• Published 25th Feb 2016
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Silver Glow's Journal - Admiral Biscuit



Silver Glow takes an opportunity to spend a year at an Earth college, where she'll learn about Earth culture and make new friends.

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August 28 [Zoo and Peggy's Friends]

August 28

I was eager to get going when I woke up, so I got out of bed carefully so I wouldn't wake up Peggy and went to the shower. I'd kind of gotten spoiled by mine, and while hers was nice 'cause it was just a shower without a bathtub, it didn't have a mat and the floor was really slippery.

I shook off before I got out and put my towel around my mane, and then went back to her bedroom. She was still asleep so I went to her desk and sat in her chair and wrote in my journal. She had a really cute red lamp that was on wheels, and made a little pool of light just over the desk so it wouldn't wake her up.

I looked up when I heard another airplane taking off and I thought that that would wake her up, too, but it didn't.

It was already pretty light when Peggy finally woke up and when I wasn't in bed she first looked over at the cot and then saw me sitting at her desk.

She got out of bed and petted my mane and asked me if I'd been writing all summer long, and I said that I had. She said that it must be pretty long by now, and I suppose it was.

I asked her if she wanted me to get breakfast for her, and she said that we could get it together. And then I asked if she wanted me to get out clothes for her, 'cause Meghan let me pick out her clothes. She said I could pick a shirt, so I started to look through her dresser for shirts. It was easier to pick for Meghan 'cause I knew what she had.

I finally found one I liked that said 'I love them double Ds' and had two diamonds on it, which was how they marked snowboard trails.

Peggy thought it was a funny choice, and she said if anyone asked she was going to tell them that I'd picked it. And when she put it on she said it was a little bit tight, which was appropriate enough.

She checked on the weather, and said that there were probably going to be afternoon thunderstorms. I asked her if I should go and patrol during them, but she said that she didn't think it would be necessary. And then she asked if I'd ever been to a zoo.

I said that I hadn't, and she said that it would be fun. I could get a quick look and then we could go meet up with her friends downtown for lunch and maybe visit the park and a dispensary and then after that we could figure out what else we wanted to do. She said that there was also an airplane museum that wasn't too far but she thought that her mom would want to go there with me.

So we had a quick breakfast of cereal and then she went into the garage and got her wheeled snowboard and put that in the back of Cobalt, 'cause she said that there was a park near downtown where you could ride them, which wasn't as good as snowboarding but it was almost as good. And she got her helmet, too.

The park was towards Pikes Peak, and Peggy said it was famous for being the only zoo on the side of a mountain. That seemed like an odd thing to be famous for, and Peggy agreed. She said it wasn't as big or as good as the Denver Zoo, but it was a lot closer, which was nice, and we were also allowed to feed giraffes.

The giraffes were a lot of fun—the lettuce was overpriced and I said that we should have just brought our own, but Peggy said that we weren't allowed to. I guess the giraffes were used to people feeding them, 'cause when we got over to the boardwalk a couple of them came right over and put their heads down so that they could reach the food and she said that you could even pet them if they'd let you. So I nuzzled one on the cheek and he drooled on me a little bit and she said that she wished she'd gotten that on camera. And I found out that they didn't like it so much when you blew into their nostrils. I guess that's not how giraffes make friends.

We also saw some lions, who were kind of boring, 'cause they were all napping, and we weren't allowed to bang on the glass to wake them up. But the other African animals were fun to watch—the elephants played around in their pool and sometimes blew water out of their trunks, and we got to look at the rhinos from inside an airplane that was mounted on a pole. Peggy said it was kind of strange, and that they hadn't had the airplane when she was younger.

There was an enclosure that had meerkats, too, and they were a lot of fun to watch. They ran around and stood up a lot, so that they could see better. Their favorite food was termites, and in Africa instead of living in trees, the termites built mounds on the ground that the meerkats dug through to get their dinner.

I asked Peggy how the animals liked living in Colorado, since all the pictures of Africa made it look like it was warm and flat, and I couldn't remember what we'd learned all the different continents were like but I didn't think that Africa got cold and snowy in the wintertime. I guess the lion's shaggy mane would keep him warm if it did.

She said that they kept them inside when it was really bad out, but that the zoo stayed open all year and most of the animals that were outside didn't mind the cold too much, and they had warm places they could go if they were too cold.

We went and saw the Colorado animals next. They had some mooses, which looked a lot like horses, but with bigger faces and huge horns. They stayed away from us and just went on grazing in their boggy pasture.

There was a mountain lion that was prowling around its habitat, going right up to the glass and then jumping over the rocks that it had, and it looked like it was trying to figure out if there was a way to escape and eat someone, and I didn't trust it at all. At least if it did get out, I could fly away.

They had a little display with otters, who were like meerkats that lived in the water. They liked floating on their backs which was really cute, and the sign said that different kinds of otters lived in rivers and streams and lakes all over the United States, so I was going to have to keep an eye out for them when I was back in Kalamazoo.

Once we'd gotten done looking at the animals, we took a chairlift across the park and then we went up to the Will Rogers shrine, which was a tall building that overlooked Colorado Springs. I could see the airport, but not Peggy's house, even though I knew about where it was. She said that maybe if we'd had binoculars we'd have been able to spot it.

When we were back in Cobalt she said that none of her friends could make it for lunch, but that some of them were free for dinner, and so we'd meet up then for a late night at the pub, and that sounded like it would be fun to me.

So we went to a Taco Bell for a light lunch, and then we drove over to Memorial Park. She had to park her car a little ways away because there were so many cars parked close, and she got out her wheeled snowboard and her helmet and we started walking towards the park.

Well, when we got there there was a big crowd of people, and a bunch of police cars, too, and she didn't know what was going on. So I offered to fly up and see, but she said that might not be safe until we knew what was happening.

When we got closer, there were a bunch of people standing around without shirts and holding signs that said #freethenipple and some of them had that painted on them, too. Some people were talking to them and one woman was talking to a man with a microphone.

I wanted to go over and talk to them, too, and so Peggy followed along, and there was this really nice girl named Leah who I thought was a boy when I first saw her because she had short hair and really small breasts. She said that they were protesting how it was unfair that men could go around without shirts on but women couldn't.

Well, I thought that was unfair, too.

Then she told me that all over the United States people were having protests and parades to draw attention to it, and she asked if we wanted to join with them.

Well, I did want to stay with them for a little bit especially because Leah had started to scratch my ears. Peggy didn't really want to until she saw one of her friends who was named Gina. And she asked Gina if this was why she wasn’t free for lunch, and Gina said it was, and then said that she liked Peggy's shirt, and Peggy got all red and said that I'd picked it for her.

So then Gina and Peggy sat down with us and Gina tried to convince Peggy to take off her shirt but Peggy said that she wasn't going to show her boobs to all of Colorado Springs and anyone with an internet connection as well.

After they'd caught up and Gina had met me, we walked more towards the center where a skinny man with long, tangled hair who smelled kind of skunky painted their slogan on my belly so that you could see it when you saw my belly and then after we'd met a few more people we went off to the other end of the park. And Peggy asked if it was okay if I posed with Gina and Leah and she took my picture, and I said that it was.

There were some things that Peggy called half-pipes, and then a big, recessed area that you could ride in, and there were already some people playing there but not too many. Peggy said that most of them were boys and that they were probably gawking at all the topless girls but that was fine because it was more space for us.

She rode down first and it was just like snowboarding, although the sides were steeper and there were more frequent obstacles. And there were things that she could do with her board that she couldn't do with a normal snowboard, 'cause it would have been strapped to her shoes.

So the most basic thing was to ride down one side and then back up the other, and I got the hang of that pretty quickly. And as long as I kept some weight down on the board, I could use my wings to help me with some tricks, so I was having lots of fun. I couldn't make the board flip around; I tried a few times but I never managed to get my hooves on it in the right place at the right time and usually if it did flip, it just landed on its back and skidded off.

She also showed me how to jump for height and that was a lot of fun except that I lost the board every time, and she said that didn't really matter. And then she told me that people compete for how high they can go, and she shouldn't have said that right when I was at the edge, 'cause the next time I went I used my wings to get extra speed on the downside, and after the board fell out from under my hooves I kept flying up, until I was about a hundred feet high and I said that I won.

She said that using my wings was cheating, and I said that she was just jealous because she didn't have wings of her own. And I guess I shouldn't have been so boasty, because she went over to the other course and just flew around it, flipping her board around and landing back on it and then when she'd finally jumped over every obstacle and gone around all the banks, she got off the board and said that it was my turn. I did make the first jump but the board didn't.

After that we went back to Cobalt, because it was getting really dark and cloudy and it felt like it was going to rain soon. Everyone was still out in the park with their nipples free, and they'd put up a small pavilion for shelter if it rained. I waved to Leah and then flew up a bit so that she could see the message on my belly, then looped back around and down.

When we got to the corner, I saw Miss Cherilyn standing there, and she waved at me. Peggy asked her what she was doing, and she said she was keeping an eye on things, just in case. And I asked her if Mister Salvatore was around, and she said that she'd suggested he take a two-day Jeep trip up in the mountains, just to keep him away because she was sure he'd find a way to get himself in trouble if he was watching a topless protest.

I thought that he was going to be kind of mad that he'd missed it, and she smiled and said she thought so too.

Peggy asked if it was okay for us to go to a dispensary, and Miss Cherilyn said that she was going to be here, and Mister Salvatore was somewhere in the mountains, so she had no problem with it, but she advised against letting me try anything that they had for sale, and Peggy said that we weren't buying, just looking around.

She raised her eyebrow, and then told me and Peggy not to do anything stupid, and then went back to watching the protest.

We got to Cobalt just before it started to rain, and Peggy used her portable telephone to get us directions to a dispensary. She said that she had never imagined that she would tell a federal officer that she was going to look at drugs and that that was a story which was never going to grow old.

We had to drive all the way through town but we finally got to a little brick shop that was called The Dankery, which was a brown brick building with a green stripe and all the windows covered up.

She said that it looked kind of sketchy, but we went in anyways, and inside it was a lot nicer although the smell was pretty intense. Peggy said that she thought she might get a contact buzz just from being in here, and after we looked around a little bit and had a nice girl with blue hair that was almost the same color as my coat tell us about all the different kinds they had, we left without buying anything. I was glad it was raining because that helped wash some of the scent off of me and clear out my nostrils.

We had a little bit of time before we were supposed to meet everyone for dinner, so we went back to Peggy's house and she took another shower and changed into clean clothes, and she also gave me a washcloth so that I could clean the paint off my belly.

It had stopped raining by the time we got back in Cobalt and went to the Jack Quinn Irish Alehouse and Pub. Which was kind of like Olde Peninsula inside.

Gina was already there, along with another friend who was named Clive. When they saw us, we all got a big table 'cause Peggy said some more of her friends were coming to visit, and we ordered some appetizers and beer for before they got there.

Peggy asked Gina how the rest of the protest had gone, and she said it had gotten cold when it started raining and a lot of people had wimped out and gone home which was too bad. But she thought that there was going to be some coverage on the news tonight, although they'd probably edit it so that nobody could see a single nipple.

We were still snacking on our appetizers when Heather and Lindsay arrived, and Lindsay was another snowboarder, so the first thing she said when she met me was that she'd seen the video of me snowboarding and that I had good style.

We'd ordered our dinner by the time her last friend arrived who was named Victoria and brought her boyfriend who was named Blake. And they were also snowboarders, too. I don't know if everyone in Colorado Springs was or if just Peggy's friends were. But that was mostly what we talked about at first, and then after a while we talked about lots of stuff like college and what we were gonna do after it. Lindsay said unless she broke something bad she was going to the Winter Olympics, and everyone said that they'd cheer her on.

It was funny—once Peggy told me what the Olympics were, I thought it was pretty amazing to be talking to someone who might be good enough to actually compete in them, and at the same time Lindsay thought it was really amazing that she was talking to a pony. And I don't know how we got on the topic, but someone brought up Orange is the New Black and nobody but Peggy believed that I actually knew Gusty. Peggy said that she'd met her, too, the last time we'd been through on a train.

It was really late when we left the bar, and I'd had too many beers to drink. I started singing along with the radio on the way home because they were playing Renegade, and we had to go in to a gas station so that I could pee. Peggy said that she should have told me that the altitude would make me drunker, and I said that I wasn’t at all because altitude didn't affect pegasuses. And then I must have fallen asleep because I don't remember the rest of the ride home.

Peggy woke me up in front of her house and we walked upstairs together, and got in her bed and curled up on the pillow and told her that I'd had a really fun time today.

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