Cheyenne Wyoming and Nebraska

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.