Sod House Museum

The Sod House Museum was closed.
But I am an asshole.
So I walked on some crackling hay over a mucky marsh to get onto the property.

The sod house looked like a house with a sod roof.
Cool.


Sod house security consisted of a barb wire buffalo, and a barbed wire Native American on horseback.
Upon closer inspection, the tribesman's cigarette of choice was a Marlboro menthol.
He Who Smoke Mint.




Why do you insist on making these racist type of jokes?
Because I'm alone.

Pony Express Station

For seven years I worked as a bike messenger.
So I feel a connection to the Pony Express.
The pay was about the same.

I stopped in at an original Pony Express station in Gothenburg, Nebraska.
Well, sorta original.
It had been moved a few times.


It was a small wooden cabin.
They probably did a lot of sorting.
And then they were off.

I guess it would be like visiting "the base" at my messenger company.
It's just a room where the dispatcher yelled.
The stories all happened outside of the office.
Which is the allure of that kind of work.


But if you want to visit it, it's at 449 N Union in Chicago.
Only it's not there anymore.
They moved.

Fort Cody Trading Post

I took a break at the Fort Cody Trading Post.
North Platte's big log frontier fauxtress.
A towering Buffalo Bill guarded the parking lot.
Making sure varmints didn't shoplift.
If you did, you got a hot arrow in your butt.

The trading post was a giant gift shop.
Fair enough.
I couldn't find anything to waste money on.
I considered getting some kooky candy.
I forget what.
Horse flavored gum or something.
But all the candy was under glass.
I'm not going to ask someone for assistance in purchasing a pack of gum.
That would be trading my dignity.
No way, Buffalo Bill.
Up yours!

Just then the Buffalo Bill Miniature Wild West Show began.
A tiny replica of his 1877 touring cavalcade of lasso prowess, buck riding, and trick shot showmanship.  Positively goofy!

I walked out of there with a few chuckles without spending a dime.

Ole's Big Game Steakhouse

In Paxton, Nebraska there's a steakhouse filled with all kinds of game.

Big game.

Everywhere you look, a once living animal meets your gaze.

The room is dark.

The beer is cold.

And the steak is all Nebraska.

For decades, Ole Herstedt went crazy traveling the continents, killing every animal he saw.  Bears, giraffes, elephants, zebras, emus, tigers, gazelles, pythons, iguanas, he didn't care!

Ole is the reason the unicorn is extinct.

Then he displayed their severed heads on the walls of his exclusive outdoorsman's bar.

A grumpy man's lounge.

Full of scars and farts.

And occasionally Robert Duvall.

Then in the (and his) late 80's, Ole closed shop.

They were going to ship all the animals to South Carolina until a religious twentysomething stepped in, cleaned it up, and reopened it as a family restaurant.

Now everyone is welcome to eat under the head of a buffalo.

Or by the cute little ears of a dik-dik.

Grandpa can play keno by the elk antlers.

And your troubled cousin can snort blow off a leopard's tits.

Lunch at Ole's was invigorating.

I wolfed down a quality steak sandwich in a living diorama of frozen death.

Biting into the tender 6oz sirloin, I felt the rush of adrenaline that hunters get when killing a large animal.

I felt like a man.

What was your side dish?

My, my what?

Your side dish.  What was it?

It was um... What was my side dish?

It looks like cottage cheese.

Cottage cheese?

Isn't cottage cheese kind of a sissy thing to eat at a big hunter's steakhouse?

No!!  Besides.  That wasn't even cottage cheese.

Then what was it?

It was the sperm of a mongoose.

What?

Yeah.  You heard me.  Mongoose sperm!

So you had cum as a side dish?

From a mongoose!

It makes you a better hunter.

Good Riddance, Colorado

Well, Colorado.
I guess we had a bad date.
I'm aware that many people find you attractive.
And yeah, on the outside, you're very pretty.
But you're an asshole.


You think you're in the WWE.
And that the WWE is real.
Reality TV taught you that dramatic white trash behavior was acceptable.
So you rev your motorcycle and buy your guns and intimidate decent folk with how shaved, tattooed and full of meth your head is.
You're stupid.


Also, you chose drug dependency as your disease.
I don't feel sorry for you and you aren't entitled to my dollar.
You wasted your privileged upbringing for nothing.
You're pointless.


And spandex bicycle shorts still look terrible.
You take cycling too seriously.
You're boring.


And yeah, I'm an asshole, too.
For reasons that I'm well aware of.
But we're just different types of assholes.


Sorry it didn't work out.
On the way out of you, I'm going to listen to a breakdancing compilation I made.
And breakdance all the way to Nebraska.

1. Grandmaster Flash - The Message
2. Herbie Hancock - Rockit
3. The Adventures of Grandmaster Flash On The Wheels Of Steel
4. Twilight 22 - Electric Kingdom
5. Freeez - Pop Goes My Love
6. Newcleus - Jam On It
7. Double Vision - Clock On The Wall
8. Whodini - Magic's Wand
9. GLOBE and Whiz Kid - Play That Beat Mr DJ
10. Grandmaster Melle Mel & The Furious Five - Step Off
11. UTFO - Roxanne, Roxanne
12. Alex & The City Crew - Boogie Head
13. Alex & The City Crew - Shake Your Arm Down Up & Down With The Boogie Speed
14. Alex & The City Crew - Let Electro Beat Make Your Body Move
15. Alex & The City Crew - Space Walk Action

Big Mama's Burritos

For breakfast I had a hankering for a burrito made in a fake stationary stagecoach.
So I went to Big Mama's Burritos in Wheat Ridge.

For a little over $3 I enjoyed a delicious egg, potato and ham burrito and endured a cup of non-dairy creamer quality coffee.
The burrito packed a subtle spice.  
More a nudge than a Bronco buck.
It hit the spot.


In the shade of a Big Mama's umbrella, I watched a roughneck in a bandana outside a gun store, where he stood arms crossed, waiting for it to open.
It was 9:45am.

The seconds counted down like spent shell casings.
Soon he would be legally able to get his hands on some guns.
His boot tapped impatiently next to his giant motorcycle.
One less Prius.
And counting.

One Less Prius

I saw a sticker on a four-door Suburu.
ONE LESS PRIUS
Hmm.
The message wasn't clear to me.
Did this driver hate the Prius because its drivers have a reputation for being pretentious?
Was this driver a tea party supporter?
Or did she just hate the concept of a car that gets good gas mileage?
I couldn't figure it out.

It seems this sticker has been around for a couple of years.
It was created by a cyclist in LA who got tired of Prius drivers being douchebags.
He believed that just buying a Prius is not enough, and the environment, and "I risk my life every day on my bike", zzzzz, etc.


So it's a pro-biking sticker.
On a Suburu with no bikes.
And no bike rack.
M'kay.
I heard that when you buy this sticker it comes with another one that says ONE MORE ASSHOLE.

Lookout! Mountain!

Lookout Mountain.
That's where I spent Saturday morning.
The twisty trek was dense with cyclists.
The power bar spandex types.
Having once been a professional cyclist myself (thank you yes), I gave them the space they deserved.

At the top of the mountain lied Buffalo Bill's grave.
Not far from the Buffalo Bill Museum & Gift Shoppe.
Museum and gift shop?
Didn't Buffalo Bill murder a bunch of innocent people?
I'm pretty sure he killed the Brady Bunch during that old time train robbery dream sequence.
What's next, the Richard Speck Hall of Fame?
Thank you, thank you very much!
You're thinking of Jesse James.  William "Buffalo Bill" Cody was a decorated soldier, world renown for his skills as a bison hunter, and later as a showman.  He is a respected figure in American history and was never considered an outlaw or a murderer.
Oh.
I guess I'll buy some gift shop crap then.


The gift shop's false comforts and touristy tchotchkes made me feel like I was really seeing America again.  I bought a boot magnet for the fridge, some Annie Oakley postcards, a sheriff badge with my fiancé's name on it, and a fake brothel token.  Now that's Colorado!

Nonsense aside, Lookout Mountain proved mighty and wonderful and breathtaking and refreshingly not Chicago.

Denver Disconnect

I got up early.

I knew Colorado had to be better than this.

I probably just saw its unwiped butt.

An elderly couple surprised me in the motel lobby.

They wore Leave It To Beaver clothes and sipped instant coffee.

Was I still in Denver?

"Don't go camping," the wife said, reading the paper.  "There's bears that are going after teenagers."

That was a hilarious sentence.

"Teenagers!" I repeated, underlining the word that made that sentence funny.  The concept of a bear that only eats teenagers hasn't really been tapped.

"You know, young people," she clarified for me.

Oh, Denver.

We just weren't connecting.

It made sense though about those bears.

They probably got tired of teenagers begging for money at gas stations.

Mountain View Inn

I decided to get the hell out of Lakewood, Colorado and Colfax Avenue, and settled on nearby Golden, Colorado.
Home of Coors, my favorite right wing swill.


The clerk at The Mountain View Inn was a surly roughneck.
I asked him what there was to do around here.
He mentioned the mall, the Coors brewery, Red Rocks, some dinosaur tracks...
He mentioned the mall again.


I paid from the pouch and asked for a receipt.
He wrote the information by hand on the rind of a cashier's ticket.
It turns out the Mountain View Inn is on Colfax Avenue.
In Lakewood, Colorado.
Can't win in this state.


I decided that I deserved a beer.
Something to watch the distant lightning storm with.
This particular section of Colfax Avenue had very little to offer.
There was a Sinclair.
And a mile down there was a roadhouse.
I cautiously parked by the roadhouse.
In the parking lot, shrill women taunted men from inside cars.
Men stood by their hogs, whispering incoherent gossip.
Bandanas were popular.
Over-produced new country muffled from the upstairs bar.
I started up the gross carpeted stairs, but the music and the hee haws frightened me.
A beer in that environment would be too stressful to be relaxing.
I made an about face and asked a younger dirtbag a question.
"Can I get a six pack here?"
He discussed this with an older roughneck.
It seemed I could not.
The older roughneck groped sloppily at me.
"What do you need?  A beer? A shot?"
His slur was moist.
I wriggled out from his paws and bought a 22 ounce can of Busch from the Sinclair, where a stinky hippie stocked the shelves.

I watched the lightning storm from the shared balcony of the Mountain View Inn.
2nd shift migrant workers hopped out of their pick up truck carpools and into their rooms.
Old guys on bikes ran midnight errands.
A cocaine freak in a sports car pulled up and asked me a flurry of questions.
"What part of Denver is this?  There's a casino over here, right?  How much for a room?"
He wiped his forehead with the tail of his club shirt.
"I don't know, man.  I don't live here."


I drank my horrible beer and wrote about horrible Colorado.