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Published: June 23rd 2011
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The distance between Walla Walla Washington and Fort Collins Colorado is almost exactly one thousand miles. Roughly the equivalent of driving from Adelaide to Melbourne and back. I undertook this quest alone to meet up with Kat And Becca of T.A.S fame. The problem with trying to drive for 16 by yourself without stopping is that at 2am when you are 13ish hours in there comes a point when you realise you really need to stop. There are a bunch of truck rest-stops along the interstates in southern Wyoming. I hunkered down for for a four hour sleep and awoke to the cold twilight of dawn and holy shit was i cold. It was at this stage that i realised there was snow everywhere and I had been driving down a snow lined highway for at least 50 miles in the dark without realising it.
Okay, so the I'm about to make some comments about american socio-economics. These are the opinions of the author and reflect his limited knowledge of american society, none of the following comments should be taken to heart and if offence is taken, get over it, you know i live you!
Anyway, I met Kat
and Becca in Fort Collins from where we voyaged south to Colorado Springs to hang out with Becca's family during her little brother's highschool graduation. The important thing about this story is that you do not missunderstand my intent. Becca is awesome and her family is equally as awesome. The world view in that house however is a little right of centre, hilariously so.
"Obama is a marxist, and he should be shot," When you hear these words escape the mouth of a cute little old grandma your world view changes irrevocably. You think that everybody, no matter how uninformed can be, at the very least, logical. It turns out that they can't and comments like that have permanently changed the way i see the world.
Note for first time players #6 On a similar note as a fitting gift from an unnamed member of the extended family, a .38 police issue hollow point bullet was given to me and promptly forgotten in my bag. This led to quite an interesting, shall we say, situation, at Denver airport.
'Sir we are going to do a search of your bag."
'Sure, that's fine."
'.....Do you have any ammunition
in your bag?'
'No, wait, ummmm, shit, yes!'
All in all a pretty fucking stressful situation.
Rednecks love guns Yes, rednecks love guns. But their reasons for loving guns differ. Your average deep south, uneducated loony fringe dweller loves his gun because he thinks that everyone is going to try and jack him at the first opportunity. The More educated rednecks however have a far more cogent reason for hanging onto their firearms, the first is the 2nd amendment (guaranteeing the write to bear arms) and then second is a legitimate fear that the government is so shit that they will eventually move against the people of America. Left or Right Wing it don't matter, they just want the government to stay out of their shit. Funny stuff for sure....
On a lighter note, Colorado springs is actually a pretty fucking cool place and chilling with Kat and Becca was straight awesome. The area is strangely reminiscent of the flinders ramges, the rock formations are large and the colours are deep iron stained red. The main difference is the presence of the Rocky Mountains in the background and a bit of snow around the place. Very strange.
Of particular note is that little baby sausages slow cooked in a mix of grape jelly and coke taste weirdly good, like seriously weirdly good.
The next week was a week of relaxation if Fort Collins which was awesome, after which i went to denver for a few days to hang out with my main man Joey! He took me out to A little glacier up in the Rockies which was freaking incredible, also it's at like 11,000 feet (3,300m). This wasn't my first experience of exercise at altitude, that was the 3 mile run i did in Fort Collins which was also insanely destructive, but this was where i realised that even easy things are made very difficult at altitude.
It was back to Fort Collins again for a week with Tess and Corey, who are hands down the most annoyingly perfect couple on the planet. It's exhausting just being around them hahahahaha, if you've met them you'll know what i mean. Anyway, FoCo is awesome, it's about as hippy as Colorado Springs is redneck and it rocks. Everybody uses a bicycle and there are Fixies freaking everywhere, including a few bikes with bamboo frames which are straight hilarious and about as hipster douchebag as you can get. Frisbee-ing and
slack-lining abound and the small fact that there are about 100 micro-breweries in Colorado, six of which are in FoCo. These places are awesome, some, such as New Belgium, offer free tasting and sell beer in growlers (yeah retarded name) which are half gallon (1890ml) glass containers which sell filled for about $12 and you can go back and re-fill them for about $7. The price of, even very high quality, beer around here is awesome.
All in all Colorado was a pretty sweet place to just chill out and enjoy being in the USA. The fact that there are hippies and rednecks living right next to each other is more than a little strange but if you go there just rememeber not to confuse the to.
Next stop we ditch the car and fly to
NEWWWWWWWWWWWWW YOOOOOOOOOORKKKKK........
As always, more photos are available
here
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