I left Rapid City and headed out to Sheridan in Wyoming. The aim of this leg was to head all the way back to Yellowstone and meet up with Fay (who I met in Laramie) in Jackson. On the long and boring ride to Sheridan was the "Devil's Tower", which some of you may know from the movie "Close Encounters of the 3rd Kind".
I took a 20 minute detour off the interstate towards the tower. As I got closer it was pretty amazing to see it in the background, it almost looked like it was movie set - sort of painted on. The thing juts out weirdly from the landscape making it look really strange.
Devils's Tower, my bike and I.
As it appears from the highway.
Once I reached the park where it was located I had to pay to get in (as I was starting to get used to, lucky there is always cash in my wallet). Then there was a super slow ride all the way to the base of it. I quickly got off my bike then walked around the trail at the base. I walked pretty fast as I knew that I could run out of daylight by the time I hit Sheridan (I want to ride as little as possible at night over here) and the sun was pretty intense at the time. I met a very nice couple along the way who live in both France and San Francisco, 6 months at a time. They had both been to Australia, one had even been to Canberra!
Que the music from Close Encounters.
For some reason I look really pleased with myself.
If you look closely you can see one of the climbers.
Interesting story: Apparently some guy parachuted onto the top of the tower a while back, but when they dropped his climbing equipment they missed completely. So for a few weeks they air dropped food as he languished about on the summit. By the time they could get the climbing gear to him he had gained a few kilos!
So off I set to Sheridan, not much to see except some interesting isolated cloud formations. This time no tornadoes.
I decided to ride to Rapid City to see Mount Rushmore and Crazy Horse. Unfortunately I couldn't get a host so I booked 2 nights at the Holiday Inn. This was a pretty nice hotel - it had a waterfall and everything!
I did managed to get in contact with Kyrah, a local who couldn't host but was happy to hang out. The night I arrived she and I met up in a bar downtown. Just like my host in Cheyenne, Kyrah served in the Air Force. However she was much younger than Kendra (21 from memory). She had a lot of plans to see the world some day, but seemed rather content to be living in Rapid City for now.
Kyrah and I at the hookah bar.
We both had a couple of beers at a place called "The Firehouse" (a fire station converted into a microbrewery), then went to go meet some of her other Air Force buddies at another bar. They were a pretty cool bunch; what I was coming to realize is that people I meet in the forces over here are not as conservative as you'd expect. They had especially liberal views on issues such as the Iraq war and were almost embarrassed by some of the military actions taken by the US. I'm guessing these liberal viewpoints might be because I haven't met any front-line members yet, everyone so far seems to treat the military like a regular job.
All of us had a few beers then headed down to a hookah bar. These seem popup sporadically around the US (I guess states that allow smoking in bars). The last time I had hookah was in Berlin so I was excited to do it again! It's pretty awesome if you've never tried it, it's like smoking really smooth tobacco but with awesome flavors. It has no discernible "hit" to it as far as I can tell.
We got a flavor called "Pikachu" and took turns taking hits from waterpipe. Every now and then a staff member would come around and replace the hot coals, making sure the "flavor was still good". We also were given detergent so we could blow sweet-ass smoke bubbles.
Micheal (left) and what's-his-face (sorry terrible with names!)
Me attempting to blow Pickachu (...flavored smoke bubbles).
My full day in Rapid City was used to go and do the mandatory Mount Rushmore Monument and Crazy Horse Memorial run. This was, after all, the only reason I was in South Dakota. The Mount Rushmore Monument is pretty cool, you can see it above as you drive up to the park. You then have to pay to get in, I think it was about $10.
After that it was certainly a case of a "Super Touristy" attraction, I parked in a multi-story lot, walked a short distance through a giant granite walkway flanked by state flags out to a massive viewing platform. There were tourists everywhere. A small wooden walkway could take you out closer to the monument. At the end there was a massive gift store (as you'd expect) and large cafeteria.
Rushmore walkway.
Rushmore and Squints McGee.
The Eiffel Tower.
The Crazy Horse Memorial.
I then rode down to the Crazy Horse Memorial, a massive monument to the famous Native American figure. The sculpture when finished will be the largest in the world (nearly 200 meters tall). The problem is that none of us will be alive to see the final product! The face is done, but at the current pace of development the horse's head will be completed in 25 years.
The sculpture was started by one dude in 1948, and work is now continued by his descendants. All funds for the work are sourced from tourists and donations. What I liked about Crazy Horse was that it had a free 15 minute introduction movie that gave some background on the sculpture, what it was about and the progress, and there was a pretty decent museum there. As a pretty pragmatic guy, what irked me a little was that the Ziolkowski family refused government donations of $10M to complete the work faster. Apparently the original dude believed in "free enterprise", so all government contributions are off limits. But I say take the money and get it done faster!
Crazy Horse Memorial and what it will eventually look like.
That night the "Hot Summer Nights" festival was on in downtown Rapid City. It was pretty much a street party with live music and market stalls. There was an interesting alleyway that had some "alternative" people playing music and selling homemade goods. It was like a weird modern hippie community, and the only place in Rapid City were people were legally allowed to graffiti the walls. The police seemed to walk up and down there a lot.
Later on I met up with Kyrah at the festival and went out drinking again with her some different friends. That night I really didn't feel like partying, so after few drinks I went back to my hotel and had an early night. Oh, one of them was "Reaper" pilot - he was less fucked up than I would've thought someone with that occupation would be. Kind of a really cheery guy really.
Hippie alleyway at the Hot Summer Nights Festival.
Theater in downtown Cheyenne (my only photo of the city...)
I really had to get my 3000 mile service done for my bike, so I picked a bigish city close-by and located a Kawasaki dealership. This city was Cheyenne; a place unfortunately not known for it's excitement.
I arrived at my host's place on Monday afternoon. Kendra was a girl in her early 20s who served in the very large Air Force base near Cheyenne. She had been deployed to Afghanistan a year or so ago and was involved in some sort of intelligence branch. Kendra was a pretty awesome host; she cooked me dinner both nights during my stay and loved Greek cooking (she was not Greek by the way). She told me all about her time deployed in the Air Force. So apparently US soldiers are not allowed any alcohol but the ones from the other countries are (including the Aussies I suppose). Also she thought that the "international" side of the base had way better facilities than the USA side - they even had their own little cafe! I would've thought there'd be more money with the US contingent. And there is a KFC there!
On the way to Chadron, Nebraska.
In my full day in Cheyenne I just took my bike to the mechanic then caught a taxi to downtown Cheyenne. I was feeling pretty under the weather at this point so I just chilled at 2 consecutive coffee places. ("Is the espresso any good here?" - "You'll drink it"). In these times it's fucking awesome to have the iPad.
My bike was soon done, so I went and picked it up/ It only cost me about $150, which is pretty fucking cheap by Australian standards. Then I went had Mexican with Kendra and the "best Mexican place in Cheyenne".
After my giant burrito I felt even more under the weather then before. So Kendra just let me back in to her place so I could sleep. I don't think it was the Mexican, I was just feeling really lethargic for the next few days.
The weather system I rode through in Nebraska.
Cheyenne is a kind of a cool town, but as Kendra explained to me, everyone here is just a bit apathetic about everything. There have been many attempts to try and introduce live music and different events, but all have basically failed. I think the problem is that the city is much too close to "cooler" cities like Laramie, Boulder and (especially) Fort Collins. If people in Cheyenne wanted to see live music or go to awesome bars they just head there. But the city has a lot of potential, it could be a really awesome place to visit. It does have is a huge annual rodeo ("The granddaddy of them all") which is bigger than all rodeos in the US apart from the finals. I just missed it by a week, but apparently it is so massive that many of the locals leave town when it's on. This is profitable for them though - a lot of them will rent out their house to attendees at really expensive rates.
The next day I headed up to a small town called "Chadron" in Nebraska, a stopover on the way to Rapid City in South Dakota. Not exactly the most exciting ride with lots of rolling prairies. As I was riding along the guy in front of me slowed down, then did a u-turn and went back the other way. "That's a bit weird", I thought to myself, "he must of forgot something..."
Where I stayed in Nebraska.
At that point I started to see a weird cloud formation to the right of me. It looked pretty innocuous at first, but it was really isolated - the rest of sky was clear. Then as I watched, I could see parts of the cloud were spinning slowly. The rain was thicker below where it was spinning and the ground was turbulent underneath. Now I'm no expert, but that thing looked like the birth of a fucking tornado. It was really cool when lightning striked multiple times inside the "cone".
I really wanted to stop and take a photo, but as the rain picked up I was was honestly just hoping that the road wasn't leading towards the storm. I was less worried about getting sucked into the tornado than I was about getting struck by lighting!
But I was too stubborn to turn around, so just rolled the throttle and did 100 MPH until I got the fuck out of there. Once I was pretty sure I was safe, I turned around and took a photo of the system. Unfortunately I was so far away by that point that I didn't look like much.
Not too long after that I arrived in my inn at Chadron. I rode to the local bar, had a Nebraskan beef steak, talked to a few locals (including a network engineer - very close to what I do) then headed back to bed.
Laramie was a town in Wyoming that was recommended to me by a staff member of the Glenwood Springs hotel. He said that it was a pretty fun town since there is a big collage there. So, rolling the dice off the opinion of some random guy I just met, I managed to find a Couch Surfing host and rode there after Denver. I hit a small town called Fort Collins on the way through, which despite the name looked like a really cool town. I found out later in my time in Wyoming that everyone loves Fort Collins - if I ever come back I'll definitely be hitting that town for a bit.
Katie (bottom right) and her neighbors.
My next couch surfing host - Katie - did not have a couch for me to sleep on, so I needed to buy an air mattress before I got to Laramie. This was eventually going to happen anyway, so it wasn't a big deal. I bought a pretty decent one in a camping store in Fort Collins, it packs up pretty small and is a fair size when inflated. It was a really awesome store they had there (Jax's I think?) they had a huge range of camping mats, which was a little overwhelming at first.
When I arrived at Katie's place in Laramie, she was already out drinking in one of the many bars in Laramie. I did happen to meet her roommate Matt, who was currently just moving in to the place. Matt had spent the last couple of years in Japan, and had come back to Laramie to complete a Computer Science degree. He was a pretty cool dude, I gave him a hand moving in some of his furniture then I walked down to the bar that Katie was currently in.
Unfortunately I got caught up with something so I didn't make it to the bar, but Katie kindly offered to come pick me up and take me to a party with a bunch of her friends. Her and her neighbor Fay came then drove me to this party, where I chatted to an ER nurse for most of the time. The house was owned by a firefighter with a bunch of firefighter friends, and it was interesting to hear the conversation between them and the ER nurse. Apparently the firefighters can request a certain level of response at the hospital depending on how critical the patients situation is. There was a bit of a disagreement between the nurse and the firefighter, the nurse thought that the firefighters were calling the highest level of response (which I think required a surgeon on call) way too often. Anyway, all were nice guys!
"Bugfoot" at the Laramie car show.
Afterwards Matt and I headed out to few bars in Laramie. The first one we went to was the local "hipster" bar, full of thick rimmed glasses and terrible facial hair. But the bar was so full that Matt and I couldn't manage to get a service at the bar. By the way, this is the only real benefit of the Australian bar system, where you cannot usually sit at the bar - it definitely unclogs the lines.
So anyway, we move on to the local sports bar which was also fucking packed. This place (ironically really close to the hipster bar), was bro-town USA. There were bros everywhere - hats backwards, douchbag shirts, the whole deal. We eventually got a beer after waiting for a long time at the bar, and decided to head to quieter place.
We eventually ended up at a favorite bar of Matt's, where it was pretty chill but was without all the young collage students. Here I met - for the first time ever - a fan of the website "The Chive" which is notorious for ripping off Reddit (2nd best site ever). He had a t-shirt which said "Keep calm and chive on", which didn't even make sense. So apparently there is actual fans of The Chive? Who would've thought? The Chive hate was really big on Reddit until they eventually moved their hate laser to Funny Junk and now 9gag.
I also met an Australian - he was part of the band. He was pretty cool, actually all the members were pretty awesome kinds of guys. They were doing a pretty massive tour through the states, and had just recently completed a tour in Australia. He told me that Americans love it when we say "Dr Pepper", which I now say all the time.
The next day Katie went down to the local pool, but I had no interest in showing my pasty white skin to anyone, so I headed into town. Luckily there was some sort of car show on, which had some pretty sweet American cars. And some bikes too, mind you I don't think a 2011 Ducati Multistrada with some carbon fibre really counts as "special". That night I went to Matt's birthday party briefly (right after buying a 6 pack the Hipsterific utterly terrible PBR... For 5 bucks!), then Katie and I headed back to the house as there was a "block party" going on.
It was pretty cool really, the landlords (about my age - Candice and John) lived in the same complex and threw a party for all the tenants. They are all shown in the first photo - John is at the back and Candice is the blond girl crouching down. Fay lived below Katie and Matt and is kneeling next to Katie to the left of the dog. Anyway we drank a lot of beer and played with the fire, generally shooting the shit about various stuff. I love the more relaxed get-togethers.
The next morning most of us from the party headed down to a local restaurant for breakfast. Candice and John were nice enough to buy me my lunch! They were a really super nice bunch of people, some of the most friendly I've met in America yet. Oh I had a massive breakfast burrito - these are pretty common on the breakfast menus in the USA. It was pretty awesome!
Denver was my first experience with couch surfing, I was to be staying with a nice young lady named Mary Kay, who works as a teacher in the area. For those who don't know, couch surfing is done via a website (www.couchsurfing.org) where people act as hosts and let random travelers stay in their house (usually on the couch) for a couple of nights. From my experience, it kind of acts as a platonic dating website, where everyone has a profile and you message members to get hosted etc. I decided to take up couch surfing after a conversation with a guy in Colorado Springs, who told me it was a great way to meet different people without the need to get fucked up with them at bars. Plus it is way cheaper than hotels!
Mary Kay had never hosted before, so this was a first for both of us. In fact she had put together her profile a long time ago but was never able to find the right time to host. Eventually I guess she started to drop down in the search results, and only recently did she log in (she was getting a bunch of emails from the website), and that's how I picked her profile up. I thought that an older woman (profile said 36) who was a high school teacher was a good safe bet for my first experience.
Some government building in Denver.
What threw me a little bit is that she wanted me out of the house when she was not there, as her roommate didn't really trust couch surfers. This was pretty fair I suppose, but it was a little confronting to be treated like a possible criminal or creep.
Anyway, I arrived at MK's house in the evening, and she suggested going to the gym. I hadn't been since Boise, and I was really feeling it so I gladly accepted the offer! Plus I could get in for free. After the gym we got some Indian food and frozen yogurt. The Indian food was a little different to Australian-Indian; In this fast food place you selected either beef or chicken and then selected the sauce. It was a bit like a Subway sandwich. It kind of made sense from an efficiency point of view, and it wasn't too bad for the price. The frozen yogurt places over here are pretty awesome, it's all self service with 20 or so different flavors and heaps of different sprinkles, toppings and sauces. And after you're finished putting it together you just pay by the weight. This means it can end up being really cheap!
The attractive Coors Brewery building.
The next day I decided I should head down to the Coors brewery - The tours are completely free. From memory this is the largest brewery in the US. It is located in a small town just outside of Denver called Golden. The tour is self guided, a bus comes and picks you up from a car park and drops you at the brewery and then get one of those electronic tour guide things. You also get a photo in front of a green screen - just like the Seattle Space Needle. I'm guessing now that this is just a cleverly disguised security measure to get a photo of all the visitors. I pretty sure this is the case because you can't refuse the photo - you have to get one taken and then opt not to get it printed out at the end of the tour.
So the tour was pretty good, the place smelled pretty awesome. They just sort of went through the entire brewing and packaging process as you'd expect. But there was a little sales-y undertone going on, they definitely liked talking the company up. At the end of the tour you get 3 free beers which was pretty awesome! However, the glass size is fairly small, I'm guessing that they figured out that people would be able to legally drive with the smaller glasses. Or they are tight-arses, who knows. You could choose from Coors Banquet (the best regular Coors beer), Coors Light (a super popular beer over here - by the way "light beer" over here means low calorie) and a Coors red beer.
Cases of Coors Light.
Copper kettles at the Brewery.
After the tour I headed to the famous "Red Rocks" which is a natural amphitheater formed out of a rock formation. They have a lot of concerts at the
amphitheater, and apparently the acoustics are so good that bands often record albums there. I only knew about this place by seeing a Zach Brown band video clip with Bec! Unfortunately for me they were just closing up (got there at 2PM) for a concert that night. Oh well - I'll come back tomorrow!
That night MK and I went and had some Mexican food (I had the Quesadillas) and margaritas. I haven't had a margarita in years! Anyway, the food, drinks and conversation were fantastic! I was pretty lucky to have such a great couch surfing host. We had lots of great conversation, definitely contentious ones about religion - I learnt that the word "atheist" over here is often seen as confronting and negative. It's best to say that you're not religious :)
The next day I set off to Laramie, Wyoming but on the way I headed to Red Rocks again. This time I managed to get in. The place was full of keen bean exercisers who run up and down the stands doing pushups and shit. It was a pretty amazing place though.
Thanks to MK for being such a great host. I wish her all the best!
In the afternoon I left Colorado Springs, heading up a main highway to a small town outside Denver called Parker. A guy named Jake who I met in Boise owned a house there, and offered me a place to stay on my way through. I'm too cheap to refuse, plus staying with a local would be a welcome change from all the hotels.
Jake had a really nice house, it was kind of the classic American home in classic American suburbia. I'm not sure what made it so American; Maybe the architecture? Or the street layouts with actual green grass everywhere? Or the American flags flying out the front? Anyway, I was staying in Jake's basement, but it was a really sweet setup, Jake had converted it into a "man cave" of sorts, with a flatscreen TV, carpet and couches. Plus I had my own bathroom! The setup was better than some of the hotels I'd stayed at.
Jake took me to an awesome sushi place that night, which was some of the best sushi I've had. Mind you, unless you want to spend a whole shitload of money, good sushi is hard to find back home. Anyway after we had a few Sakes we headed to a local bar, got drunk on cheap beer and cinnamon whiskey (not my thing, a bit like mouthwash) and headed home.
Beer sampler I had at the Microbrewery in Parker.
The next few days were pretty chill at Jake's. I needed some time to do some washing and organize my couch surfing profile. I decided to give couch surfing a go so I could meet more locals on my trip without the need to get fucked up with them at the local bars. Also it would be a pretty good way to save money, which I'm all for.
Jake was kind enough to cook me dinner for 2 nights, ribs one night and sloppy joes the next - two American staple foods! Both were pretty awesome, the ribs were fantastic. They take hours to prepare though, in a croc pot for 4 hours then into a smoker for an hour or so more. Really fucking tasty though, served with potato salad and watermelon (yeah not just a dessert food). Jake just happened to be an ex-chef, which was pretty awesome from my point of view.
Me trying to look like a hardass with my
pansy-ass PBR.
Jake, Jake's roommate Levi, one of Jake's friends and I all headed out one other to a local brewery who did some pretty awesome beers. Microbreweries are really popular in Colorado, not quite as much as in Oregon, but they are starting to spring up everywhere. Even Jake (who had to remove some beer making equipment from his shower before I moved in) was thinking about starting a microbrewery at some stage. By the way, a great American pastime along with shooting animals and paper images of Zombie Bin Laden is to brew your own beer. But not how us Australians do it - they tend to make it from the raw ingredients like barley and hops. Pretty hardcore stuff.
After the microbrewery, we all headed to a dive bar that I had to see as part of my American experience, according to Jake. It was actually not a bad bar, I've been to far worse in Australia (South Pacific Rugby Club, Shooters) all of which would feel way more unsafe than any place I've been in America so far. The awesome thing about this bar is that you were allowed to smoke and could actually buy decent cigars from a little wooden cupboard in the back. Apparently there are quite a few "Cigar Bars" in Denver, some of which are pretty classy. I wish we had that back home, as much as I don't miss smelling like cigarette smoke when I got back from the bar, it'd be pretty awesome to sit down with a few friends to drink whiskey and smoke cigars. It'd also make an awesome start to a bucks night I'd think.
Jake and Jake's friend. Fuck I suck at names.
One day whilst staying with Jake I did head up into Denver. On the way there I wasn't wearing a motorcycle jacket. However an unanticipated side effect of this (apart from injury - please spare me the lectures) was that at about 65 miles an hour my t-shirt kept creeping up showing from the wind, showing my pasty white skin to all the other drivers!
So having had enough of trying to keep my shirt down, I decided to pull over and stick my motorcycle jacket on. When I re-entered the highway, I got pulled over by a cop. Following Josh's advice on cops, I took my helmet off and sat on the bike waiting for the cop to approach. I just apologized to him, telling the officer that I wasn't exactly sure what I did wrong (which was the truth by the way). Turns out I used the wrong entry lane to the highway, not like it was going the wrong direction but from where I was entering it was incorrect. Luckily the cop was a nice guy and let me off seeing that I didn't do it on purpose and I was just an ignorant Australian.
Here I was expecting the cop would push me to the ground and taze me, then throw me in jail for weeks without charge. Why would reddit lie to me like that? Turns out that cops are pretty cool here (at least in Denver).
My favorite piece in the
Denver Art Museum.
After getting back on the highway, I headed to the Denver Art Museum. They had some pretty sweet art there, and even though I'm not a big art fan, I had a good time. If nothing else it's so relaxing to walk around quiet air conditioned galleries while it's 37 degrees outside. I thought the best floor was the one dedicated to western art as it was something I'd never seen before. Apparently a lot of the old west movies are based on the ideas presented in old western art. The West was never really like that (gun fights at noon etc.), but the painters had to pimp up their artwork so it would sell to people who were fascinated by the idea of the West.
Mary Kay - my first couch host who was taking me in the next day - had invited me out to Washington Park to go see her team play volleyball. So after I saw the Art museum and got dinner, I rode down to the park. There were lots of volleyball games going on, the field was full of about 50 courts. And although I thought I located Mary Kay from her descriptions, it felt pretty creepy to just sit there watching strangers play, so I wandered around the park to try and get some good photos. Later on it got a bit dark and Mary Kay was still playing, so I had to apologize to her via text and leave - I did not want to ride in the dark and cold back to Parker. Especially given my fuck up earlier that day!
The next day I organised some stuff and basically chilled watching Mythbusters back at Jake's place. I also went out and bought him some more cereal, I felt guilty that I ate all of his! I just took a chill day because I knew that I was not really going to be able to relax in such a nice place for the next few weeks.
I left Moab and Utah and headed towards Glenwood Springs, but still with no GPS! I sort of memorized the route in my head, the exit numbers etc and set off. Luckily there were quite a few signs towards the end of the trip pointing me in the right direction. I decided to take the "River Road" out of Utah onto highway 70, as I was told the scenery would be awesome.
Eventually the awesome scenery turned into really sparse wasteland, and for the first time I thought "man I'd be fucked if I broke down here". I also went past this really sketchy town called "Cisco" with a whole heap of abandoned buildings and derelict equipment. I wanted to take some photos of it but thought it wasn't worth the risk!
Landscape started to look like this...
On highway 70 it was all 75 MPH (which means you can get away with about 130-140 KPH). As I got close to Glenwood Springs it started to rain. However by the time I arrived it was drying up. Glenwood Springs is actually a really beautiful town, pity I was just using it as a stopover on the way to Colorado Springs. After doing my laundry (one of those constant annoyances while on the road) I went headed to a bar in downtown. I had a few drinks with a couple of locals (who were nice enough to buy me some shots after finding out I was Australian), I went back to the hotel bar. I then got drunk with the hotel staff (bartender gave me free drinks as it was a slow night), where I met one of the reception staff. He was an architectural engineer, but since the GFC has had to resort to checking people into hotels. It was pretty funny to hear these guys talk about the other staff, who had slept with who and who they were trying to hook up with at the time.
After securing myself a late checkout from the desk, I went back to my room at about 3 AM.
More of the river road.
The ride to Colorado springs was pretty uneventful, I went through some small towns and up a mountain (presumably part of the Rockies). Had to stop and check I was on the right track once or twice as my iPhone was still kaput. Unfortunately there was little open that day, so I had to get lunch at pizza hut.
I arrived at "Bill and Mary's" place, who were a couple nice enough to put me up for a few nights. Bill used to ride Harley's and had even built a few trikes out of VW Beatles. Mary was away for most of the time I was there as she was busy house sitting in the mountains.
Bill and Mary lived in "Old Colorado Town", which was supposed to be the capital of Colorado before that honor eventually fell to Denver. On the main street (Colorado Ave) there were lots of shops and a few bars in buildings that looked very old fashioned. This was done on purpose to keep the place a tourist attraction, in fact when some of the buildings burnt down in a fire they had to be rebuilt in a similar style as to keep the look consistent. Bill also told me that this part of town was fairly seedy back in the day, bars used to run up one side of the street and brothels on the other. There were underground tunnels that interconnected the two sides so that politicians didn't need to run the risk of being seen walking into a brothel.
One of Bill and Mary's cats
Bill was nice enough to take me out to dinner a couple of nights, including a Greek and a Mexican restaurant - both were pretty good! Bill was also able to accept some mail packages for me including my now fixed netbook, my American Motorcycle Association membership and my real license plate!
In Colorado Springs my priority was to sort out my iPhone, so a couple of days were spent dealing with that. So I first took my phone into the Apple Store and waited for a Genius Bar appointment. I have to say I was pretty impressed with the service, this was an Australian bought iPhone, but because I had AppleCare the staff were more than happy to replace the phone with a brand new one. The problem with this is that you lose a bit of stuff in the process (iCloud doesn't backup everything - namely non-iTunes bought music). Lucky for me I had the foresight to bring all my mp3s across to America on my portable harddrive, so once I got my new phone back home I just resynced it with iTunes that I installed on my netbook.
Unfortunately for me (and Apple), the new phone had battery issues - it kept randomly powering off. So I tried to do the right thing and upgrade the software on the phone first (part of the recommended steps on the Apple website to preform before visiting the Genius Bar). This completely failed, and resulted in phone needing to be restored, which took forever because the Internet connection I had wasn't that fast and I had to resync my music again. So after a very frustrating 3 or 4 hours, I had a phone back on the latest software... But it kept powering off randomly. This was pretty much what I expected, I've been around this stuff long enough to know that the issue was hardware related. I was just trying to follow the process properly, as I didn't want to be arrogant about the whole thing. But knowing that this had a very small chance of fixing the problem was the most aggravating thing, as it took up a whole lot of time.
Packing up to leave, shows the chaos that I live with.
So I took the phone back to the Apple Store, where they were happy to again replace the phone. They told me not to restore from iCloud as this may have been the issue (which I thought was unlikely, more probable that the phone had battery issues - from some googling I found out that this had happened to a lot of people, sometimes there are just bad phones like with any mass produced product). So the same process followed, come back in half an hour so the phone could activate as unlocked. So I come back later, turn the phone on and get a sim card error. Turns out that they forgot to start the activation process! So now this phone is useless, so they give me another brand new iPhone 4S and tell me to come back in half an hour.
View from the top of Pikes Peak
When I came back that time, yes it finally worked! I then spent an hour in the Apple Store mooching their high speed wifi, downloading all my apps etc. My music would have to wait until I got to Parker. So now I'm officially on my 4th iPhone 4S (the 64 Gb one, so not cheap for Apple to replace), but I tell you what, I'd still have an iPhone. They are seriously that good, I've never had technology that is so capable (the Navigon GPS app is fucking unbelievable, camera is pretty good as a replacement point-and-shoot, alien blue app helps me pass the time in bars on those slow nights) and so aesthetically pleasing to use. And despite all the issues, the Apple customer care was still pretty top notch. But hey, you get what you pay for.
Rock climber in the Garden of the Gods
So despite all my dramas, I did manage to get a few touristy things done in Colorado Springs. I rode up "Pikes Peak", a 14000 foot mountain. You have to pay to get onto the road, but everyone told me it was a must in Colorado Springs. The road was very recently sealed all the way up, thankfully, as there were a lot of tight hairpins that would have been pretty tricky on the bike in dirt. The ride was pretty good, but unfourtunately there were lots of drivers, all doing the speed limit of 25-30 MPH. This was excruciatingly slow for anyone on a motorbike (especially a sports bike). But the views were pretty spectacular, aside from a bit of obsforcation from the bushfire smog.
I also went to the "Garden of the Gods" national park, which had a lot of red rocks. Unlike Utah though, there were paved paths and lots of tourists. It was definitely more family friendly, kind of difficult to get photos of a lot of rocks without people in them! But it was interesting to see the rock climbers, especially when when the thunder started and they all scurried down.
Garden of the Gods
Balanced Rock at The Garden of the Gods (note: tourists).
Some of the bar locals said I should go check out "Graffiti Falls", officially "Rainbow Falls" but notorious for being heavily graffitied. So I rode up there and walked around, didn't see that much graffiti but upon looking at photos online I don't think I walked far enough. It was getting pretty dark by that time though.
