Laramie, Wyoming

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!

That day, off to Cheyenne!