Hello, the chronicler is sitting in one of the compressor rooms in the USA, i.e. in a poorly insulated, spacious motel room whose air conditioning makes quite a racket to keep temperatures bearable. You live by the difference, says friend Uli, so the chronicler takes it in his stride that the multi-coloured door frames are not intentional but due to peeling paint, and the residual puddle in the bathtub is also calm. Instead, he was able to position his racing bike in front of the room. There, where the elegant to battered cars are always parked in the films.
All right for a small price
The chronicler has arrived in Fort Morgan, another small town in the Midwest of the USA. His starting point for tomorrow, for Denver. Let's see what the clan is up to. He has won an hour for the second time in a short space of time. The one that is regularly bemoaned at home as the changeover to summer time. And he's now in Colorado, which he previously only knew in liquorice form. If Nebraska was treeless and flat, Colorado is also treeless, but by no means flat. A huge, gently undulating landscape of sandy soil from the Ice Age, which is used for agriculture with huge irrigation systems. Because the maize is still small, the tallest plants are sage bushes, which stand out from the barren grassland with their whitish light green leaves. Completely black cattle stand out as individual specks in this impressive picture.
The chronicler is so fascinated by the landscape that he doesn't feel like talking to the friendliest bus driver yet. Kati, who greeted him with a laugh in North Platte, said about the racing bike that she doesn't normally take such things with her, but today she had room. The chronicler had taken care of packing the rear end again and thought her remark was more of a joke. Kati drives for a company previously unknown to the chronicler. There are only four other passengers in the almost new vehicle. Finally, the chronicler sits down on the step to the driver's area, his bum behind the white line, his feet in front and his best view forwards. Kati thinks that's fine. To his right sits a black woman with incomplete front teeth, whom Kati always calls Nurse.
The conversation dies down when the chronicler comes out with his question and Kati categorically points out that she is not allowed to talk about politics, religion and sex according to company regulations. It would cost her her job. Okay. We remain on good terms anyway!
Kati, twenty years on buses
The chronicler would like to add something here. He slept very well in this carefully designed accommodation in North Platte and it also somehow instilled a sense of calm in him. Or perhaps the chronicler is slowly becoming more relaxed on this tour anyway. After all, he still had time, and for this he had created a local exploration in Google maps. Because he had read this on Wikipedia: North Platte has the world's largest marshalling yard, operated by Union Pacific. They built a tower, the Golden Spike Tower, to give him an overview. Golden Spike was the gilded nail that was used to close a famous gap in the railway line in the nineteenth century.
You can only build something like this in an area like here; sorry for the unproductive photo; the yellow in the foreground and on the left in the picture are just locomotives, about a hundred of them.
Down in the souvenir shop, the chronicler met customers Cheryl and Barry, who provided an answer in return for his story: 5-5-90. Chery presented and Barry mumbled that that was more or less his opinion. Maybe not quite.
Cheryl and Barry take a trip to North Platte; they live 120 miles further north
On the way there was a railway museum, which actually only consisted of two objects and a railway keeper's cottage, but was quite something.
The chronicler was extremely grateful for this coincidence and for the friendly explanations of the keeper; they were alone on this beautiful site.
Monsters of steel
At this point, the chronicler makes an attempt to give a little more impression of where he is. And this small town of North Platte, which was so pathetically difficult to conquer, somehow appealed to him. What you don't usually find about places in Wikipedia, he read here: Information on average income. And in this city, the average is roughly 30,000 dollars a year. Knowing that a doctor in a large American city earns ten times that amount, he is overcome with a certain perplexity.
He has also made videos from his racing bike and hopefully the back office can integrate them.
First of all, the back office is closed tomorrow morning (CET) and will deliver later. See you there.
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