Couchsurfing - Day 36: Jeffery City, WY to Rawlins, WY

As has been the pattern when around interesting people, none of us left early besides Rob, who seemed to prefer his bike to people anyway. Jersey John played the church piano beautifully and impressed everyone while I tried to figure out how to turn on their classic Hammond B3 organ, a standard of the funk and gospel worlds for a while. Eventually, I figured it out. No one wanted to play it. I stepped all over John’s playing where I thought I could pick out a melody line, and then decided to turn it off. He was very gracious about complementing my ear for music. I liked him.

On the ride to Rawlins, I planned to eat at a diner that I discovered had closed long ago. I poured myself some granola before realizing that I had broken my spoon in the church. So, I explored the diner (it was only kind of locked, and clearly long abandoned) until I found the one spoon among hundreds of forks, washed it with the dregs of some dish soap, and enjoyed my granola. I washed the spoon again and returned it - it was clear no one cared about the place, but it felt like the right thing to do. There was only one, after all.

Climbing Willow Hill into Rawlins, I started having issues with my right Achilles' tendon. Thankfully, a prairie storm hit about the same time the tendonitis got bad, which provided a nice cooling rain and some tailwinds that carried me over the continental divide (again) and into town. I wandered around until I found cheap food and WiFi at Penny’s Diner, at which point Nicole texted me to say she was in town. I directed her to Penny’s and her group showed up one by one. They had arranged a Couchsurfing host who was kind enough to let me tag along, so after some false starts in every cardinal direction, we made our way to Hans’ house. They mentioned that having a dude along with them made them feel more comfortable couchsurfing. I'm not sure what help I would have been if things went poorly, but I was happy to be a placebo bodyguard anyway.

Hans already had one couchsurfer and was very excited to have a total of 5 guests at once. He was honest about why he was excited - his girlfriend had left, and, frankly, he was lonely. I appreciated that he was open about that, given that he is a self-identified "country boy" which, I thought, meant that emotional expression would be considered weakness. Maybe it was easier around 4 women. Hans liked Rawlins, and appreciated that one could live their life there without the government getting in the way. From the many different types of ammunition lying around, I assumed he was referring mainly to gun control. I should note that all the guns themselves were safely locked away in a safe, and he did use them. He said he hadn't bought meat for about 4 months now.

The other couchsurfer, Calen, was pretty much the opposite of Hans: a vegan yoga teacher who was visibly uncomfortable about all the taxidermied animals in the house, though she didn't mention that discomfort until asked. She is riding westbound without any money to her name, instead stopping at restaurants when she's hungry and asking to wash dishes for a couple hours. Apparently it's worked well for her so far.

Hans was very generous, allowing us essentially free access to his liquor cabinet. Emily assembled some ginger beer, lime, and whiskey cocktails, and we all hung out by Hans' fire pit with his two silver labs. Discussion topics included whiskey, pseudoscience, and all the typical questions one gets as a touring cyclist. The group of three went to sleep in a gigantic bed in Hans's basement, while Calen and I took couches outside their room.

The abandoned cafe:



The hill and storm into Rawlins, which has to be something like the 8th time I've crossed the continental divide: