Distance covered today: 203 miles
Distance covered total: 2,731 miles
Estimated mileage remaining: 1,303 (33% left to go)
The Metro succeeded in fending off bandits overnight, as it
was still standing vigil outside of my motel room when I woke up in the
morning. It had the feel of another good, comfortable day for riding, but after
plowing an unprecedented 244 miles yesterday, I would be afforded a more
leisurely pace on this fine Sunday and toyed with the idea of making a quick
stop at nearby Chimney Rock, the landmark of Oregon Trail and State Quarter
renown.
I thought better of it though, as it only would’ve added
mileage to my already lengthy Great Plains detour. Besides, the unexpectedly impressive turrets of stout Scotts
Bluff and its neighboring rock formations would’ve diminished Chimney Rock’s
luster. My condolences to the
fictional Western Nebraska Tourism Commission (something similar has to exist),
but I’ll just have to save places such as Chimney Rock, Carhenge, Fort
Robinson, and Toadstool Geologic Park for my next visit. So many sites, so little time!
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| Scenic overlook from outside of Scottsbluff. |
Before hitting the Interior West’s main metropolitan oasis
along Colorado’s Front Range, I’d have to repeat my charade as a lone wolf out
in the open country of Nebraska and a corner of Wyoming (another perk of my
South Dakota detour was that it gave me a chance to tie my record of hitting
three states in one day), as the 100 lonely miles between me and Ol’ Cheyenne
would feature only one town.
Giddy for the day’s double dose of state sign photos, I
gunned it through empty fields until I had reached the doorstep of America’s
least populous state- Wyoming!
What Wyoming lacks in people, it makes up for with unabashed Wild West
pride, even seeming to revel in the fact that its population hasn’t been
diluted with the same pansy-assed city-slicker riff-raff as the other 49
states. The state is also nobly
spearheading a counterculture movement to bring the brown-and-yellow color
combination back into the mainstream.
Perhaps owing to the lack of people and subsequent cultural diffusion,
browns and mustard yellows ripped from the beating heart of the 1970s are all the
rage out here. The font on the welcome sign, the license plates, the sports uniforms of the state’s flagship
university, and even the parched looking grass and occasional sandstone outcrop
that made up the landscape… it was ALL brown and yellow.
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| The few. The proud. The Wyomingites. |
Wyoming did nothing to dispel its sparsely-populated reputation in
the first town I came to. That
town was LaGrange (pop. 332), which supported an unmanned gas station- if you
can call a single pump standing in solitude a “station”. Fueling up all by my lonesome in
LaGrange was the admittedly pitiful highlight of my morning, but that’s
alright- I was banking on the hustle-bustle of Cheyenne to add some excitement
to my day.
Fifty-seven wide open Wyoming miles later, I finally rode
into Cheyenne like a desperado of old. As an Albany, NY native, I have a
special appreciation for this great land’s lesser-known and smaller-scale state
capitals that often go overlooked.
Matching this description, I was eager to acquaint myself with the aptly
nicknamed “Frontier City”.
From its real name (that the voice in my head always says in
Johnny Cash’s darkest drawl and preceded by “Ol’”) to its nickname, to the
abundance of cowboy imagery scattered around town, Cheyenne is a fitting
capital city for a state that is so in touch with its wild (Western) side.
I liked Cheyenne from the start. The place made a good first impression when, while stopped
at a traffic light, the mom of some family in the car next to me rolled down
her window and asked the usual list of questions about “where’d you ride that
thing from?!”, etc. But, as any
loving mother should, this one was kind enough to let me know that my face had
some major booger action going on before she pulled away. In my defense, nose nuggets are an
occupational hazard when you spend your day with a non-stop 35 mph
headwind. They’ve no doubt been a
recurrent problem throughout the trip, but this mom in Cheyenne was the first
person who was kind/brave/motherly enough to actually let me know I was in
desperate need of a tissue. Hey,
at least my good, crusty road boogers were consistent with the state’s brown
and yellow theme, so I was gonna fit right in.
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| Typical street corner decor in Cheyenne. |
Still unhurried in my day’s trek to Boulder, I chose to take
a lengthy lunch-break to explore the city and walk around for a bit. Maybe the sunny weather had something
to do with it, but my love-at-first-visit feeling towards Cheyenne only
strengthened. Pleasant residential
neighborhoods led to the manicured grounds of the State Capitol Building, which
then gave way to a handsome business district. And everywhere you turned were not-so-subtle cultural clues
to remind you which part of the country you were in- most restaurants and bars
try to recapture the rough-n’-tumble saloon ambiance, and whereas Erie, PA has
its frog statues all over the place, Cheyenne has 10-foot high cowboy boots.
I had definitely been converted into a fan of the place, but
after such a lengthy stroll around the city, I realized that I needed to climb
back in the saddle or I would risk being overcome by a hankerin’ to buy some
boots of my own to go along with a ten-gallon Stetson. And so I dove south once more, into the
brown and yellow countryside.
Just a lasso’s toss south of town, I came to a wooden sign
welcoming me to “Colorful Colorado”- another state that I’d never before set
foot nor scooter in. Here on the
border of these similarly-shaped states seems a fitting place to divulge a
dirty secret I uncovered that will shake you to your core, and could
drastically alter your worldview.
There’s no easy way to put this, but Colorado and Wyoming aren’t the
perfectly rectangular polygons we’ve always believed them to be. (I’ll wait while you go consult a map
and look closely at their outlines... and I'm tellin' ya, you gotta look, like, REALLY closely).
I only realized this unsettling truth recently, while planning my swing
through the Centennial State. As
someone who spent considerable time in my childhood nibbling state outlines
out of cheese and graham crackers and such, I’m not going to try to hide my
disappointment (Colorado and Wyoming were the only ones that I thought I had
truly mastered), but as I twisted the gas, I resolved to give Colorado a fair
chance to win back its street cred.
 |
| Warning: this state is NOT a rectangle. (And note my glove giving a thumb's up!) |
And suddenly, there they were. As if waiting to be unveiled until I crossed the state line,
I went up a slight hill, rounded a turn, and was then taken aback by the sight
to the West. Previously obscured
by rolling brown and yellow hills, the steep wall of the Rocky Mountains
magically sprouted from the nothingness of the Plains, with the range’s highest
peaks soaring to altitudes of 14,000+ feet (roughly 9,000 feet overhead from
where I was riding). I can now
relate to that moment in history when Lewis and Clark first beheld the Rockies,
and Lewis famously turned to Clark and remarked, “Oh f---.”
That’s not actually true, but while that phrase did come to
mind, it was hard for me to isolate one word or emotion to articulate the
avalanche of different feelings that the Rockies produced. They simultaneously sent shockwaves of
awe, excitement, inspiration and intimidation through my veins. They looked so beautiful and yet so insurmountable.
Just as my gaze had been helplessly drawn to the speedometer
on my first day of going 40 mph, I now found myself spellbound by the rampart
of shark-toothed mountains. Knowing full well that my plebeian camera couldn’t
do them justice, I didn’t even attempt a picture, but with my slackjawed stare fixed on
the Western horizon for the better part of the afternoon, I pretty much committed the Rockies’
progressively lighter array of blues to memory. Already the welcome sign was living up to its promise of a
land of color, as the spectacular backdrop of blue mountains’ majesty (that
“purple” guy was off by a shade) provided a much-needed antidote from the brown
and yellow landscape of the High Plains.
The sleepy Plains towns began to get progressively larger
and more suburban-feeling as I approached Fort Collins. As soon as I shot into its city limits,
“FoCo” struck me as a happenin’ place- it’s a manageably sized town with
pretty, tree-lined streets permeated by that unmistakable, infectiously fun
college town vibe (but on a smaller scale than what I was envisioning for
Boulder). Not having felt the
sensation since Ames, I would’ve liked to stick around, but I only lingered
long enough for a brief rendezvous with a friend from school, before waning
sunlight forced me to continue onto Boulder.
The road between Fort Collins and Boulder was probably the
busiest that I’d been on since Chicago, but despite the traffic, I enjoyed the
ride. I was already of the opinion
that evenings are the best time for riding, but that’s especially the case when
the sun is disappearing behind the Rockies on your right. I had to cover the last half-hour or so
in darkness, but that too, was a refreshing stretch of road. The Metro’s headlight piercing the cool
night air before me, I drove towards the wall of mountains silhouetted against
the fading twilight, with the lights of some of Boulder’s outlying mountainside
neighborhoods hanging above me like constellations. It was a cool sight that brought out all those overused
Dorothy clichés- I most certainly was not in Kansas or any other Plains state
anymore (though I’d never been in Kansas, but you get the point).
 |
| Don't worry. Better pictures of the Rockies are yet to come. |
It’s true though.
Boulder represented a dramatic change in the character of the land and
an equally sudden conclusion of the Plains chapter of my trip. The Plains had indeed been Great, but
now I was ready for a part of the country with a new flavor to it and a new set
of challenges… Or so I hoped.
My friend Travis’ house was set up in the Flatirons, the
jagged foothills of the Rockies that imposingly push up against Boulder,
putting an abrupt end to the suburban sprawl of the Front Range. I crept up the hill to his house at a
speed that would’ve been a moderately respectable jog, but, just as in the
Black Hills, this limp to the finish did not ease my concerns about the
mountains only a few miles yonder.
Those concerns were shelved for another day, as I gratefully
sank into a couch and settled in for a couple-day stay in Boulder. I was ecstatic to be back in the
company of a friend as well as back on my original path to California. But I was even happier to have made it
a nice, clean 2/3 of the way to my ultimate destination… or (gulp) maybe this would be as far as I’d make it. The elephant-in-the-room question that
had loomed over me all trip was, “what are you going to do when you get to the
Rockies?” I heard it from friends
and strangers each step of the way, and my attitude all along had been, “I’ll
worry about getting to Colorado first, and then deal with that Rocky
Mountain-sized problem once I get there.”
But here I was, with the formidable phalanx of the mountains before me,
and while the Metro and I now had a swagger about us that had been absent in
Boston, the plan of attack for the Rockies had not enjoyed the same
evolution. I guess, for better or
worse, we’re about to find out what happens when scooters and mountains
collide.
Shout-Outs:
-Cheyenne booger mom. Aren't moms great!?
-Emily in Fort Collins. Hope AmeriCorps has treated you well! Wish I could've stayed longer. (A New Belgium brewery tour may be in order, some day).
-Fellow scooter-owner Travis in Boulder. We would form one bad scooter gang over
the next couple days (more on that to come).
Town(s) of the Day:
-Cheyenne, WY; Fort Collins, CO; Boulder, CO
