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!

Parker, Colorado

Sushi in Parker.

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.

Sunset at Washington Park, Denver.