After spending two nights in Pinedale, I woke up this morning to a weather forecast that was anxiety raising: Cooler with the potential for snow over parts of the state.
I ended up doing the morning ablutions rapidly, before heading out on the road. I stopped in Boulder (Wyoming) to eat breakfast before continuing my journey south. It was as brief a stop as I could make it. From Boulder until Farson, I had periods of clear weather, periods of snow, and periods of slick highway. I wasn’t that happy with the conditions: Before last Sunday it’d been years since I’ve driven in this kind of crap, and I’m still a bit nervous on it.
Consequently when I got to Farson, I continued straight ahead toward Rock Springs instead of turning left to visit South Pass, one of Wyoming’s many historic landmarks. I was also hoping to lunch in Jeffrey City and then make my way leisurely to Laramie.
Instead I turned into a slightly panic driven guy: I wanted to get to Laramie before the road conditions turned crappy—and believe me, they can turn crappy.
The weather cleared up nicely about 30 miles north of Rock Springs, and then it was pretty much clear sailing all the way to Laramie. There were a couple minor spots of wet and slick roads in the vicinity of Elk Mountain, but that’s pretty much a given when it’s slightly damp out.
Maybe I was too concerned—but I really did not want to get stuck somewhere remote.
That said, I arrived in Laramie about an hour too late to catch “Blatant Acts of Homosexuality”—which was a two hour event between 11 and 1 on the UW campus at Simpson Plaza (I have no idea where that is—it must be something recently renamed). It featured:
A civil ‘demonstration’ of students simply hanging around the designated area doing what ‘normal’ people do. Such as homework, talking on the phone, playing the guitar and talking to friends.
Maybe I was participating remotely: driving a car is pretty gay if you ask me.
Of course, I should note that today the US House voted to extend the definition of violate hate crimes to include victims of crimes who were attacked based on gender, sexual orientation, gender identity or disability. It was inspired, in part, by the murder of Matthew Shepard.
Am I to understand that the queer gathering at UW was just sitting out in the quad/open space and simply doing the same thing anyone else would do. IE the event was showing that queer folk can be just as boring as everyone else?