I Am a Motorcoach . . .

. . . And we’re on a 3-blog trip westward. This week, part 1: Denver, Colorado. To get there, I carried my passengers and their luggage up nearly 5,000 feet of elevation. Now, because of Kansas, it didn’t feel like you might expect such a climb to feel. It was as gradual as the growth of Kansas crops from planting to harvest. Over the 422 miles of I-70 pavement from Kansas City (on the eastern border of Kansas) to Kanorado (on its western border) we climbed 3000 feet without noticing any change.

And some say Kansas is flat! Hmm . . .

Selfies

(which by definition means I’m in them . . . though you might have to look for me)

There’s that harvest I mentioned. I-70 is a high-traffic thread through a vast sea of Kansas raised commodities. Boring passage to some, but to anyone with an appreciation for farming or economics, this is where the world gets its bread. One year’s Kansas wheat crop alone could fill a line of train cars from western Kansas to the East Coast (a sample of the kind of thing you can learn from a Tour Director).

It’s called a Tuk Tuk (pr: Took Took). It dreams of being like me when it grows up (one of them told me so as we shared curb space near Union Station). It’s a kind of mini-coach. They are made in Denver and it appears that they Tuk-Tuk much of the business from the taxis in this city, because we saw lots of them and only a few taxis.

Stopped in for a tour of the state capital building at 200 E Colfax Avenue. Built in the 1890’s, the dome was plated in gold in 1908 to commemorate Colorado’s Gold Rush days. And, by the way, did you know the sky is actually bluer in Colorado because there is less water vapor in the air?

Union Station is located in the heart of the LoDo neighborhood, Denver’s downtown historic district. Effective and stylish architectural repurposing, a vibrant urban nightlife, and the busyness of Tuk Tuks shuttling folks around the area disguise the fact that this is one of the oldest neighborhoods in Denver.

MEETING THE NEWS on the roadways of America, first-hand, real time, real world news—going out and discovering the news . . .

PREHISTORIC NEWS: Denver is old, really old! Dinger, the mascot for the city’s baseball team, the Colorado Rockies, is a dinosaur – a purple triceratops to be exact. Excavation prep for construction of the ball team’s stadium, Coors Field, unearthed a dinosaur rib. There it was, right in the Colorado dirt, the natural birth of inspiration for a team mascot. On April 16th, 1994, the embodied mascot, Dinger, emerged (less naturally) from its dinosaur “egg” on Coors Field.

ELEVATION NEWS: You’re probably wondering what it’s like for a Missouri based motorcoach to haul around more than 10,000lbs of passengers and luggage in the “Mile-High City.” Does the high altitude present any special challenges? Thanks for your concern, but no it doesn’t. True, at our garage in Washington, MO, where we are parked at 551 feet above sea level, the atmospheric pressure is 14.4 pounds per square inch (psi); and in the mile high city the psi is 12.3. Now that’s a big difference when it comes to getting enough air, whether into an engine like mine or lungs like yours. And in the old days, motorcoaches did lose power at higher elevations due to reduced air getting through their engine’s combustion chamber. But that was several generations ago. Those conditions don’t faze me for two reasons: I am turbocharged and I am a modern electronic machine. My electronic engine controls perform what you might call spontaneous acclimation. A barometric pressure sensor registers the amount of atmospheric pressure and adjusts to the conditions, making sure my engine is fed enough fuel and air at all times. My turbo, I’m sure you know, converts exhaust product into compressed air for the engine, creating additional power and efficiency. More oxygen = more fuel burning. Well, my turbo happens to be a Variable Geometric Turbo (VGT), which means it is equipped with multiple sensors that alter the turbos performance as conditions change.

(Unlike selfies, these are not about me, but about travel discoveries I think you’d like to know about.)

Stopping for a night in Abilene, Kansas (boyhood hometown of Dwight D. Eisenhower) on the way to Denver was an opportunity to dine at the historic Brookville Hotel Restaurant. Winner of the prestigious James Beard Foundation Award, the restaurant’s famous family style chicken dinner lived up to its legacy.

Quote Of The Day samples

“A people that values its privileges above its principles soon loses both.” – Dwight D. Eisenhower

“Everything comes from an understanding that you are a gift in my life – whoever you are, whatever our differences.” – John Denver