Last year my dad, brother and I all had our own bikes. My dad was a bike racer in college and my brother has tons of energy. They were naturally significantly faster than me and I felt left in the dust. The hardest day last year was climbing over the mountain from Ten Sleep to Buffalo. It was steep, hot and buggy and I finished the ride about a minute behind my dad and brother. My goal was to get through the ride without needing to sag a ride in a car. I was slower than snot but I made it.

This summer my goal was to keep up with my dad and brother. There were a couple times where they got a head of me but for the most part I kept them in sight. Going up mountain passes I have an unfair advantage because of my third gear. We call the granny gear, or call granny Irma, because no one under fifty has one has three gears.

Going up Teton Pass in to Jackson my brother challenged me not to use Irma. It was on, there was no way I could back down from a personal challenge and my brother knew it. The pass has an average ten percent grade, which can feel steep in a car let alone in a bike. People were walking their bikes and I had to fight to pass them. I thought of getting off my bike and walking, it would have been faster not to mention easier on my thighs, but decided that if I got off I would never be able to get back on. As I rounded the final bend I could hear cheering. I knew that if I could just keep my feet moving I would make it.

I’m not sure what was harder, riding to the top of the pass or passing calculus III. Both felt like an impossible journey that would never end but my pride would not let me go half way. I wanted to prove to myself that I could do it and smile after words.

About 100 feet from the end an amazing biker woman, or fellow biker chick, rode up to me and we shared words of inspiration and finished together. Climbing to the top of mountains and after a 100 mile day reminded me that although college can seem near impossible, frustrating, and undervalued there always is a great sense of accomplishment at the end. During mile 80 it feels like the end will never come but I am here to say keep on pedaling, studying, follow your heart and stay true to who you are and you will make it to that breath taking view.

Zoe N. McDonald

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Photo: Zoe N. McDonald

Situated right off of Reynolds and 15th Street, Laramie High School has been used for everything except school since the wildfires started.

Numerous lines of tents across the grass amount to somewhere around a few hundred temporary homes for the firefighters coming from places like Colorado, New Mexico and Oregon. The parking, once empty for the summer is now filled with row after of row fire trucks, personal vehicles and buses, all of which belong to the fire departments.

Forest fires are no stranger to Wyoming, but because of a dry spring with little snow, the normally cool summers in southeastern Wyoming have become arid and dry. The month of June saw temperatures climb into the high 90s before the month was halfway through. With hot climates and dry forests, fires started midway through the month of June.

The Squirrel Creek fire, as of July 6, reached a maximum of 11,142 burned acres, and was at 55 percent containment, according to an Albany County press release July 6. Firefighters were pulling outrageous shifts to stifle the flames as much as they could and prep the unburned land to make sure the fire would not spread as easily.

Fire activity continues to diminish due to weather conditions and access to establishing fire lines, according to the release. The fire is 98 percent contained at 10,921 acres. Crews are mopping up to 100-feet into the interior of the containment lines. The number of personnel on the fire is now at 361.

Finally, the county had some relief from the disastrous fire. Heavy rains and tireless work from the fire crews have paid off greatly. At one point it seemed as if the fire was going to take a turn for the worst and engulf most of the county’s forests.

The local citizens know this too. Red Solo cups in a chain link fence on the Laramie High School campus read “Thank You” and signs on another fence spread their thanks for the men and women have done to preserve some of Wyoming’s forests. These tokens of appreciation are just some of the things Laramie citizens have done to play a part and show gratitude.

On July 4, the City of Laramie had an engagement at Washington Park called “Freedom Has a Birthday.” This festival was to celebrate America’s 236th birthday, but the Red Cross had a booth collecting funds to help with the fire relief, for the evacuated families, and the men and women working day and night containing the flames.

Will Burger

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Photo: David Demic

“When the doors opened and everyone came in at once, there was a little panic between everyone,” bartender Joe Hruska said.

The stress and excitement of the Crow Bar & Grill finally opening was underway.

“We had a list of drinks on our order tape about 7 feet long within four minutes. It was a couple of hours before we really got into a flow of things,” Hruska said.

And with all this business flowing in the doors, there were some kinks that the newest of Laramie’s bars suddenly faced.

“We had seven or eight kegs on tap opening night and all the beer was pouring warm and the pressures were way too far off. They had just been installed that day, so we never had time to fiddle with them,” Hruska said.

This beer malfunction made it difficult for customers’ needs to be met. Overall, the process of opening the Crowbar & Grill was no easy task. Co-owner Andy Glines, who worked at Big Hollow Food Coop before he decided to open his own gastropub with friend and co-owner Justin Turner, describes the hoops he had to jump through to get the business going.

“I guess the pieces that took the longest were … our building permit which [took] about two months,” Glines said. “We were changing this entire space from basically just a retail store to a kitchen.”

Glines has learned a lesson in the short few days of being open.

“Everybody says ‘don’t open until you’re ready,’ but the first thing we found out was like when we thought we were ready – you’re really not,” Glines said.

After opening night, and realizing the issues that popped up, there are some changes being made to accommodate the flow of business.

“We are currently waiting for a walk-in cooler to chill the kegs and get some kinks worked out with the tap lines as well,” Hruska said. The Crowbar & Grill hopes to serve up to 15 craft beers on tap.

“Another issue has been keeping a steady list of bottled beers for people to choose from. The distributors didn’t expect us to be needing so much of so many, and we keep buying out their stock,” Hruska said.

The Crowbar & Grill sets itself apart by its mood and relaxed atmosphere.

“It’s a great place to go for groups just wanting to eat, sit around and talk and enjoy some beers and cocktails you don’t normally find in other establishments in Laramie, or go on a date, or just got sit at the bar and have a conversation with someone,” Hruska said. “The Crowbar and Grill is different because of the atmosphere we are trying to provide.”

Holly Diorio

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Noelia Antweiler (center left) strikes a dramatic pose with inmates of the Kentucky Northpoint Training Centre as part of the Voices Inside acting rehabilitation program. PHOTO: Voices Inside Courtesy

Being well rounded is one of former university student Noelia Antweiler’s many talents. She has performed in over two dozen plays, both educational and professional, played roles as diverse as the “Chicago” sex idol Velma and a mother trying to help her ADD afflicted child in “Distracted.”

And then there was that time she taught prison inmates in Kentucky how to write touching plays and feel characters’ motivations.

“In the beginning it was kind of weird, just being in prison with all these guys in orange jumpsuits,” Antweiler said. “I just remember feeling overwhelmed but also really excited.”

She found herself in the position of a teacher during an internship with the Kentucky Pioneer Playhouse, which gave her the opportunity to first perform a play in the prison and later teach a classroom of ten inmates.

“Noelia was hired as an actress at Pioneer Playhouse,” Pioneer Playhouse Managing Director Roby Henson said. “Our theater does outreach services to our community and we consider the Northpoint Prison 9 miles down the road as part of our community.”

Antweiler was initially concerned whether her presence would disturb the group dynamic of the inmates, who had been part of the “Voices Inside” outreach program for a year prior to her teaching. Her worries were unfounded.

“She totally bought into the concept of rehabilitation through creativity,” Henson said. “She helped the incarcerated polish their writing and performance skills and became the inmate’s favorite instructor last summer.

“I decided the best way to handle it was to be myself and treat them like humans,” Antweiler said. “And so, I totally fell in love [with the work] that week and proceeded to come back three or four times a week, every week, for the rest of the summer.”

Over these weeks, Antweiler and Henson worked closely with the inmates on refining their self-written plays as part of the Voices Inside mission to “increase communication skills, build self-esteem and humanize and enrich the lives of those closed off behind bars,” according to the program’s website.

The connection Antweiler developed with the inmates became one of respect and trust. Even after she left Kentucky, the inmates continued writing her letters and asking for her advice.

In one case, an inmate by the name of Ricky wrote Antweiler that the work she did with them moved many to want to live a better life.

His dedication was put to the test during an incident at the prison.

“Two days ago, while at work with a friend, while we were upstairs, another inmate attacked and attempted to kill two female officers. We were upstairs in the building, they were down-stairs, alone with the inmate,” Ricky wrote Antweiler. “By the time we were able to reach them, both had been injured and were later removed by ambulance.

“In pulling him off the female officer (a Sgt.), I ended up in one of the most brutal fights I have been in for many, many years. I broke the middle finger of my right hand and also fractured my right hand. He was a terror, Noelie [sic]. The Sgt. Said that we had saved both of their [lives]. In my humble opinion, she is correct. As I told Robby, though I would have undoubtedly came to their aid, the fact is that by being involved in the Playwriting venture where one is forced to explore himself, I was able to help save two [lives] with a noble heart and a clear mind.”

To Antweiler, who considers theater to be her “creative wild child,” it is also one of the most important things in society because it brings people together, she said.

“Theater can talk about taboo subjects in a really constructive way and can just be plain entertaining,” she said. “It really speaks to my soul and it’s where I’m happiest. And I believe in happiness – not doing things for money.”

David Demic

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Instead, two students at the University of Wyoming don expensive lingerie and shoes to work as exotic dancers – commonly referred to as “strippers” – in the Wyoming and Colorado area to earn their tuition money.

Photo: Edward Timmons. A dancer and customer at the Cheyenne based club "The Den."

“I’ve been doing this for 5 months now,” Suzan, a theatre major at UW, said. “I couldn’t afford school anymore and so I was working every day of the week and it was not cutting it close at all for what I needed for school and I was like ‘[screw] it’ and…I googled strip clubs.”

While both students were willing to go on the record under their stage names, for the purpose of avoiding any potential recognition, their names have been changed to “Suzan” and “Fiona.”

Fiona, a math major at the university, discovered her interest in the profession through a different route.

“I went to Amsterdam with a former boyfriend and participated in an amateur [stripping] night while we were there,” Fiona said. “It was a lot of

fun and I thought ‘I can do this back home. It would be great.’”

Sex work is often subject to stigmatization and stereotyping, depicting those working in the exotic dance industry as “whores” or worse.

“It is a reality that some women see sex work as a form of liberation,” Susan Dewey, assistant professor in the Gender and Women’s Studies Department, said.

Dewey, who wrote the book “Neon Wasteland” on her research with topless dancers, works with a group called Sex Workers Outreach Program, which works with sex workers in the Denver area.

Dispelling stereotypes, Dewey teaches classes on sex work on campus. She defines sex work as a continuum and a form of labor, she said.

“Think of sex work as a continuum ranging from complete choice to complete coercion. The reality is that many men and women who engage in sex work are somewhere in the middle,” she said.

Dewey referred to sex worker activist Carol Leigh who defined sex work as a liberating force in her life and a feminist choice “to use her body in a way that’s very empowering,” she said.

While money was a motivating factor to the two UW students, they said that dancing became about more than the monetary value.

“I think I’ve always been this, we’ll call it open-minded, person and stripping is nice because I meet girls who are just like me,” Fiona said. “Before, I was the crazy one of all my friends. I was more open-minded than they were and I was like ‘yeah, I’ll do that.’ And now, when you’re stripping, you meet girls who are exactly like you are.”

The dynamic of dancers both on stage and behind the scenes is one of camaraderie and competition.

“There is definitely a line of seniority that is respected beyond all believe,” Suzan said. “You don’t [mess] with this line.”

“When I was a new girl, you would not talk unless spoken to,” she said.

And while both girls had to earn their spots among the other dancers, the customers presented their own rewards and challenges.

“What’s funny is that I’m super confident, but the way I was raised I always have had some self-confidence issues,” Suzan said. “After working [as a dancer] those all went away, because you are dancing for 9 hours a day [and] you have people telling you how beautiful you are all the time.”

When it comes to dancing on stage and during private sessions, the dancers have full control, the students said. Any physical contact is only initiated by the dancers, or with consent of the dancers, giving them a high level of control over the customers.

But there are also “the creepers, the 50s, 60s – the truckers,” Fiona said.

“A guy comes in, gets a soda and tells me to tell him how much I love taking my clothes off. I get a lot of those,” she said. “Lots of guys … all they want to do is talk about sex and what they would do to me and blah, blah, blah, but they buy lap dance after lap dance so you say, ‘Yeah baby.’”

While both students work at establishments that have a zero tolerance policy when it comes to prostitution, or “hooking,” both said it does happen.

“Some girls do make that leap,” Fiona said. “Maybe 10 percent of the girls make that leap at some point.”

Both said that they have never engaged in the act or would ever want to.

“I mean we are in the sex industry, but there is different positions within that,” Fiona said. “We are not porn stars. I don’t know if I could ever do porn. And definitely no hooking.”

Work can follow the students home in other ways. One example is when dancers become so familiar with certain customers that they become their “regulars.” Customers will ask dancers for their phone numbers, to which dancers ask the customers to leave their numbers with the bar tender. When dancers feel comfortable enough to exchange numbers, they then have the option to text or call the customer.

“Regulars are a lot of work. So much work,” Fiona said. “Most expect you to call or text them on a daily basis.”

The benefit of keeping such relationships with regulars come in the form of more security in pay.

“If you’re having a slow night, you can text your regular ‘come see me’ and you make $500 that night,” Fiona said.

She said that the line between a relationship with a regular and a romantic relationship can become blurry.

“It’s a fine line, because a lot of the girls that are single meet guys in there and they become their boyfriend. It’s a grey area,” she said. “If you want to keep it over the phone that is fine, or you can grab coffee or go out to dinner — you can take it as far as you want to. You can take it to a physical, intimate sort of level [but] that will get you in trouble.”

Suzan said that she had coffee with a regular before, but would never do dinner.

“I have to drop a lot of them, especially when they realize that I won’t go home with them,” she said.

Suzan said she did not want to date while working as a dancer.

“I had a relationship when I started stripping and we weren’t doing so hot as is, but as soon as I told him on a trip, ‘hey I’m going to audition at [strip clubs]’ he looked both of them up and said that if I was at one club we could still be in a relationship but it wouldn’t work if I worked at [the other place],” she said. “So then I picked [the latter place] because you could probably make more money there and so we just kind of faded.”

Constant obstacles the students face are their families finding out about their employment.

“My family will never know, unless it gets out somehow, which I don’t think will ever happen,” Suzan said. “I mean it’s not like they’re helping me out with bills, so they couldn’t take away money from me, [but if they found out] I think half of my family would just be really angry and the other half would be really sad.”

Fiona would face monetary consequences in addition to familial stigma.

“I would be disowned,” she said. “I have a lot of inheritance money coming to me one day and it would be gone.”

Dewey said that this form of privacy and lack of unified sex worker movement is common internationally.

“Many women who are doing this kind of work [under that] stigma don’t want their families to know; don’t want their loved ones to know,” she said. “Then there are other women, like the street workers I’m working with in Denver, who don’t think of this as a form of work. When I say the [term] ‘sex worker’ to them, they’ll look at me like I’m crazy. To them, considering prostitution as work is crazy, because that’s how social norms tell them to think about it.”

Dewey also said that stigmatization over the years led to misconceptions regarding the difference between sex work and sex trafficking.

“Now what’s begun to happen in recent years is… that trafficking has become conflated with sex work,” she said. “I have many students who will use terms prostitution and trafficking synonymously, interchangeably. This is very, very problematic because when you say to someone ‘you do not have the right to do something legally’ that’s one thing entirely, but when you say to a person ‘you think are making a choice but you’re actually not, because no person with self-respect would make that choice,’ that’s a real problem.”

Fiona and Suzan plan on continuing their work as dancers for the rest of their time as students.

“[I think the stereotype] is funny, because I look at what we do every day and I’m like ‘it’s not that bad,” Fiona said. “I mean I do much less than the slutty girls at the club.”

David Demic

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