In less than 24 hours I will literally be on a flying machine hurtling in the air at 500 mph towards Salt Lake City. I am so amped right now. In less than one week I will be fighting a Grizzly Bear.
It is fairly difficult to focus at work today because I'm super pumped and my stomach is all rumbly like it's made out of tectonic plates and dild-... vibra-... shake weights. Instead of focusing on things like turbine temperatures, like I'm supposed to, all I can concentrate on is calculating the amount of pepto bismal I should take right now so that I don't unleash semi-digested liquid fortune cookies (read: my breakfast) all over my keyboard and monitor. I'm thinking it's somewhere around a quarter of a bottle.
Showing posts with label Utah. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Utah. Show all posts
Thursday, June 9, 2011
Saturday, September 18, 2010
Partial Road Trip with Joe and Rebecca
9/8/2010
And so it begins. When Joe told me that he and Rebecca were road tripping across the country (Boston - San Francisco, similar to mine last year) and invited me for part of it, I was ecstatic. Re-live some of the greatest experiences of my life, not alone this time? Yes please. Sign me up.
My day started by going to work. Not a regular work day, mind you: Cedardale. My company rents out a corporate outing location for the day for some food and fun activites. So Jacobs picked me up (I had my car parked about 7 blocks away so it would be ok for the multiple street cleaning days that I would be gone for). We arrived, and I played beach volleyball for almost the entire day. Oh, and mini-golf and swimming. It sounds like I have it good, but really this is just my company's way of saying "sorry we douched you over by taking away your health care; hopefully a paid 'fun' day makes up for it."
Anyway, Jacobs drove me to the airport right afterward (what a guy!), where I caught my flight to Denver. Joe, Rebecca, and Joe's friend Josh picked me up and we drove into the city. We got some dinner at a cool restaurant, and in typical Colorado fashion, they had some delicious microbrew beer.
Denver, although I didn't really have a chance to see much of it, seems like a really cool, clean, fun city. I've said it before; I wouldn't mind retiring in CO. But yeah, that two hour time zone thing is hitting me, and we didn't get back till late, so I'm taking a shower (my last one for 4 days!) and going to bed.
9/9/2010
I'm sitting here writing this entry by flashlight and firelight. Our dinner is cooking on the fire (baked beans and Indian food - perfect combination perhaps? Or toxic recipe for gaseousness?) while Joe and Rebecca are setting up their tent. I, as I have recently been wont to do, am opting to go sans tent so I can sleep under the stars, and it promises to be an epic night sky.
Today has been friggn incredible. Like hands down one of the best days in the realm of possibility. We woke up at Josh's place around 6am and left Denver just as the Sun was starting to come up. We then proceeded to drive through the Rockies during sunrise, while Rebecca gasped with awe at every single turn we made. I forgot how much fun it was to drive through the Rockies. And now that I was a passenger rather than a driver, I could take pictures in a much safer capacity. We got to Vail, and I took over driving. Joe showed me a bit of how to drive manual a couple weeks ago, so I did alright. Minimal stalling out, and I did fairly well at shifting gears. Until I got to Moab, UT. I really dropped the ball there, but whatever, we survived. Sorry Joe.
We grabbed lunch and some microbrews at "Eddie McStiff's" (classy name, right?). It was clear that our waiter had no idea what was going on by any definition of the phrase. How he manages how to figure out how to do simple tasks like brushing his teeth is beyond me.
So eventually we made our way into Arches National Park. Now I remember why I love this place so damn much. You cannot take a bad picture here. It is too beautiful. We drove to a bunch of lookouts and went frolicking. Or scampering. Basically just tearing around like 8-year-olds. So much fun. We saw most of what I saw last year and more. The parking lot to hike up to Delicate Arch was full, so we opted to save it for sunrise tomorrow. We went to see Landscape Arch and a shitload of others for sunset instead. (I'm not sure why this word processor doesn't have "shitload" in its dictionary. Seems pretty common to me.)
We basically trailblazed really high, steep, suicidal-looking ridges, traversing the windiest and most deadly paths I've ever imagined. And I imagine some ridiculous shit. But we found an awesome area with no one else around to frolick/leap-and-almost-die. The wind was so nuts that it could pretty much hold you up while peering over the ledges. I peed over the edge (upwind of course), and it was hilarious. The pee went everywhere after a few feet of stream. Oh yeah, did I mention I was on top of the highest peak in the area? Awesome.
After that, we then ran around like maniacs from awesome view to awesome view. We found an incredible 360 panoramic view of the entire valley/mountain area at sunset. It was literally the greatest view I've seen to date. Even better than Delicate Arch last year. SO EPIC. Fuck.
Seriously. WTF. So awesome.
But we decided to sprint back down the trail before it got too dark, seeing insane colors in the sky and in the background of the landscape. Landscape Arch was cool because it spans such a huge length, but it didn't compare to the sunset that we had just seen. Holy fucking shitballs. So intense. Kind of like a double rainbow.
And now I'm about to nom some baked beans out of a frisbee, so... I'm done writing.
9/10/2010
For those of you who thought the road trip couldn't get any better than yesterday, including my past self, you are sorely mistaken. I am once again waiting for food to cook over our fire pit (this time with delicious Utah beer) after another epic day.
It started off cold and dark as we packed up the car. We wanted to do the Delicate Arch hike to see the arch at sunrise. The hike itself wasn't as arduous as last year because I wasn't in direct, brutal sunlight the entire hike up. We actually managed to get to the top before the Sun came up, and the view was as amazing as I remember it. It was made better because we were the only ones up there to see the arch at sunrise. It was amazing, competing with our sunset view from last night. Less pants-crapping, but same awesomeness. (I didn't actually crap my pants you guys, don't worry).
Holy shit my fingernails are so dirty. I need a shower for sure. I think our campsite in Zion might have showers? Cool. But I digress.
From Arches we snagged some breakfast (blueberry crepe) and gas in Moab and then headed onto the scenic Utah drive to Bryce Canyon National Park. The scenic route was totally worth it. The Utah Rt. 12 is easily the best drive ever. Even better than the CA Rt. 1. We first drove through part of Capitol Reef National Park: a pleasant surprise for sure. We took some cool pictures and took a dip in the small river by the side of the road. It was a lot of fun, really refreshing, and pretty impressive that we stripped to our underwear, forded a river, and played a mini frisbee game.
Hilarious
We then proceeded to Dixie National Forrest, where a mountain sprang up out of friggn nowhere and an amazing crazy green wooded area popped up. I started driving, and immediately the road became an insane, windy, mountain roller coaster ride and was super awesome to speed down. I've never had so much fun driving. I was shifting gears, making 180 degree bank turns at 60 mph along curving cliffs; it was nuts. NUTS I tell you. I have some videos we took of the crazy driving in this folder near the bottom I think. We got out at a few scenic overlooks to romp around for a bit, but continued on our way.
We then drove through part of the Escalante Grand Staircase National Monument (seriously, Rt. 12 is awesome. I even started a manual car IN REVERSE, UP A HILL. I rocked it out. I was so impressed). We drove through, saw some stuff, it was cool, whatever.
Anywho, we get to Bryce Canyon National Park and immediately see some Hoodoos. Hoodoos are some crazy-pillar rock formations native to Bryce. And they have hilarious names. Joe and I annoyed the CRAP out of Rebecca by saying it in every sentence for no reason at all. It was great. So we parked at Sunrise Point and hiked the Queen's Garden hike. It was a short 3 mile hike down into the Canyon amongst the Hoodoos. HOODOO! Joe and I came up with so many great hoodoo related songs, to the dismay of Rebecca. But the hike was so unique and incredible. I was a fan.
After the hike we hit a few more overlooks including Sunset, Bryce, and Inspiration Point. We saw the crazy shadows from so many angles that it blew my mind. We saw sunset from Inspiration Point, and seriously words cannot describe how amazing the view was. Photos do not do it any justice. It was just bad-ass.
Hoodoos!
I'm going to bed down, sans-tent again, after dinner. Hopefully the stars will be as awesome tonight as they were last night. They were crazy you guys. You could see billions and billions.
9/11/2010
Ok, so we just burned Rebecca's sneakers trying to dry them off by the fire. But besides that, it has been a pretty sweet day. If I had to choose a word to describe today, it would be (in honor of Bryce Canyon) Hoodoo-rific. That is a positive adjective by the way.
It seems so long ago, but we started the day in Bryce. We got up in the freezing cold, dark, frigid morning a little later than expected, around 6:15am. It was fine though, everything turned out pretty cool; we didn't miss sunrise. Joe and Rebecca decided to take the tent down when it was warmer, and I, without a tent, was eager to see an awesome sunrise, so we started off on the 18-mile drive to the last viewpoint: Rainbow Point. Similar to Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park, this drive was mostly a bunch of viewing points you stop at along the drive to look into the canyon. They were really incredible (meaning: a lot of Hoodoo), and we managed to catch sunrise at an awesome spot.
We drove back to Sunrise Point (or Sunset, whatever, they were pretty much the same, it doesn't matter). We then packed up and said our goodbyes to Bryce. After a really short drive, less than 2 hours, we were already at Zion National Park.
The drive into the park was a little annoying because they were doing some construction and parts were one-way, but it was definitely amazing. There were some crazy checkerboard mesa rock formations, a mile-long tunnel through a goddamn mountain, and then a shitload of switchbacks into the Zion Canyon. (By the way, Zion Canyon is a delicious beer brewed in the local town right outside Zion. I'm currently drinking it). The park itself was pretty crowded, but most people park at the Visitor's Center and take the shuttle buses throughout the east side of the park. In fact, that's what all people do, because personal cars aren't allowed after a certain point. It really helps reduce the amount of retards driving around the park.
Pause for game of 3-Person Hearts
Result: Joe - 26, Sevs - 31, Rebecca - infinity
Rebecca didn't do so well.
Well, I passed out and am on my flight home from Vegas right now, but I'll continue. We took the shuttle to the last stop, the Temple of Sinawava. We hiked from there up a short trail along the Virgin River to the end, where we started hiking IN the river. This river went through the Narrows: a thin river path with huge walls on both sides. It was seriously awesome through there. I'm pretty happy my boots held up, because that could have been a disastrous hike otherwise.
At some places the river came up to my waist. It was unbelievably awesome. We came across a big boulder (that we obviously climbed for no reason) with a smooth side, so Joe and I did some mini-watersliding. After a while we turned back, but were pretty sad to do so.
We checked out a couple more steps to look at some amazingly huge cliffs and to grab a burger to hold us over till dinner. Our next step was to take a hike to the Emerald Pools. Relative to the park, they were only so-so, but in real life they were pretty great. I think at this point I was fairly jaded from seeing basically the coolest things on the planet. As usual, Joe and I climbed around on some rocks for absolutely no reason while Rebecca relaxed, enjoying life.
After some more hiking, we grabbed some delicious ice cream, fajitas, and Zion beer in the nearby town. We made a fire to drive our socks and boots (unfortunately burning the shit out of Rebecca's sneakers, as previously mentioned), and then went to sleep. Our campsite was just outside the park right next to the river, so we had the sound of rushing water to fall asleep to while we all slept under the stars. Seriously, the night sky is friggn amazing out west. Apparently a huge tree branch broke and fell right next to us in the middle of the night, but since I reach coma levels of deep sleep, I remained completely and blissfully unaware.
9/12/2010
I think my watch battery is dying, because it didn't go off when we wanted it to, and therefore got off to a late start. We wanted to hike Angel's Landing trail, a really intense hike, to see sunrise, but everything worked out fine regardless. The hike was pretty strenuous, but fairly short. The last half mile was completely insane. Like "holy crap has anyone actually survived this before?" levels of insanity. Both sides were shear cliffs, so even the slightest miss-step would be semi-fatal. Or very fatal, since we were 1500 feet up. We had to use hands to climb and chains at most parts. It was definitely not for anyone afraid of heights. I have no idea how I am insane enough to lack any fear of heights, but it worked out for me here. We got to the top for what I can only assume is the best 360 view ever imagined in all dimensions and timelines.
Needless to say we took some great pictures.
I sat on a few cliff edges with my feet dangling down, as I am wont to do, and it was so extreme that it got my adrenaline going like crazy.
I managed to pee on the top, which by law dictates that I am now the owner of that trail. The way down was still pretty extreme, because you had to look down the entire time. Looking down those cliffs on either side of you is seriously intense. Rebecca, who we convinced to go up the whole way to the top of the trail, had some shoe issues, so she heroically hiked down the entire mountain in socks. We saw a vulture, or Condor, or some damn big bird along the way (well, we had to trailblaze and rock climb to get to it, but we saw it).
We climbed that. We are goddamn champions. This day was so ridiculous because after we did this incredible hike, we left Zion, ate In N' Out Burgers (yum!!), and drove to Las Vegas. Within hours of hiking an insane mountain, I was full of delectable burgers and relaxing in a hot tub.
We grabbed some drinks at the pool bar (where I saw the Eagles lose, which seriously blows) and then went out to buy some alcs for the room. Did I mention that we had a suite at the Venetian? Because that part is pretty important. We were pretty baller. We cleaned up (first shower in four days! Yes!) and dressed in our fancy clothes to go hit the town.
If my current headache is any indication, we had an unbelievable time last night. We saw the Bellagio water fountain show, hit some casinos, and had an all around amazing time. I knew I was doing pretty well in Roulette and Black Jack, but I was certainly surprised to see a $100 bill in my wallet when I paid for my cab this morning. To be fair, I only made about $70 or so, but still. Awesome.
The flight at 7am this morning is certainly destroying my will to live, but what can you do. Awesome road trip. So much fun.
Wow. I can't believe I didn't voms on the plane.
Thursday, June 10, 2010
Lost Journal Entries: The Trip West
Ok, it is a few months after the fact, but I recently re-discovered the journal that I had used in an attempt to document my adventure to California, and I decided that it would be a great sacrilege if I did not share it with the world. Without further ado, I present to you: the regaling of my journey to California. For anyone who actually gives the slightest damn, I’ll keep what I wrote in the journal (what I like to call “the translation,” because it sounds like I’m some kind of crazy historian or something. Also, it’s really terrible handwriting) in regular font. Any comments/opinions that are more current will be in italics. ARE YOU HAPPY EVERYONE?? You better be. This is my gift to you. I encourage you to read all of the entries, because they are comedic gold. Apparently I am a somewhat sarcastic person. Who knew? Oh yeah, and if at any time you want to match up the photos I took on my adventures to the stories surrounding them, I have them up at http://picasaweb.google.com/christopher.severino.
8/27/09
Less than a week to go before I start the trip. There have been a few changes to the plan. All of the campsites and hotels are now reserved. I will be staying at a campground on the Canadian side of Niagara Falls, a hotel in downtown Chicago, a hotel in downtown St. Louis, a hotel in Kansas City, staying with Blake in Boulder, a campsite at the Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park, a campground near Arches National Park in Utah, a cabin for two nights on the south rim of the Grand Canyon, and a hotel/casino on the strip in Las Vegas.
Geoff and Olsenglubin will not be joining, but my friend Molly will meet up with me in Buffalo and possibly come to Chicago. She didn’t end up coming to Chicago, but it was all the better, because I did not have room for her in my car. I just need to pack and get some food for the campsites. OH YEAH, and friggn move in to my new apartment with Cronin and Arlen. I love moving. What an awesome experience. I apologize; there really should be a specific font for sarcasm. Seriously though, moving is my least favorite thing to do on the entire planet. Without hyperbole. But then Kyle is visiting, so that should be pretty awesome.
In retrospect, the move actually went ok since we hired movers. We didn’t have that much space, so I was sleeping on my bed that also had Arlen’s mattress stacked up on top. I felt like a god damn king perched up there. A bunch of us ended up going to Razzy’s, where we had some jalapeno vodka. Yum? No. As a result, the first morning I woke up in my new room I puked out of my window. It was a hilarious situation for me, even though I was elbows deep in a fairly horrific hangover.
9/2/09
Buffalo/Niagara Falls
After driving for 7 hours, Hogan and I finally met at 12:30 at Anchor Bar in Buffalo, the restaurant where the first Buffalo wings were invented. He, Jocelyn and I toured a bit of the “city” and went to the city capital building (is that what they’re called?) and viewed Buffalo from the top floor. It was a pretty cool view. Then we met up with Molly and two of her friends for wings at Anchor Bar. I was very pleased that our road trip did not begin with our cars getting towed due to the fact that we left them unattended in the parking lot while we walked across the city. The wings were definitely good, despite the fact that the waitress couldn’t comprehend the idea of breaking the bill to put onto three credit cards (thanks for the lunch, GE!). Then we left for Canada. I have to mention that Molly tried her DAMDEST to get me lost in Buffalo by IMMEDIATELY losing me at the first rotary after I was supposed to follow her to the bridge. However, my phone has GPS capabilities, so her plan was foiled. Seriously, I would not have made it past day one without that friggn phone.
We drove over the Rainbow Bridge into Ontario (now I’ve been to TWO different provinces. Take THAT, Canada!), which at Niagara Falls appears to be in the middle of a casino. We arrived at King Waldorf’s campground after Hogan made a few random wrong turns and nearly got hit by a car, and are now getting ready to explore the Falls. We have plans to eat “Amazing Chinese food” according to Molly, when we meet up with her for dinner. I’ll try to call my parents and Lauren tonight, but who knows if that’s even possible since I’m in Canada now and there might be roaming charges. My parents better not freak out thinking I’m dead on the first day of my road trip if I don’t call. WHOA! Foreshadowing of things to come?! Spoiler alert: it IS foreshadowing of things to come. HOLD ON TO YOUR BUTTS, THAT RIVETING TALE COMES LATER.
We drove to the Falls and went on the “Maid of the Mist” boat ride. We went out onto the water, going into the mist under the Falls (duh). I got some great pictures in the mist, including like a BILLION rainbows all over the place. We then had some dinner nearby with Molly and watched the Falls at night. They were pretty amazing. They were lit up with different colors projected from across the way. It made the waterfalls look like it was changing color, like some sort of crazy, friggn water lightshow jamboree! I swear to God, you don’t even know.
Now I’m bedding down to sleep, getting my tent ready and such. Not a bad first day on the road. Thank god for daylight savings. The Sun is up for so long that you can do a bunch of stuff, even after driving a million hours that day. Oh yeah, and you might as well get used to the superlatives, because THEY ARE NOT GOING TO STOP.
9/3/09
Chicago
I awoke this morning at 4:30 (apparently that time actually exists), packed up my tent, which was soaking wet from the morning dew (I’ll let my future self deal with that one when I take it out to camp again…), and drove through Ontario toward Michigan. It is a long state to drive through, but I stopped at Wendy’s for lunch at about 11:30. AND, my car got over 39 mpg for most of it: holy shit! I then drove through a bit of Indiana and into Illinois. As I drove through Indiana, I called Ed, who had already started his cross-functional in Cincinnati. Ed, I drove through Gary, Indiana. It blows. Not a good place to represent your entire state). Holy crap, Chicago is hard to navigate. I parked at some parking garage, checked into my room, and immediately set out to explore the city.
I walked for about 20 miles; my feet are killing me. Ok, that was an exaggeration, but NOT ENTIRELY. I think I did walk about 13-14 miles, zigzagging through the city. I toured as much of the city as possible between 2:30 and 6:30. I started by going to the top of the Sears Tower, or the Willis Tower as it is now called, for those of you who are no doubt using this historic piece of literature as a reference to some documentary or something. It was an incredible view of the city. On the top floor they have these glass cat-walk things just hanging off the sides of the building. There is literally nothing between you and the road, 101 stories below, besides a piece of glass. So epic. This girl who was in it with me was afraid of heights and was totally freaked out, so I started jumping up and down in it to scare her. Haha. What an asshole. Not me: the guy who designed the thing. He should have made them vibrate or something, it would have been even funnier. Then I walked to Millennium Park and wandered around for a bit. They had some blob-like mirror structure, a weird fountain with a projected face that spits water at you, dinosaur statues: basically just a shitload of random garbage that when I describe it, it probably seems like I’m making it up. Or that I’m retarded. Either way, you’re wrong.
Creepiest thing ever? Yes.
I saw some of the Magnificent Mile as I explored the East side of the city. I saw the park area near Lake Michigan and then walked over to Soldier’s Field. The Bears are playing the Browns in their last pre-season game tonight.
Lou Malnati’s: best pizza ever. I just got back after meeting up with Hogan and Jocelyn for some deep dish pizza. It was some dough, cheese, tomato sauce, and roughly 40 tons of toppings (including love, happiness, and sunshine), in a deep pan and served lava hot. So delicious.
After this, we tried to find a Jazz-Blues club, but ended up getting suckered into paying some dude a bunch of money for walking with us halfway across the city. Yeah, weird story, let me explain. This guy comes up to us and asks what we’re looking for. We tell him, and he starts being friendly and helpful. Then he starts walking us toward what we assume is the location we wanted. This is where I start to realize that he’s doing this to get money out of us. He goes on to explain how he “helps” people by walking them around the city, not hesitating to point out the fact that he has a bowie knife the size of an obese infant with him at all times. Super. So then we get to this place, which he tells us has no cover (the cover was $15), and asks for money for walking us there. He explains that his “service,” is similar to that of a cab, so we should pay the rates of a cab. Except that we walked to the location. And it wasn’t where we wanted to go. That didn’t stop him from gouging us for a combined total of about $25. I learned my first valuable lesson on the road trip: don’t trust people, because people suck. We ended up going to an Irish pub, where Hogan and I drowned our sorrows away in Jameson and sweet, sweet Guinness.
9/4/09
St. Louis
After a continental breakfast, we went to see the Navy Pier and the beach. I got to touch Lake Michigan while this really weird fog rolled in. We then saw a bit of the John Hancock tower, got some Chicago hot dogs at Navy Pier, and headed back to the hotel. On our way, we passed a really high building with some ropes hanging down from the top, about 60 stories up. We started messing with the ropes; making standing wave transmissions all the way to the top. It was pretty freaky, but entertained us for a VERY long time. Ah, physics. Then I said my farewells to the Windy City and started towards St. Louis.
I arrived in St. Louis at about 5:00 and checked into the Downtown Hilton, which was surprisingly really, really nice. I went up in the Arch and toured the museum below ground there. It was a cool experience, although kind of boring to do it alone (Hogan and Jocelyn had stayed an extra day in Chicago, so I’m on my own for a few days in the road trip). I went over and touched the Mississippi River (I would have peed into it, to mark my ownership, but there were more people watching than I cared for. Super mature decision, I know). I ate some not-so-great crab and oysters at Union Station. Overall, I’ve seen most of St. Louis already; it wasn’t a very big city. AND the number of homeless people per capita is staggering.
9/5/09
Kansas City
After hitting snooze a couple times, I got up and had some brunch. At this point I started getting worried, because the food cost in all these cities had been more than I budgeted with my food stipend. I remember this particular meal being COMPLETELY overpriced for the food I got (which was not NEARLY enough bacon). I then drove four hours to Kansas City, MO. My hotel is a lot farther out of the city than I thought. This made driving there and parking easy, but I thought the “plaza,” where I am staying, was the big KC…thing…shit, I don’t know. Well, it wasn’t. So in order to see anything cool, I had to walk for what seemed like an eternity (but probably wasn’t). I actually got blisters on my feet from walking so much. For realzies. Like five friggn blisters. Anyway, I ended up seeing some pretty cool stuff. I went to an art museum for a bit. There were actually two art museums next to each other. The first was a modern art museum, to which I walked up, said “fuck that,” and went to the next one, which was a real art museum. I went over to some Irish festival that was happening (all I know is they dyed the water fountains green, so it HAD to be cool) and I saw some crazy Lego exhibit. I forgot how much Legos rule.
Crazy Lego...statue? Model? Thing? Whatever, it was awesome.
Then I stumbled upon a World War I museum as I wandered aimlessly towards the downtown part of KC. It was actually really cool, and had a great view of the city. Then I walked four miles (FOUR FREAKING MILES) back toward my hotel to get some famous Kansas City BBQ for dinner. Remember, at this point I already had about a billion blisters on my feet, so that extra four miles wasn’t as enjoyable as you might think. They make a fantastic steak in KC, I’ll give them that.
In hindsight, I was pleasantly surprised by Kansas City. I wasn’t really expecting that much (I basically arbitrarily chose to go there to break up the drive from St. Louis to Colorado), but it had some interesting sights and some good food.
9/6/09
Boulder
First, some general notes about Kansas:
I decided to write down the biggest highlights as I drove across the state. Believe me when I say that these are not opinions. These are facts. As a whole, this list of facts sums up the entirety of Kansas.
-Foggiest state EVER
-Radio stations start with a K rather than a W on the west of the Mississippi
-There are big wind farms and cattle farms everywhere; the wind farms are awesome, and the other farms smell like the foulest kind of shit in the world
-It is really easy to go over 100 mph and not even realize it, because there is NOTHING to gage your speed by
-Almost every radio station is either country or gospel
-They have Jesus billboard signs. That’s right. Billboards dedicated to advertising Jesus. Try to wrap your head around that.
-Like Longcat, Kansas is looooooooooooong
I finally made it to Colorado, which is possibly the second best state ever (behind PA, obviously). Once I got to Denver, the Rockies popped up into existence. It was a welcome sight after driving nine hours through FLAT NOTHINGNESS. I met Blake (my cousin) at his house in Boulder. We then biked to a few microbreweries to taste their beer. Spoiler: they’re all awesome. Also, Boulder is a very bike-friendly city. The bike paths are the best maintained thing I saw the entire time. It was pretty great to have that extra lane space when you’re riding a bike drunk off microbrews. CU had a pretty big football game, so there were quite a few college students at the bars around mid-day.
On our way back home, Blake crashed his bike (and was apparently surprised that his ability to ride a bike was hindered by alcohol), and got a pretty huge cut on his eyebrow, which he made me promise not to tell my Mom, but who knows if I will. TO THIS DAY I have kept that promise. However, she will very likely read this, so…sorry Blake! Whatever, I held out for a while. At this point it is just water under the bridge…HILARIOUS water under the bridge. I bet he has a pretty sweet scar. Seriously, that thing was bleeding like there was no tomorrow. Then we tried to clean him up while simultaneously trying to make ribs (with a delicious rub that Blake had made). Eventually I had to take him to the emergency room to get stitches. At this point I want to make it clear that he was STILL pretty drunk, which I found hilarious, because he kept trying to have conversations with nurses and doctors about how there must be a lot of drunk college kids getting injured. He was trying to convince them that he himself was not wasted, but I think they caught on when he slurred every third word he said. Then on the way home, Bohemian Rhapsody played on my CD, and he thought it was a good idea to turn my volume to the max, put all the windows down, and sing along as loud as humanly possible. Well, he was right. It was awesome.
After the hospital adventure, we went out with one of his neighbors. We went to a few bars, where I learned that the altitude of Boulder, which thinned my blood already, did not have a beneficial effect when I added alcohol to the picture. Luckily, we biked home without incident and I slept on Blake’s couch.
9/7/09
Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park, CO
Jesus Christ Monkeyballs, what an awesome day. We started off the morning with bacon and bread fried in bacon grease (Blake, you brilliant son of a bitch!). Very healthy, I know. Then I said my goodbyes and drove to Red Rocks park, which is a small park where the boulders are…red (I’m a master at writing), and form almost a natural amphitheater. It was really impressive. There were a ton of people running around exercising on the stairs.
I then drove west to Vail, which is a cool little ski town. Since there is no skiing in the summer (yeah, I’ve decided to err on the more obvious side of describing my events. I think when I wrote this, I was imagining that the people who found my journal some time in the distant future lived in a world where the Earth’s axis is tilted differently, effecting the seasons or something. I really don’t know. It must have been the thin air in Colorado affecting my brain), I looked around, went to the “ski museum,” and got some mango-raspberry ice cream. I know what you’re saying. “Chris, you pick the most amazing flavored ice creams imaginable. You are so handsome and smart!” Well, you’re right. I then drove south to the Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park, where I’m staying for the night.
I drove to nine of the ten overlooks into the canyon, ending with watching the sun set at “sunset point.” I actually had to stand there, eating Fruity Pebbles for 20 minutes waiting for that damn Sun to go down. It was surreal. I can’t even believe sights like that exist in real life.
Then I drove to an empty campsite with the last bit of light. I pitched my tent in the dark, which is neither easy nor fun. Plus everything was still wet from the dew at Niagara (THANKS A LOT, PAST SELF, YOU JACKASS). Then I made a fire, and after struggling to open the can for 20 minutes, cooked some baked beans for dinner. At the time, I didn’t know how the can opener on my pocket knife worked. I reverted to stab/smashing it into the top of the can, cutting up my hand pretty good in the process. Don’t make that “you’re a friggn idiot” face at me! You know damn well that you don’t know how to use that can opener either. And I was freaking starving.
Another cool thing about Colorado is that you can see more stars than I knew even existed in the Milky Way. AND, driving in CO is incredibly fun. You can coast down the mountains at like 80 mph; it is so awesome.
9/8/09
Arches National Park, UT
If today could be characterized by a single theme, it would be that google maps needs to get its shit together. Somebody needs to inform the people there about the difference between a road and a dirt hiking trail that hasn’t been used in ten years. Not only is there red dust in EVERY CREVICE of my car, but I’m pretty sure my shocks are destroyed, and there have to be major damages done to the under-carriage of the car. But I digress. I’ll try to explain it more fully in chronological order.
With that said, it was a fairly cool day. I woke up, broke camp, and left Gunnison (and Colorado). I headed into Utah to Arches National Park. Google maps gave me some back-door entrance directions, which included a seven mile stretch (that’s 36960 feet) of PURE BUMPS. If I drove any faster than 10 mph, my car would have hit a resonance and would have shaken itself apart. I eventually found the main road (and at this point I have an inch thick coating of fine, red sand all over my car).
After messing around on what appeared to be a big, rocky, adult jungle-gym, I went for a hike to see Delicate Arch. The hike was intense in the dry heat, but there were some really cool Pyroglyphs made by the Ute Indians in the 1600’s (if you have any idea what that means, then…good for you? What do you want a cookie? No.). Getting to the arch, I realized I was looking at the most spectacular view of my life. Photos won’t do it any justice; the scene was absolutely gorgeous.
Seriously, this photo does it no justice. It was insane.
I saw a few other sights in the park, then headed to the nearby town of Moab. I tried some microbrews at the Moab Brewery, and headed toward my camp area. At this point, I’d like to give an additional shout-out to the jackasses at google maps that made the code for my next set of directions. FUCK YOU. Not cool. NO CAR COULD EVER TRAVERSE THAT ROAD. I drove about a mile on what looked like a hiking path that was FULLY overgrown with plants and bushes, and big boulders all over the place. I realized that I had another THIRTEEN MILES of that crap, so I decided to drive back over the rocky, shitty mile I had driven (in reverse) and find another way. After calling the people with whom I had made the campsite reservation and FINALLY convincing them to get me better directions (I honestly had to plead with them. They were not being as helpful as they were when they were accepting my reservation payment), I headed toward the campsite. Oh yeah, did I mention it was 40 miles in the wrong direction? Sweet. Anyway, it was mostly a dirt path, and the Sun was setting. I arrived at the campsite (the ONLY person in the entire campground, about 20 miles away from the last sign of civilization) and pitched my tent with the last bit of light, just in time to hear wolves howling nearby. I think I’ll sleep in my car tonight.
OK, I have to tell you this story now, because it is a doozy. My parents LOVE this story, because as a result of it, they both aged about 20 years. Right before I ate dinner, I called my parents and informed them of my situation – alone, miles from civilization, wolves surrounding me. However, the reception was terrible for the entire state of Utah. From my parents’ side, the conversation went like this: “…I’m alone here and there are wolves really close by. It sounds like they’re getting closer-” then silence, because I lost reception. I ended up sleeping in my car and starting the next day as usual. All the while, my parents are freaking out. I didn’t get reception back until I left Utah the next day, at around 2:00 pm. All the while my parents are going absolutely bananas because they think I was attacked by a pack of wolves. In typical fashion, they assumed the worst, and as my Dad described, he thought “they would find only my phone next to a bloody pile of bones somewhere in Utah.” My Mom freaked out so much that she started crying hysterically at work. They basically had to shut her school down, because all the other teachers were calling every national park in Utah trying to find me. Since my parents apparently don’t listen to me when I tell them where I’m staying for the night, they had no idea where I was. They called as many Utah rangers and national parks as they could to put a search out for my body. When I finally got reception back and called, my Dad actually friggn yelled at me! Hahahah, I had a good lol about it. Anyway, that was my experience with camping in Utah.
9/9/09
Grand Canyon
I woke up early to get the hell out of that campground. I followed signs back to the highway rather than following the directions from google maps. It saved me about 20 miles. Since I saved so much time, I decided to take a little excursion to Canyonlands National Park before I left for the Grand Canyon.
Canyonlands was nice. If I had more time I would have hiked there. It looked like it was really made for hikers or bikers, especially the south section, which is where I was. There were a lot of classic Southwest rock formations that really blew my mind. I hiked a little bit, but then called it quits, since I wanted to make it to the Grand Canyon by sunset. After leaving the park (by the way, driving in national parks is awesome; you get to blast the music with the windows down, speeding around windy turns. So cool), I stopped at a few more places in Utah along the way. They included some small fort, Valley of the Gods (a classic Southwestern rock formation), Monument Valley: basically a bunch of places with great scenary.
However, the Southwest towns are few and far between, which means gas stations are too. I was down to only two gallons by the time I got to the next town. I was unsure if I would make it, so I started coasting more and turned off all the air conditioning and everything superfluous. Luckily I did make it, and stopped for lunch when I crossed into Arizona. I was one of only three Caucasians at the restaurant, everyone else was Navajo Indian.
I finally made it to the Grand Canyon at about 5:00pm. (I only later learned that Arizona is a badass and doesn’t follow the rules when it comes to daylight savings. THEY ACTUALLY DON’T DO IT. Apparently it was on Pacific Time at this point). I saw a lot of different views of the canyon, which is indescribably intense. It goes all the way to the horizon in every direction and includes colors that I’ve never even seen before. It is just plain gorgeous.
I decided to watch it during sunset and then go to dinner. I had some baby back ribs at the restaurant on the rim. These dinners alone are getting pretty pathetic and I really wish Lauren were with me, but what are you going to do. I had actually used them as excuses to talk to random strangers, which is really cool because you get to learn about different parts of the country, and people generally seemed fairly impressed when they heard my story about driving across the country to work on jet engines in California for a few months. Looking back, I really don’t think I would have gotten that aspect of the trip if I had gone with somebody else. At least I’m not paying for it. I then went to the bar for a beer and to listen to the guy singing. He was pretty amazing: he knew every song people requested, and actually sounded a LOT like Bob Dylan when I requested Tambourine Man. I met a bunch of guys from the Royal Air Force who have been in the canyon for the past few days backpacking. And here they were now getting completely wasted, or “pissed,” as they kept saying. We talked about jet engines for a while, and then talked about some quantum physics. What? Yeah, one of the dudes was an avid Hawking reader. Two of the dudes were completely wasted and started a dance marathon to the southern slow-songs the guitarist was playing. They even went up with their own harmonica and started playing with the guy, but were so drunk that the words they were singing weren’t even in the right order. Those guys are crazy. Apparently if guys from the UK are getting drunk near you and you order Jameson, they are instantly your best friends.
9/10/09
Grand Canyon Continued
I got up to see sunrise, but at this point my concept of what the real time was is still messed up, so I went and had some breakfast. Then I hiked the Grand View trail down into the canyon to Horseshoe Mesa: about seven miles round trip. Mind you, this is seven miles including a descent and return ascent of a VERY large height differential. I did the hike in about 4.5 hours. Hiking in the Grand Canyon is weird, because rather than hiking up, resting, and hiking back down, you hike down first, then hike back up once you are already tired and the Sun is at its peak. Yeah, going up was tough. On the way back up, I bumped into another group of people hiking down. They were enamored by the fact that I was already coming back up, because apparently I was the first person to hike down and up already. They asked when I started the hike, and told them about 8:00. They responded with “you mean 40 minutes ago?” I immediately realized that I had jumped time zones again.
I walked around the canyon for a bit more during the day, just completely amazed at how awesome the Grand Canyon was. I went back to my room, only to find an ENORMOUS elk standing outside my door, just hanging out eating some grass. Definitely a pretty wild experience.
Later in the day I met up with Hogan and Jocelyn. We had some dinner (at the only restaurant I’ve been to at this point) and drinks, regaling each other with our tales of adventure in the past few days. Then we called it a night. I had forgotten how good it felt to have a meal with other people, and no longer needing to awkwardly ask for a table for one. Hogan and Jocelyn stayed another day at the Grand Canyon, so the next time I saw them was when we moved into our apartment in Hanford, CA a few days later.
9/11/09
Las Vegas
I had a casual breakfast, paid some bills via my phone (holy crap this phone is a lifesaver) and left the Grand Canyon for Las Vegas. Not much happened along the way, but I stopped at the Hoover Dam and took a tour of the power plant. I realized what a super engineering-nerd I am, because I had a damn good time learning about the power production system. I ended up talking to the tour guide for about an hour afterward about the dam and the new GE turbines they were getting soon. Also, it is HOT in Nevada, can I just throw that out there?
I checked into my hotel, the Circus Circus casino, near the end of the strip. I got some buffet dinner and walked down the strip for a while. I completely underestimated the length of it. I think I re-opened some blisters. Nope; I definitely did. Ouch.
I got back to the hotel and put a $20 in a slot machine. I played with that $20 for an hour and a half: going up, going down, and eventually losing it. Not a very exciting end to a night in Vegas, but I am honestly pretty freaking tired. It’s ok, I had a much more eventful evening in Vegas a few months later when a bunch of the GE guys in California went for Davies’s birthday. That’ll be another story.
9/12/09
California
I got up fairly early to get to the apartment. I knew I would beat Hogan, since he was coming from the Grand Canyon, so I decided to stop at the Mojave Preserve once I crossed into California. It was really boring: there weren’t really trails and it was mostly deserty with some weird trees. Later, I learned these were Joshua Trees, and they look like they come right out of a Dr. Seuss book. I got some Gatorade at a random outpost from a guy who looked like ZZ Top. Then I made like a tree and got the fuck out of there.
On my last 70-mile leg of driving, World Conquest on facebook started up again, so I played on my iPhone. I played while driving 70 mph through California. It was great/dangerous.
I got to the apartment early, so I ate at “Jack-in-the-Box.” Yeah, they actually exist somewhere in this country! I was surprised too. I then checked in (finally meeting with the insane realtor whom we had nicknamed “Desertface”), and found that the apartment is huge and really nice. We each have our own bathroom. After Hogan and Jocelyn got in, we went for a swim (because it was 103 degrees out. YEAH, THAT TEMPERATURE IS REAL AND IT SUCKS ASS), and watched some Futurama. In conclusion, I think we had a pretty spectacular move-in day.
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