$45 whenever I actually need to move something big" sounds good on paper but those rentals add up if you need a truck more than once a month. Plus you're stuck waiting on their hours and hoping one's free on a Saturday. Sounds like it works for you but I could not deal with that hassle.

That $9 stencil paid for itself in one job, easy.

The pink tint is the giveaway, sodium lights from Denver give you that yellow-orange, never pink. What you saw was almost for sure the aurora, that May storm was huge and people were catching it as far south as Texas and Florida, so Colorado was well inside the viewing zone. One thing though, from Cherry Creek you were fighting the city glow hard, which is why it looked like a smooth wash instead of sharp curtains. Real aurora photos this far south usually show a soft red or pink glow low on the horizon with maybe some faint pillars if you get lucky, not the bright green bands you see from Iceland. Those vertical curtain shots you see online were mostly taken way farther north where the light is stronger. So keep those frames, they are not junk, you probably caught a once in 20 years event for your area. Just push them in editing and you might pull some structure out of that glow.