com. Buy his book, prints, or original artwork while you’re there. He’s done a couple of these eye-chart gags and they’re all killer. Also, dogs and cats. What’s not to like?

Those of you who share my buddies’ fondness for pickin’ and grinnin’ — I’m looking at you, Pat O’B — should give this one a look-see. I haven’t tried it yet, but I did some research and Dave’s eye chart is 20/20.

• Update: I asked Dave (belatedly) for permission to reproduce his cartoon here, and he tells me that it’s a doctored version that musicians have been passing around for a while now. There’s another that uses notation from Bach’s Toccata and Fugue in D Minor. I should’ve picked up on it because the voice balloon and chart don’t match his other work. Derned Innertube pirates are everywhere, and it seems they’re all in a band.