August, 2010

Wyoming is the first place I’ve lived where the heat index is usually below the air temperature. Example: Right now it’s 79 degrees, feels like 78. The sun shines and a small breeze blows 90% of the time. The average temperature for the summer was likely between 70 and 80 degrees. At night it dips down into the 50s and 60s. If I had a porch, it’d always be perfect porch-sitting weather.

90 degrees, perfect day for tubing on the North Platte River. (Photo by Dan Cepeda)

There have been 95-degree days. I avoid them by running in the mornings and evenings and soaking up the way-too-cold AC at work. The hottest temp I ran in this summer was 70 degrees. 70 degrees!! You bet I was dying from the heat. Even when it’s 90 degrees, I’ll still walk down to the library or to the corner store instead of hopping in my car. Usually I leave the pool or beach because it gets too hot. This year, I left because I got bored.

The warm weather we’ve had (I refuse to say, “It’s hot” after living in New Orleans) hasn’t been fun for people without AC. I understand that because the AC in my Corolla is no better than those personal mini fans.

My apartment doesn’t have air conditioning. Or fans. Actually, my electric bill is about $2 cheaper in the summer because I’m not running a space heater.

Even on those 90-degree days, I routinely change into sweats after work because I’m — gasp — cold. Basement apartments have their disadvantages: little light, spiders, stuffy without a way to circulate air throughout. Those same disadvantages (except maybe the spiders) make my place a perfect summer hideout.

A porch would be nice.

If this post made you pine for Wyoming and want move west. Don’t… it will be snowing by the time you get here.

Salt Creek Country Club is a nine-hole “pasture golf” course in Midwest, Wyo. (Pop: 400ish), about 40 minutes north of Casper.  Pasture golf pretty much explains it — brown grass, brown dirt and brown sand “greens.”

Tee-ing off from the ladies’ tee. Yes, the sky was this blue in real life.

And prairie dog holes.

Lots of holes. Between the four of us, we only lost ONE ball!

Josh, Will, Josh and I played in the Salt Creek Days golf scramble Saturday. Being nerdy journalists, we named our team the Nut Graphs. For $25, we got all we got breakfast, lunch, all the beer/water/soda/Gatorade we wanted and a door prize. Oh, and nine amazing holes in the middle of oil fields.

ATVs and four-wheelers are better equipped for the course than golf carts.

Just picking up my ball in the rough. Josh said rattlesnakes had been spotted in this area.

This woman was forcing everyone to take a shot before hole No. 1.
We started at hole No. 3, so by this point, she’d had a few herself.

Sand greens require raking.

I won a mini cooler and a denim shirt with an oil company logo. The cooler felt heavy, so I opened it and found melted ice and cold Budweiser. Bonus!

Josh won a sand wedge, which he couldn’t take on the plane back to Missouri. We scouted possible trades. I wanted binoculars or a mini DVD player, but those people clearly weren’t letting go of their new possessions. Then the guy next to us won a 10×10 ft gazebo. He didn’t know what he’d do with it, so he traded Josh for the club.

And now I have a 10×10 ft gazebo in my trunk.

Last time I floated the North Platte with Carol, our floats stopped floating. The old-school innertubes deflated about an hour into the trip, and we ended up walking a mile through neighborhoods and on the bike path back to the car.

We made sure this time not to repeat our prior experience. We rented a raft. With oars.

The yacht seated 12 (we were 6) and included a cooler to hold beverages, snacks and dry clothes. The heavy-duty sides protected us the few times we bumped into cement bridge supports.

I got to row!

We floated about six miles down the river, which included the whitewater adventure park.

Rapids!

The last time I rowed anything was November 2003, before the fall crew season ended and the Genesee River froze over. I liked rowing but didn’t like how cliquey the team was. It was college — time to branch out and meet all sorts of people. And I joined the newspaper, which cut into 5:30 a.m. practice on the morning the paper came out. Although I stopped in between seasons, I still consider it the only commitment I’ve ever quit.

“Rowing” the  raft made me remember why I used to like it. Rowing is hard work that looks easy when it’s done well. I loved getting into a rhythm — slipping the blade in the water just enough, reaching forward and pulling with one clean swoop to glide across the water — and repeating it 2,000 meters at a time.

Last weekend’s outting can hardly be compared to competitive rowing, but it was a little reminder that it’s something I could return to someday.

I’m still recovering from my mom’s visit the weekend before last.

There’s a lot to see in this huge state and a couple hours in the car can take you somewhere completely different from where you were. Mom was here 4.5 days and we put 750+ miles on my car: Casper -> Guernsey -> Cheyenne -> Fort Collins -> Cheyenne -> Casper -> Buffalo -> Sheridan -> Casper.

In front of the Indian Village, with our new hats. [Cheyenne Frontier Days]

I drove down to Guernsey for an assignment on Friday and Mom met me there. We drove to Cheyenne to walk around Frontier Days. KISS played that night and the people watching was excellent. On the way out, we bought cowgirl hats and rodeo tickets. We then drove to Fort Collins because we didn’t think we’d find a hotel room in Cheyenne (and because I needed a shopping/Whole Foods fix).

We watched Frontier Days’ opening rodeo — Mom’s first. She enjoyed it except for steer roping, where the cowboy ropes the steer by the horns and yanks it to the ground. I could explain events to her because of all my rodeo experience.

We spent Saturday night in Casper and left Sunday morning for mountains. The Big Horn Mountains are a small spur off the Rocky Mountain chain and begin about two hours north of Casper. I drove so Mom could stare at mountains because that’s what she does when she’s behind the wheel too.

Big Horn National Forest

We hiked about 2.5 miles in the Big Horn National Forest just south of Cloud Peak. We stayed the night in Buffalo at The Occidental Hotel, built in 1880. The hotel doubles as a museum. Famous people such as Teddy Roosevelt and Buffalo Bill stayed there. We stayed in the Madam’s Suite in the back on the first floor, former home of the bordello’s madam and the cheap whores. She would have been on the second floor but weighed too much to walk up and down stairs.

Occidental Hotel lobby

We saw a movie and stopped at the renowned Century Club saloon. We only had one drink and went to bed early. Mom brought a cold/sinus infection with her and I was starting to feel a head cold coming on.

The plan was to wake up early and drive back to Casper. I woke up at 8:30 still not feeling 100%. After coffee and animal crackers from the hotel pantry, we headed further north for breakfast in Sheridan.

It was hot, like 92 degrees hot, so we went home and lounged in my cool basement apartment. And then she left.

Mom was my eighth visitor to Casper in less than one year. Eight! I thought moving to Wyoming would mean no one would ever visit but so far, more people have visited me here than any other place I’ve lived. Well, except that one time all my friends drove to New Orleans for Mardi Gras.

Now that I’ve gotten over the loss of my blog pages and comments (and finished off the rest of the ice cream) I’m ready to update.

Two weeks ago (two weeks already!) my friend Cat and her fiance Kyle were married on a farm outside Kansas City. The weekend felt like a destination wedding for me. I arrived late Wednesday night. Cat took me and our friend Sarah, recently stateside after a year in Senegal, to a large suburban mall. Cat left Sarah and me to wander the mall while she waited to get antibiotics.

Talk about culture shock, for both of us. It was the largest mall I had been to in a year. Sarah hadn’t been in a mall period. Clothes, fast food, SO MANY PEOPLE = sensory overload. We got lost in Dillards — turns out they had a second store just for women’s clothes and shoes across the mall. The food court had 20 different options for lunch and I went for Japanese (don’t have that here!) and Sarah appropriately chose orange chicken.

After the mall, we left the city for the farm to start setting up. Chairs had to be taken from the barn to where the ceremony would take place behind the larger of two houses on the property. The wedding party and family stayed in the houses.

The wedding was the perfect reason for a mini-reunion with great grad school friends who traveled from as far as Africa, San Francisco, D.C. and Wyoming.

(All my pictures are on a disposable camera that probably won’t be developed for a few years, so this was borrowed.)

Cat and Kyle did most of the decorations themselves, so every part felt like it belonged to them. Name cards were personalized bottles of Jones soda. The dance floor was lit with white Christmas lights. Champagne was swapped for lemon-ginger infused Polish vodka.

Because it was 100+ degrees with the humidity, it really felt like we were back in Missouri again. I had a hard time with the heat and humidity. I ran with the groom one morning at 7 a.m. and we were drenched in sweat just walking to the road. While setting up, I had to step inside every half hour or so. I drank water like crazy and still plumped up enough that my bridesmaid dress (that fit perfectly when I packed it) almost didn’t zip up.

It’s hard to believe I lived Midwestern summers all my life and in Louisiana last year. Winter here might be hell at times (or for a long time), but it’s worth it for the dry mountain air and cool summer nights and mornings.