COLORADO TRAVEL UPDATE

Colorado Travel update
Greetings from Colorado USA.
I am staying in a suburb of Denver (the mile high City), it is called Centenial city. It is a nice pleasant little American suburban town. Lots of well manicured lawns and gardens. Lots of American flags hanging off peoples front porches.
I have been here for about 5 days. I am traveling with Angela from Austria, who has been with me since Miami. We are getting along very well.
Had a 5 star great experience in beautiful Asheville North Carolina. Stayed with an old amigo of mine, my original travelling mate,(with whom I once travelled for 9 months in USA Canada and Mexico) who lives out there and teaches University. We were with him and his lovely family for about 6 days. Shared a magnum of 1990 Lynch Bages,(AMAZING!!) smoked some "THUMPER" and went to a very nice music and arts festival in the mountains held on a lake called Lake Eden. Slept in a tent for 2 nights and remembered why I hate sleeping in tents...Last time I slept in a tent was with a bunch of Berber tribesmen in Morrocco.
Heard some great music from Bands I had never heard of as well as some that I was familiar with. Highlights were... The New Orleans Klezmer Jazz Allstars, The Little Rascals Brass Band, Donna the Buffalo, The Muses, Crooked Still, Toubab Krewe, Avec la Force, and Afromotive. Lots of other bands and stuff too but these were my favorites.
So here I am in Colorado. I have been to a couple of Yoga classes here with my friend of 20 years Suzy. She is a most excellent Yogini and teaches a lot of Yoga classes. Its never too late to learn how to breathe and sit.
I get to go for free because I am special. You dont know how lame you really are until you try to get into some of these poses.
Yesterday Suzy Angela and I went to Rocky Mountain Nastional Park. You must drive to Estes Park to enter the park. Its about a 90 minute drive from Suzies house there is no bus or train, then you have to pay 20 american dollars to enter with your car. 10 american to enter on foot so for the three of us the car was cheaper. Its a lot of $$ to walk in the woods but it is a 7day pass. There is no one day pass.
I used to live about 30 miles (45 km) from this park. Had a great view of the Rockies right outside my dining room window, back in 1985, It is one of the most beautiful places I have been to on this Planet.
We saw Elk, White tail Deer, Two lynx looking cats with short tails and ears like Mr Spock, Chipmonks, Black squirrels, Rabbits, Ducks, Herons, Robins, Blue Jays, Trouts swimming in fresh icy mountain streams...
Had a beautiful picnic on a huge boulder and took a 5 mile (7km)hike. Raw veggies, hummus, guacomole, peanut butter and home made 11 grain bread. Munching out on this huge boulder thats jutting out into this rushing mountain stream causing all these little rapids in the water beside us...
On the way back we stopped at the Estes Park Brewery and had 6 or 7 free samples of micro brewed ales. Oh its tough to be a traveller huh? I dont know why I quit working...
So I am raiding Suzys library and listening to her CDs. Whatching basketball on the TeeVee...She has a ton of Buddhist books,plus a lot of great music and plus my old Jazz on Vinyl record collection is here with her. Just listened to Kris Kristophersons new CD. The silver tongued devil hasnt lost his touch for writing heart wrenching lyrics...
I believe a new anti war protest movement is beginning to ferment in the USA. I hope it is a Peace movement instead of an anti war movement. To have an anti war movement you just bring home the troops. To have a peace movement you have to beat the spears into plough shears. We have to dis-arm if we want to live up to our potential as human beings.
Thats enuf political bullshit for now huh?
So we took Suzies little grand daughter Zoe for a hike in the deer creek park south of denver. It a beautiful rockie mountain foothills trail. only abaout 2 miles each way. She is only 7. We walked slow. We couonted blooming wild flowers on the way. Lots of flowaers. I love springtime in the Rockie Mountains. Super green. Lots of blossoms. We counted 30 DIFFERENT types of wild flowers. Another nice picnic with more home made bread.
We fly to California tomorrow night. The Golden State! Yee-hahh! Oohh, to be home again... Flying into Oakland and getting picked up by friends for a week or so in Sonoma before heading to San Luis Obispo for a week. The two places I used to live for about 20 years all together. Freaky to be gone and freaky to come back.
I love the plumbing in America. You can just throw your toilet paper right into the toilet and flush it all away. There are trash cans everywhere to so it looks nice and clean. Like Sweden. Very clean place too. I like the ice cream here too. Ben and Jerrys and hagen dazs. I think I am gaining back a kilo or two. Best potato chips (packaged crisps) in the world too. Gotta be true.
So
The the Tha Thats all folks. Reporting to you from my motherland... Whilst rebering what Honest Abe says:
"America will never be destroyed from the outside. If we falter and lose our freedoms, it will be because we destroyed ourselves." -- Abraham Lincoln
Chow for Now
Rambling Robert

Greetings from Asheville NC USA

Well, Hello everyone,
I am in Asheville a small city in the mountains near the North Carolina Tennessee border, last exit on the Blue Ridge Parkway. Where the Blue Ridge Mountains and the Great Smoky Mountains join. I arrived today on the dog
The dog or the Greyhound as it is more “formally” known, is the principle Bus Line available to travelers in USA. The best way to travel here, is to rent a car, but this is a real budget buster. These Greyhounds are okay busses but definitely not engineered with the passenger in mind. For instance there are no curtains even on overnight busses. We were on an overnighter from Orlando Florida to Fayetteville North Carolina. They stopped the bus for “routine cleaning” at, (are you ready for this) 5 in the morning. Woke EVERYBODY on the bus up, and then made us all get off the bus into a bus station for an hour while they swept and mopped!!! This, mind you when we were only one hour away from our destination stop!! Our 900 mile trip took 25 hours because of 9 hours of scheduled “layovers”…this tells me the people who run the company don’t ride their own busses and they certainly don’t ride busses in other countries…

It is May 11. I have been in USA since April 25 and I have not eaten any fried food except one order of french fries at a greyhound bus depot. I have been eating too much meat the last 3 days of April so I have quit eating meat for May. It gives me nightmares, I think. I am not so sure if I will take up this habit of eating other animals in June or not. I feel better but i am really craving some fried chicken!! All this time in Florida and North Carolina and no fried chicken. What a long strange trip its been.

I am staying in a friends house and this weekend we will go to a big music and arts festival Called LEAF which is an acronym for the lake Eden Arts Festival. 3nights and 2 days of camping in a tent and listening to music and checking out artisan works and taking classes in things like yoga and woodcarving. Partying Singing Dancing Frolicking and Reveling…Ah yes the life of a world traveler…

Finished off the last of my stash of Flor de Cana Nicaraguan rum, with my friends the Professor and Ning in Chapel Hill North Carolina. Where I spent the last 4 days lazing around their house and eating Vegan feasts or hiking in the woods. A plague of ticks of biblical proportions has struck his woods…but we survived this and the dreaded red ants of Boynton Beach Florida. We were in Boynton Beach from April 26 to May 4, This is a very antiseptic little town on Florida East coast. Mostly old retired people from the Boston-New York-Philadelphia Megalopolis live here. We stayed with my parents and visited with my two brothers and my niece and nephews The whole family was together for the first time in almost 4 years to celebrate Fathers 80th birthday and Mothers 75 birthday.

So…the first thing I noticed about the USA. Customs is really relaxed. Walked right through after hardly even stopping. No bag searches at all, barely even a hello and good bye. It is a lot more expensive here than I remember. The price of food and of course gasoline is way up from my memories of 3 years ago. The place is really clean and manicured looking.

The people dress a lot differently than I recall too.
I just love this "look" where the kids are wearing some clothes 8 or 9 sizes too big on him and his pants are falling down. Whoaaa thats so cool man!!! In general the population seems to have gained weight. Some incredibly large folks in the doghouse (greyhound bus station). The long term results of the double quarter pounder with cheese diet plan.

All they serve to eat in these stations is the worst fried junk food you can imagine.
Street food is nonexistent here. The fast food is all giant multinationals, and giant multinational wannabees. Not much character just uniformity, conformity, and mediocrity. I am getting nightmares when I eat meat. The restaurants are much better but alas not what you would call cheap. Tipping of 15 or 20% is considered normal and not tipping is considered rude.

The people seem a little on edge. A little tense maybe or even maybe angry about something. Its a little weird. Do you think its the grub? After the last two months in Oaxaca the contrast between the laid back lifestyle of Southern Mexico and the East Coast USA is astounding. I just came from a place where no one is in a hurry and no one is ever on time, or late. People just come and go. But on the other hand, I feel like I have never seen such a lovely Mountain/Forest springtime ticks and all, as this one I am in the middle of right here in North Carolina. Fields of beautiful colored flowers in tall green grass. Red Cardinals winging about, Saw some cool little owls in Florida and flamingos and Herons and crocodiles.

I will be here in America for another 8 weeks or so. I fly to Ireland on 10 July.
Next update will be from Colorado.
Reporting to you live (well sort of) from the land of the free
And the home of the brave
Rambling Robert