Bilingual means that you can converse pretty well using common topics (not bondage, microprocessors or quantum physics). I think you count as bilingual, mikez0r.
Welcome from Seattle all. There are many stories to tell, so I guess I will get going. I think my last post was from just before I went out on my last night in Denver. This is where we pick up the story . . .
I'm sitting around the apartment watching something on TV when Krista comes home. She reminds me that we are going out with her friends Jen and Reba (yes, Reba) tonight to a local pub. I'm pretty stoked about the evening. Not only will it continue my streak of not interacting with a single male for more than 30 seconds on this trip, but it should be a good farewell to Denver and Colorado in general. Before I go, however I need to go pick up the gifts for Krista and Jen.
I swing by the liquor store and am stuck. I know what I am getting: a case of Corona for Jen (explain later), and wine for Krista; but the real issue is what wine. I flounder a bit, then call Jason. I remember Jason going through a wine tasting phase at some point so he's got to have good advice, right? Well, it turns out he didn't at first. I'm getting a dark wine (red, to use the parlance of our times) and J was all about the light wines. So he's no use, until he remembers that Lori (an ex of his and a co-captain of mine) lives wine. So I call Lori up and get some advice. She says that Cali is for pussies and so is their wine. Fair enough, I get an italian wine and head back thinking that by now we'll be significantly closer to leaving.
I get home and Krista is fresh out of the shower, which bodes well, but she says that Jen isn't ready yet. So we're waiting, just me and Krista, which is a good time for me to talk about Krista:
Krista is really cool, and very well suited for Colorado. She's from Minneapolis originally, and does all of the "you betcha" stuff that minnesotans do. But she's definetely an outdoors kind of girl. So much so that I get the impression if it can't be done outdoors it really isn't worth the time in her planner. Well, we were fine hanging out before when we were talking about deep shit like life and what not, but now that we're just shooting the shit waiting for Jen our cultural distinctions will come to the front. She turns on the TV, and all of a sudden a counter goes off over her head, switching from 4 to 5. She explains that she really doesn't watch TV much, and flips around asking me what I want to watch. Best Week Ever is on VH1, so I ask her to stop there. BAD IDEA. See, the outdoorsy people (BIG GENERALIZATION MODE FOR SAKE OF STORY) are not so in touch with the pop culture, so making her watch a show which basically talks about the pop culture of the week is really stupid. It was like we were thrown into a pot of molasses and our mouths were taped shut. Not a word was said by Krista, not a laugh, not a chuckle, for the entire show. Not knowing how to fix the problem I was pretty silent also, but I did laugh at least.
Sedway: This is the complete opposite of Beth's friend Sam who is a Philly girl true and true. When I finally met her thursday I was sleeping on the couch. I woke up and she was chilling at the computer. She came over and turned the TV on, immediately going to the Fresh Prince and then starting a conversation with me. So we're talking and watching TV and the conversation goes to her trip in Phoenix, how drunk she got on $2 Coronas (see?), and the stupid shit that she and her friends did. We sat and had a really fun talk for a few hours like it was nothing. I got the impression that although Sam can handle doing the outdoorsy stuff that Krista/Colorado wants out of her, she still is a city girl in her heart and loves going out late. End sedway.
So after 30 minutes of awkwardness Jen finally shows up and we get going to the place. The place is a celtic pub (Krista is very much a pub girl not a club girl). We're waiting for her friend Reba to show up and we get a few drinks. They both get some amber something and I get my strongbow. By the time I finish my first pint I look at their glasses and I think they had a few sips. No really, they maybe had about a fifth of their drinks. So I order another. I finish my second before they are done with their first. Now, I'm no champion drinker so these girls suck at finishing a pint. And I'm the one who is going to feel the drink being at altitude anyway. I go outside to warn my friend Beth of the drunk dialing that WILL be happening later on in the evening, and while I'm outside this guy walks by a police officer and all of a sudden is cuffed. Nothing happened before hand. It was like the two peopl were walking towards each other and the cop says to the guy, "hey, did you committ a crime." and the guys like "no, but we can pretend." "swell" and then he's bent over the rail. Strange.
I head back inside and we have gotten a table. I think the girls (Reba had shown up) have finally began a second pint and I order my third. So we're hanging out for a good hour or two, talking about life, love and all that shit. Oh, I almost forgot. When we were in the car I found out that this girl Jen, who is also a travelling nurse (all four girls I hung out with in Denver were travelling nurses) is orginally from Knoxville, but grew up in Marietta and actually went to Harrison for high school. It's a small world or something. Back to the story, so we're sitting there talking about past relationships (theirs, not mine) and Reba, who is the oldest of us (32??) is talking about how she was dating this 48 year old for a while and how he was trying to settle down. No shit, he's fucking 48! Really all of this relationship talk had started because Krista had broken up with her boyfriend for 1.6 years and he had just sent her the "you wronged me you bitch" email and she didn't know what to do. So every now and again it would get back to that thread, and evey now and again I would add some gem of wisdom. At this point I had another pint and talked everyone into doing carbombs. Being at altitude I was a little tipsy, and had this concern that everything I was saying I was yelling. After another pint (I think that is 5) I decide that it is time to start the drunk dialing, when lo and behold I get no coverage. No worries, my motor-skillz impaired self managed to write Chowning a text message explaining how lucky she was that I had no service. I was going to write one to Beth also, but then a hot girl walked by so I lost my train of thought.
I pull my wits together and refocus on the group to find Reba flirt with the tail of a man-train coming through. The caboose (sp?) stops, alerting the rest of the train that there was some drunk pussy this way and they needed to heed the call. Reba's holding her own with the guy, being very aloof. As for the other two I felt bad. These two guys swept in like vultures on carrion and weren't getting the hint to leave. All this time I'm sitting in the corner like, "that's right, I got a dick so back the fuck up." After a few desperate glances at Reba from Krista, Reba lets the caboose go. What she wanted from him I'm still not sure. She didn't even get a drink or a number. But then again I was finihsing another pint (half guiness half strongbow at this going) so I was preoccupied. At this point Krista is ready to go home. I look at my watch and it is like 12:30. Krista had earlier explained that she doesn't stay out late well, but Sam told me that was a crock. Apparently Sam was fully of shit, because it was 12:30 and Krista was ready to go home so that she could sleep and do nothing tomorrow.
We go home, and the only thing I remember is thinking that I could finally drunk dial Beth and Chowning. But my fucking phone was dead. I curled up in bed defeated and fell asleep. There isn't anything special about the next day. I dropped off the gift while they were sleeping and hit the road . . . for 15 hours of Wyoming, Utah, Nevada and Idaho.
First of all, Wyoming is beautiful. I had driven through it before but it was nightime so I couldn't soak it in. There is something more pristine about Wyoming than Colorado, Utah or any other of those states. I tried to explain it to Jeremy. Basically, it feels like in Colorado you have these small cities where people live, and then there is nature, where people pack up their bags to go on the weekend. In Wyoming, I'd find single houses in the middle of nowhere. See people riding horses hours from a town. It felt like people lived in the outdoors more in Wyoming, and that was pretty cool. The terrain was similar to other places, lots of hills, mostly dry climate, not a real tree in sight. It was wide open, similar to New Mexico. You could see for miles, and then there would be a hill or mountain. Very pretty.
After getting through Wyoming I was basically in Salt Lake. I was looking forward to seeing the Great Salt Lake desert. I called Jeremy, because at this point I still didn't have a place to stay that night, and no computer access. He hooked me up with a few hostel numbers in Boise and we talked for a bit. I had to get a few numbers because if there is one thing that I have learned from travelling is that hostels aren't perhaps the least reliable thing on the planet. The pop up and disappear like mirages so only having one number would surely lead to dissapointment. I drove past the Salt Lake, and it really does smell like salt, wierd. I also go to see the Morton salt facility. They had mounts and mounts of salt just sitting out it the open. Like Homer did when he found the sugar. It was crazy, these mounts were huge, it was like a salt mountain, but it was all grey and shit. And then it started raining, and althgouh I didn't think of it then, what happens to the giant mounds of salt when it rains??
After driving through the rain and mountains I entered the great salt lake desert. I have only one real comment about the desert . . . IT ISN'T A FUCKING DESERT. You want to know how I know . . . IT RAINED THE ENTIRE FUCKING WAY TO NEVADA. How the hell can you be a desert if it is going to rain?? Isn't that the opposite of a desert. It basically was a bunch of wet sand . . . whoopidy-fucking-do. This was my mentality the entire may through the "desert." And then in the distance I saw something. I couldn't make out what it was, not because of the rain . . . but because I still have no idea what it is. As I drove by it I was confused, so I stopped, about a quarter mile away from it and approached it.
Physically this thing, which was a few hundred feet high, looked like a yellow cactus with giant tennisball like things at the end of each arm. And then littered around with were what looked like three pieces of a hollow sphere with the radius of 2 meters or so. Obviously it was some sculpture, but what the fuck was it doing as the only think in the "desert." My curiosity made me want to get a picture, so I trekked the quarter mile in the rain to get a better picture. As I got closer I saw a rainbow, so I thought it would be cool to get both in the picture. In order to do this I had to walk into the "desert" where I had been walking on the side of the highway before. So I stumbled out there, the ground felt wierd, not like wet said, but if I walked flat footed I was fine. I get to a good position after avoiding puddles, take my picture and turn to leave. But my feet wouldn't move. I looked down and I had sunk about a half an inch into this "desert." I was wearing my shoes where I don't tie the laces, so when I tried to lift my foot up, the shoe stayed still. I bent down and tightened the non-tied laces, and then lifted my foot, taking a 6-inch radius piece of this shit with my shoe. I had the consistency of really wet clay, and wouldn't come off. I manage to free my other shoe and talk walking slowly back to the street. Now that I had shit on my shoes no more was sticking, but I couldn't get good footing, so I had to resort to sliding like ice-skates across the "desert."
I get back to the side of the road, walk about and find that this shit iscausing everything to stick to the bottoms of my shoes. So now I have gravel below this shit under my shoe. I do what I can to scrape it off of my shoes on bushes (in a desert, I'm just saying), and make it back to the car with only a medium amount of shit on my shoe. At this point I had it with Utah and was ready to get the fuck out of town. A sane person would go north to get to Boise the fast way, but since I had to get to Nevada first I continued west.
And that will have to be it for this installment, there was plenty of other shit that happened in that day alone, not to mention today. But I need to get back. I swear I will talk about Seattle next time, which should be tomorrow. Sleep tight kiddies.
M
Welcome from Seattle all. There are many stories to tell, so I guess I will get going. I think my last post was from just before I went out on my last night in Denver. This is where we pick up the story . . .
I'm sitting around the apartment watching something on TV when Krista comes home. She reminds me that we are going out with her friends Jen and Reba (yes, Reba) tonight to a local pub. I'm pretty stoked about the evening. Not only will it continue my streak of not interacting with a single male for more than 30 seconds on this trip, but it should be a good farewell to Denver and Colorado in general. Before I go, however I need to go pick up the gifts for Krista and Jen.
I swing by the liquor store and am stuck. I know what I am getting: a case of Corona for Jen (explain later), and wine for Krista; but the real issue is what wine. I flounder a bit, then call Jason. I remember Jason going through a wine tasting phase at some point so he's got to have good advice, right? Well, it turns out he didn't at first. I'm getting a dark wine (red, to use the parlance of our times) and J was all about the light wines. So he's no use, until he remembers that Lori (an ex of his and a co-captain of mine) lives wine. So I call Lori up and get some advice. She says that Cali is for pussies and so is their wine. Fair enough, I get an italian wine and head back thinking that by now we'll be significantly closer to leaving.
I get home and Krista is fresh out of the shower, which bodes well, but she says that Jen isn't ready yet. So we're waiting, just me and Krista, which is a good time for me to talk about Krista:
Krista is really cool, and very well suited for Colorado. She's from Minneapolis originally, and does all of the "you betcha" stuff that minnesotans do. But she's definetely an outdoors kind of girl. So much so that I get the impression if it can't be done outdoors it really isn't worth the time in her planner. Well, we were fine hanging out before when we were talking about deep shit like life and what not, but now that we're just shooting the shit waiting for Jen our cultural distinctions will come to the front. She turns on the TV, and all of a sudden a counter goes off over her head, switching from 4 to 5. She explains that she really doesn't watch TV much, and flips around asking me what I want to watch. Best Week Ever is on VH1, so I ask her to stop there. BAD IDEA. See, the outdoorsy people (BIG GENERALIZATION MODE FOR SAKE OF STORY) are not so in touch with the pop culture, so making her watch a show which basically talks about the pop culture of the week is really stupid. It was like we were thrown into a pot of molasses and our mouths were taped shut. Not a word was said by Krista, not a laugh, not a chuckle, for the entire show. Not knowing how to fix the problem I was pretty silent also, but I did laugh at least.
Sedway: This is the complete opposite of Beth's friend Sam who is a Philly girl true and true. When I finally met her thursday I was sleeping on the couch. I woke up and she was chilling at the computer. She came over and turned the TV on, immediately going to the Fresh Prince and then starting a conversation with me. So we're talking and watching TV and the conversation goes to her trip in Phoenix, how drunk she got on $2 Coronas (see?), and the stupid shit that she and her friends did. We sat and had a really fun talk for a few hours like it was nothing. I got the impression that although Sam can handle doing the outdoorsy stuff that Krista/Colorado wants out of her, she still is a city girl in her heart and loves going out late. End sedway.
So after 30 minutes of awkwardness Jen finally shows up and we get going to the place. The place is a celtic pub (Krista is very much a pub girl not a club girl). We're waiting for her friend Reba to show up and we get a few drinks. They both get some amber something and I get my strongbow. By the time I finish my first pint I look at their glasses and I think they had a few sips. No really, they maybe had about a fifth of their drinks. So I order another. I finish my second before they are done with their first. Now, I'm no champion drinker so these girls suck at finishing a pint. And I'm the one who is going to feel the drink being at altitude anyway. I go outside to warn my friend Beth of the drunk dialing that WILL be happening later on in the evening, and while I'm outside this guy walks by a police officer and all of a sudden is cuffed. Nothing happened before hand. It was like the two peopl were walking towards each other and the cop says to the guy, "hey, did you committ a crime." and the guys like "no, but we can pretend." "swell" and then he's bent over the rail. Strange.
I head back inside and we have gotten a table. I think the girls (Reba had shown up) have finally began a second pint and I order my third. So we're hanging out for a good hour or two, talking about life, love and all that shit. Oh, I almost forgot. When we were in the car I found out that this girl Jen, who is also a travelling nurse (all four girls I hung out with in Denver were travelling nurses) is orginally from Knoxville, but grew up in Marietta and actually went to Harrison for high school. It's a small world or something. Back to the story, so we're sitting there talking about past relationships (theirs, not mine) and Reba, who is the oldest of us (32??) is talking about how she was dating this 48 year old for a while and how he was trying to settle down. No shit, he's fucking 48! Really all of this relationship talk had started because Krista had broken up with her boyfriend for 1.6 years and he had just sent her the "you wronged me you bitch" email and she didn't know what to do. So every now and again it would get back to that thread, and evey now and again I would add some gem of wisdom. At this point I had another pint and talked everyone into doing carbombs. Being at altitude I was a little tipsy, and had this concern that everything I was saying I was yelling. After another pint (I think that is 5) I decide that it is time to start the drunk dialing, when lo and behold I get no coverage. No worries, my motor-skillz impaired self managed to write Chowning a text message explaining how lucky she was that I had no service. I was going to write one to Beth also, but then a hot girl walked by so I lost my train of thought.
I pull my wits together and refocus on the group to find Reba flirt with the tail of a man-train coming through. The caboose (sp?) stops, alerting the rest of the train that there was some drunk pussy this way and they needed to heed the call. Reba's holding her own with the guy, being very aloof. As for the other two I felt bad. These two guys swept in like vultures on carrion and weren't getting the hint to leave. All this time I'm sitting in the corner like, "that's right, I got a dick so back the fuck up." After a few desperate glances at Reba from Krista, Reba lets the caboose go. What she wanted from him I'm still not sure. She didn't even get a drink or a number. But then again I was finihsing another pint (half guiness half strongbow at this going) so I was preoccupied. At this point Krista is ready to go home. I look at my watch and it is like 12:30. Krista had earlier explained that she doesn't stay out late well, but Sam told me that was a crock. Apparently Sam was fully of shit, because it was 12:30 and Krista was ready to go home so that she could sleep and do nothing tomorrow.
We go home, and the only thing I remember is thinking that I could finally drunk dial Beth and Chowning. But my fucking phone was dead. I curled up in bed defeated and fell asleep. There isn't anything special about the next day. I dropped off the gift while they were sleeping and hit the road . . . for 15 hours of Wyoming, Utah, Nevada and Idaho.
First of all, Wyoming is beautiful. I had driven through it before but it was nightime so I couldn't soak it in. There is something more pristine about Wyoming than Colorado, Utah or any other of those states. I tried to explain it to Jeremy. Basically, it feels like in Colorado you have these small cities where people live, and then there is nature, where people pack up their bags to go on the weekend. In Wyoming, I'd find single houses in the middle of nowhere. See people riding horses hours from a town. It felt like people lived in the outdoors more in Wyoming, and that was pretty cool. The terrain was similar to other places, lots of hills, mostly dry climate, not a real tree in sight. It was wide open, similar to New Mexico. You could see for miles, and then there would be a hill or mountain. Very pretty.
After getting through Wyoming I was basically in Salt Lake. I was looking forward to seeing the Great Salt Lake desert. I called Jeremy, because at this point I still didn't have a place to stay that night, and no computer access. He hooked me up with a few hostel numbers in Boise and we talked for a bit. I had to get a few numbers because if there is one thing that I have learned from travelling is that hostels aren't perhaps the least reliable thing on the planet. The pop up and disappear like mirages so only having one number would surely lead to dissapointment. I drove past the Salt Lake, and it really does smell like salt, wierd. I also go to see the Morton salt facility. They had mounts and mounts of salt just sitting out it the open. Like Homer did when he found the sugar. It was crazy, these mounts were huge, it was like a salt mountain, but it was all grey and shit. And then it started raining, and althgouh I didn't think of it then, what happens to the giant mounds of salt when it rains??
After driving through the rain and mountains I entered the great salt lake desert. I have only one real comment about the desert . . . IT ISN'T A FUCKING DESERT. You want to know how I know . . . IT RAINED THE ENTIRE FUCKING WAY TO NEVADA. How the hell can you be a desert if it is going to rain?? Isn't that the opposite of a desert. It basically was a bunch of wet sand . . . whoopidy-fucking-do. This was my mentality the entire may through the "desert." And then in the distance I saw something. I couldn't make out what it was, not because of the rain . . . but because I still have no idea what it is. As I drove by it I was confused, so I stopped, about a quarter mile away from it and approached it.
Physically this thing, which was a few hundred feet high, looked like a yellow cactus with giant tennisball like things at the end of each arm. And then littered around with were what looked like three pieces of a hollow sphere with the radius of 2 meters or so. Obviously it was some sculpture, but what the fuck was it doing as the only think in the "desert." My curiosity made me want to get a picture, so I trekked the quarter mile in the rain to get a better picture. As I got closer I saw a rainbow, so I thought it would be cool to get both in the picture. In order to do this I had to walk into the "desert" where I had been walking on the side of the highway before. So I stumbled out there, the ground felt wierd, not like wet said, but if I walked flat footed I was fine. I get to a good position after avoiding puddles, take my picture and turn to leave. But my feet wouldn't move. I looked down and I had sunk about a half an inch into this "desert." I was wearing my shoes where I don't tie the laces, so when I tried to lift my foot up, the shoe stayed still. I bent down and tightened the non-tied laces, and then lifted my foot, taking a 6-inch radius piece of this shit with my shoe. I had the consistency of really wet clay, and wouldn't come off. I manage to free my other shoe and talk walking slowly back to the street. Now that I had shit on my shoes no more was sticking, but I couldn't get good footing, so I had to resort to sliding like ice-skates across the "desert."
I get back to the side of the road, walk about and find that this shit iscausing everything to stick to the bottoms of my shoes. So now I have gravel below this shit under my shoe. I do what I can to scrape it off of my shoes on bushes (in a desert, I'm just saying), and make it back to the car with only a medium amount of shit on my shoe. At this point I had it with Utah and was ready to get the fuck out of town. A sane person would go north to get to Boise the fast way, but since I had to get to Nevada first I continued west.
And that will have to be it for this installment, there was plenty of other shit that happened in that day alone, not to mention today. But I need to get back. I swear I will talk about Seattle next time, which should be tomorrow. Sleep tight kiddies.
M
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