March 24 [Colorado]
March 24
Colorado looked a lot the same as New Mexico. There isn't really much difference when you cross state borders, or if there was I hadn't noticed it yet.
It kind of made me wonder how people had decided one place was one state and another place was another state. The bottom half of Michigan was obvious enough; it followed the base of the Great Lakes, and the rest of it was surrounded by it. And there were some river borders, too, which also seemed sensible, but other states had nice straight lines that had nothing to do with anything as far as I could tell.
We sat down for dinner just before the train got to Trinidad. I was getting a bit bored with the repetitiveness of the menu and thought about experimenting and trying the herb roasted chicken. Miss Parker really liked it; that’s what she’d had for dinner every time.
It probably wasn't a good idea, though. Long trips already mess up your sense of time and sometimes make you sick, and it's not smart to make a significant change to your diet, too.
Cayenne was also annoyed with the sameness of our meals; she ordered a Bacardi as an appetizer and another to go with her dinner and I was kind of surprised that she didn't want one for dessert, too. It probably didn’t pair well with a chocolate cream tart.
I think it was getting a bit stressful on all of us to spend all this time on trains. I think the humans had the best of intentions when they came up with this plan, but they didn't ask us what we wanted to do, and of course none of us were rude enough to refuse.
But maybe I was being unfair. I'd had a good time so far, and the scenery outside was gorgeous. Next time Peggy talked about Colorado, I'd know what it looked like.
And I'd been wrong about Colorado being all mountains. When the train had turned east, it had pretty quickly gotten out of the mountains and into snow-covered plains. A lot of it was fenced off and there were cattle grazing through the snow.
Mister Barrow said that there used to be lots of buffalo or bison that roamed the western states, and they were such a symbol of America that they used to be on the nickel, which is one of the silver coins.
Aquamarine asked where they were now, and he said that the early settlers had driven them off and raised cattle on the land instead.
She told him that wasn't very nice, and she was surprised that the buffalo hadn't fought back, and then she remembered that on Earth, buffalo weren't smart and probably didn’t understand what was happening to them.
He told her that if she wanted to see buffalo, there were national parks that let them roam around wherever they wanted to, and she thought that would be fun to see. But then she said it was kind of sad seeing how dumb animals on Earth were compared to the ones in Equestria.
She told us that whenever she was out by the horse pastures at Michigan State, she understood a lot of what the horses were doing and why, but that it was a little uncanny seeing something that was so much like us that hadn't managed to take the next step to intelligence.
What made it the most difficult, she said, was that some of them were smart enough to have figured out one simple thing—there was one horse that knew how to turn on the water faucet, and she saw him do it once, but then when the water came out he didn't know to push the bucket over so he could drink out of it, and instead lapped the water up off the ground. And he didn't turn the faucet off after, either, which made the woman in charge of the pasture mad.
Miss Parker told us that she had the same feeling when she saw great apes at the zoo. They hadn't quite made the cut, but it wasn't too hard to imagine that some day they would be smart, too. She said that chimpanzees had been taught sign language and could speak to people, and some of them had learned to live with people but it was hard to overcome their instincts; deep down they were still animals, even if they could use sign language.
Gusty wanted to know what sign language was—she said that there were lots of signs everywhere with special symbols, but that wasn’t what Miss Parker was talking about, and she explained how sign language was a way of talking to deaf people, and showed us how to sign 'I love you,' which she said was all she knew.
That wasn't really all that useful, since none of us had hands to imitate her with. Aquamarine said that there was ear-language, and showed Miss Parker how to say 'I love you' in ear-language.
It was kind of slow, though. She used her ears to spell out words one letter at a time, but she did it using telegraph code, so her left ear was shorts and her right ear was longs. I tried to imitate her, but it's a little hard to get your ears to do what you want them to when you're thinking about it. Gusty caught on right away. I guess because she's practicing to be an actress she'd have to know that stuff.
Cayenne said that unicorns usually used horn-pictures, and made a little illusion of a human and a pony hugging each other. Gusty tried to copy her but couldn't manage to do much more than make a couple of glowing lights.
Cayenne said that it took a bit of practice to get it right, that you really had to imagine the scene in your head and then focus the magic, and Gusty growled that she could imagine scenes just fine but she wasn't as good at spellwork as Cayenne was because there wasn't a lot of call for it on stage. A good actress, she said, could do a whole show without a single magic spell; what was important was body language.
They were about to start arguing, so I jumped in and said that one of the mares on my weather team had gotten yelled at for making a cloud-penis that rained from the end, but we'd all thought it was really creative, and she'd put a lot of effort into getting all the details right. I heard later that our supervisor thought it was really clever, too.
Cayenne started to tell us about how she'd watched a sex movie with one of her friends and then made horn-pictures based on the movie, and Mister Barrow interrupted us to say that maybe we should talk about that kind of stuff in private and maybe we should get off the train and run around on the platform in La Junta to cool down a bit and maybe ponies shouldn't have two drinks with dinner either.
That sounded like a good idea, so we all went down to the bottom floor of the car and waited for the train to stop.
Since we went there a little bit early, Cayenne had a bit of time to demonstrate her horn-pictures, and I don't know about the other girls, but I was thinking how much fun it would be if Aric was on the train with me.
Just as we were getting off the train I heard a shout and flew up to see who it was, and it was Peggy! She came running over, and I flew towards her and had my forelegs wrapped around her before I had even landed all the way. I almost knocked her over!
She said that when she'd heard from Miss Cherilyn that I was going to be on a train in Colorado, she knew that she just had to meet me at the station, even if it was only for a little bit, and she waved to a man and woman who were her mother and father.
We hardly had enough time for introductions, and I didn't get very much time with Peggy at all because the train wasn't stopping for all that long. Her father shook my hoof, and then her mother hugged me, and they asked me a whole bunch of questions about myself and said that Peggy had shown them some movies of me playing in the snow and even snowboarding—Gates had apparently finished it while he didn't have classes—and I found out that her mother was in the Air Force and her father designed web pages.
Meanwhile, Peggy had introduced herself to my three traveling companions, and was talking to them. I was glad that Gusty didn't have her saddlebags on, because if she had she probably would have taken out her picture of Tim Stern.
It was kind of sad that we didn't have more time together—it would have really been fun if she had wanted to ride the train back with us—but I would be seeing her again in a couple of days.
We had to cut our conversation short when the conductor called us back to the train, and I just had time to hug Peggy and tell her that I missed her and then when I turned around everyone else was on the train and so I flew back and zipped through the door without even using the little stepstool.
I didn’t go right back upstairs with the other girls, but stayed by the door so that I could wave to Peggy and her family as the train was leaving the station.
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This one time, a buddy of mine's parents said he couldn't borrow the car to come meet me at the station, so I ended up stranded in Maricopa, Arizona for two days.
7230933 Stern doesn't even rise to the level of a Hey, It's That Guy, his face is generic Yorkshire yeoman, it looks like his career has been a series of walk-ons on really obscure single season shows. Mostly British, actually, he may be based in England.
If I believed the world revolved around myself I would say "thanks" for mentioning the bit about great apes / chimpanzees / ear semaphores as I posted in previous comments.
"How the States Got Their Shapes" is an interesting look at why the states are what they are.
Jeez. Ponies even argue cute.
(Also, it's my headcanon that the pony equivalent of sign language would be a combination of ear and mouth movements.)
Ah yes, the uncomfortable realization that the adorable, marshmallow-hooved ponies are sexual creatures with prurient proclivities. Poor Mister Barrow.
Also, a delightful surprise Peggy! Good to see her, even if briefly.
Oh, and:
Pretty sure you'll want to rephrase that. Also, good point on the issue of travel fatigue.
As long as it's not one of those fruit flavored varieties, there's no reason plain rum wouldn't go well with chocolate cream tart.
Maybe it would curdle it a bit in the mouth if you didn't wait a bit between them. I don't remember the rough acidity range of Bacardi.
Well it's spring
Is it estrus season yet?
Did you kno? Some chimpanzee were recently judged evolved enough to receive rights as "non-human person".
Two shots of 151? And she could make a coherent argument?
I wonder what Silver Glow thinks of human coins (at least the ones she's seen) being made out of copper, nickel, and zinc, rather than gold and silver?
7231606 wouldn't mouth movements just be reading lips?
7231873 This was because of the fact that some have been determined to have entered the bronze age of enlightenment, isn't it?
7231950
Unicorns, man. They're just that OP.
LOL@CloudPenis
7231581
Eurgh! Not during the summer, I hope. (Or, as I call it, the "Oh, God, make the hot stop!" season)
Awww, cloud dicks and friendship! What more from Equestria could we possibly want!
IMO I kind of think the narrative is a bit strong with other ponies involved in the story; I'll be sad to see them go.
7231980 Not necessarily. Exaggerated mouth movements that don't correspond to a specific sound would probably provide more "information bandwidth" paired with ear movements than just ears alone, and wouldn't require precise lip-reading ability.
American what?
They also learned to capitalize species names in the middle of sentences. Their teachers didn't know English that well.
That must've been one bored mare.
Tell me more, Cayenne...
7231618
Indeed. It's kind of like this scene from Serenity, only with Cayenne in the role of Kaylee Frye, and Mister Barrow in the role of Mal:
I think they would be surprised to find out that Domino's Pizza has their headquarters in Ann Arbor, Michigan which has bison on the property.
http://www.annarbor.com/business-review/dominos-farms-award-winning-bison/
Aww yeah! Aim High, Fly, Fight, Win!
American what?
Gives a whole new meaning to "make it rain," doesn't it?
Nice to see Peggy make a quick appearance in that arc. It was a sweet moment after the conversation nearly turned pornographic.
7233775 You know afterwards, that mare was kicking herself for not making it snow instead.
7233885 An old couple of ponies were on the ground below when that pony made the cloud penis.
"Abner? What are you looking at up in the sky?"
"Looks like a storm's a-cummin'."
7233912 Some poor kid not looking up tries to catch a snowflake on their tongue.
If Amtrak through Colorado is as slow as it is through California (average < 35 MPH, peak 85 MPH for a very short time around Watsonville), Silver could stay behind to socialize with Peggy and *easily* catch up to the train.
7232778
I could probably blame that one on English being a foreign language to Silver Glow, right? Right?
7232778 7233757
i0.wp.com/www.ucreative.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/84.jpg?resize=660%2C427
(Corrections made, thank you!)
I've just caught up to the last five or six chapters. It's been interesting, keep up the good work.
7232026
Early stone age, actually, they're just figuring out how to get fire without burning themselves. That's still leaps and bounds above hi-tech species, though. Many have been discovered to be developing tools and weapons from stones and sticks, including very crude blades.
7232064 Too right.
7234926 above hi-tech?
Are you sure that it is what you meant?
(If yes,then you just taught me a new expression)
7234956
Goddamnit autocorrect, that was supposed to be 'undeveloped'!
How do you get hi-tech from undeveloped?!
Well, I mean... without proper research, anyways. And development... I meant linguistically, how do you go from one to the other?!
7235609 I am just as baffled as you are.
7234775 don't blink, or you will find a dozen more in your update box.
Just hold on tight and enjoy the ride
7233885 discord with a notebook nearby ...
also, all the little pegasus fillys that want to become youtube idols instead of wonderbolts later ...
7231581
That sucks, dude. I've never wound up stranded anywhere, although there was one time in Durand where I thought I might be. I had a friend leave me a car at the train station, and when I was on the train out there I couldn't help but think what if she forgot?
7231588
That was part of the reason I chose him. The only movie I could think of he was in was the second Dungeons and Dragons movie.
7231590
That comment was definately an influence. IIRC, The Rogue Wolf used ear semaphore in Misunderstandings, which is the first place I've come across it. But it's really logical for ponies, since they have so much ear movement.
7231594
I know Michigan got its lower border shape and the whole of the UP because we went to war for Toledo (and lost). There's actually still an island on the Michigan/Ohio border that's owned by both states.
7231606
7231618
Sometimes it sucks to be the only guy in a gaggle of teenage girls. The things you hear that you can't unhear. . . .
I looked at that for the longest time before I could figure out what the problem with the phrasing was.
7231621
It might actually be pretty good, now that I think about it. Maybe not the best pairing, though.
7231747
It's getting there.
7231873
Huh, that's interesting.
7231950
Just plain Bacardi, not 151. Given roughly equal body mass to a human, and that Cayenne has a proclivity for drinking, even two shots of 151 might not faze her.
7231969
Just that it's a human thing. She might not know exactly what they're made out of, anyway; she's not a metallurgist. I didn't know until somewhat recently that pennies are made out of zinc these days.
7231995
That's awesome! I actually came across a horse that did it in a book about horses, where the author had one who would do that (but wasn't smart enough to turn the water off [or else he didn't care]).
7232100
You know if people were pegasi they'd do the very same thing.
7232670
I know, right?
7232917
Well, when there's nothing else to do on weather patrol . . . we've built some crazy stuff at work when we were bored.
That's something that you really have to see to appreciate.
7233215
And they also have all sorts of Christmas lights on it around Christmastime. Driving from Kalamazoo to metro Detroit, that's a great landmark, since it's right at the M-14/US-23 interchange.
7233775
It does. I bet every spring, mayors in towns throughout Equestria have to field complaints about the shape of the clouds that the weatherponies are putting in the sky. (and then when the team's told to stop, the mayor gets complaints from other ponies that it just isn't spring without cloud penises)
7234241
It usually runs pretty quick once it gets out of the mountains. At least that's what I remember--Amtrak blazing across the plains until the train runs into a truck that someone left parked on the tracks somewhere in Kansas.
7234775
Will do!
7240668
Wouldn't that be one of the curses of clashing technologies? All of a sudden all the foals are sporting GoPros and doing dumb stuff in the hopes of getting their cutie marks.
Okay, so it would be pretty much the same as it is right now, except for the GoPros.
7257551
Pennies have been made with mostly zinc since 1982!
I remember my first grade teacher's explanation about why dimes were smaller than nickels was because dimes were made of silver. Unfortunately, it was no longer the case at the time (and the spike of silver prices not long before meant she should have remembered that).
7258711
I meant that I didn't know that they were made out of zinc until recently, not that the change was recent. If that makes sense.
I don't remember much of anything from first grade. I have vague memories of reading a book, and my first grade teacher (Mrs. Frost) had white hair, and that's all.
Barrow is like: "These perverted ponies... they drive me to drink.
"
I wonder whether one can hybridize Equestrian Ponies and our horses. The Soviet Union under Stalin in the 1930s tried to create Super Soldiers by hybridizing humans and other great apes.
7231873
All organisms are equally evolved.
7434906
I don't understand why you got voted down. With a single common ancestor, it's literally impossible for anything that is alive right now to be more evolved than anything else.
Equating evolution with organisms becoming better or more complex is just a complete misunderstanding of how selection works.
7513473
Indeed.
7513473
Maybe its because a lot of popular literature uses the terms interchangeably.
This gave me a very stupid story idea: a Mother decides that the idea of Cute Ponies™ having sex corrupts children and she goes around preaching to ponies to stop having sex, period, to the ponies' confusion.
(Okay, finally got this out of my system.
)