Denver, Colorado

Mary Kay - My first couch surfing host!

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!