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About my rescue, the smoke shacks, and being here and queer

Dan Gundlach, Breckenridge

I broke my back a few weeks ago, and without television, the Summit Daily bas been my only source of information. Thanks for a good newspaper. I also want to thank the six men and women who got me safely from above Broadway Chute through the Windows, down the traverse to the medical center: Jessica, Tim, Mike, Susie, Duke and Paul, the snowmobile driver. Good job for dealing with my screaming (out loud in pain) sense of humor. So I’d like to kill three birds with one stone.First, without insurance, my medical bills are horrific. I’ve been out of work for more than a month. If you love modern art, my paintings are currently on display at Clint’s coffee house on Main Street in Breckenridge. Any purchase of a painting will help me defer these costs, and the work is affordable.Second, about our beloved smoke shacks: There needs to be a balance between those insistent on building bigger and better smoke shacks and the do-gooders who want them torn down, even though they don’t know where most of them are. There are plenty of shacks already. Enough is enough. Improve the ones already here. Stop building more. Clean them more. Keep them a better secret. In the end, there will always be smoke shacks at Breckenridge. But the users and builders need to win this war a bit smarter. Third, I’ve enjoyed the series on gay life in Summit County. I’ve been here and queer for nine years, and I’ve observed the following: Out of the 35 or so gay and lesbian folks I’ve met here, only half of them truly know each other, and of those, only half interact regularly.Most of them have many straight friendships and few gay ones. This is not because they’re all closeted or afraid of social responses, but because not a single one of them moved here “to be gay.”We moved here for the same reasons as all of you – snowboarding, mountain biking, fishing, hiking, the beauty of these mountains and the wonderful feel of a friendly, small town. Besides, a lack of drag-queen bingo in the county isn’t really all that bad, is it? No one here seems to care if we’re gay or not, including homosexuals themselves.


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