Boise, Idaho 2

This photo nothing to do with Boise

So let me talk a bit about Boise as I didn't know the town at all before I came through. Boise (pronounced boy-see or boy-zee if you're not a local) is a small city with a population of around 210,000 people. It contains a fairly large university, which seems to make the population fairly young. It also means there is quite a good amount of night life, bars and pubs around. For some reason that no one could exactly tell me, Boise has a very high population of females compared to males. To me Boise seemed to have a very relaxed pace, was fairly open, had low amounts of crime and poverty and the natives I was lucky enough to meet were really friendly people.

On the streets in Boise

On Sunday the 29th, I needed to do some laundry first thing. After not being able to get a seat in Capri, then having the worst maccas breakfast I've ever had (the hoecakes were dry and pretty sure they were not heated up), I punched "laundry" into my iPhone GPS and set off. On the way I noticed the weird way Americans sometimes reseal a road, which sucks for motorcyclists. It seems like they spread loose gravel onto the setting tar, and then use the weight of the traffic to "bed it in". Presumably they later come back and brush the remaining gravel away. Anyway, it made it slow going on the motorbike.

After this a very friendly Boise resident - who I met as a friend of a work colleague of someone I met in the hotel bar - offered to take me around to see some of the sights of Boise. Kim is a lovely young lady who although she looks in her younger 20s is actually a year older than me! She is an ex-Minnesotian, which she tells me makes her sound like she has a Canadian accent. Kim currently works as a professor of psychology in the Boise State University (BSU), where apparently she often gets confused one of the students.

Our destination: Table Rock

Apparently hiking is the thing to do in Boise, so we walked up a trail to Table Rock; a popular Boise attraction. This goes past the old penitentiary up to a square looking rock formation (plus a very large controversial religious cross on top, this being America). It was quite a hike for me, being as out-of-shape as I am, and some parts were very steep. But the view from the top was pretty spectacular, where you could get a glimpse of the entire city and the surrounding mountain ranges. And although I stupidly did not put my water bottle lid properly back on and wet my wallet in my backpack ("why is my back so wet, I don't usually sweat this much"), I had a fantastic time!

Kim and I on the top of Table Rock

Afterwards, we headed down to BSU to see the famous collage NFL stadium which is the only one in America to have blue AstroTurf - which the locals call "smurf turf". We also saw the Boise river that passes through the university. A common pastime in Boise is to float down the river on small inflatable boats and tubes, and that day there were many people doing just that. The heat probably helped, it was 99 degrees Fahrenheit that day (37c). It looked like a lot of fun, but unfourtunately we had no boats!

After that we went and had dinner at a really nice, er, beer house I guess? There's not much like it in Australia, well Canberra I guess. But due to the heaviness of the food I'd been eating lately, I opted for the salad. According to Josh I'll get teased if I order a salad in places like Oklahoma City, so I was a bit wary!

Mountain sprout playing at the saloon

Afterwards we went to a saloon downtown, which just happened to have really good live music. The band was called Mountain Sprout, who play bluegrass music with awesomely vulgar lyrics. It was the first time I've seen a band anything like it, they played with a banjo, guitar, fiddle and double bass. I'm not sure how common bands like these are in America. But I had a pretty tough time wiping the smile off my face the for the whole set. The music is so energetic and the lyrics are hilarious, but most of all it was so American! So far the best thing I've seen in the states yet!

Boise, Idaho

I'm typing this blog post on my iPhone, as my fucking Netbook has died! Some of the keys just stopped working, so I just had to send it back to Asus for repairs. I think I should have bought a Lenovo or maybe even a MacBook air. Oh well, hopefully I'll get it back in a few weeks.

Downtown Boise

The ride from La Grande to Boise was pretty good, albeit uneventful. I had the go pro taking shots every 10 seconds, but I'm not sure what happened because when I got to the hotel the memory card was empty! Probably not the most interesting scenery anyway, the next few days should get amazing footage.

The hotel I'm staying at in Boise is really nice, probably the nicest one so far. Because I'm only paying about $80 a night, I always expect the rooms to be crap, but the accommodation over here is thankfully really cheap.

The first night I was pretty beat, so I just headed to the hotel bar. The bar has a really cool bartender, his name is Jason but for some reason we all called him Frank! So I ended up meeting two Americans at the bar: Micheal and Jake. Micheal is from california and runs his own construction company (I think) and Jake is from Denver and is a dishwasher repair man. Both were in Boise to do some camping, up until Jake smashed the bottom o his feet by jumping over a wall at the hotel pool. I guess that must have been a wild night.

Downtown Boise and my bike

Anyway, spent most of the night drink heavily, especially on this rum called "the kraken", which was fantastic but gave me a killer hangover the next day. Most of the day I spent watching a deadliest catch marathon in my air conditioned hotel room.

It is hot in Boise by the way, temperatures are between 36 and 38 Celsius. You don't seem to get burnt easily, because hey have an ozone layer here, but it is still pretty intense.

The next night I met up with Micheal and Jake again, along with a few of their friends from the Boise area. We drank and played pinball and pool. I had this blue cheese beef burger, which brings me to a point: Americans seem to love blue cheese. It's not on everything, but it defiantly has been a lot of menus I've seen, especially on burgers and salads. It's just something I was not expecting about the USA!

Food at the Basque festival

Anyway, there was a festival for the Basque people, who are small community of northern Spanish people who migrated to Boise. We head to a bar which had good music, and I was thinking to myself "man the guys over here dress kind of gay over here", but there were heaps of girls in some crazy (re: super slutty) outfits. So yeah turns out it was a gay bar. Certainly explained a lot!

The bartender earlier that night had told me about a great place for breakfast called Capri, so the next day I walked down there and had some wheat pancakes. I suppose at some point I should try the biscuits ad gravy over here, but damn I did not feel like something that heavy that morning. But the great thing about these sort of diners is that you can sit at the bar and talk to all the other solo people there!

After posting my netbook back to Asus using the super cheap US post service, I rode down to the mall to buy some shit. I also went to the biggest wall-mart yet, but unfortunately it wasn't full of the "people from wall-mart" type people (must be a south thing).

That night I went to dinner with some other people I met at the hotel bar (Jake and Micheal had headed back home). We went to this really awesome pub/restaurant that served a wide range of microbrew beers and really good food. I got a Hawaiian burger, as I felt like something a bit Australian. Pity they don't put the beetroot on their burgers over here! We then hit a few bars in downtown Boise, however we had some issues getting in to few as one of the guys was 20 years old, just short of the legal drinking age. Bartenders and bouncers over here seem to always check IDs. One of the bars we went to was what they call a "dive bar" over here, basically a kind of dodgy bar. They had really cheap beer though - I think about $2 for a PBR (yeah the hipster beer)!