9.) Denver police ALMOST shot me June 13, 1997 outside the U.S. District Court Building in Denver - at the VERY minute mass murderer Timothy McVeigh got his death penalty sentencing. Somehow I had trespassed past a police roadblock and saw to my slight amusement - and fright - that TV crews were looking at me scared. Thanks A LOT to the unknown senior police officer who immediately saw that I was harmless - and no bomb threat to all the TV crews! . (I found my ATM Transaction Record: 06/13/97 16:32 CAP 4040 [Denver ATM shows 4:32 PM MDT or EDT?] from The Bank of Denver: 1534 California St. Denver CO.)

.
9.) Denver police ALMOST shot me June 13, 1997 outside the U.S. District Court Building in Denver - at the VERY minute mass murderer Timothy McVeigh got his death penalty sentencing. Somehow I had trespassed past a police roadblock and saw to my slight amusement - and fright - that TV crews were looking at me scared. Thanks A LOT to the unknown senior police officer who immediately saw that I was harmless - and no bomb threat to all the TV crews!
.
(I found my ATM Transaction Record: 06/13/97 16:32 CAP 4040 [Denver ATM shows 4:32 PM MDT or EDT?] from The Bank of Denver: 1534 California St. Denver CO.)
.
(If Google wonder who googled Timothy McVeigh, JonBenet Ramsey and Columbine High School shooting all within five minutes, it was just harmless me.)
.
Text improved June 16, 2018.
.
In March 1992 I bought a Mace pepper / teargas spray in a weapons shop in Miami and cycled across the US to San Francisco with the Mace cannister dangling in my belt the whole way. Nobody bothered me.
In 1997 I thought about buying another Mace, but the situation is different in the West than in the South East.
In the South East they are intolerant to strangers and people who apparently don't fit in. In the West "strange people" are tolerated and not harassed. Therefore I didn't buy a cannister of Mace.
.
But IF I had a cannister of Mace dangling in my belt June 13, 1997 the Denver police outside the U.S. District Court Building would - and should - have seen me as showing signs of aggression and therefore having been justified in shooting me.
.
Leaving the U.S. District Court Building I kept on walking to stretch my legs when a crowd of reporters and camera crews ran noisily past me. I guess Timothy McVeigh was leaving the court building after receiving his death penalty. As far as I remember he wished to be executed fairly quickly and he got his request granted.
At that time I was opposed to the death penalty, but I have changed my mind and now see the death penalty as justified - AS LONG AS the courts are "100%" SURE...
.
I never have had any problems with the police in the US.
One day cycling from Florida I passed Mobile, Alabama, at night and an oncoming police car put a VERY bright spotlight on me, but turned it off after just a few seconds having decided I was no problem - and I was heading out of the city of Mobile and Alabama towards Mississippi anyway...
.
Second day out of Baton Rouge i did have an incident with the police at night at the "city" sports ground. It was mistaken identity and both funny and dangerous for me - I will write about it later...
.
In Texas I found some European tourist's money-belt by the side of the road and delivered it to the next police station. I thought they would be annoyed with extra work but they were delighted because they had been looking "all over" for it. And the Texas police even gave me pizza...
.
Back to June 13, 1997 and I spent a couple of nights in probably Kings Inn Motel in Aurora before I cycled to the airport and took a plane to New York, Newark airport, before cycling a sleepless night passed Time Square, the Twin Towers at World Trade Center, Wall Street and over Brooklyn Bridge to JFK and a plane back to Europe.
My three months long bicycle trip in the US was over.
.
Almost two years later the mass shooting at Columbine High School happened, where 12 people were killed.
15 years later a "carrot top" had a mass shooting in a cinema in Aurora, Denver, and 12 people were killed.
.
.
THAT was the short story about me nearly being shot by the Denver police.
HERE is the long and "tedious" story of how I got to the U.S. District Court Building in Denver at - just by chance - EXACTLY the wrong time...
.
In 1996 I had left my Thai girlfriend for the last time, not knowing that she had looked upon me as the best male DNA available - and single handedly had mixed my DNA with her own DNA.
.
I had cycled on my old bicycle Sydney - Canberra - Thredbo - Wangeratta - Melbourne. Melbourne and Victoria where I had previously lived in 1990/91 with my Australian girlfriend - who in 1997 didn't want to see me again...
.
From Melbourne I took a plane to Christchurch - I cycled via Invercargill and Queenstown to the ferry to New Zealand North Island. Then I cycled to Auckland. I was supposed to fly to L.A. with a free stopover in Fiji but due to storm damage in Fiji, I changed to a free stopover in Tahiti instead.
.
After beautiful Tahiti I cycled from Los Angeles to Las Vegas. Then plane to San Francisco to cycle my 1996 Las Vegas new bicycle back to Las Vegas.
In 1996 I was offered in the Las Vegas shop to buy a cool surplus "Las Vegas Sheriff Department" bicycle on condition I repainted it.
Unfortunately I picked an ordinary Trek bike with Shimano silent gear to be able to come undetected on wildlife in Yukon and Alaska. - And the Yukon and Alaskan wildlife jumped just as high as me - before they ran away from the silent rider.
.
So I finally had to leave my beloved Koga Miyata Traveler bike that I bought in Vienna in 1988. I had cycled my Koga Miyata estimated more than 65,000 kilometer or more than 40,000 miles and I gave it back to my local Las Vegas bicycle shop hoping they would give it to a homeless person or something.
But as the door closed I heard the boss say:
"Who wants to put a sledgehammer to this bike?"
.
For the first time in my life I cycled to the Grand Canyon then I cycled through the night to Monument Valley without stopping to sleep, and I was a bit too tired to fully enjoy Monument Valley...
In Moab I was supposed to cycle on the Slick Rock area. But I had let my travel insurance expire so one look at the trail and I chickened out...
.
I cycled to Aspen and in Alpine Access ATM I withdrew 500 dollars at 12:58 (Aspen ATM shows 12:58 PM MDT or EDT?), June 3, 1997.
10 days later, after a few more mountain passes, I cycled into Denver, Colorado. The last remotely interesting thing I saw was Buffalo Bill's museum and grave.
.
I came into Denver and there were cars and people everywhere. So I cycled through the city looking for a cheap motel. At one stage I started walking not paying attention to my surroundings.
.
Suddenly I saw a row with cameras pointing at an official looking building away from me. Then I notice a reporter that with microphone in her hand looked straight at me, with fear in her eyes. She said something and all the reporters and camera crew were looking straight at me - and to my slight amusement they all looked at me scared...
I looked to my right and I saw a crowd of demonstrators holding banners telling me that they were opposed to the death penalty.
.
Somehow I had managed to walk passed a roadblock between fenced off demonstrators and fenced off reporters with their TV crews. I immediately understood that this was a trial about the mass murderer Timothy McVeigh. AND that those worried reporters and camera crew would be fearing that I had a bomb in all my bicycle bags...
.
Immediately orders went through my brain:
"Don't stop! Play confused! Play dumb foreigner!"
A police officer came running and I was relieved to see that he was in his fifties and able to see that I was harmless. I immediately changed to my
"I am a harmless, ignorant and dumb Norwegian" singing kind of English:
"Sorry for passing the roadblock! I just didn't see it. If I had been interested in this I would have been standing with those opposed to the death penalty."
The police officer, who was friendly and understandable, walked me passed the roadblock on the other side of the fenced off areas.
.
Now I just googled it and I was outside the U.S. District Court building in Denver.
If a trigger happy rookie police officer in his 20's had been there, he may have shot me. Because those reporters and camera crew were really afraid of me and what they feared I represented.
.
If I had been shot and if I still would have been able to think straight for a few minutes, I would have told whoever that I could understand that it would have been necessary to shoot me in a situation like that.
.
I got to a motel and spent the next day sleeping and w'ing. Suddenly I heard this knocking on my door and I knew immediately that it was the police. Police all over the world knock in the same demanding way. You can't ignore it because they all ready know that you are in the room.
.
A year later - in 1998 - in Sichuan province in China, I was cycling towards the part of the Tibetan Plateau that is in Sichuan when the police came knocking demandingly on my "hotel" door:
"We are police officers from Public Security Office and you have cycled through an area that is closed to all foreigners. Come to our office tomorrow morning and sign a blank paper of admitting your guilt, pay a fine and you can continue cycling. If you don't come to PSB we will find you, arrest you and kick you out of China!"
.
The two cops in Denver weren't there to arrest me for causing "panic" outside the U.S. District Court Building, but to ask me if I had seen a car hitting a person in the parking lot.
.
.
1997 was a VERY special year to me:
I could have been - "should have been" - shot in Denver.
I earned 425,000 or rather 502,000 NOK on selling shares I had bought while abroad cycling.
AND I had become a father in Thailand (with 85% certainty - and 85% certainty it's a girl) - without knowing it - so even if I had been shot and killed in Denver, "my" DNA would still go on living...
.
.
.