Addendum

That pretty place we walked up in Durango was the Animas City Mountain. Now you know.

Allllllllbuquerque!

Cooling my heels in Albuquerque for a bit, trying to manifest a little scratch, spend some quality time with some family of my choosing, maybe cement my future a bit, and also literally cooling my heals (that toenail with the blister under it? Turns out the end of that story is it came off. Left it in Margaret’s shower).  Margaret and her husband Brian, my hosts in this fair city, seem content to let me stay as long as I’m carrying heavy stuff (they’re moving back to OR next month; apparently it’s the cool place to be now that I’m out here), and I’ve got a porch with a view to crash on

three floors up and neighbors who haven't complained about seeing me in my underwear yet. what more could a man want?

so I’m likely to be here through the week while I get some stuff together. In the meantime, bloggees and bloggettes, I thought I’d do a little retrospective work (and satisfy my father, who prefers this over all other forms of communication). Starting off with:

Greyhound: a postmortem (unless I end up back on there, in which case: a midmortem)

Hmm, what to say about our nation’s only transcontinental bus line. It’s a great way to meet poor Americans and middle class Europeans. I think our cousins from across the pond must do their research online and just shop by price before getting here; they rarely seem to understand what’s waiting for them on the other side of a Greyhound month pass. I met  a couple of Austrian kids once, just out of highschool, who had come out the other side of a twenty-four hour Greyhound ride, their first, and it was some real Apocalypse Now shit. And they had another 29 days of that. Never did find out what happened to them, I assume it was all ill-timed acid trips and mirror punching from there out. In all fairness, there should probably be a disclaimer on the Greyhound site warning the euro kids that American buses are not like European buses. I imagine they’re more like European halfway houses with a slightly higher average mph, but don’t quote me on that.

If you ever do find yourself relying on the monochrome canine, dear gentlecreatures, I can assure you that by far the best way to do it is with a pass. Week, two week, month, two month (yes, they offer a two month, and I can only assume that if you survive it you get your name on a plaque somewhere), doesn’t matter. All of the shitastrophes that are the intrinsic hallmarks of a Greyhound trip are much easier to bear when you realize, hey, I’m not paying for this. Or more accurately, I’m not paying any more than the original sunk cost, and if this bus blows a tire or bursts into flames or rolls over (all of which happened on buses somewhere in the country during the week I lived on them), I can just walk onto the next one. Seriously, that’s how passes work; you walk onto whatever bus you want to be on, and just flash your pass in the little plastic envelope/keeper thing they give you, an action which gives a small thrill of celebrity while thoroughly defining the idea of big fish/small pond. I met one couple who’s eight hundred dollar (!!!) trip was riddled with breakdowns, tardiness, incompetence and occasionally outright hostility (station I met them in had a customer to employee ration of roughly, and I’m being dead serious here, 40:1. Maybe worse. All of whom needed to replace their tickets because their bus had broken down. Hence the beauty of the pass). I didn’t have the heart to tell them that, for a quarter of that price, I could do whatever the fuck I wanted as far as Greyhound was concerned for half a fortnight. A twotnight? One week. Whatever. Point is, somebody would have died in that trip if I had been stuck where they were, but with the pass, it didn’t matter, I could float between buses at will. So, you know, if you go Greyhound, pony up for a pass.

The busses themselves were kind of what you’d expect; dirty, loud, smelling of chemical toilet with a constant background chatter of debate over which state prison system has the worst food. Overall, very reminiscent of high school. The stations though can foster a really fascinating ecosystem all of their own. It’s easy sometimes, especially late at night, to forget that you are just in a room in the middle (except for Phoenix) of a city, free to walk outside and go be a person whenever you feel like. I was often tethered to the station by my luggage, finances, schedule or the fact that I was in Utah, but I’m not sure what would hold so many of my travel companions  in the room with me. And many there were; the ecosystem in question would start in earnest once there was a hundred or so of us killing time, united by our common bitterness of circumstance and the particular kind of voluntary limbo we existed in. People would arrange their bags to form a sort of dual furniture stand-in/border delineation, denoting specific camps in the wilderness of the Greyhound plains. Dice games would start up, social cliques would fuse (I’m serious- walking through certain neighborhoods of the Greyhound barrio without the right connections would pull serious mean mugging and occasionally verbal aggression), the whole place would take on the feel of an involuntary summer camp or minimum security prison. I would occasionally walk into one of these situations blind, having opted to spend my layover on the penny slots on Freemont, the 16^th st mall or the happenin’ Albuquerque scene, and would be confronted with blank confusion, a blinking kind of non-comprehension that clearly communicated that these creatures had no grasp of a world outside of the grimy linoleum realm of the bus lines. If they had to stay there any longer, I fully believe that a significant portion of these people would have ended up like the old dude from Shawshank, completely unable to find a place in the outside world.

All that being said, there is a certain laissez-faire, don’t-tread-on-me charm to the Greyhound experience. As I mentioned before, they have a pretty strict set of rules regarding what you can have on the bus, but the enforcement is largely through a don’t-ask-don’t-tell strategy. I once saw a security personnel going through a kind of cursory visual inspection of one line’s carry ons, but never had to deal with that myself. I routinely traveled with at least four items that were expressly forbidden on the bus and easily twice that number in things I wouldn’t be able to get on a plane, and only had a problem that one time I was honest about it. The Greyhound world is one where there are no hard and fast rules, and once you learn the lay of the land you can do pretty much whatever you feel like. So, once again, a bit like high school.

Plus, you know, super cheap.

Thursday, August 18th

So, as I said last time, the next stop was Durango CO, where the living's cheap and the love-seat is always open. I spent a week, Thursday to Wednesday, staying with my sister;

She's the one with less hair and more crazy

Anyway, Durango is a tiny little college town of a little under 17k during the summer, with not a hell of a lot going on in August, which to be honest, I was fine with. The big attraction to this town is the parts that aren't town; that is to say, outdoors activity is what makes Durango worthwhile. And to be honest, it is *very* nice out there.

Pictured: things you can see from within a half mile of my sister's house

To paraphrase a friend of mine, it's like an REI commercial. Sadly, I had truly fucked my feet during the weeks before hand (my right is still not quite back to full strength, even now). Through nearly a month of constant walking, often under the weight of all my crap (I live out of a rucksack now, and while I packed relatively light,  having enough stuff to live indefinitely puts the stress onto "relatively"), not to mention that I didn't always have the facilities to bath/change my socks/take my shoes off for any length over the course of several days, my feet accumulated a goodly amount of damage without any real chance to recover. I had blisters on top of blisters, not to mention a non-insignificant area on both feet that was just straight-up missing skin by the time I hit Durango;

I didn't have the heart to actually expose you to that, so here's some puppies to help wash off that mental image. Or forever associate puppies with disgusting medical issues. Either way.

The upshot of this is that I missed out on most of the outdoorsy stuff, so Durango primarily became a town where the Taco Bell closes by eleven

Seriously guys? Fourthmeal doesn't mean "a quick bite after dinner"

I did manage to get out a couple times, however. On Saturday Miriam, apparently suffering from brief memory loss, actually offered to introduce me to her friends at a Vista (AmeriCorp sub-groub) party out in the woods, which was pretty fun. Me, a handful of other twenty-somethings (and Miriam) sitting around a fire in the backyard of a farmhouse in the middle of nowhere, proving that Pabst is the universal language of the poor. Also, we met these guys; 

His name is Beans

I'm not sure what this one goes by. Mostly "eeeeeeeeeeee" I think

There wasn't really much else going on in town, except the annual county fair which my sister had sworn a blood oath against, something about "goddam Texans can't drive taking all our lanes stupid SUV's something something something bicycles", so we avoided it.

Even if it was oh so shiny

As a result, not much else of interest happened until Wednesday; mostly I just spent my time laying around, visiting the river and convalescing a bit. 

Not that the company wasn't excellent

Our other big day out was Tuesday, when Miriam ditched work to show me around a bit. First we hit up the Ute tribe museum in Ignacio, the town where she works, which had just opened in May. (The museum, not the town)

Photography of any of the exhibits is strictly forbidden, so here's some structural elements that they're less touchy about. It's cool though. You would have liked it.

The museum is pretty nifty, with several exhibits on loan from the Smithsonian. Since Ignacio is right in the middle of reservation land (the town itself used to house the head of Indian Affairs for this half of the tribe), there's a pretty strong community link to the museum; while the sister and I were watching a video about the heritage of the language, two of the Ute tribe members who were in the video actually walked into the room and sat down with us.

After getting my learning on, we drove out to the Vallecito Reservoir, the drinking water for all the local humans, which is also (not to press the point) super pretty;

 Apparently, in the winter it freezes over juuuuussstt enough to trick people into going out there, then kills them. Charmingly rustic

After a quick siesta back at the casa de hermana, we took one last expedition, this time accompanied by the lovely Casey, the sister of my sister's beau, as our native guide, up...some hill thingy. I really should start writing these things down. It was cool.

Top to bottom is a left-right panorama of Durango from the top of Mt. Whereverthehellwewere.

The next day Casey was kind enough to give me a ride to Albuquerque (yes, back to Albuquerque. I never claimed to be a fast learner) to mooch off my sister from another mister Margaret and her nifty husband Brian.

Drink: a slowly diminishing six-pack of Colorado microbrew. Not Oregon beer, but pretty close. Also, some Pabst that one night.

Bed: Loveseat. Yeah, I know.

City. Durango. For the whole week. Strange.

Final thoughts: CO (and Miriam).

This was easily the most time my sister and I have spent together since she moved out of my parents' house thirteen years ago, and I actually really enjoyed myself. Not only did she let me crash in her living room for a week, she also went out of her way to find me things to do, skipping out on work more than occasion (although, in all fairness, that may not have been an entirely self-less gesture). It was really nice to get a feel for her life for once, and I'm definitely coming back soon. In closing, I leave you with a little more photographic evidence of what I've had to contend with for my entire life;

26 years

Southwest Blitzkrieg

8/7 (redux)

My first night in Denver, I spent poking around the downtown, seeing what there was to do. While the downtown looked pretty nifty

I'm starting to get the impression that a lot of downtown areas in American cities look pretty goddamn similar. Also, for some reason this one would occasionally remind me of Inception.

BWAAAAAAAAA

Wandered around for a bit waiting for my hostel to open up for check ins. I had originally planned to avoid paying for housing during this period, but after a few days in the Southwest, it became worth it for the shower privilege alone. Shopping on price brought me to the Denver International Youth Hostel, off of Colfax and Washington. Being cheap for a hostel, the place had...character, but no worse than some apartments I've had.

I don't think that's the "80's intentionally exposed brick" architectural statement, I think it's more the "legally speaking, this building has been abandoned since the 80's" architectural statement

Being in a new city with no plans or connections, I did what is rapidly becoming the usual: found a low-key bar with a good happy hour and made new friends. Amongst these (no pictures, so you'll have to use your imagination) were Andi and Cynthia, the middle aged, marriage averse couple from Atlanta who introduced the bar to pickle shots, (Jamesons with a dill pickle juice chaser, not as bad as it sounds) and Ross, the sensitive grad student. Andi is a federal judge, and gave us all his business card ("get out of jail free card, only good in Atlanta") and Ross caught flack for not wanting to go see his girlfriend after drinking ("it's a show of respect"). So, that was pretty entertaining. Explored Denver's light rail system a bit after that, and went to bed.

shiiiiiinnnyyy

Drink: pickle shots!

Bed: the stained matress of the Denver International Hostel (always a sign of a high-class joint if the only other person checked in is a Brit who's lived there for a year)

City: Diggity-Denver

8/8

So Denver has a a pretty neat strip called the 16th st. mall, a long strip of (you guessed it) 16th street closed to traffic, with free buses running every 5 minutes or so. Here's some pictures!

...okay, I lied. Apparently I didn't bother to document that bit, but it's cool. One of the coolest bits is a bookstore called the Tatterd Cover (props to Ms. Sarah for turning me on to that one);

 Multi-floored, wood paneled, allows you to read books without buying them first=super awesome.

Also, they do things like this.

The strip culminates in the Commons Park, right along the Platte River, which is a really great place to eat your food stamps lunch and read a used Pratchett book

also, the path there has things like this once in a while

Denver: generally quite pleasant, occasionally over run with undead reindeer

In an attempt to stop paying money for shelter, I spent the evening in Longmont thanks to the wonderful hospitality of Andrew and Alicia, married friends of my sister who live in the state. I spent the evening watching those two herd and corral their weapons-grade cute children of 3 and five, who are both obsessed with Batman (hooray) and assaulting my ass with plastic swords (somewhat less hooray). 

Drink: Familial affection

Bed: a 3/4 size recreation of a futon pull-out

City: Longmont. 

8/9 

Woke up just extremely, implausibly, sadistically early (8:30), and went back to Denver to wait for my bus. Luckily, I found this place

I'm starting to see a pattern in the establishments I feel comfortable in

That is the Leela European Cafe on 15th and Champa, the kind of coffee house that has middle aged men drinking bottles of Pabst at 9 in the morning. Also, free wi-fi. So, I spent some quality time there watching (aptly enough) Futurama episodes until I could board my bus for Amarillo Texas. Why Amarillo, you ask? Because it's one night's ride from Denver, and I've never been to Texas. Also, it's in a Johnny Cash song.

Drink: European Coffee. Which is a lot like regular coffee, it turns out

Bed: Greyhound, my one true home

City: The Road

8/10

So the Amarillo Greyhound station is...provincial, lets just say. My phone was dead, so I didn't manage to get much beyond these;

Pictured: Texas

I know this may not come through in a still photo, but that light pole is still swaying from when that bus nailed it on a wide turn and didn't even look back

Anyway, the station itself honestly looked like the bombed out remains of an abandoned warehouse; the walls were crumbled to the point where you could actually see the rebar in more than one spot, there was plastic construction sheeting hung everywhere, the floor was noticeably missing in spots- the Mcdonalds Kiosk approach taken by the good people of St. George represented a more fully realized attempt at the Bus Station ideal. The upshot of this for me was that no, they didn't have any lockers in Amarillo, neither in the station nor apparently in the town, so instead of humping my big-ass ruck sac all over 100-degree small town Texas for 18 hours, I just signed up for the next bus to Durango, where I was headed anyway to see my sister. They had one leaving in an hour, which suited me just fine. What didn't suit me quite as fine was the fact, unmentioned to me until I was getting off the bus in Albuquerque, that there's a lay-over in Albuquerque on that particular route.

A 20-hour layover.

From 5 pm until 1 pm.

Sooooooo, yeah. Okay, fine. Bring it, Albuquerque. Cunning plan: explore the nightlife in happenin' Albuquerque until it died down, crash at the Greyhound station, get on a bus. Sorted. Since the station is actually right on the edge of the downtown strip, I figured this wouldn't be to hard.

This also added to my optimism

So, walked around a little, got a feel for the area, started chatting with a couple folk lounging outside a tattoo parlor who pointed me towards the Launchpad, a local bar with a half-price happy hour and a metal show tonight. Liking all parts of that equation, I headed over that way and acquainted myself with the natives: Casey, the developmentally disabled young woman who was in nursing school and wanted to go to her first loud show, Joe, the 35 year old army vet turned private eye, Ed, the local dirty old man, and Roman, the huge, hairy metal head with the heart of gold. Spent the early evening with this group, thoroughly enjoying myself. 

The show itself was also quite good; the line up was Thrones, Torches and Big Business, who were all new to me. Thrones was one guy on an electric standup bass, which was pretty cool, if a little tedious- his whole set was like the slow parts of a Rasputina album. Torches was good, if nothing super special. Big Business, however, really earned their headlining status; those kids fucking thrashed. Turns out that they're two-thirds of the Melvins, which was no surprise at all after having my face melted off. The drummer was specifically savage, to the point that some of their songs ended up being 5 minutes of the drummer trying to murder the room with sound while the guitar and bass just tried to keep up.

Pictured: Albuquerque being fucking metal

That was, however, that last good thing that ever happened in Albuquerque. I should have known this was coming when the cabs started assembling around one in the morning, but it didn't seem quite as ominous then. The minute the bars closed (2 it turns out), there is a mass exodus from the downtown strip, with a speed and efficiency to rival the fall of Saigon.

Albuquerque, 2:01 am.

Disappointing as this was, I had still had an unexpectedly pleasant night, and had a warm, welcoming Greyhound station waiting to take me into it's loving arms. 

Well, that was the plan, anyway. Turns out that Albuquerque is the only place ever in the history of man to close it's Greyhound station at night. Also, and this is likely more common, Albuquerque hostels don't answer their phones at 2am. Luckily, I had a plan B: Denny's. It was a couple mile's walk, but it's not like I had anything else to do with my time, so I hoofed it down the road, thinking I'd abuse their bottomless coffee privileges for a few hours until the station opened back up. However, in the next development of what I now consider an orchestrated plot against me by the state of New Mexico, the Denny's was "closed for maintenance", leaving me standing in an Albuquerque strip mall at three in the morning, hungry, under caffeinated and relatively uncertain as to what to do with my time. Last ditch option, I decided to go hang out at the local 7-11, where I could at least drink cheap coffee in the parking lot and consider the decisions I had made in life that brought me to this point.

I'm sure you've already figured out where this is going.

Albuqueeeeeerrrrrquuuueeeeeee!

Yes, New Mexico: The Land of Enchantment Until 2am and Then Go Fuck Yourself. I ended up killing that last few hours chatting with a couple of Irishmen and a couple of lesbians I found loitering in the middle Central st. who were also trying to figure out what to do in Albuquerque, until the station opened back up at 5 and I could go sleep on some metal benches.

Drink: Roman and Coke (it's made with Old Crow)

Bed: Greyhound Inn

City: Albuquerque. Fucking Albuquerque.

Currently ensconced at my sister's house in Durango CO, which is not without it's dangers

Oh, family

But is still a marked improvement.

The wheels on the bus

come off sometimes

Wednesday 8/3

Got into Tuscon about nine in the morning after having slept on the bus.  Sidenote: late greyhound rides are great, both because people talk to you less and you don’t have to pay for somewhere to sleep. Also, let’s just say that the less of a greyhound bus you can see, the more pleasant they become. Anyway, checked into the Roadrunner hostel, a small, very low-key place, with room for about 12 people and only about 6 registered guests, which was the perfect contrast to my last housing experience. 

Spent the morning puttering around, showering, blogging, and napping in the sun. In the late afternoon, I left the hostel to find some food and the fabled fourth avenue, apparently the hip center of Tucson’s nightlife. This last bit was much harder than it sounds, both because Tucson has numbers going all four directions with it’s streets, and because fourth avenue has a north fourth and a south fourth, only which of one is interesting. Soooo, took me a bit to figure things out that night. On the bright side, I did find this place:

My natural habitat

It’s an alternative/punk bar called Bison Witches with northwest beer on tap. Fantastic.

After that, it was back to the hostel, where everyone else was out by eleven. Being me, I stayed up until 2 watching Netflix before I went into the men’s dorm, only to find that somebody else had thoughtfully filled all the beds with unconscious people, including the one with my name on it (literally; they give you little name tags there). So I slept on the couch until a staff member came in (no onsite-it really is a super low key atmosphere), and explained my situation. The staff was extremely apologetic, and went right to work on it; turns out someone’s name got written down wrong, or not written, or something stupid like that. Anyway, upside is I got a second night comped, so that works for me.

Drink: Dead Guy! I know!

Bed: Couch, which I paid 20$ for

City: Tucson

Thursday 8/4

Woke up the next morning just in time to catch the end of free make-your-own waffles, which I was very excited about. After having finally, painstakingly worked out the location of the actual fourth avenue, I spent most of the afternoon cruising that, finding a real Mexican place

Pictured: what is best in life

And the local radical coffee house

Patriarchy not allowed

Both of which instantly endeared Tucson to me.  After being fully fed and caffeinated, I took a stroll up to the campus to wander for a bit. I was a little put off at first; being from Eugene, I'm used to Campus being full of beautiful trees and ugly buildings, and the Tucson campus has more of a "middle of the desert" feel to it, and understandably so (it's in the middle of a desert). Still, it is quite nice. Here, see for yourself: 

I had wanted to go see the desert museum, but it turns out they close by four, which was almost the exact time I decided to look up their hours. So, instead I went and saw Captain America.

Take a knee.

Soooo, I was never a huge Cap fan, although I did like the story line during Vietnam where he had an existential crisis and hung up the shield to wander SE Asia (no joke, look it up), but especially since the Marvel Civil War he’s been more on my radar, and as far as I can tell, the character of CA was done extremely well in this film; props especially to Chris Evans for playing him with a level of restraint I didn’t know he was capable as. Also, Hugo Weaving is Red Skull, which is awesome just to hear Elrond do a Nazi accent alone. As a movie, it suffers from a lot of the same problems Marvel house movies seem to these days; that is, they sacrifice a certain concreteness in order to get through the points that they feel are necessary for the audience to understand before the Avengers film in a couple years. The origin story is pretty solid, but the end fight scene feels as airy as Thor or Ironman 2, and the entire second act of the movie is, no joke, a *montage*. They go straight from Cap’s first real mission to the build up for the third act climax, with nothing in between except what looks eerily like a pg-13 version of the original faux  Machete trailer. Sooooo, I dunno, you should probably see it. It is pretty cool over all, it just feels like they went really far out of their way to have it be less than it could.

Right, back. Anyway, after my intrepid adventure on the Tucson bus system, I walked around downtown a bit and went back to the hostel, to a bed this time.

Drink: the American way

Bed: Top bunk!

City: Tucson

Friday 8/5

Got up bright and early (10:30), checked out, walked back to the Greyhound station where I had a week long “discovery pass” waiting for me, basically a nationwide bus pass. Used this to (as detailed earlier) immediately go to Phoenix and spend the day there. I should note that Phoenix is one of the few towns I’ve been to that puts its greyhound station next to its airport. That is to say, not in the city. I needed to find wi-fi to plan my next trip, since greyhound itself lacks this capacity, so I googled the closest café and set off, thinking the mile and change google maps showed me would be no sweat. I was wrong. It was so very much sweat.

I’m an Oregon kid; I tend to view everything over 95 as roughly the same temperature, that being implausibly hot. So, after spending a few days walking around all day in Vegas and Tucson, both of which were over 100 pretty much all day and most of the night, I didn’t think Phoenix would be any different. That is, until I walked about a half mile, and started seriously considering asking a mortuary I was passing for shelter. It turns out that 104 and 113 have some serious differences in practice. But, I needed that wifi, and I wasn’t going to turn back now just because the laws of nature and physics were against me.  Stopped into a circle K for a gallon jug and continued merrily on.

It turns out that what we mean when we say café up here is not what they mean when they say café down there; in Phoenix, it can be anything from a bbq joint to a sushi bar. By the time I got to the second one, I finally just googled “coffee”, which led me to a place that had closed an hour ago. Just north, I did find a real coffee house, at what turned out to have been a distance of nearly three miles from the station and actually just in the downtown. Their wifi was dead. Luckily, I managed to leech some from ASU, and finally complete my task.

By now, I figured I’d just stick around and see Phoenix. The city proper was nice enough, didn’t spend enough time to get a real feel but I enjoyed myself. 

Also, there was this thing. No, I don't know either

I did manage to find a light rail that went straight back down to the station. Took seven minutes, and I didn’t even have to pay fare.

Got back on the bus at 10 that night head towards St. George, the first city in Utah that’s big enough to show up on google maps.

Drink: Water. So much water

Bed: Luxurious Greyhound accomodations

City: er, somewhere between Phoenix and St, George.

Final thoughts: Arizona.

Like I said, Phoenix just kind of seemed like a hot city. However, I really liked Tucson. At a population of 500k, it is genuinely a respectable City city, but it has a much smaller feel to it. Great bar scene, active arts community, and sandwiched between several parks and mountains, I could definitely see myself living there at some point.

Saturday 8/6
So the plan for today was to do what I did in Phoenix, stow my bag at the station and go hang out in St. George for the day. Turns out, however, that the “station” in St. George is a kiosk in McDonalds. So I just got back on the bus. Apparently the only place in Utah with a real Greyhound station, according to the driver, is Salt Lake City, so that's where I went next. Salt Lake City, it turns out, is currently holding some variety of huge Mormon convention, so every hostel bed has been full for weeks, which I find out after lugging my luggage a mile an a half to the hostel. Sooooo, I light-railed my happy ass back to the station (I've really got to start checking those routes first) and got on the bus for Denver, which is apparently where literally every CO route goes through.

Pretty much all I saw of Salt Lake City

That, in retrospect, may have been a mistake.

The bus got there on time, but since Greyhound oversold it, us dregs ended up waiting "a half hour" for a second bus. I put that in quotation marks, because apparently the good people at Greyhound use a different standard of measurement than we do: roughly two hours later, the second bus showed. Alright, not great, but not unexpected. We climb on board, and get under way. 50 miles outside of town, the bus pulls over. Why you may ask? because it is now filled with a mysterious, acrid smoke. Sooooo, we spend another two hours on the side of the interstate, while a replacement bus makes its way to us. Much grumbling is to be heard. The new (comparatively) bus arrives, we clamber on, and make it allllll the way to  Fort Collins, about an hour from Denver, when our driver apparently hits his overtime cap or something and has to be replaced. With a driver who was another hour away. On the bright side, Fort Collins seems pretty nice, and I immediately found a pleasant little coffee shop to kill time at

Literally all I know about Fort Collins

Drink: bitter, unadulterated frustration

Bed: a rotation of Greyhound seats on multiple buses

City: hell, take your pick

Sunday 8/7

I am currently sitting in a Starbucks in Denver, because the 4 independent cafes I checked earlier were all closed ( I suspect foul play), deciding where to go next based on what city has an available hostels. Also, my laptop charging cord is dead now, so I may be off the map for a bit. I've got to find a radioshack or something to get a new one. Hope they're not expensive!