Wednesday, January 5, 2011

Western Hospitality

Whoever coined the phrase 'southern hospitality' clearly forgot to consider life west of the misissippi river.  Since the completion of the last post in St.Louis, Steph and I have enjoyed the company of not one but two total strangers for dinner in St.Louis and Boulder.  For the protection of ourselves and these characters, we will give them code names. 

Steph-the friendly spirit that she is- believes in complementing total strangers.  This unraveled as Steph approached Elliot at Kayak's to tell him he was cute.  As the conversation went on and I sat nearby watching like a guard dog, Steph managed an invitation to dinner in St.Louis and a place to couch surf for the night for both of us.  We contemplated this for about 5 minutes before we decided that there was no good reason not to go.  So, after changing clothes and applying deoderant in a grocery store bathroom, we met up with Elliot at Pi's, a fantastic pizza spot in the Loop neighborhood in St.Louis.  Steph says it was easily the best pizza she's ever had.  I think it was a close second to Pies and Pints at the new river gorge in West Virginia.  As the conversation ensued, Steph and I both got an itch to get back on the road to our almost final destination-Boulder.  So at about 10 pm we bid farewell to our new friend and hit the road to Colorado. 

We drove through the night alrernating 2 hour shifts of driving and sleeping.  Kansas was brutally long and boring, but had the most beautiful night sky and so many shooting stars that we lost track.  Temps dropped into the single digits and as we made our way into Colorado the sun came up. Enjoying coffee in Boulder, we decided to join a gym for a week long trial with the main purpose of being able to shower at the completion of our exercise.  While I was enjoying the sauna, I over heard Steph strike up a conversation with some locals in the hot tub about where we could camp for free close to town. 

Once again, fate had its way and next thing you know JB(a contracter) was offering to let us stay in his 'extra' house in Boulder for the night.  With a bit of hesitation we decided this was a solid idea.  For extra security, we gave the address of the house to a few of our friends and told them that if they didn't hear from us shortly they should send the police to the address.  Thankfully, JB was not an axe-murderer picking up young girls at the gym as our imaginations had allowed us to think.  After a nice cruise in his 0-60 in 3 seconds porsche, we enjoyed beers at a few brewery's and spent the night in our sleeping bags in the spare bedroom of the spare house. 

Every person we've met since St.Louis has been unbelievable friendly and welcoming to two total strangers.  JB even joked to me yestereday that we could totally make a life out of this bumping into strangers thing.  I think we'll stick to our original plan and head to our final destination tomorrow morning.  Can't wait to see what Laramie has in store for us!

Smokey and Looseleaf

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