The Philosophunculist Travelogue, Part Five: COLORADO

Colorado is a weird place.

Jeopardy doesn’t start until six. Conan starts early at nine. The Subway we went to didn’t have any five-dollar footlongs. Before we left on the trip, people kept telling us to check out some English pub called The Pot And Weed, or was it the Weed In The Pot? Anyways, we Googled it, and never found the place. It must be uber-local.

And also, marijuana is legal there. I went after the beer, though. Got to taste a Fat Tire 23 minutes off the line, as well as about 75 other Colorado beers I’d never had before.

The most bizarre feature, though, were these extremely large hills, mostly made of rock, that we had to drive over to get to our lodge. Some of them are covered in snow, which is kind of a buzzkill in July. But once you stare at them for awhile, these large, inconvenient lumps start to look pretty neat. I like them now.

We toured the Stanley Hotel, where they shot Dumb and Dumber.

We did all kinds of stuff.

It was a good trip. I won’t bore you with all the awesome and exciting details.

This is a photograph of Rocky Mountain National Park.

The Philosophunculist Travelogue, Part Four: Wyoming

After driving through Nebraska, you’ve had about enough. Then you find out that southeast Wyoming is the same as Nebraska.

Except that you can finally see mountains in the distance. So Wyoming had that going for it.

It is shaped like a square, just like Colorado. Or is a rectangle? All squares are rectangles, but not all rectangles are squares, or vice versa. You know what I mean. This state does not have any weird squiggly lines for borders. Just four clean right angles. Yeah, that’s the stuff.

That’s why it was so easy for me to make this map:

You can see the part of the map where none of the action is, denoted by the text ‘This is where none of the action is,’ right? That’s where we passed through.

The Philosophunculist Travelogue, Part Three: Nebraska

‘Marooned’ by Howard Pyle

Along I-80 somewhere in Nebraska, you will enter a zone where your car radio picks up only four stations: country, country, religious talk radio, and country. To free your mind from this insanity, you pull into a gas station. In the bathroom you find a half-naked trucker, his back blanketed with a botched snake tattoo, taking a bath in the sink.

All you have left then is the road. It’s cruel, really.

Even pirates were kind enough to leave the marooned with a loaded pistol; Nebraska leaves you with 400 miles of……Nebraska.

Oh yeah, Nebraska has Chimney Rock. We added two hours to the trip to see this monument because hey, it didn’t seem too far out of the way, and it’s in the game Oregon Trail.

This can be said of the stone erection: It’s worth driving by, if you live within sight of it. Cool to see, yes. Worth a detour on an overnight road trip? Nah. But we can say we saw it. Someone, somewhere, at some point will be impressed by that, maybe.

After Chimney Rock, there were some bluffs and semi-interesting geological features, for about ten minutes. And a fox. We saw a fox. Then, back to I-80, and on into southeast Wyoming……..

The Philosophunculist Travelogue, Part Two: Iowa

It was dark both times we drove through Iowa, therefore we did not see much. We smelled a lot, though. Cow dung is the name of the game in Iowa.

However, the return trip up Interstate 35 is fun. Every exit sign names two towns, and each combination sounds like the name of some old-money kid at a Massachusetts private school:

-Roland McCallsburg

-Clarion Hampton

-Sheffield Belmond

-Rockwell Swaledale

-Jewell Eldora

-Stanhope Randall

-Huxley Maxwell

-Norwalk Cumming

And there was one that said Manly Forest City, a place I reckon is not for out-of-towners.

Somebody documented all these on okroads.com, which is where I stole the pictures from.

Exciting, exciting stuff.

The Philosophunculist Travelogue, Part One: Minnesota

Rudy Maxa. Rick Steves. These are the big boys of travel. The alpha males. The heavy hitters.

What a terrible series of opening lines.

The saga begins in Minnesota on 19 July, 2015 at 10:13pm, and ends in Minnesota on 26 July, 2015, at 2:54am. I’m driving in a car with a person whose real name is Cassandra Moistnoggin, formerly known as Cassandra Morningfart, en route to something called Colorado. To get there, we will have to drive south to Iowa, turn west at Des Moines, carry on through Nebraska, cut across a corner of Wyoming, then finally head south from Cheyenne to arrive at our destination, where we will stay for awhile, then turn around and come back.

Why would we leave Minnesota, home of Prince, the Mall of America, and thousands of lakes, to put ourselves through this awful drive across the Great Void of the United States?

Because Prince sucks, the Mall of America is dumb, lake water is disgusting, and everyone here will remind you everyday that they are either too hot or too cold.

There is not much more to be said about this place.

At around midnight, we cross over into Iowa, and you will moisten your undies when you hear what happens next….

Did you like that use of a tease? Are you excited for the next installment? Tune in tomorrow for a discussion about the highway exit signs of Iowa!

Rudy Maxa Asks Montrealian Bagel Maker Whether He Prefers Montreal Or New York Bagels—And His Answer May Surprise You

During a visit to a Montreal bagel shop on today’s episode of the PBS progrum Rudy Maxa’s World, the titular host was looking to stir up sediment on a rivalry as old as a man that was born a long time ago.

Maxa was no doubt hungry for blood—as the bagel maker gave a walk-through of the ingredients and techniques that make a Montreal bagel, Maxa loomed in the background, ignoring all that was said and done, visibly salivating, ready to hit the man with the controversial question that was on everyone’s mind.

Then, the bagel maker finally shut up. Maxa pounced.

“So, which do you like better, Montreal or New York bagels?” asked Rudy, crossing the point of no return.

After a full half second of silence, the bagelman answered, to the surprise of everyone present: “I like Montreal bagels.”

There you have it—the man who makes bagels in Montreal likes his own product more than one that was made somewhere else.

Next week, I hope to catch a rerun of Maxa’s trip to the Pacific Rim, where he asks a native whether or not that rim is the best rim in the world.

I Was Gone For A Little Bit. I’m Back Now.

I’ve been out of the blogosphere for a few weeks, but I’ve been doing stuff:

—I gave three cans of beans to a food shelter. I am now part of the solution.

—I travelled.

—I came back.

—I was undercharged at a Subway in Lusk, Wyoming, and didn’t tell them because the service sucked.

—I was overcharged at a liquor store in Mounds View, Minnesota, and I did tell them because the total came to over $8,000 for a six pack.

—I met a woman at an Arby’s in Kearney, Nebraska, who believed South Dakota was an exciting state to visit.

—I went through South Dakota, and wanted to drive off a cliff after passing the 257th sign for Wall Drug. BUT THERE WERE NO CLIFFS.

—Then there were cliffs, in the western part. I decided to boycott Wall Drug instead.

—In the mountains of Colorado, I urinated in a tributary of Clear Creek, the water source of the Coors Brewery.

—I drank a beer infused with bull testicles. This beer: Rocky Mountain Oyster Stout.

From beerpulse.com

—I drank a beer named after Kurt Vonnegut, using a recipe from his maternal grandfather. This beer: Kurt’s Mile High Malt.

From wynkoop.com

That’s it.