 | USA - SEPTEMBER 2002 |
| USA - SEPTEMBER 2002 |
CRESTED BUTTE
At the crossroads a short distance behind me, I had made the decision not to take the long way round via Hotchkiss up to Carbondale on the easy road. Instead I turned right into Gunnison, and then left at the lights, and up the 135 to Crested Butte with the aim of going over the top via the Schofield Pass.
Now the image in the photograph here represents the kind of thing we did when we were kids - to ride the motorsickle without a helmet. But then of course we grew up! However it can be said that the reason why this guy isn't wearing a helmet is because if he fell off and scraped his skull all down the highway, he'd still have as many brain cells afterwards as he had before. I saw a lot (maybe the majority) of bikers in the States riding without helmets. Shudder!
In all honesty I'm notorious for not wearing my seatbelt in a moving vehicle as it restricts me too much and I suffer from claustrophobia anyway. Just try getting me in a submarine. But as you saw in an earlier photograph, even I was wearing my seatbelt in the Mustang. I don't think that today even I would ride my motorcycle (yes, it may only be a CZ 125 but it's still a motorcycle) around these days without a helmet.
At the end of the road, I arrived in Crested Butte. In this photograph, you can see the town all nicely spread out in the bottom of the valley.
It looked like a nice touristy type of town with the usual motels and hotels. The kind of place that would be popular with summer walkers, and winter skiers, I imagined. Not my kind of place at all.
The road I was looking for was over the Schofield Pass to Carbondale. Somewhere up there in the hills in this photograph.
However I reckoned without the usual bane of my life in the USA, the lack of signposts. Seeing another motorist coming down the road that I thought was the correct one, I asked him.
"Well, er, yes" he said, hesitatingly, looking nervously at the Muzzy. "but you're not thinking of going over it in that!"
"Well, I am" I replied. "Why ever not?"
"Well, I don't go over it in my Explorer" he replied "it's an awful road"
"I'm sure it can't be worse than any other I've been over recently" and I told him about the Moffat Road and the Stunner Pass, to name but a couple. If you saw the story of my drive up the Moffat Road, you'll see that I passed several Ford Exploders with no difficulty at all, and I was in a Pontiac Sunfire.
He visibly blanched, and said "seriously, I really advise you. Don't go up here. In that" he indicated the Mustang "you'd be best going down to Gunnison and all the way round"
Yes - like I was really going to do that.
"Bugger off" I retorted. "I've just driven all the way up from Gunnison and I'm flaming well not going all the way back!"
"Well, if you're serious and you're very careful, you can go back into Crested Butte and try the Kebler Pass, but rather you than me"
.
But it was getting late and it would be dark very shortly, plus the fact that I was starting to feel really tired. Remember, I'd recently been quite ill and I wasn't up to going for another fight over the rocks , especially in the dark. In any case, you shouldn't ask the locals if you don't want to take their advice.
And he sounded so serious too.
Consequently I descended the hill back into Crested Butte.
At least it would give me a good opportunity to have a quick look around on my way out to the Kebler Pass, and see if there was anything exciting or interesting to report. After all, you never know your luck.
Well, exactly. Talking of exciting and unusual things, have a look at this bench seat in this photo. This is exciting and unusual to be going on with, isn't it?
I know what it is, but I wonder what it used to be. Cadillac, anyone? American cars aren't my strongpoint. E- me if you know. I like to interact with my audience.
THE KEBLER PASS
So here we are, then, the Kebler Pass. All 10,007 feet of it. And what we are bout to see is the road that I was advised not to take by one of the natives. And he in a Ford Exploder too.
Ptah! The more I hear about dangerous, rough roads, the more I start to worry about Americans. It surely can't be anything to do with the tyres the fact that Ford Exploders keep falling over. It must be the way these Americans drive them.
You know, this road was as smooth as a billiard table.
In fact there was only one rut in the whole 30 mile-or-so length of this road. Needless to say that yours truly, lulled into an extremely false sense of security and quietly singing along to the music on the CD player as he is wont to do, was so distracted that he drove straight into it!
That settles it! I'm definitely going back here and driving the Schofield Pass next time, come what may!
But by now the light had gone completely. I've really had to digitally enhance these two photographs here so that you can see anything at all.
In fact, it's this sort of image and this sort of circumstance that made me go out a couple of years later and buy for myself a digital SLR - a Pentax K100D
You can tell however that by now I was heading down the mountain pass and out towards Highway 133, which was going to take me northwards to Carbondale.
Now I know why they call this road a "pass". Well, it is because I was in such a hurry that I passed every car I came up behind. And in that respect the McClure Pass on Highway 133 lived up to its name too.
You can tell that it's the last night of my journey too. By this time I'd really got the hang of drifting the Mustang into and out of bends with the power on and I was having a great time going downhill towards Carbondale. I previously thought that the phrase about people being "at one" with a machine was a pile of pretentious rubbish, but after the drive over the Slumgullion Pass and the McClure Pass in the Mustang, I now know exactly what they mean.
CARBONDALE
Strangely enough, there wasn't a great deal of choice for motel in Carbondale - I could only find a couple, none of which looked particularly enterprising.
I was against the idea of yet another night in a chain motel, so I had a really pleasant night at the Thunder River Motel, just in front of the Red Rock.
I can't remember how much I paid now and it was probably a bit out of my price range but I remember that I was quite impressed with the value I received.
Another thing that quite impressed me was the view that I had from the motel car park.
The mountains were absolutely stunning, if not breathtaking. This particular one is Mount Sopris - all 14,000-odd feet of it. And there was snow on it too. I'm not sure how high I am up here, but I bet it's higher than Denver.
This here below on the left is the centre of Carbondale. Actually, it's more of an off-centre as it isn't on the main road. To reach it, you have to turn off the main road and go down a side street.
It looks really quiet and peaceful here. A typical small-town rural America touch. But I bet in the holiday season, whether winter or summer, it isn't so peaceful.
I stopped at the local hardware and hunting shop over the road from the motel to have a quick look around at the stuff that might be on offer in a local rural store-type of setting. Whilst I was there someone came over to pay me a visit and to say hello. Isn't he cute?
He was huge and had such long hair, but that was all matted and needed a good grooming. It's a pity that there was no room in my suitcase, poor thing, otherwise he'd have been on the plane to Europe with me the very same afternoon.
This is the bar/restaurant where I ate the previous evening. It was well worth visiting. The ambience was nice, the service was good, and my cheeseless pizza was excellent. Definitely 10 out of 10.
I also met Lydia again in here, a girl I'd met on the biodiesel course the other week at Guidestone more than 200 miles away. What a small world, hey?
THE SOLAR ENERGY INSTITUTE
The Solar Energy Institute was the reason why I came to Carbondale.
Here I met some more nice people, had an interesting chat, talked about solar photovoltaic panels, filled in a membership form, and picked up some interesting leaflets and brochures. I'm also trying to raise my profile in the field of renewable energy, what with the farm and so on, so making myself knwon here won't do me any harm. It's hard to do all this in Europe, because over there, I'm completely on my own.
As an aside, even four years after this visit, in 2006, some "friends" of mine on a Land Rover newsgroup in Europe were still calling me an idiot because of my beliefs - and the price of oil has almost quadrupled in that time period. I'm sure these people can't be as blind as they appear to be.
Here's some more anti-war literature and publicity. This is despite the contemporary American and British press spreading around all kinds of stories to the effect that everyone in the USA is in favour of the War to Steal Iraq's Oil and that there's absolutely no opposition at all!
Yes, the press can't half disseminate some total garbage at times. I mean, if you're not careful you might actually start to believe them.
GLENWOOD SPRINGS
So before I took the car back, there remained one important thing to do after all of my exertions through the deserts and over the mountains.
I had this funny feeling that Hertz wouldn't be too happy with me if I took the Mustang back in this sort of condition. Luckily at Glenwood Springs I found what I was looking for.
Never mind a vacuum cleaner. I really needed a spade, but they didn't have one here unfortunately. This meant that I had to shovel all of the sand out by hand.
These are one of the "before" shots.
And this is one of the "after" shots. It's still not too clean as you can see, but certainly an improvement on whatever had gone on before. Tons of traildust had now gone back to join the nearby watercourse.
But it was a shame really. This really marked the symbolic end of the journey, I suppose. I had become quite attached to the Mustang now and was really sorry to take it back.
Something else I saw at Glenwood Springs was this. It was quite a strange sight to see, too. And not because I'd never seen a pickup bed trailer before. I've seen hundreds of them in Europe, mostly made out of old Renaults, Peugeots and Citroens.
What caught my eye was the quality (or, rather, the lack thereof) of work to convert it. It was dreadful. I mean, look at the photo to see what passes as the ... er ... parking brake.
However, closer inspection revealed that it had what seemed to be a VIN plate, so some official was happy. Who am I to complain?
The front of the chassis legs had been snipped and bent to meet up in the middle, and some kind of proprietary thing with a towing hitch built in that you would buy from the shops had been welded over the join. It seems like it's a common - enough conversion, if all the bits to do it are available to be bought in a shop.
BACK TO DENVER
So over there in those mountains is Vail, one of the leading ski resorts in Colorado. It was round about this time that I'd worked out that I had 3 hours to flight check-in, and 164 miles to drive and a hire car to check in. Ordinarily I might have been tempted with a quick peek but not today.
A bit farther on is the Eisenhower Memorial Tunnel - a good few miles long, and it was only when I entered it and everything went dark that I realised that the fuel warning light was on! So next exit, there were a couple of men repairing a ski lift so I asked them about the next service station.
"Oh, about 20 miles further on in Lawson"
"Gulp"
"Oh you'll have no problems - I've coasted down there from here in a car which had no engine"
I quite enjoyed that comment. It summed up the USA for me. Crazy people doing crazy things. Just imagine trying to do that in Europe? The Thought Police and the Political Correctness Brigade would fall upon me like a ton of bricks, as they have so often done in the past. It's little things like this that make me love the USA and love Americans.
Well if they can do it, so can I. So I made my way back to the Interstate, built up some momentum, and switched the engine off. Sure enough, by the time I'd arrived at the Lawson exit, with a petrol station just over the road, I was doing about 85mph and I'd passed everything else that was moving. That was some steep drop.
But one thing I'd forgotten, which I suddenly realised when I came to a bend in the road. No engine = no power steering, and the viscosity of the oil in the steering pump puts quite a drag on the steering. It was a good job that I was used to driving trucks and old vans, because I didn't half have to maul that wheel round.
You know, you just can't believe some of the things you find on sale in the shops over here. Don't you think this sums up a lot of the USA? PI$$ in a bottle?
I actually asked the sales assistant in the shop if she sold anything that I could use that would be as guaranteed to attract female women, but she told me to PI$$ off - at least that was what her sickly smile indicated.
I suppose that was that, really. I could't do much else otherwise I'd miss my plane. It was time to make for the airport to return to boring old Europe.
But seriously, I'd met some really nice people too over here in the States, and it's quite reassured me. I had a great deal of fun. It's real pity that all Americans can't be like you.
Now you need to go back to the front page to read the end. Rather logical, that, isn't it?
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