50 cc to Shining Sea: The Motorscooter Diaries: Scottsbluff, NE to Boulder, CO (September 25)

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!

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.

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.

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.