Jackson, WY. Home of the quintessential fake cowboy. It may be Wyoming, Middle of Nowhere, USA, but these guys don't substitute anything for fashion. It's a bunch of rich, white people who want to live in the REAL West, so they buy their over-priced houses and their over-priced cowboy boots and their-over priced lives and spend summers or winter (but nothing in between) playing rancher or mountain man or guy-on-safari. It's all fake, though I suppose they couldn't have chosen a better location for a fake life.

The meeting went fine, boring and logistical and full of people speaking in their own jargons to make everyone else there feel stupid. By and large, I was treated like someone who didn't just get a master's degree and who was too young to have any intelligent thoughts on anything. I discovered that Francisco's opinions on culture were indicative of how little biologists know about culture, but of course he wouldn't listen to a word I said. I also discovered that people from Jackson love talking to you like you have never ever been out West and are therefor ignorant of everything that goes on there. When you correct them and say, "Actually, I live here" they look at you blankly, completely unsure how to proceed. I get that a lot.

I could go on about the things I disagreed with or about how I was dissed the whole time. I don't want to.

But it was quite beautiful, so I spent a lot of time wandering on my own. The dinner that night was STILL paid for in full, so I had a couple of stouts (which I don't drink much here so I can share with Jonmikel) and some nice, fancy shrimp pasta thingy. Too fancy for Wyoming. :-)