Adaptive Curmudgeon

The hotel looks empty. While checking in I strike up a conversation with the two ladies running the counter. Perhaps this was unwise because I was feeling loopy? I did it anyway:

“I tried to stay at the nearby campground. It was sold out. But you’ve got lots of rooms. I shoulda’ called you first eh?”

“Oh, we’re almost sold out too. It’s the day.” The lobby manager says.

“Huh?”

“Four twenty.” She says.

“I’m not getting you.”

“The twentieth, of April.”

“So… this has something to do with good Friday? Lotta’ people traveling for Easter?”

She rolled her eyes. Her colleague laughed. “Ha! Easter. That’s awesome!”

I should get used to everything I say making people laugh.

I persist. “Seriously, what’s with the 20^th day of the 4^th month? I get PI day on March 14^th but 420 isn’t even prime…”

Now both women are looking at me like I’m a space alien. At the very least, I suspect they don’t know what “prime” means.

“Four twenty… for weed.” They explain.

Dimly I think maybe I saw that on a T-shirt once. I’d forgotten all about it. I continue. “OK, fine. 420 means dope. Whatever the kids call it these days. I don’t get out much.” I could have stopped there but didn’t. “I know you legalized pot a few years ago. So, everyone gets stoned and hangs out at a State Park on ‘weed day’? Looks like I dodged a bullet.”

“They’re coming here too. After the concert.”

“Excuse me?”

“It’s STONERFEST. Around midnight, when the concert’s over, they’ll all show up. This hotel is almost booked up. You’re lucky you got a room.”

Here’s my policy statement on pot: I’m a libertarian through and through and have no issue with people smoking weed. I’m all for the freedom to be stupid, kill brain cells, and, if you really go overboard, fuck up your life. ‘Aint my problem what you do with freewill. I’d love to legalize everything. I would happily allow selling machine guns to naked heroin addicts on rollerskates. I don’t give a shit because stupid people will sort themselves out. However, everyone keep your damn hands off my money or I’ll get medieval on your ass.

Then again, celebrating getting stoned seems odd to me. Is it not… superfluous? It’s like celebrating getting laid. You got laid, isn’t that fun enough in itself?

I don’t think like a joiner. I’m not the type to want to go to a concert and rent a $150 a night room to collectively experience the fact that I’ve temporarily got the mental facilities of a goldfish. I’m the opposite. I drink alone. When I’m perfectly happy being buzzed on bourbon with nobody else in the room they say it’s anti-social, a sign of addiction, and uncommon. They’re wrong! (OK, I might grant the anti-social part.)

Selfishly, I wanted to be somewhere else. I hate stupid people and stoned people are stupid. I dreaded their arrival. They’ll probably make a racket and demand donuts. Crap! How loud would they be?

I’m lost in thought. I realize they’re both starting at me.

“What?”

“You’re not celebrating 4:20?” One asks.

“Not if he doesn’t even know the term.” The other comments, still sizing me up.

It takes a moment for me to catch up. I’m not well versed in slang and I’m not good at reading people. Also, I read more than I speak and that makes my language sound weird. In my defense, you can read a fuckton of books and travel widely and do lots of cool things without picking up 4:20 slang. How does one say such things in polite company? Meanwhile, these two are trying to put my square peg in the round hole of ‘stoner’.

“So,” I say, “you’re talking with a dude who sports a huge beard and looks like he lives in a barn. Thus, you ASSUME I’m a pothead?”

“Yes.” The first one nods.

“Who uses the word ‘pothead’?” The other questions; she’s sagely picking up on the fact that I’m galactically unhip. She correctly deduces I’m too unplugged to be a stoner… or pothead… or whatever the term happens to be this generation.

I’m on a tear now. “OK, fine, if not ‘pothead’ then ‘aficionado of mental masturbation’; that’s your theory isn’t it?” I think ‘aficionado of mental masturbation’ took them back a bit but I was on a roll and kept going. “Let’s unpack things, I look like Willie Nelson’s retarded hillbilly cousin and that means I must be here to toke? What if I play bluegrass banjo? Maybe I’m a cosplay version of Gandalf? Are there no other explanations?”

“You checked in with points… a freebie.” At this, they both nod sagely.

Potheads have hotel loyalty points? Who knew?

“I got points from a friggin’ gold club loyalty account.” I argue. “For all you know I’m a wayward college professor.”

This got their attention. “Are you?”

Inward, I shiver at the idea. Hell no! Imagining toadying to make tenure makes me break out in hives…. Or flee. Which I did. “No, I’m not a professor. Kissing ass for tenure sounds like hell on earth.”

They’re waiting for more. Like that didn’t explain it. I thought I’d been clear? Oh well. Time to have some fun.

I make a little pirouette and ham it up: “Check it out ladies, a genuine example of Gone Galt.”

“Who is Galt?”

OMG! They said it! My life is complete!

“Ha ha ha!” I burst out laughing. This is the best thing to happen in the history of ever. I want this moment recorded form remembrance in annual celebrations; possibly by stoners and hotel lobby managers. I made them say it!

“Seriously. What are you talking about? Where’s Galt?” One asks.

I’m delighted! These two probably haven’t read a book since sixth grade and I’m making them ask about John Galt. For the moment, the world is a puppet and I pull the strings. I’m enormously pleased with myself. Ayn Rand, that heartless beast, wouldn’t appreciate the joke… but I do!

“Galt lives in a Gulch. But you’re not invited. Neither am I. He stopped the motor of the world and all I did was fuck up my tractor. Read a book!” I’m making no sense (to them) but I’m massively enjoying the moment, I grab my keys. One hands me a cookie; hoping for a better explanation. I thank her and make to scamper off like a lunatic.

“You gotta’ tell us what that meant. We told you 4:20.” The second lady complains. The first is already tapping into their hive mind; a smartphone. She pulls up a Wikipedia entry. They forget me and start skimming the page. I see Ayn Rand’s dour puss and lots of text. That’ll keep ‘em busy for a while.

Smiling, I saunter off to my free room in the land of communalist potheads who have smartphones with which to reserve a whole State Park AND money to rent most of the rooms in the hotel.

Rich. Potheads. Who make reservations in advance? What an interesting world in which to live.

Also, the two ladies at the counter will be wondering half the night if I was baked or just read too much. Good luck sorting out that one.

It was a good cookie.

I rolled into Guam, which isn’t Guam, around noon. I was going to meet some friends, chat for a few hours, and then split for a campsite. I wanted to camp solo for the night in one of three or four nearby State Parks. My truck bed was full of new, untested, “overlanding” gear and I was looking forward to playing with my new toys.

Did you know that Parks do reservations now? Go ahead and laugh! I totally forgot “camping” and “reservations” can happen in the same sentence. This leads to the second fact; “camping” and “sold out” can happen too.

Shit!

Frustrated, I bumbled into the third fact; there are no people at the Park gate. There are possibly no humans manning any State facility in this season…. Or, for all I know, any season ever. The whole thing is done online; which suits the current generation of campers which have had a smart phone in their hand since they were born. I do not have a smart phone; or at least one suitable to handle the situation.

This whole thing was ruining my laid back “go where the wind blows me” attitude. Does it have to be this way? Reservations are for business dweebs flying on airplanes, not me on vacation with a truck and a tent. I regretted being in the metro area of Guam instead of the unpopulated areas I usually frequent.

What now? I glare at the front gate of “Snickerdoodle Campground” but all the spots are reserved… or maybe not. How can one know? I wind up driving AWAY from the campsite TOWARD Wi-Fi to log on with my apparently cro-magnon obsolete laptop to investigate the same situation that would unfold like a flower for the smartphone set.

A few miles away I sip an overpriced latte and discover that all three campsites in Guam; “Snickerdoodle”, “Snowflakes”, and “Triggerdom” are reserved. Booked solid. Since they’re all reserved, people will notice an interloper. I can’t sneak in and stealth camp with a giant Dodge and my brand new (i.e. huge) tent.

This is my fault for being so locked into the backcounty mindset that I didn’t imagine the problem. I generally camp wherever I wish. (I often go a week at a time without seeing anyone. Do that a few years and you’ll forget about reservations too.)

Campout denied!

Adaptive… that’s me. I start burning up Wi-Fi searching alternatives. Hotels are easily in the $150 range (and up!). My inner cheapskate can’t have that. I begin to explore other options.

I travel a lot and have loyalty cards for every hotel chain known to man. I’m loyal to none but have points in various accounts. I never monitor this. Several re-established passwords and multiple re-logins ensue. This is followed by a tedious conversation with someone who doesn’t speak English and is connected by a phone VOI system that sounds like Smeagol chain smoking at the bottom of a well.

The phone service person fucks up everything I request. I mean like an incredibly thorough 100% fuck up rate. Every detail, no matter how small, is mishandled. I almost respect that level of incompetence. It takes forever to explain that I’m not trying to check into a timeshare in Baltimore. Nor am I reserving a wedding suite in Vegas. Nor do I want anything to do with anything in Europe, no matter how close it is to the train station. After all this crap, the shameless bastard tries (or is forced to try) to upsell me, in order, with a car rental, a trip to Cancun, and a credit card. I shout “NO” so many times that I’m getting hoarse.

Eventually it works out. I literally step the yoyo on the phone though the process of data entry in his own software (which I can’t see). Despite being routed through hell and back, the great database in the sky does what the phone service drone can’t; get the job done. I’ve grown to prefer robots to humans.

That night I’ll stay at a fabulous high-end hotel for free. A win for team Curmudgeon!

[Whew, I got a little hot under the collar about Yellowstone in that last post didn’t I?  What can I say? I’m on my fifth espresso and I and I bristle that Yellowstone treats American citizens like pets. I often avoid that otherwise gorgeous place because of the hassles. Lucky for me, this walkabout was about thawing out, not tangling with the Federales over a bottle of beer on a picnic table. I stayed out of Yellowstone this trip.]

There is (or was) an activity called “car camping”. I dropped out of the scene and went hard core backcountry for decades. Then came a tragic period of being “too busy” to get out there. Last year I tried to regain past glories but it didn’t work out.

On one particular outing, for a variety of reasons, I didn’t make it to the “wilderness”. Adaptably (see what I did there?) I went to “Plan B”. I “day tripped” around the edges of wilderness and set up my lightweight canoe camping gear in a nearby State Park for the night.

It’s probably for the best because everything went wrong. I expected low key “next to the truck” camp to be much easier than “backcountry” endeavors but it was a fiasco. To start with, I froze my balls off. (In backcountry I can adapt to unexpected cold with a big fire and tarp, in a park I didn’t have extra fuel to burn.) More importantly, sleeping on the ground gave me aches and pains that went straight to the core of my body. Ouch! I have a superlative sleeping bag. A “Big Agnes”. (I may review it sometime.) It has built in padding and I’ve always been comfortable in it (or at least “comfortable” in terms of tradeoffs with backcountry camping) but not this time. I suspect I’ve changed (not the forest and not my gear).

Sleeping on the ground sucked. It’s a fact I won’t dance around. I’m getting’ old and denial isn’t how I roll. It was time to re-evaluate, re-equip, and adapt! For a while, hopefully temporarily, I felt it would be wise to become a “car camper”.

Except I’m obsolete. “Car camping” is a term that seems long gone and folks who camp on a State Park pad are pandered to with mixed message marketing. First, it’s as if they’re summiting Everest. “Buy the new ‘Bear Grills Super Tactical X-Mod 37 Sleeping Pad System’.” Really? What fresh hell is this? Words like “tactical” and “extreme” for hanging out at super-tame State Parks? Then they shift to pushing cheap-ass chickenshit gear that’ll barely hold up for a single weekend. The kind of useless crap that will dissolve if it gets wet or dirty or exposed to any rough conditions.

Eventually I deduced that, for my new desire for heavier gear (as opposed to lightweight backpacking stuff), there’s a “new” term: “Overlanding”.

As far as I can tell “Overlanding” is when you outfit your $40,000(!) lifted super-Jeep with enough stuff to cross the Australian outback. Then you drive around enjoying yourself. God bless the internal combustion engine!

Overlanding shit is heavy so you never camp far from the vehicle. Allowing for gear heavy enough to kill a backpacker earns you the benefit of more creature comforts. Theoretically, “overlanding” means you’re capable of camping “primitively”; meaning you’re self-supporting for anywhere your vehicle goes. Heavy gear is fine for a State Park with flush toilets but “overlanding” you can happily overnight just along a dirt road somewhere.

I’m not making light of this. I think I’ve found an acceptable niche. If I’ve got to dial back (temporarily!) on backcounty trips, it’s more my style to “Overland” along some random dirt track than “Car Camp” in a Park.

“Overlanding” opened new opportunities. All winter long, my visions filled with the amazing luxuries I cannot take backpacking but fit easily in any vehicle. Bigger tents, coolers, chairs, BEER! The mind boggles! I decided to “Overland”. At least for now, I will camp within sight of my Dodge.

Unfortunately, all my tried and true gear is optimized for backcounty use. Also, most of it is 20 years old and every bit has seen hard wear. I’d trust my life to my battle-scarred gear, but it’s ill-suited to new ideas and tamer outings.

Where all this digression is leading is that I’ve geared up in entirely novel ways (for me). This particular Walkabout is a “test run” of future “overlanding” adventures. It’s hard letting go of my old approach of “disappear for weeks using only what you can carry” but I’ve earned a chance to bask in luxuries.

The city of Guam is where I started testing my new theories. Predictably, it’s where I met my first obstacle. As is always the case for me, things got weird. Stay tuned.

[Everything on my blog, including talking squirrels, is true. However, I sometimes change details in the interest of privacy. If I fudge a few details here and there I’d rather not spark a manhunt among the weaponized autists of the net; just go with the story y’all. My posts are honest in spirit and if you really think I drove a Dodge to Guam you’ve got issues.]

[Also, I went off the rails a bit over Yellowstone. We all have things that light our fuse; camping in Yellowstone’s front country is one of my pet peeves. In keeping with my “be the mellow you wish to see in the world” policy I’d try to edit it down… but I can’t. I should be forgiving but I’m not. Oh well.]

So, where was I? Oh yes… by design, my time in the urban Utopia of preachy recyclers with good coffee was short. When my patience wore thin, I blew town.

After a few hours on the highway I arrived in Guam; a city that’s not actually called Guam. I didn’t have a hotel reservation. However, I had a plan. I’ve recently geared up as a “State Park Schlub” and planned to use my new tent as an alternative to expensive hotels.

Oh heck, lets ramble down a side ally of thought; I’m on vacation after all.

…

When I was a child, I associated State Parks with families and innocent fun. I loved camping in parks. Because kid.

Later I used them as an alternate to hotels I couldn’t afford. Because broke.

I called this “car camping”.

Car camping also applied when you wanted to go half assed camping with friends (or alone) without a lot of effort or planning. “Hey, y’all, let’s meet Friday evening at ‘Whacknut State Park’. I’ll be on the ‘Happy Poplar Loop, site #35’. Get the adjacent campsite if you need more space. Bring beer.”

It was a fine form of low-key outdoor recreation. It may be fading. For example, I notice some State Parks no longer allow alcohol? WTF? Rationally I get it, the family of Thaddeus McSnowflake and his wife Helicoptermom Yogapants don’t want their precious offspring roasting vegan hot dogs while deplorables rut in the spot next door. But it’s also sad. It sucks to see nanny state nimrods overmanaging outdoor recreation. Lighten up y’all; it’s hardly untrammeled wilderness so live a little.

This is important: Parks take themselves WAY too seriously and it worries me. I smell creeping elitism and big brother’s socially nudging booted foot getting warmed up for the big game. A healthy society makes room for poor and just laid-back folks who could use a little fresh air but don’t want a goddamn safari.

Let ‘em see nature without excess hassles. Not everything has to be an expensive professionally guided birdwatching/learning expedition. Nor must the baseline start at three years of planning and huge wads of logistics for a character-building free climb assault on a dangerous peak. It’s vitally important for society to leave room for an average person to catch a bluegill on a cheap fishing pole. Let the old folks snooze in a lawn chair. Let the kids dig a hole with a stick. Let campers toss pinecones into the fire. Leave part of the world unscripted.

There’s nothing wrong with parking a Civic in a dirt spot so you can set up a pup tent and sit around the campfire telling jokes. Stifling that simple humble approachable activity with red tape is why nobody hugs bureaucrats.

I’d always gone deeper into the woods whenever I got the chance. With age and greater resources, I stopped at “State Parks” less and less. Eventually I forgot they existed. How strange that sounds now. I suppose we all become different people in different ages.

[Warning: Angry Rant:]

(Also, under the term “State Park” I’ll add National Parks and local parks. Basically, if some seasonally employed weenie might materialize to bitch you out if you park your vehicle in the wrong spot… it’s my definition of “State Park”. In particular I’d like to single out Yellowstone Park rangers as sourpuss totalitarian twits that need a wedgie. I don’t know why Yellowstone is special, but it seems to grow crops of micromanaging Nazis with a hard on against everything. They shamelessly use bears to justify their bullshit and I bristle under the constant impositions. Grizzlies are repurposed as a codpiece and a cudgel. The park shamelessly bosses adults around like they’re children.

More people die of heart disease than bears in Yellowstone. But math doesn’t stop Treeweenie McHighorse from patrolling a five-acre campground that’s packed like a ghetto as if the only thing that keeps roving gangs of tactically trained death bears from killing everyone in an Ursus terrorist attack is a thin blue line of Mall Cop badge sniffers.

Hey assholes, Yellowstone is a zillion acres and you’ve crammed 300 tents into a postage stamp; fence it and shut the fuck up. Hell, this is the same logic that makes me quit watching zombie movies. 

I’m pretty sure parkies secretly (and not so secretly) want to line you up against the wall and shoot your ass. Doubt me? Listen to ‘em. Their biggest complaint is the horrible burden of people enjoying the Park instead of staying bottled up in the city where they belong. It’s a mistake of logic; drawing a line around a piece of earth and thinking “humans don’t belong here… except me because I’m special”. It massages the ego to be “the only one who belongs here”. Eventually one winds up thinking of free citizens as speedbumps interfering with your righteous Gaia worship. You can see it in their aggressive behavior; leave a half-eaten candy bar on a picnic table in Yellowstone while you adjust your tent guylines and they’ll spring into action. Otherwise unemployable uniformed zeros who are halfway through a degree in Nature Hugging Through Interpretive Dance will materialize out of the ether and freak out like you just raped a badger.

I’m not saying I want a bear to eat me… I’m saying you can take reasonable precautions without being epic buzzkill overlords. It’s immoral to boss around citizens in a way that no citizen should ever be treated. Say it with me folks: Citizens are adult men and women who should be treated with respect. Yellowstone is not Disneyland. I fuckin’ hate camping in Yellowstone!)

[/Rant]

Whoops… I totally lost it there didn’t I? Focus, Curmudgeon! I’ll try again in Part 2.

Here are the lyrics of the song Mrs. Curmudgeon composed while I was crammed in the wheel wells of my truck. Let’s all give her a hand.

It was mud season at Curmudgeon Compound
When God decided to throw the gauntlet down

We’d had a real tough winter, nearly 6 feet of snow
And also 2 months of 30 below

And just when I was thinking spring was finally on the way
I was dreaming of camping on a beautiful summer’s day

That’s when God decided that I had too much hope
And he was going to push me to the last inch of my rope

chorus:
Tough enough, tough enough
God just don’t think I’m tough enough

He’s test in’ and a tryin’ and Good Lord I am a dyin’
But God just don’t think I’m tough enough

My truck sank axle deep into the the fucking lawn
And then God sent some freezing rain to really stick it down

When I wasn’t on my knees digging in the mud
I was slipping in the dog's shit and falling with a thud.

My shovel broke, my shoulders ache I think I’ve gone insane
The truck pulled down the tree that is now wrapped around may chain

And just when I thinking reality is firmly in my grasp
Come thunder, lightening, snow, and wind to really kick my ass

chorus:
Tough enough, tough enough
God just don’t think I’m tough enough

He’s test in’ and a tryin’ and Good Lord I am a dyin’
But God just don’t think I’m tough enough

By Mrs. A. C.
Copyright 2019

No point in cliffhangers; I’ll start with the end (which isn’t really the end) and then mention “misfortune roulette” which made departure memorable.

The “end” is that I did it. I finally got out of town. I’m eleventy zillion miles from my frozen muddy homestead. It’s t-shirt weather and I’m in an urban coffee shop. It’s so rich and decadent I can scarcely imagine this place exists on the same planet where I froze all winter. “Video killed the radio star” is cheerfully warbling in the background. The earnest self-interested chatter of rich, well fed, urbanite dweebs is layered over ubiquitous happy spazz music (probably statistically selected to appeal to my demographic). It’s not quiet like I’m used to. There is a certain level of hubub; I’m reminded of beehives and hamster wheels. Everyone seems active… though they’re just sitting on their ass drinking coffee. I can’t pull that off. I don’t radiate “active” while resting. There’s probably a deep thought to be found in the observation but I’m too lazy to chase it.

The coffee is excellent; though served at a temperature I call “ball shreddingly hot”. I was given two options to donate money (to God knows what) when I bought it. (I donated nothing. I purchase things I want and act charitably in separate actions… always. Mix the two only if you must.)

My seat is comfortable and that’s good because I’m road weary from my drive to get here. WiFi is ample but everyone (aside from me) is probably mainlining the grid directly via data plans. I don’t see any laptops. Everyone is staring at their cell phone. I’m typing on an Alphasmart Neo2. Later, if I feel like it, I’ll download from the Neo2 to my laptop and thence via WiFi to the grid. Or not. I might just drink my coffee and ignore my blog a bit longer.

Have you noticed cities bitch at you about the environment (and social justice… whatever that means at the current millisecond) constantly? I had to run a gauntlet of recycling placards on the way out of my hotel lobby and another one just to get in the door of this coffee shop. There was environmental crap in the hotel about shower temperatures, lights, air conditioning, and laundry services. Somehow the in-room coffee was blessed by Gaia too; though the only thing I noticed was that it tasted like shit. Starbucks, of course, needs no explanation. No wonder Millennials think we’re on the edge of environmental destruction; their propaganda is administered with a sledge! It’s a 24/7 suppository of social engineering that involves every fucking thing they do every moment of the day. Do Imams praise Allah as often as hipsters kvetch about recycling?

I’m a very long way from the cold, relatively poor, grittiness of my home. I sojourn in America’s near Utopian wealth like a visitor from an alien world.

Damn this coffee’s good!

So… it was easy to get here right? Wrong!

I mentioned in a previous post I’d foolishly buried my truck to its axles?  I did this deed, not 30 paces from my front door. The following morning I escaped the mud during the brief predawn window when the soil was frozen. I made a rookie mistake not driving a bit to test the truck after recovering it!

I started packing but an unseasonable foot of snow ruined my plans. I wanted to “test out” some of my gear before departure. The mud and snow precluded it.

Frustrated, I stacked tents and sleeping pads by the door as winter let fly with a fury out of sync with the calendar. Would the tent bag have the requisite stakes? In this weather I decided to just “assume” the best rather than verify.

My lightweight sleeping bag and thin t-shirts looked suicidal in the raging snow. I paced nervously and added contingency gear. Soon my packs were overstuffed with wool hats and thick jackets.

We called the snowplow guy. I fretted that I’ve dropped $500+ on him this year. Then I saw the shape of his truck. In 4 months his truck has been beaten silly. Shortly after New Year’s it was a newish shiny Ford with a freshly installed plow. Now it’s got a caved in roof, broken windshield, scrapes on both sides, a missing front grill, both mirrors smashed and hanging by a thread… and that’s not to mention the transmission work and blown axle. I’m not sure how much is covered by insurance (his garage roof collapsed under the snow and that’s the source of some but not all damage) but I know trucks ‘aint cheap and his looks like it did ten rounds with Godzilla. I think his plowing winter has been a net loss. Every time I think of bolting a plow to my Dodge’s front end (the “Death Wobble Express”) I think of repair bills and seek another solution.

The week before departure my world oscillated between ice and mud. I tried more pre-trip preparations and my trailer got buried under more snow. Resistance was futile.

Finally it was the night before departure. I loaded the truck with a dump run and coaxed Mrs. Curmudgeon to accompany me on “a date”. The plan was I’d toss our garbage at the dump and then we’d have a pleasant dinner on the last night before I saddled up and fled south. (Yes, stopping at the dump on the way to a “date” is uncool… forgive me, I have many irons in the fire.)

Unexpectedly, the truck bucked like a bronco. The mud and sod from when I’d buried it in the lawn had solidified between the dual wheels and froze solid. It’s not uncommon for a rock or something to lodge in duallys but this was a different order of magnitude. The “plug” of ice/mud was huge and heavy and on both sides. The truck vibrated like it was going to shake itself to pieces (which seems to be a specialty of Dodges).

I put on the hazards and limped down the road at 20 MPH. This was not helping my optimism. I was planning a long road trip (departure in 12 hours!) based entirely on a truck that couldn’t go faster than 20 MPH.

In the passenger seat, Mrs. Curmudgeon giggled. “What the hell did you do? You’ve got the karma of a serial killer.”

I shrugged. I do have comically bad luck at times.

“At least the rest of the truck is fine.” I reasoned.

Then the driver’s side windshield wiper flew off. No shit!

What. The. Hell? It just hopped off the wiper arm and took flight. Like it was bored with its job. “I’m sick of pushing snow; I’m gonna’ make a leap of faith. Banzai!”

Mrs. Curmudgeon laughed as I stopped and hoofed it back to the blade lying on the road. Then, because it HAD TO, it started snowing much harder.

Back in the rig, limping toward town, I was a we bit miffed. I couldn’t see much through the windshield but then again I was only going 20 MPH. I said it felt like a country music song.

Mrs. Curmudgeon happily started making up lyrics.

In town the only car wash was closed. A guy was plowing in front of it so I explained my predicament (“I can’t drive home on those unbalanced wheels”). He had the key and opened the door. Nice! It took 4 rounds with the pressure washer ($8!) and some brave hand to hand combat with the mud. If you’ve ever been on your hands and knees with a big screwdriver trying to pry frozen mud from between dual wheels you know what I’m talking about. I was filthy; covered head to toe in splashed mud and water, soaking wet, irredeemably cold. Country music song indeed.

At the dump (which was closed but had open dumpsters) there were teenagers sitting in cars. I assume they were either having sex or doing drugs… what else is there for a rural teenager parked by the dump in a snowstorm?

The next day the weather was worse. I still didn’t have a decent wiper and the roads were a mess. Plus every muscle ached from clearing the duallys the night before. Even worse, I just couldn’t shake my chill. I postponed departure.

How long ago that seems. Looking up at the most fortunate generation in humanity here at an urban Starbucks, the cradle of their civilization, I wonder if any of them ever crawled under the wheel well of a mud coated Dodge. Would they even understand the mission? Is it better or worse that I had to deal with it? Better or worse that they don’t? I don’t inherently assign nobility to suffering. Recently, clinging to rural independence is wearing thin. The spandex clad unemployable students riding $700 mountain bikes to buy a $6 coffee don’t seem world weary. How the hell do they afford it?

All I know is I made it from my world to briefly visit theirs. I’ve got good coffee and I’m wearing a t-shirt instead of a parka. After I’m good and thawed out I’ll head back to my redoubt and put my nose to the grindstone once again. But not yet!

More will be reported when feel like it.

A.C.