Adaptive Curmudgeon

It was time to go home.

The shiny new bike perched proudly in the truck bed and it was glorious! It fit just right. Tailgate closed and everything. I had brand new ties with which it was solidly secured. It rode like the lead float in a small-town parade. It was vibrating with potential awesome. It had 0.1 miles on the odometer.

Damn that’s a special moment! Everyone pause and take it in. Just close your eyes and think of it. For a certain personality this is a treasured inflection point of pure joy. Remember your first car, or your favorite car, or a beloved motorcycle, or a boat, or whatever the hell it is that made you happy. Remember when you and that machine met. Remember that time in your life.

It’s all about possibilities!

A factory in Japan had birthed this anachronistic machine and I was going to flog it mercilessly all over the American outback. What fun we would have together!

Mrs. Curmudgeon smiled at my childish excitement. She wants nothing to do with falling off cliffs on a mechanical death trap. If I want to careen around some God forsaken wasteland; crawling with scorpions and bears, getting frostbit and sunburned, well that’s just an untreatable malady which her husband possesses at the molecular level. No need to fight it; just send him off on his own and hope he doesn’t get too stupid while unsupervised. She’s a wise woman. Also, she enjoys seeing me do the things that I love. What man could ask for more? So long as I don’t get myself killed out there, she’s pretty supportive.

I was starry eyed like a child on Christmas morning. I already had a list of “mods” to make the thing from a chunky minimalist blank slate to a beefed up mini-mule. I’d tweak it here or there (but not too much, just enough to meet specific needs without endangering reliability; hot rodding engines is not my game). After 6 months of attacking it with a wrench I’d probably never alter anything again. I’d do oil changes and maintenance but almost never wash it. I’d consider every dent and scratch a delightful chapter in an adventure story. It would become tough and grizzled, like it’s owner.

I sipped overpriced coffee and smiled.

[I rewrote this part several times but could never truly capture what happened. This is the best I could do.]

The motorcycle I’d agreed to buy was a long way from my home. I decided to make an overnight “mini-vacation” of it. Mrs. Curmudgeon and I traveled together and that was excellent.

The rest happened entirely unlike this: The long trip to get to the dealer was uneventful. I arrived with plenty of time to go every detail of the bike with the dealer. The paperwork was relaxed and unhurried. Dinner afterwards was cheap and excellent. Our hotel was well appointed, quiet, and I got a great night’s sleep.

The Death Valley Trail maps were now useless too. They were stashed in the box with the Lake Powell maps. Salt Lake City was out, Barstow was out, the new destination was in western Texas. Was I unknowingly involved in a geographic lottery?

I was already on phase #3 of plan C. At first, I decided to take the time to drive to Utah and play in terrain I already knew. Then I decided it wasn’t a great season for my old stomping grounds near Moab so I’d been researching somewhere lower elevation and further south. Meanwhile, my dog had died, my heart had broken, and an ATV had turned into a motorcycle. Phase #3 was a stack of blogs and reports from the Utah Backcountry Discovery Route (UTBDR). I was just about to buy an overpriced UTBDR map.

The phone rang…

Oh, dear God, not again! I picked up the phone.

“How’s $4500 out the door sound?”

“I’m in!”

I’d just agreed to buy a motorcycle I’d never seen, of a type I’d never ridden, without a test drive. It was a long drive to pick it up. I was delighted. The loss of my dog had been a big blow and I needed a little “pick me up”. If I could play in the canyonlands, adequately supported with the cheapest thing legally allowed to have a plate… I sighed contentedly

Maybe things were going my way!

I’ve only been to Barstow once. I dimly remember a blistering hot highway and a ridgeline with windmills. There was lots of dust as my motorcycle and I were sandblasted by hot desert winds. It was hot. I don’t know if Barstow can ever be cold. All I remembered was wind and sand and air hotter than the balls of a scorpion in a frying pan.

It was -18f outside my window and I was pulling out all the stops to keep the room where I was working a barely tolerable 61f. Heat exhaustion sounded like bliss.

I had a new pile of maps to supplant the old. Trails in Death Valley. I’ve ridden my street bike across Death Valley and it was wonderful. I’ve never gone into the backcountry. I was delighted with the prospect.

Next to the maps was a pile of ATV sales brochures. This new ATV was going to get a maiden voyage for the ages! A small stack of camping gear had started coalescing in the corner.

Then, the phone rang again…

There was a pile of maps on my desk. Most involved Lake Powell. Camping writeups and wind / climate data. Was I really going to mess with that inland sea using only my 8’ box boat and my limited seamanship skills?

Meh… it would be warmer than my current snowbound misery. I’d figure something out.

The phone rang. Ten minutes later I’d swept the maps into a box. They were useless now. The situation had shifted to Barstow.

[Things don’t always go as planned. My first 2020 Walkabout was conceived in good faith and pursued with diligence. It didn’t come together well. It was a reasonable idea but it got pancaked by the truck of external factors. What follows are vignettes from the oft-interrupted process.]

Vignette #1:

It was dark out; not because it was late but because the northern climate spends half the year trying to kill us. That includes blizzards so dense they blot out the sun. The wind was howling and I was shivering.

I was in my workshop (not the one with wood heat). It’s well insulated but a standard 1500-watt heater just wasn’t up to the task. I had a generator outside humming away and a second auxiliary heater going. The two combined were only barely adequate. The window panes were frosting up. Through them I could see no more than ten feet into the maelstrom. I saw nothing but misery and the snowdrift that used to be my truck.

I usually like working from home but this day I was miserable. I was talking to someone on the phone. They were in a clean, properly heated, well-lit office. Imagine the unparalleled luxury of heating that’s provided entirely by unseen forces you can ignore! For once, I was jealous.

“So, we’re going to need some poor sap to go to all the way to Salt Lake and do this job. It’s a lot of work so I won’t ask you but if you know someone who can…”

I glanced at the thermometer. It was -22f. It had warmed to -22f over a long unpleasant day. It was sure to drop to -35f by midnight.

“I’m in.”

“WHAT?”

“I’ll do it. E-mail me the details.”

I hung up the phone. I’d just agreed to a less than ideal work situation. I didn’t care. It was just so damn cold. I’d have driven 2,000 miles to submit to a proctology exam on live TV if it happened where the ambient temperature was above 50.

I’d figure out a way to make a silk purse of this sow’s ear.