The Three Thousand Mile Entry

Photos

Moab, UT
Arches National Park was filled to the gunwales with stone arches and other ridiculous formations, from the 3 footers to the exquisite 100m Landscape Arch, a few miles up the Devil's Garden trail. Utterly jaw-dropping (our chins are bruised from repeated impacts with the floor) scenery that words can not really do justice. Go and buy a plane ticket immediately, or if you live in the real world have a gander at the photos. Or watch a Wyle E. Coyote and Roadrunner cartoon. 


Moab itself seems to be composed more or less entirely of outdoor outfitters - everything from rafting on the Colorado river to 4x4 tours. We didn't stay long enough to say whether living there would be desirable or not, but as a staging ground for outdoor adventures and visits to Arches it was perfect.


That evening, after a failed attempt to get in touch with a local couchsurfer and a successful attempt at "stirfry on bread" (you would be surprised at what you can do with "taco cheese"), we went to the Moab Brewery, a sterling establishment that served a dizzying variety of in-house brews. We got talking to a bunch of people heading to the Burning Man festival in Nevada, and their wide-eyed reverent description of it made us curse our opposite direction and lack of crippling breakdowns in Nevada. One of them also turned out to have gone to the same school as Joe (although at a different time) and they bonded merrily over mutually despised teachers. 


Boulder, CO
The journey to Boulder took us from the plains and fluted buttresses of Utah up into the green mountains of Colorado, crossing over the Colorado Rockies. Climbing the range The Steed became more and more breathless, forcing us to ease back into a canter and we became more and more light headed, laughing at our own humourous prowess, bellowing nonsense chinese phrases at each other. We arrived in Boulder fairly late in the evening and met with a couchsurfer called Nico, a superchilled student of oriental medicine. We walked from his house into downtown Boulder, along an off-the-road walkway through green parks, suburbia and a chortling creek, occasionally having to step briskly out of the way as unlit cyclists hurtled down the path like bats fired from a cannon. Nico took us to the Mountain Sun Brewery (another microbrewery) where we ate killer burgers and drank more outstanding beer (brews such as the Jamaican Ginger!). The legend that American beer is "****ing close to water" could not be further from the truth, unless one is referring to Bud' or Coors. Frankly, the UK could learn a lot from the microbrewery culture. We're thinking of starting one. After the Mountain Sun we went to some dive bar where we drank $1 cans and got soundly threshed at pool by Nico until the early hours.


As we pioneered our way home, Joe's toe was intercepted by an object that proved to be a broken laptop, lying disconsolately by a "trash-can". Following some drunken antics with the laptop and nearby industrial sprinklers we set to looting and pillaging. Mark jacked 2 GB of RAM and a DVD-RW drive. Joe made off clutching two pieces of useless twisted metal, finding beauty in their form. Mark considered the night a win.


Groaning out of our sleeping bags (like toothpaste squeezed from a tube) we heroically propped ourselves into chairs in Nico's spartan apartment and allowed him to cure our befuddled heads with a mix of beetroot, kale and carrot juice that tasted of the earth. Deciding it was a coffee morning (any morning that is not a coffee morning is not a morning we should care to meet) we headed to The Cup, cousin to Stumptown Coffee in its apple-using clientele. It may have been Nico's horizontally laidback attitude, the excellent coffee, the beaming sunshine or titillating conversation that did it (or maybe the fat doob), but this was one of the most relaxing mornings we had ever spent. For 2 hours we sat outside, supped our brews, read our books and exchanged opinions on the world, even learning a little about nutritional medicine. Nico took off in the early afternoon to attend a seminar and left us to fend for ourselves. Eventually (fearing our constituent atoms would float apart under the relentless relaxation) we shifted and went to Illegal Pete's Burritos. In the afternoon we drove out of town a little ways to the State parks surrounding Flagstaff Mountain, where Joe indulged in a little bouldering (what better to do in Boulder?) and Mark had his world views widened by a book written by a dope-smoking biochemist. The air was so clear that sound played tricks on us; thinking people were just round the corner we eventually spotted them standing on the next mountain over. As we finished up and headed back to the car, 3 fearsome fawns took an interest in us and stalked us menacingly back to the car, walking parallel perhaps 10 metres away, flapping their ears in herbivorous malevolence. That evening we cooked a bomber curry for Nico and his friend by way of thanks and went carefully to sleep on our backs, lest we rupture our stomachs or blast vegetable madras out of every available orifice like shattered fire hydrants. All in all, Boulder was another place we would happily live. Full of people with new age hippy ideas, independent food&drink, dominant cyclists, happy university students with an expanding university, excellent rock climbing minutes out of town AND less than an hour from Denver airport, why would you not want to live here?


Lawrence, KS
As usual we awoke later than we should have and faffed about a lot before we finally got on the road. The night before Joe blithely spoke of "easily crushing the 300 miles to Lawrence, lets lie in" and only in the early afternoon did he realise he meant 550 miles. Some hasty in-flight rearrangements were made with our next couchsurfer, telling her we were "speeding as much as possible, don't worry". We crossed the Kansas border fairly quickly (accelerator foot buried somewhere in the engine bay), and much to Joe's surprise and disappointment, it was indeed the featureless cornfields that everyone warned him of, apart from Clark Kent running alongside the interstate on his way to school. Occasionally there was a signpost to "Scenic Point" but unless we missed something they were pointing to the odd shrub that stood proud in the goldengreen fields. At around 300 miles in we were succumbing to "Kansas Madness" and our conversation dried up to talk idly about thought experiments and tunelessly sing Journey. Fortunately we were saved by a cracking sunset and ferocious lightning storm that followed us for about 60 miles, bolts crackling and screaming against the windows in bursts of 3-4 a second, as the wipers clawed out visibility against the grey rain that hid the road amid the oceans of corn. 


A little further and a police cruiser flashed its lights behind us. "It's probably some other guy, like last time" we said to each other. Another moment and we realised that no, they wanted us. We pulled over at exit that appeared and awaited our fate, the blinding lights/tractor beams of the cruiser angled perfectly into the mirrors for maximum intimidation. It is amazing what stuff pops into your head when in trouble with the police. Most of your brain is thinking "oh dear. Oh dear", but a small and significant part is thinking "what is the worst thing I can say or do here?".


Officer Terror walked over and asked us for our license and registration documents, just like in the films! "Good evening, Ossifer". We gathered together the appropriate materials and handed them over. He told us he had clocked us at 81mph. "Is that all?". We mostly stayed quiet and didn't try to make excuses or argue. This strategy was going well until he spied the 18 empty beer bottles and cans innocently littering the back seats, which instantly raised the suspicion level a few notches. Apparently it's illegal. We were questioned about drugs and the driver received a drunkeness test, followed by a request to step out of the vehicle, sir. "You'll never take me alive!", followed by urge to run into the fields. He asked whether the driver was carrying weapons. "Only my wit". Then the same happened to the passenger, who was also patted down facing the vehicle with arms on the roof. *Grabs camera to take photos of arrest to put on blog*. Officer Terror then asked if we were carrying any other contraband ("contraband?" we squeaked) and searched the vehicle, finally allowing us to get back in. He let us off with a warning, a smile and a change of underwear, professing he didn't want to use up our money for our trip and he couldn't be bothered to take us the 13 miles to the post office (why the post office we have no idea). We turned up in Lawrence at 2345 and met Becky the couchsurfer, who stayed up and drank beers with us, bless her, as we sheepishly admitted we had been busted for the speeding we had boasted of earlier.


The Future
The next day we set out to explore Lawrence, the centre of the USA.


Disclaimer
By speeding we mean galloping up to 80mph in a 70mph limit, nothing crazy. Relax, mothers.