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:
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
And the local radical coffee house
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.
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!
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