Colorado is pretty
And Nebraska smells like cow, if you know what I mean. Those are the lessons I learned today.
Really, though, before I begin, I've had a couple things on my mind that I'd like to clarify:
1) I think the reason why I was most scared that night was this: yes, being in unfamiliar territory at midnight with strange people in beat up cars leering at you can be very nerve-wracking, but take that mild discomfort plus my tendency towards paranoia plus finding out we had the potential to not be able to get into the apartment, and now multiply that anxiety by twelve billion (because I really, really had to go to the bathroom like nobody's business, I'm telling you...it was bad). Everybody knows that a full bladder can add stress and moodiness to any situation, and when you're already a little bit on edge (and you're stuck in a car when everything is closed) you're bound to get a little crazy.
2) In the car after the firefly incident (and the bug-coated windshield) I was thinking about what would happen if we decided to start utilizing the ocean for travel, and developed a commuter vehicle for extremely fast underwater travel (even speedboat-fast would do, probably). Now, why we'd decide to move underwater instead of stick with the floating methods we've got now (more room? the water has a much higher resistance, but with the proper streamlining, and if we were really desperate...) I'm not sure, but bear with me. We've already got fast airborne travel, and we've heard the stories about unfortunate avians (apologies for a potentially incorrect pluralization) getting sucked into jet engines. When you hit bugs on the road, some stick in your radiator, and others smack into the windshield, their guts stick to the glass, and the exoskeleton flies up and over the roof of the car. Planes probably don't get much in the way of duck guts on their windshields, but then again I've never seen the front of a plane after landing (and I'm sure hitting birds in the air is a much more rare occurance than hitting bugs on the highway). Plus with animals with internal skeletal systems I'd assume it would be different anyway, since it's not outer shell + squishy innards, it's squishy outer + bones so instead of a juicy explosion it might be more of a weird smear. Then again, when people get hit by trains they pretty much disintegrate (or at least explode), so I guess it just takes a high enough speed for the mass of the object.
But I digress. My point was that if we developed very high speed underwater travel, might we start getting sea life stuck in propellers? Probably not stuck on windshields, since the water rushing past the glass would probably be enough to keep it fairly clean (at least while in motion), but stuck in things? Maybe. Would you stop for fuel and find little fishies and bits of dolphin on your craft? Who knows. But this is a terribly morbid subject, and not one I should continue to discuss.
3) Last night there was a huge hailstorm in Colorado Springs, which is where we are now, but I'll get to that later. Huge enough that cars were disabled and minor havoc ensued. Last week when we were stuck at Phi Tau trying to figure out when to get the car, we were thinking about trying to go up Thursday morning before Eric's trip to Boston. Had we left that day earlier, we would have been here last night during the storm and may have gotten stuck or something worse. (Hail in Colorado Springs has been known to get massive and has even killed people in the past.) So this goes back to what I said earlier about feeling a bit like a tempered Candide in that this may not be the best of all possible worlds but at least things tend to work out for the better, even when they seem to be going poorly at the time. [Let me destroy my previous assertion, now, by telling you that the reason we left a day later is that we wanted to see Eisley in concert on sunday in Cleveland. So no matter which day we left, we would have ended up in Colorado Springs tonight, and would not have hit the storm. So there goes that theory. But had we gotten the car on time and left on Monday, we may very well have ended up there yesterday and gotten stuck, so maybe *that's* my proof.]
So now that that's over with, here's a quick update on the situation:
Road Trippin: Day 6 (the abridged version...I don't feel like typing much anymore)
We began in Nebraska, hoping that after Kearney things would get more interesting...there were some postcards that promised pretty things in the west of the state, but sadly we sort of bypassed that to get to Colorado. We took a parallel highway for a bit and found that it looked much the same as the interstate, so we went back. Pretty much the entire middle of the state smells like cow, too, which is kind of gross.
Colorado started out looking a lot less green than the previous states. However, once we got closer to the Rockies it turned green and full of lakes and even had snow in the mountains, and Oh the Mountains! It's been so long since I've seen real mountains. The east coast only has hills (and Mount Washington, which will kill you), but the west...now those are mountains. The Rockies are just huge raw slabs of pure, strong, and unadulterated Nature. They're beautiful and intimidating. (The Sierras in California, on the other hand, are sort of a compromise between the sanded-down bumps in the east and the Rockies: they're huge and majestic but not as raw as their younger cousins...quite breathtaking if I do say so myself.) It's an amazing feeling to look up into the clouds and notice that what you see beneath them is not sky but mountains disappearing into the mist. Coming from the east coast, they seemed almost comically gargantuan, and I couldn't really convince myself they actually extended that high into the atmosphere until we got closer to the base.
We drove through the mountains and bypassed Denver (no big loss). We saw Boulder (adorable adorable college town) and Golden (tiny cowboy town where Buffalo Bill Cody is buried--also home of Coors) and a bunch of cute towns up in the mountains that lay in between. In Boulder we walked around the pedestrian mall downtown and saw the tiniest kitten ever, the cutest puppy ever, a man playing the harp gorgeously, hand-made soap, ten stores selling import goods from India or Tibet, lots of ice cream (to complement the perfect life in a perfect town, I suppose) and a game store that sold every bit of electricity-free entertainment you could think of EXCEPT for a certain item I've been searching desperately for. Boulder is also very very crunchy. So many Tevas! Ah, they're so huggable. :) (The people, not the shoes.)
In Golden we actually saw some live deer for a change. They *were* standing awfully close to the highway, though, which made me worry that we might have to see some of that roadkill in the making. Thankfully, we didn't.
We then drove into a bit of a rainstorm that was hitting Denver (we caught the edge of it). I love watching storms in the distance...the clouds look like you've raked them down with your fingers and you would never in a million years guess that the fuzzy gray wisps hanging from the sky can actually be torrential downpours if you didn't already know. Some lightning, too, but very infrequent. Nothing like the good storms we had in Hanover.
In Colorado Springs we saw (for a split second) a harvest moon. It was probably a couple of inches in diameter and only an inch or so above the horizon, so that we lost sight of it when we came off the hill. It was also the most amazing shade of burnt orange I've ever seen. It's a shame I couldn't pull out my camera fast enough. Not quite sure why we were treated to that sight in the middle of Colorado, but it was nice nonetheless.
Now we're in a Howard Johnson with free wireless (but we certainly paid for it :\) and a fan that doesn't really work. Oh, and "hot" breakfast meant "microwaveable sausage patties," which weren't all that bad. For microwaveable sausage patties, that is.
Tomorrow morning we're off to Garden of the Gods and then down to explore Northern New Mexico. The ranch plans fell through so we'll be motelling it again, but it's not so bad...just means we can make it farther south tomorrow and have less driving to do on our very scenic day (friday's filled with a visit to Jared in San Felipe Pueblo and seeing the Petrified Forest and Meteor Crater, and then an early bedtime before going to see the sun rise over the Grand Canyon). So for now, goodnight.
ps--We saw gas today for $1.93. (But we bought some at $1.99...:( ) Just thought people in more unfortunate bits of the country might like to hear that. :P
pps-We gained another hour today in western Nebraska. It's quite convenient, so I'm glad I'm not driving in the opposite direction. I also realized that I proved my ignorance *again* in print when I expressed confusion regarding time zones. Now, being in the mountains, I realize that Mountain time would have no business representing the Midwestern states, which are hilly at best. Bah. So I'm a bit slow. I try to make up for it in other ways.
Really, though, before I begin, I've had a couple things on my mind that I'd like to clarify:
1) I think the reason why I was most scared that night was this: yes, being in unfamiliar territory at midnight with strange people in beat up cars leering at you can be very nerve-wracking, but take that mild discomfort plus my tendency towards paranoia plus finding out we had the potential to not be able to get into the apartment, and now multiply that anxiety by twelve billion (because I really, really had to go to the bathroom like nobody's business, I'm telling you...it was bad). Everybody knows that a full bladder can add stress and moodiness to any situation, and when you're already a little bit on edge (and you're stuck in a car when everything is closed) you're bound to get a little crazy.
2) In the car after the firefly incident (and the bug-coated windshield) I was thinking about what would happen if we decided to start utilizing the ocean for travel, and developed a commuter vehicle for extremely fast underwater travel (even speedboat-fast would do, probably). Now, why we'd decide to move underwater instead of stick with the floating methods we've got now (more room? the water has a much higher resistance, but with the proper streamlining, and if we were really desperate...) I'm not sure, but bear with me. We've already got fast airborne travel, and we've heard the stories about unfortunate avians (apologies for a potentially incorrect pluralization) getting sucked into jet engines. When you hit bugs on the road, some stick in your radiator, and others smack into the windshield, their guts stick to the glass, and the exoskeleton flies up and over the roof of the car. Planes probably don't get much in the way of duck guts on their windshields, but then again I've never seen the front of a plane after landing (and I'm sure hitting birds in the air is a much more rare occurance than hitting bugs on the highway). Plus with animals with internal skeletal systems I'd assume it would be different anyway, since it's not outer shell + squishy innards, it's squishy outer + bones so instead of a juicy explosion it might be more of a weird smear. Then again, when people get hit by trains they pretty much disintegrate (or at least explode), so I guess it just takes a high enough speed for the mass of the object.
But I digress. My point was that if we developed very high speed underwater travel, might we start getting sea life stuck in propellers? Probably not stuck on windshields, since the water rushing past the glass would probably be enough to keep it fairly clean (at least while in motion), but stuck in things? Maybe. Would you stop for fuel and find little fishies and bits of dolphin on your craft? Who knows. But this is a terribly morbid subject, and not one I should continue to discuss.
3) Last night there was a huge hailstorm in Colorado Springs, which is where we are now, but I'll get to that later. Huge enough that cars were disabled and minor havoc ensued. Last week when we were stuck at Phi Tau trying to figure out when to get the car, we were thinking about trying to go up Thursday morning before Eric's trip to Boston. Had we left that day earlier, we would have been here last night during the storm and may have gotten stuck or something worse. (Hail in Colorado Springs has been known to get massive and has even killed people in the past.) So this goes back to what I said earlier about feeling a bit like a tempered Candide in that this may not be the best of all possible worlds but at least things tend to work out for the better, even when they seem to be going poorly at the time. [Let me destroy my previous assertion, now, by telling you that the reason we left a day later is that we wanted to see Eisley in concert on sunday in Cleveland. So no matter which day we left, we would have ended up in Colorado Springs tonight, and would not have hit the storm. So there goes that theory. But had we gotten the car on time and left on Monday, we may very well have ended up there yesterday and gotten stuck, so maybe *that's* my proof.]
So now that that's over with, here's a quick update on the situation:
Road Trippin: Day 6 (the abridged version...I don't feel like typing much anymore)
We began in Nebraska, hoping that after Kearney things would get more interesting...there were some postcards that promised pretty things in the west of the state, but sadly we sort of bypassed that to get to Colorado. We took a parallel highway for a bit and found that it looked much the same as the interstate, so we went back. Pretty much the entire middle of the state smells like cow, too, which is kind of gross.
Colorado started out looking a lot less green than the previous states. However, once we got closer to the Rockies it turned green and full of lakes and even had snow in the mountains, and Oh the Mountains! It's been so long since I've seen real mountains. The east coast only has hills (and Mount Washington, which will kill you), but the west...now those are mountains. The Rockies are just huge raw slabs of pure, strong, and unadulterated Nature. They're beautiful and intimidating. (The Sierras in California, on the other hand, are sort of a compromise between the sanded-down bumps in the east and the Rockies: they're huge and majestic but not as raw as their younger cousins...quite breathtaking if I do say so myself.) It's an amazing feeling to look up into the clouds and notice that what you see beneath them is not sky but mountains disappearing into the mist. Coming from the east coast, they seemed almost comically gargantuan, and I couldn't really convince myself they actually extended that high into the atmosphere until we got closer to the base.
We drove through the mountains and bypassed Denver (no big loss). We saw Boulder (adorable adorable college town) and Golden (tiny cowboy town where Buffalo Bill Cody is buried--also home of Coors) and a bunch of cute towns up in the mountains that lay in between. In Boulder we walked around the pedestrian mall downtown and saw the tiniest kitten ever, the cutest puppy ever, a man playing the harp gorgeously, hand-made soap, ten stores selling import goods from India or Tibet, lots of ice cream (to complement the perfect life in a perfect town, I suppose) and a game store that sold every bit of electricity-free entertainment you could think of EXCEPT for a certain item I've been searching desperately for. Boulder is also very very crunchy. So many Tevas! Ah, they're so huggable. :) (The people, not the shoes.)
In Golden we actually saw some live deer for a change. They *were* standing awfully close to the highway, though, which made me worry that we might have to see some of that roadkill in the making. Thankfully, we didn't.
We then drove into a bit of a rainstorm that was hitting Denver (we caught the edge of it). I love watching storms in the distance...the clouds look like you've raked them down with your fingers and you would never in a million years guess that the fuzzy gray wisps hanging from the sky can actually be torrential downpours if you didn't already know. Some lightning, too, but very infrequent. Nothing like the good storms we had in Hanover.
In Colorado Springs we saw (for a split second) a harvest moon. It was probably a couple of inches in diameter and only an inch or so above the horizon, so that we lost sight of it when we came off the hill. It was also the most amazing shade of burnt orange I've ever seen. It's a shame I couldn't pull out my camera fast enough. Not quite sure why we were treated to that sight in the middle of Colorado, but it was nice nonetheless.
Now we're in a Howard Johnson with free wireless (but we certainly paid for it :\) and a fan that doesn't really work. Oh, and "hot" breakfast meant "microwaveable sausage patties," which weren't all that bad. For microwaveable sausage patties, that is.
Tomorrow morning we're off to Garden of the Gods and then down to explore Northern New Mexico. The ranch plans fell through so we'll be motelling it again, but it's not so bad...just means we can make it farther south tomorrow and have less driving to do on our very scenic day (friday's filled with a visit to Jared in San Felipe Pueblo and seeing the Petrified Forest and Meteor Crater, and then an early bedtime before going to see the sun rise over the Grand Canyon). So for now, goodnight.
ps--We saw gas today for $1.93. (But we bought some at $1.99...:( ) Just thought people in more unfortunate bits of the country might like to hear that. :P
pps-We gained another hour today in western Nebraska. It's quite convenient, so I'm glad I'm not driving in the opposite direction. I also realized that I proved my ignorance *again* in print when I expressed confusion regarding time zones. Now, being in the mountains, I realize that Mountain time would have no business representing the Midwestern states, which are hilly at best. Bah. So I'm a bit slow. I try to make up for it in other ways.
posted by Sassafrassy at 11:36 PM
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