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Published: August 23rd 2008
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Close Encounter with a Lynx
The hills of eastern Colorado abound with wildlife, all of it out to kill you. Day 8: Damnation Alley I would like to take issue with one of my astute readers: a few posts ago, someone (was it the illustrious Festus Hagen?) intimated that eastern Colorado would be hard to distinguish from western Kansas.
Geographically speaking this is true. Both landscapes showcase the gently rolling hills of the high plains. Swaths of scrub brush and yellow dirt are dotted here and there with the picturesque sight of industrial feedlots and the cattle killing floor. The bleating of terrified animals rides the late summer breeze and the sharp stench of baking manure wafts to and fro. However, in cultural and economic terms, the contrast between the two states couldn’t be starker. The first thing you will notice upon entering Colorado is that they have boldly forsaken the smooth paved roads of Kansas for a more rustic, 18th-century feel. The lucky driver must wend his way between yawning potholes, gravel slicks, and the burning wrecks of old Winnebagoes. Indeed, eastern Colorado struck me as a charming blend of George Peppard’s 70s masterpiece,
Damnation Alley (Who can forget the gleaming biceps and rakish good looks of a young, not-yet-coked-out-of-his-gourd Jan Michael Vincent?--still carrying the effervescent
brio of
Danger The Long Pants of the Law
I didn't have the cojones to snap the trooper's photo while he was leaning in the window. I figured that might get me pistol-whipped. Island but not yet shouldering the world-weary weight of
Airwolf.) and a low-budget remake of any Leone western.
Unlike the outlaw thematics of these films, however, you’ll be happy to know that these days the law rides tall in Colorado. We began the day by getting pulled over by a ridiculously polite state trooper. Normally, I would use this opportunity to belittle the officer’s tiny-brimmed hat and inexcusable polyester pants. But this individual was charmingly charmed by Jessica’s affected southern drawl and doe-eyed naïveté: “Oh, officer. I’m so sorry. It’s just that my little ol’ feet get so tired sometimes that they just plum flop right down on the gas pedal. I’m
sooo embarrassed.” Unbelievably, Officer Tiny Hat let her off with a warning. This despite the fact that he pulled her over for doing 57 miles an hour through a 25 m.p.h. school zone. Indeed, we hurtled by so close to the playground that our left front mirror knocked the Nutty Butty right out of one little blighter’s mouth. At any rate, after Jessica’s Betty Boop impersonation and a long, searching look at me in the passenger seat, he let us go.
The second thing the intrepid
Uh-oh... Chongo!
I came to Jessica's rescue immediately after taking this photo. Fortunately, I had a cool knife strapped to my ankle with which to dispatch the raptor. traveler will notice once entering Colorado is an exponential increase in both the number of cowboy hats and the elevation of the trucks. Both of these practices have been adopted, I assert, as a way for the Coloradans to camouflage their true kingdom, phylum, and class. That is, they’re always either elevated so high as to be outside normal sight lines, or they’re lost under the deep shade of their sombrero-sized hats. Why hide themselves, you ask? I wasn’t sure about this until I finally caught a glimpse of a hat-less local as he was nailing yet another scavenged hubcap to the cactus fence in his front yard. He was hideous. A desiccated, leathery brown reptile with beady black eyes. Even as I watched, his long tongue flicked out and snapped up a blackbird in flight. He swallowed it whole and finished tacking up the hubcap.
At any rate, after narrowly outfoxing Johnny Law, we were back on the road and Jessica had us back up to 80 or 90 in no time. Sure, the more circumspect driver might back off a bit seeing as how we were on a winding county two-lane and seeing as how she had
Ansel Adams Print
Jessica and I picked up a framed Ansel Adams print in Pueblo. Here's a snapshot. just been busted. But no. On the upside, we roared through Pueblo, CO (cute, in an end-of-the-universe kind of way) and on into Colorado Springs. There we visited the Garden of the Gods, a rather portentously named state park that features your standard, run-of-the-mill jaw-dropping scenery.
A word or two on landscape photography. Not to put too fine a point on it, but it is an abomination. I hate it. I hate it bad. Looking at someone’s vacation photos of big mountains, deep canyons, and verdant forests is the intellectual equivalent of a bleach enema. Let me be plain: such photos all look the same; they fail utterly to convey the full sense of the landscape photographed; and they are bereft of any personality or individual panache. Given a choice, ten times out of ten, I would rather look at a crappy, poorly-lit, poorly-framed photograph of a fat guy throwing up into a rest area water fountain, than a flawless photograph of the view from the top of Mount Fuji.
That said, I will be featuring a whole crap-load of landscape photos in the next few blog posts. Ahem.
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Festus Hagen
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"cultural brio"
Stuffing Aunt Percy was probably a good idea. Once your relatives turn on you, you either have to inter them in a secure facility or take more extreme measures. You're on the road, so the baby jeebus will forgive. For support of this assertion, I refer you to any chapter or verse in the Book of Leviticus. I only ask that you read the entries liberally and ignore the big words placed in there to do Satan's work. Also [note the smooth transition], if you think the roads in "Colaraddy" are bad for YOU, don't get me started on how they affected my pancreas a few years back. I was on the road to Sturgis (like Jessica, blind drunk, lost, and speeding) on a Harley chopper and dipped into a giant pot hole/geyser. My goiter flapped off my chest, blacked both eyes, and caused me to flip over my monkey bars into the hull of an abandoned Winnebago. The good news? I finally had found a rent-controlled domicile that was easily converted into a meth lab. The bad news? Still trying to find some...