Boggleblog

We had a wonderful, wonderful time in Boulder, Colorado. More than ever on this trip, I felt like being at home. In a real home. The cast of this Boulder home: Kristen our hostess, Ryan the boyfriend, Mary the roommate (or actually, housemate), Kristin the neighbour and Macaroni Mary’s little schnauzer-like dog. A typical day, Kristin, Ryan and us would cook dinner and play cards, Mary and Kristin making interesting attempts on baking banana pound cake. As it happened, there were two cakes, since the first one lacked milk, and some other vital ingredients. The whole thing felt very homy.

Boulder is a smallish college town just north of Denver, that we heard well of. Again, it seems that towns that are European in style, are those that Americans themselves like. It doesn’t take a genius to ask the question: why don’t they make more towns like that? Who knows. The streets in Boulder have sidewalks, there are people out walking, there are restaurants, bars and even stores with clothes that seem to be made to fit people. Not only real big people. Colorado people seem to be in better shape than others. I guess it’s because they’re all outdoor freaks, which is reasonable – the nature here is spectacular.

At the hip local mall, we tried to enter a store, but it was closed. We realized it was Sunday, and also that we had been talking about going to church and see what that’s like. Said and done. The First Presbyterian Church is where our GPS took us, and it was good stuff. There was music that was actually good (and not awkwardly cheesy), and speakers that actually had interesting things to say on the topic of the day (which was money – will it control you, ore can you control the money). Now, I don’t believe in the eternal life, so the pun was kind of lost, but everything up to that made sense, and was interesting.

Having been such good Christians, Kristen took us to a microbrewery where her brother happened to work. There is lots of good beer in the states, and the microbreweries is where to find it. It’s weird that the tasteless Bud, Miller and Coors are the only ones that are bestsellers, when there apparently is knowledge all around about how to make real beer. We had some of these real beers and played Boggle until it was time to go home. Never start with too nice a place when going out for a pub-crawl.

There's always room for desert

West Texas was the start of the desert part of our trip. It is strange how this boring landscape can be so beautiful.

We needed to go to a travel agent to arrange some stuff, and we found one in El Paso, just by the Mexican border. In the office was Doris, an elderly American lady, who used to walk over to the Mexican sister town Juarez every Sunday to get her hair cut by her favourite barber and stroll around in what she describes as a colourful and culturally exciting environment. A couple of years ago, she stopped. Mexico had become too dangerous. Maybe it has gotten more dangerous. But it feels like the main reason is that Americans are getting increasingly afraid. And it feels like a shame. In Doris’ defence, it should be said that a relative of hers was kidnapped in Juarez some years back, and was released for the facile ransom of $30000. And that there was a shoot-out in her favourite restaurant there. Things that would scare most people, even iron-lady Doris.

Iron-man Robert and iron-man Anton were not intimidated. (Though we didn’t actually dare take our car over the border.) Our two days in Juarez offered an underground rock concert and a fun Mexican karaoke birthday party that ended in a fight between two of the attending girls. Fortunately, our Spanish was not good enough for us to understand what those girls were shouting to each other. Together with our hosts Sofia and Jover, we discretely left the party. Altogether, Juarez was lots of fun.

Outside Truth or Consequences (yes – that is the name of a town), New Mexico, we needed to stop for gas. Filling the tank, we realized that we also needed food. We had the best piece of meat I’ve ever had. Not many Swedes come to this charming desert town. Jeremy, a local, offered us some drinks, and a soak in natural hot springs. Unable to refuse the proposal, we stayed the night in T or C. They say the town has magical powers that make some people who just happen to pass through stay for good. Which is easy to believe.

There are maybe 5 roads in New Mexico. I’m not kidding. Not having many options, we ended up in Gallup, a dirty hole on the historic Route 66. We felt like staying at one place for a couple of days, but clearly Gallup was not the place. We continued straight through the Navajo Indian land of north-western New Mexico to the slightly larger town of Farmington, where we now look forward to having some peace for a day or two.

Hot, hot, hot

In Austin, we had a house to ourselves. Martin, an old school buddy of ours, let us stay in his house, in which he no longer lives since he moved in with his girlfriend. Now, I have to tell you that sitting out on the shady porch of your house, under a fan, with a cold beer or a glass of bourbon in your hand, is a very pleasant experience. But don’t get me wrong, Austin was no lazy days. I played golf for the first time in my life. I think you can imagine how that went, but it was great fun. We also played pool, bowled and went for a real Texas BBQ. Man, that stuff is good. I think we ate half a cow.

Austin has a big university. So we thought hey, let’s go to some random lecture, to see how those are here in the states. First, we stalked some people with backpacks, who seemed to be in a hurry. That led us to dark hallways, restrooms or in some cases nowhere. So instead, we tried to find the auditoriums. We finally did, and we now know more about accounting and first-order logic. We did not blend in as well as we thought we would. After looking at us nervously for the first ten minutes of the lecture, the logics teacher finally asked us: who are you and what are you doing here? She unwillingly bought our explanation (that there was no particular reason), after a short speech to the class about Virginia Tech.

Our first visit to a national park would be to Big Bend, right on the border to Mexico. It was spectacular. But also hot. So hot, in fact, I thought we might die. 45 degrees Celsius in the shade is a lot. And shade is a rare thing in a desert. Even so, we managed to make a hike in the dusk, and one in the dawn. In one of them, we had a close encounter with a mountain lion. Ok, we didn’t actually see the lion, but hearing it was scary enough for us to pick up some big rocks to use as weapons and hasten away.

As I write this, I’m in a motel room in the middle of nowhere, Texas, enjoying an air-con more than ever before.