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Trans Americas 2009 - The Blog
The Just One More Mile story of Paul's Trans Americas 2009 motorcycle expedition.Sunday, 16 August 2009
More guns and a rodeo...
Today is an official rest day, so decided to spend it doing some odd jobs, with a little bit of sightseeing built in for good measure... First job after breakfast was to update the blog, as yesterday I had no Internet access and so it was a couple of days behind. With that done I sorted out the onbike video footage (still can't get it to upload, so you'll have to wait until I get home before you get to see any of it) and archived all my photos. Then I managed to get hold of Tracy via a Skype call and we chatted for half an hour or so about this and that. These little chats are very important to me, as I'm so far from home and there's so much going on there as well, and I don't want to miss out on all the gossip...
With that done it was off to the Buffalo Bill Historical Center – a 5-museums in one complex on the edge of town. I skipped the Indian Art, Indian Plains and Natural History sections and focused my time and energy on the gun museum and the Buffalo Bill museum. The gun museum was interesting, in a kind-of “Wow, look at all those guns” way, as there were case upon case of shotguns, rifles, pistols and other assorted firearms, charting the history of weapons from way back in the days of the wild west through to the end of WWII (with a few modern weapons for good measure). I never knew there were so many variants of famous weapons like the Winchester rifle or the Smith & Wesson and Colt pistols. Literally thousands of them...
They even had a “Safe Pistol”...
But that was only upstairs. Downstairs they had a further 1,200 firearms, including this rather impressive collection of British Lee Enfields...
Actually, that's only half of it, because there was another cabinet the same size full of Lee Enfields and I couldn't fit it into the photo...
By now I was all gunned out, so I headed back upstairs and across to the Buffalo Bill museum. Now I didn't know anything about the great man before I arrived in Cody, except that his name was familiar from my childhood and cowboy and indian films. So here's a (very) brief summary of his life... Born in 1846 W. F. Cody had many jobs before he became a soldier in the civil war, and then chief of scouts for the 3rd cavalry during the plains wars. He earned his nickname when fulfilling a contract to supply the workers building the Kansas Pacific Railroad with Buffalo meat, when he killed 4,860 buffalo in a period of 18 months. He was also a great showman, and created a live show based on his life, called “The Wild West” which he toured Europe and America with from 1883 through to 1913, effectively creating the image of cowboys and indians we have today... in the show were other famous “cow-folk” including Wild Bill Hickock and Annie Oakley. So, he's a pretty important character in the forming of the American psyche...
The museum contained various artefacts from his life and shows, including displays of posters he had printed to advertise the shows, clothing and still photographs showing the entourage, including the many Sioux indians that performed alongside the cowboys. One interesting fact I gleaned from the museum was that Bill died at his sister's house in Denver. Why this fact should prove interesting only came to light when I got back to the hotel and Jim had returned from his ride. He asked how I liked the museum, and whether I knew where Buffalo Bill had died. So I told him, and he said he knew, because he used to live in the house he died in with a rock'n'roll band in the 60's... small world, eh!
With my first bout of chores and my cultural needs attended to, I switched my attention to the exciting task of re-arranging my packing so I could get down to only having to bring one bag from the bike to the hotel room, instead of the 2 I had been carrying. Gripping stuff, I know... Then I went to investigate the problem with my fog lights on the bike. These are 2 lights at the front that I usually have on when riding as it makes the bike more visible, but more important, the triangular light pattern makes it easier for other road users to guage my approach speed (since they'd stopped working, I'd had 2 people pull out on me, whereas before, I'd had none). They stopped working a few days ago. Investigations suggested a relay fault, so I set off in search of a replacement, riding round to Wal*Mart at the edge of town in glorious sunshine, only for it to start p*ssing down as soon as I got there. Having bought some wire and spade connectors to bypass the relay, I rode back in the rain – having left my waterproofs in the room, of course. As I arrived back, it stopped raining, so I was at least able to try and effect a repair, only to discover that it looks like I have a short in the circuit somewhere and I'll need more time to find it (I was due to meet the others for dinner 10 minutes after I got back).
Dinner was a shrimp (prawn) jambalaya which was delicious, and then we gathered to catch the bus to the rodeo... Cody, being a real cowboy town (named after Buffalo Bill Cody), there's a rodeo every night in a stadium on the edge of town. After the inevitable parading of the Stars 'n' Stripes and the singing of the national anthem (thankfully a recorded version to avoid further embarrassment), it was time for the show to begin...
The show included all the old favourites, from bucking broncos, kids trying to ride steers (small bulls), guys lassooing calves, women racing horses round barrels, and as a final act, young men showing how incredibly tough they are by riding bucking bulls, trying desperately to hang on for 8 seconds (no mean feat, by the look of it).
But my favourite was the bit they did for the kids in the audience... They invited the under-12s to come on down into the arena, where they got them all lined up and explained the rules. There were to be 4 prizes, one awarded for each ribbon obtained by the kids. One of the ribbons was stuck in the pants (trousers) of a teenager, the others on the tails of 3 calves. The calves were brought into the arena with the kids, and then the signal “GO” given, and all the kids chased the calves (and the teenager) round the arena until all the ribbons were grabbed. How no kids died in the stampede chaos is beyond me... Imagine what the RSPCC would have to say about that in the UK!!
With the excitement of the rodeo still coursing through our veins, we caught the bus back to the hotel and popped in the bar for a night-cap, Kevin being keen for us to try a Tennessee whisky called “George Dickle” (which unlike a lot of American Whiskeys uses the traditional Scottish spelling as good ol' George believed his whisky to be as smooth as the best Scotch). It was very nice, with a hint of orange, but unfortunately we drained what was left of the bottle between us (there were 7 of us), so the 2nd round had to be something else, a “Maker's Mark” bourbon whisky, which wasn't as nice, but was still pretty smooth... then it was off to bed, before things got out of hand...
With that done it was off to the Buffalo Bill Historical Center – a 5-museums in one complex on the edge of town. I skipped the Indian Art, Indian Plains and Natural History sections and focused my time and energy on the gun museum and the Buffalo Bill museum. The gun museum was interesting, in a kind-of “Wow, look at all those guns” way, as there were case upon case of shotguns, rifles, pistols and other assorted firearms, charting the history of weapons from way back in the days of the wild west through to the end of WWII (with a few modern weapons for good measure). I never knew there were so many variants of famous weapons like the Winchester rifle or the Smith & Wesson and Colt pistols. Literally thousands of them...
They even had a “Safe Pistol”...
But that was only upstairs. Downstairs they had a further 1,200 firearms, including this rather impressive collection of British Lee Enfields...
Actually, that's only half of it, because there was another cabinet the same size full of Lee Enfields and I couldn't fit it into the photo...
By now I was all gunned out, so I headed back upstairs and across to the Buffalo Bill museum. Now I didn't know anything about the great man before I arrived in Cody, except that his name was familiar from my childhood and cowboy and indian films. So here's a (very) brief summary of his life... Born in 1846 W. F. Cody had many jobs before he became a soldier in the civil war, and then chief of scouts for the 3rd cavalry during the plains wars. He earned his nickname when fulfilling a contract to supply the workers building the Kansas Pacific Railroad with Buffalo meat, when he killed 4,860 buffalo in a period of 18 months. He was also a great showman, and created a live show based on his life, called “The Wild West” which he toured Europe and America with from 1883 through to 1913, effectively creating the image of cowboys and indians we have today... in the show were other famous “cow-folk” including Wild Bill Hickock and Annie Oakley. So, he's a pretty important character in the forming of the American psyche...
The museum contained various artefacts from his life and shows, including displays of posters he had printed to advertise the shows, clothing and still photographs showing the entourage, including the many Sioux indians that performed alongside the cowboys. One interesting fact I gleaned from the museum was that Bill died at his sister's house in Denver. Why this fact should prove interesting only came to light when I got back to the hotel and Jim had returned from his ride. He asked how I liked the museum, and whether I knew where Buffalo Bill had died. So I told him, and he said he knew, because he used to live in the house he died in with a rock'n'roll band in the 60's... small world, eh!
With my first bout of chores and my cultural needs attended to, I switched my attention to the exciting task of re-arranging my packing so I could get down to only having to bring one bag from the bike to the hotel room, instead of the 2 I had been carrying. Gripping stuff, I know... Then I went to investigate the problem with my fog lights on the bike. These are 2 lights at the front that I usually have on when riding as it makes the bike more visible, but more important, the triangular light pattern makes it easier for other road users to guage my approach speed (since they'd stopped working, I'd had 2 people pull out on me, whereas before, I'd had none). They stopped working a few days ago. Investigations suggested a relay fault, so I set off in search of a replacement, riding round to Wal*Mart at the edge of town in glorious sunshine, only for it to start p*ssing down as soon as I got there. Having bought some wire and spade connectors to bypass the relay, I rode back in the rain – having left my waterproofs in the room, of course. As I arrived back, it stopped raining, so I was at least able to try and effect a repair, only to discover that it looks like I have a short in the circuit somewhere and I'll need more time to find it (I was due to meet the others for dinner 10 minutes after I got back).
Dinner was a shrimp (prawn) jambalaya which was delicious, and then we gathered to catch the bus to the rodeo... Cody, being a real cowboy town (named after Buffalo Bill Cody), there's a rodeo every night in a stadium on the edge of town. After the inevitable parading of the Stars 'n' Stripes and the singing of the national anthem (thankfully a recorded version to avoid further embarrassment), it was time for the show to begin...
The show included all the old favourites, from bucking broncos, kids trying to ride steers (small bulls), guys lassooing calves, women racing horses round barrels, and as a final act, young men showing how incredibly tough they are by riding bucking bulls, trying desperately to hang on for 8 seconds (no mean feat, by the look of it).
But my favourite was the bit they did for the kids in the audience... They invited the under-12s to come on down into the arena, where they got them all lined up and explained the rules. There were to be 4 prizes, one awarded for each ribbon obtained by the kids. One of the ribbons was stuck in the pants (trousers) of a teenager, the others on the tails of 3 calves. The calves were brought into the arena with the kids, and then the signal “GO” given, and all the kids chased the calves (and the teenager) round the arena until all the ribbons were grabbed. How no kids died in the stampede chaos is beyond me... Imagine what the RSPCC would have to say about that in the UK!!
With the excitement of the rodeo still coursing through our veins, we caught the bus back to the hotel and popped in the bar for a night-cap, Kevin being keen for us to try a Tennessee whisky called “George Dickle” (which unlike a lot of American Whiskeys uses the traditional Scottish spelling as good ol' George believed his whisky to be as smooth as the best Scotch). It was very nice, with a hint of orange, but unfortunately we drained what was left of the bottle between us (there were 7 of us), so the 2nd round had to be something else, a “Maker's Mark” bourbon whisky, which wasn't as nice, but was still pretty smooth... then it was off to bed, before things got out of hand...
posted by Paul # 23:48 
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