Silver Glow's Journal

by Admiral Biscuit


August 26 [Colorado Springs]

August 26

So that we wouldn't wake anypony up, me and Paradise had found a spot on the floor where we could sleep, and it was a little bit chilly when I woke up, 'cause we didn't have a blanket. Also the hotel carpet smelled kind of funny, but I couldn't really identify the smell.

Almost everypony else was up, except for Dewdrop 'cause Paradise wasn't there to push him out of bed. But when she got up and stretched she went there first and yanked the covers off of him and he pawed for them but couldn't reach them and he finally opened his eyes and saw her standing there with the covers in her mouth and said that she was cruel.

So she turned around and whacked him in the muzzle with her tail, then dropped the blankets on the floor and said that he'd better hurry up 'cause there was a big storm coming, and the last ponies downstairs had to wear the instruments today. And that got him motivated, and when he was in the bathroom I asked her if that was true. She said that there would probably be a storm somewhere but they all took turns with the instruments and he'd remember that sooner or later.

It was nice meeting up with everypony and everyone one last time in the lobby. And they couldn't stay around too long because they were forecasting severe storms in Kansas in the afternoon and evening, so they were going to go out that way after breakfast. And I didn't want to delay them, at least not too much.

I didn't wind up eating much breakfast, 'cause I went around and said my goodbyes to everypony and Lofty gave me a tornado-chaser badge and she said that she would have Mister Dove send me an official weather vest, too, but they didn't have any extras right now.

Doctor Tetsuya shook my hoof and said that it had been a pleasure to meet me, and I hugged Jo and Bill; Dusty and Joey both made fists and bumped my hoof.

Then I went back upstairs to our room to get my saddlebags and flight vest, and then me and my helpers and Mister Dove all got in the Suburban and I wanted to know if he was going to drive us all the way to Colorado. Mister Salvatore said only as far as Amarillo because that was the closest place that you could rent a car, unless you wanted a U-Haul.

I asked if those were the big white vans that had murals on the side, and he said that they were. So I told him that I thought it would be fun to have one of those and he said he hadn't been serious and we were not taking a U-Haul to Colorado.

Miss Cherilyn said that she thought it would be fun, too, and Mister Salvatore crossed his arms and sulked for a while. But he cheered up when we got close to Amarillo, and we got off the 40 Highway and I thought we were about to get our rental car but he said that this was a little detour on the way to the car.

I thought that we were going to Love's (which had a big heart and I wanted to go there) but we stopped too soon and he pointed to row of cars that had their noses stuck in the dirt and their hindquarters up in the air.

He said it was an American Icon, and both Miss Cherilyn and I agreed that it looked like cars stuck in the dirt. Maybe if that was a thing that Americans did Aric could put not-Winston in the dirt like that (although not-Winston made a good picnic table, so maybe that wasn't a good idea).

We didn't get back on the highway, but went to an Enterprise which is a place that rents cars. He said that he hoped they had something suitable for the mountains like a Jeep, and we waited inside until he came back out with a set of keys and said that he got us a pickup truck.

She said it wasn't practical, and he said that she wouldn't think that if we got into snow up in the mountains, and she said that Colorado Springs wasn't exactly in the mountains, and he said that if he made a wrong turn we could be in the mountains.

Well, I said that I was happy with it because I liked trucks. So that settled the argument and we loaded all of our luggage in the back of the cab, and that meant that I was sharing space with all their luggage but I didn't mind. I got the center seat again which let me see through the windshield. There was also a little window right behind me that I could slide open and that let some fresh air in.

We had to stop for fuel before we left Amarillo, and Mister Salvatore did stop at a Love's, and I went in with Miss Cherilyn and it was kind of neat because they had a whole section of radios and other things for big trucks. I didn't know that some people live in their trucks, 'cause there's a big space in the back called a 'sleeper' which has a bed and other things. So maybe when I saw big semi-trucks sitting at rest areas, their drivers really were resting.

It wasn't too long after that that we were on the road and even though I was eager to see everything, I was also tired 'cause I hadn't gotten enough sleep last night and after a while all the fields got boring and so I dozed off.

Mister Salvatore woke me up and I thought that we were in Colorado but when I looked around there weren't any mountains to be seen, just grass stretching off as far as I could see. And he told me that this was the Rita Blanca National Grasslands, and that if I wanted to stretch out and fly around them a little bit I could.

I did, just to stretch my wings, but they weren't all that appealing, 'cause they were kind of dry and brown and I thought that the grassy prairies that I'd seen in Kansas looked a lot more interesting.

And I thought that off in the distance, I could see mountains but they could have been a cloud front. Sometimes from a long ways away it was hard to tell the two apart.

As we drove on, though, I could tell that we were getting higher and we started to see hills around us, and then mountains.

And Mister Salvatore stopped in Raton, so that we could get out of the truck and stretch out, and he said that we were near where the train had gone into the tunnel between Colorado and New Mexico. It was still outside now, 'cause when I flew up just a little bit I could see the tracks running alongside the highway.

We passed by a nice sign that welcomed us to Colorado, and Mister Salvatore pointed off to the left and asked me to imagine the train being under all of that rock, and I didn't really want to think about it too much. I liked it up here where I could see the sky and clouds and trees.

The road went down out of the pass and then after a little while we were on flatter ground with the mountains all off to our left, and mostly dry prairie land to our right. And we kept angling further and further away from them until we got to Pueblo, which was where we stopped for lunch. There was a shopping mall with a cluster of restaurants around it including one called Wingstop and he said that I wouldn't want to eat there but he had Miss Cherilyn take a picture of me and him out in front of their sign.

So he wanted to go to Denny's, and Miss Cherilyn said only if she got to drive the rest of the way to Colorado Springs, and I thought that Red Lobster would be fun. He said that Red Lobster was for dates, not road trips, but we went there anyway. I had a Salmon New Orleans which was really tasty, and Mister Salvatore gave the keys to the truck to Miss Cherilyn and had beer with his lunch. She said that she couldn't decide if he was being responsible in giving her the keys or irresponsible in drinking for lunch, and he said that he could be both.

And when we got back on the road, he dozed in the front seat for a little bit, until she woke him up to find the directions to Peggy's house.

Peggy lived in a two-story house on Hawk Meadow Drive, and I knew it was her house when we got close, 'cause Cobalt was parked out in front.

She came running out when I knocked on the door and we hugged and I nuzzled her and we both said how much we'd missed each other.

Mister Salvatore carried my saddlebags in and he and Miss Cherilyn introduced themselves to Peggy's parents, who were called John and Chrissie. My helpers were staying at a hotel nearby, so after they made sure that I didn't need anything else, they left for their hotel.

We sat in the living room and talked and Chrissie offered to order some food if I was hungry, but I said that I was okay.

Peggy had been sort of following along with what I'd been doing, as much as she could. But we'd both kind of been bad friends and not written to each other as much as we should have, so I hadn't known about her vacation to Costa Rica, and she hadn't known that I flew all the way to Chicago. And I told her about the storms I'd been flying in and she told me that she'd gotten to go parachuting, so we had a lot to catch up on.

Her parents wanted to know what it was like where I lived, so I told them about our little cloudtown and the village, and they said it sounded like something in rural England or maybe the northeastern part of the United States. Since I hadn't been to either place, I wasn't sure if it was or not.

She said that tomorrow we'd go to Pikes Peak, because it was pretty close and she said that if I went flying above it, I'd be breaking the FAA's rules without breaking them. Chrissie thought that would be fun, and she also said that I would have to come over to the Air Force base and visit. She said that we might need for Mister Salvatore and Miss Cherilyn to lean on some people and I said that Mister Salvatore liked doing that, so it would make him happy.

Her dad showed me some computer pages that he had designed—he had made an entire family photo album and Peggy was really embarrassed by some of the pictures of her as a filly but I thought that she was really cute. And I told her about my neighbors and how we'd go hunting for Pokemons.

John said that he'd heard that there was a pegasus team in Texas that was chasing tornadoes and asked if I'd heard of them and I said that I'd flown with them and helped fight a tornado but it hadn't worked 'cause it was too big and there weren't enough of us. So we went looking on the computer to see if there were any movies of it but there weren't.

I didn't have it on my GoPro anymore, 'cause I'd had Joey send it to Meghan, and when I looked at her YouTube account she hadn't put that up yet. But she had made the movie of me putting the clouds on the fire so we watched that. I guess she's figured out how to edit them, 'cause it wasn't that long, and it only started when I was pretty close to the house.

Peggy's bedroom was a lot like her dorm room except that she had more things in it, and the floor had carpet, too. There was a little cot that her mom had set up for me, which was really nice of her to have done.

Peggy went into the bathroom and put on her sleeping clothes and then I had my turn, and we didn't go to bed right away. She wanted to know about how things were working out with me and Aric and so I said that I'd taken the train to Lafayette to meet him and also we'd spent a day at a nudist resort, which she thought was an odd date.

I reminded her that she'd spent all of Valentine's Day naked with her boyfriend, and she said that was different, because it was only them and nobody else.

And I told her that I'd also been spending a lot of time with Meghan 'cause she was still in town and now we were having sex and that Aric didn't mind. She said that he was probably hoping for a threesome when he got back to Kalamazoo.

Well, that was something that I hadn't thought about. I asked Peggy if she'd ever tried it and she said that she hadn't.

The cot wasn't as comfortable as it had looked at first because there was a metal rod in the middle and no matter how I moved around, it always seemed to poke me somewhere, until I finally turned around so that my head was over it, with the pillow between us, and that left my tail hanging down off the end of the cot but at least I didn't have a rod poking me.

I woke up a couple of times in the night to a distant roaring noise which was airplanes flying away from the airport that was almost next door to us. I think I could have seen it out the back windows if I'd gotten up and gone over there.