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She met me at the airport, and we went over to Don Thompson's to pick up Keith Curtis. Then we went straight on up to the mountains. They really are mountains, great big pointy walls of rock that just went on and on. At 13,000 feet I started to get anoxia – "Don't worry," says Gail, "just let me know when the spots before you eyes turn pink, that's when the blood vessels in your retina start to burst." – and Keith discovered that he suffered from vertigo. The light was different, rather like that which you find in paintings by the Hildebrandts, and the vegetation was a much bluer sort of green than I am used to, there being no eucalypts. We stopped for lunch at a little township called Silver Heels, named after a legendary goldfields prostitute with a heart of you-guessed-it. self-contained residence underneath her parents' house. Keith admired her books and paintings until the wee small hours, and then she drove him back to Don's. I found my bed and fell into it. from Gail's grandmother. Gail is not one of the world’s early risers, but by midday we were at a shopping centre where she went looking for matting for her pictures. After a Burger King hamburger (I got sick of hamburgers but I did like the battered fried onion rings) we went on to Boulder. Here we were up to a lookout that afforded a most spectacular view – looking northward one saw the Rockies rising up like a wall out of the plain which stretched away to the right. This was the view which met the pioneers in their wagon trains and they had to detour either away north or away south in order to get around and so reach California. a bit subterranean, and the effort of getting down the stairs in the thin air killed any interest I might had had in the place. me with Rose Beetem. Rose shared an apartment with other students in a block of apartments entirely let to students. Various people came and went (reminding me of the good old Magic Puddin' Club) and we ate a concoction that was supposed to be a medieaval recipe but which was in fact good old Disaster Mince. Although the apartment was the sort of cheaply constructed building to be found near universities everywhere it was equipped with a dishwasher (at that time very much a luxury item in Australia). take me to the Laserium at Gates Planetarium. This was well worth the trip! You lie on the floor and look up at a dome (seats were in fact provided). Music is played and a laserist makes pictures to go with it, It is an art form, with each performance slightly different. One particularly weird effect makes you feel that you're falling through space. No smoking was allowed inside, but the queue was rather aromatic. bed with Rose, it being less complicated to leave the couch to her sister who hadn't yet came in. Neither of us flings our limbs about and I slept like a log.
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