Part Thirteen

“A Brush with Greatness”

On the Late Show with David Letterman on CBS-TV, Dave had this segment where before the show began, he would ask anyone in the audience if they had met someone famous. A few people  were chosen to be on the show and after telling Dave about how they met this famous person, the chosen person was given something to read that was known as a “writer’s embellishment” with some comical end to the skit.

Well on Day 13, yours truly had a brush with two people of greatness, but in different fields. More on that in a moment.

After last night’s snowfall that came thru the greater Denver area, this is what I saw outside my hotel window this morning:

The snowfall amounts were less on grassy surfaces, but any car surface was just the right ambient temperature and a lot of folks wound up with 3 inches of snow on their cars. Luckily for me, I happened to be provided a snow brush/ice scrapper with my rental car. So after about 10 minutes of warming it up and cleaning it off, it was off to my first “Brush with Greatness”:

The gentleman you see before you is of sound mind and body: he’s just not playing with a full deck. All of the fives and nines are missing. Seriously, this is my other ham radio friend in Denver. He is Terry, N0PQV. He phonetically says, “November Zero Pretty Queen Victoria”. We had breakfast at the Sunrise Sunset restaurant in Lakewood, Colorado just west of Denver. He is a fixture and regular and if he walks in with the big sombrero, the patrons know that Terry has arrived. He is a well-known ham in Denver and is kinda like one of its ambassadors. Not only does Tom own a 2-meter repeater on one of the very high mountains around Denver, he also belongs to a ham radio group known as IRLP, the Internet Radio Linking Project, which was founded by a Canadian ham, Dave Cameron, VE7LTD.

After bidding Terry farewell, it was time to go have my second “Brush with Greatness” of today. Though it took a bit of doing to get there. Despite the snowfall of last night, the greater Denver area had no traffic issues other than the usual rush hour traffic stuff:

After climbing out of Denver and getting onto U.S. Route 85, I was on my way to the city of Greeley, Colorado. And along the way, we pass a southbound auto rack train heading to Denver:

 

And the weather was having a very strange effect on the scenery.

Usually when traveling on Route 85, you can the prairie and all of its cornfields to the right and the Rocky Mountains in the distance to your left. But today, the greater Denver area was to get its second punch of snow. And the cloud front coming in was obscuring the Rockies. All you could see was the clouds; no mountains. And I can say that in past trips, I have never seen that phenomenon.

Upon entering Greeley, I headed to a very cool and unique radio station:

 

KUNC, at 91.5 on your FM dial and an affiliate of NPR, National Public Radio. I had planned to stop by to see their new studios and to renew my membership with the station. One of the persons who works there, Ryan Thompson who is their Operations Administrator, use to live in Waterford, Connecticut which is to the east of Niantic. He was unable to give me a tour due to a recording session he was in, but the lovely receptionist Val was able to take me to the station’s on-air studio. I looked in and came eye-to-eye with morning air personality Wendy Wham:

And yes, that is your given name. Wendy hosts a weekday morning program from 9am to 12 noon Mountain Time simply called KUNC Music. It is a very eclectic collection of various types of music and is very entertaining. I got to meet Wendy personally and get a view of the on-air studio setup:

All music for KUNC comes out of servers and runs on a semi-automated playlist . As the show goes on, Wendy enters the song, what cut it is on its parent CD, and the time it aired on the show into an as-run list so that if like what you heard, you can see what CD the track came from. And since this is non-commercial radio, any of the announcements made on KUNC are for and about their business contributors. Plus, public radio is also funded by memberships.You can give them a listen at www.kunc.org and Wendy thanks you.

After getting a hug form the morning hostess, I went and paid my membership dues and headed out the door. And again we enter:

As I headed to Cheyenne for lunch and then east from there to my next stop, the landscape looked quite lovely with its first snowfall:

Before I left Cheyenne, I went east on U.S. Route 30 and found what’s left of the Hitching Post Inn. Back in trips past, the inn was the mid-point of my trip and was a great place to stay. Three restaurants and a really neat Western motif inside. When I was out here in 2010, about 2/3 of the place had burnt to the ground. As you can see from these shots, the front of the inn is now just an empty lot and one of the wings is closed to occupancy:

 It’s good to see it back, but it just isn’t the same.

Soon I am up on I-80 heading east and in about 45 miles, we enter Nebraska for the last time:

Temps did not get above the upper 30’s and it was quite refreshing feeling the mid-fall/pre-winter air. And as you can see outside my mobile office:

It is a beautiful day on the prairie. And the UP always provides the entertainment:

 

Tomorrow we continue our eastbound journey towards Omaha. The weather looks like it will cooperate and we might, just might, see 60 on the thermometer. Stay tuned.

I’m Philip J Zocco. On The Road. In Sidney, Nebraska.