Dropout

     I've been holding back something about myself in these columns lately. I've failed to mention that I didn't intend to return to Telluride in the foreseeable future. I haven't said why I'd cancelled my plans to visit Europe. Did I say anything about becoming a truck driver? No, I don't think I ever got to that. I'm ready to come clean.
    First let me explain the truck driving thing. I'd been kicking this idea around for decades. With old age about to settle in any day now it seemed like the right time to jump, just before it's too late to do any jumping. Rumor has it that Wal-Mart is paying drivers in excess of $85,000. That's real money. I've lived my entire life in comfortable poverty. I've never imagined myself making this kind of money. I'd only need to bare it for a small handful of years to save up a fair amount; enough to live on for the rest of my life. I'd have to be trained first ,then get some experience behind the wheel.  I contacted a trucking firm that trains drivers and helps them obtain a commercial drivers license in return for a year's commitment to drive for them. They agreed to take me on if I passed drug tests, obtained a learners permit ( for a CDL) , and a Colorado medical exam for drivers. I took care of these requirements last week then rode to Salt Lake City for training.                                                                                                Through the whole process I was looking for some good reason to not follow through . The whole thing was preposterous. I'm not the sort of person who hears an engine purr and says " My, that's a pretty sound". I don't own a car. I hate cars. I've never driven a motorcycle ,or an ATV .I hate everything about cars and trucks ,motors ,and freeways. I've dedicated my life to avoiding them. My motivation began and ended with the money. The money center of my brain would light up when ever I thought about driving a semi. The rest of my brain was appalled, and thought the financial part of my brain had lost its mind.
      When I showed up at the driver's school campus I knew how crazy the whole plan was. I hated the place. I hated the dormitories, especially mine. I expected to feel like a fish out of water. I felt instead like a fish lost in outer space. It occurred to me that maybe the reason I was  having so much trouble picturing myself  a truck driver had more to do with it's lack of likelihood than any lack of imagination. 
      I spent a night at the facility ,but only because I was too exhausted from fighting headwinds all day to go anywhere else. I hardly slept. Having seven snoring roommates was only part of the problem. I learned that I don't have a prayer of sleeping in a room without a window left open. I can hardly sleep in a room at all, at least until I'm used to it, and even then I need.the windows open. Sleeping outside so often for so many years has ruined me for walls and ceilings, and closed windows. Give me fresh air and starlight. Give me bird song in the morning, the best alarm clock. If the wind rises at night I want to hear it tearing at the branches overhead. If it starts to rain, I want to hear big juicy drops of it pelting the tent ,and smell it's influence on earth and plants. You can see my problem. I'm not cut out for what other people consider everyday life. I'm especially not cut out for it when sharing it with seven snoring roommates.
        In the morning the bicycle and I rolled out of trucking school. It's probably safe to say that I was the first person to show up there on a loaded bike. I was happy to be the first to leave that way too. It felt like freedom.
         What would I do now? Where would I go? Telluride, I thought. I'd go to Telluride. The answer was suddenly obvious. The only thing better than twelve consecutive years in Telluride is thirteen. What could I have been thinking when I considered breaking ties? "To thine own self be true" wrote the bard. Is being true to yourself better than financial security? I don't know but it's always worth trying. When people see me on Colorado Avenue they may say to each other" There goes homeless Dave, a real pauper, but man, so true to himself. " Or maybe they'll say, " There goes old Dave, a trucking school dropout. " Either is acceptable.

Desert Storm

      I'm calling this a rest day. They don't come that often when I'm on the road. Usually I don't decide on them till I happen on the perfect campsite. It's hard passing up a perfect campsite..This one fills the bill, having water nearby ( I'm guessing this stream is Last Chance Creek). Best of all, there's shelter in the form of a large overhanging rock with a flat wide floor of sand underneath and plenty of headroom, even room for a tent. Beats last nights shelter by a mile, which was also under a sandstone overhang but was cramped and dusty and needed considerable grading to produce a narrow sleeping platform. It was the kind of spot you might hope to find in an emergency, but ard to imagine choosing it during better conditions. Good shelter is on my mind lately.
      I'm riding the Smokey Mountain road through the near wilderness of the Grand Staircase - Escalante National Monument ,that links Big Water near Glen Canyon Dam with the town of Escalante on Utah's route 12. It's 78 miles long, but you can't measure it by the usual standards of road since it is a four wheel drive unpaved road with many ultra steep sections ,rough sections, sandy sections ,and muddy stream crossings. Today I made four miles before calling it quits. There was almost no riding ,just a whole lot of pushing, mud caking around the wheels and on my boots. The road was washed out . It was nearly entirely mud, but here and there some sand or rock which made for easier pushing and sometimes even a little riding. 
      My early stop makes sense if it rains again this afternoon. It makes even more sense if it doesn't. Every moment it's not raining the road is drying out. If the drying continues I may be riding  tomorrow instead of pushing.
      I was about at the half way point when yesterday's deluge hit. It began with hail mixed with rain. The hailstorm lasted longer than usual. It wasn't just a minute or two long, but continued for twenty minutes at least, the hail stones growing larger as they rained down ,reaching marble sized, bouncing crazily ,knee high, waist high, and looking like snow where they landed. Lightning put on an impressive show. A long second might pass between flash and crash, no longer. In a few moments the quitest place in the whole world had become it's noisiest and most chaotic.
       I parked the bike next to a juniper at the side of the road and looked for overhanging rock to wait out the downpour. There was a small rock overhang at the top of a cliff 20 feet above a wash where I attempted to wait out the storm. From this cubbyhole I watched as the stream below increased in size and speed and grew sets of standing waves.. Adding to it's fury was a growing rush of water beside me as it hurtled over the cliff. I was at the brink of a fast forming waterfall. As it grew so did its roar. I've heard all sorts of sounds from falling water but never anything like this. As it built strength it's base notes became louder. Have you ever heard the woofer from a passing vehicle's speakers pound so loud that you wondered how anyone inside kept their hearing? Your teath's fillings vibrate, your ears begin to bleed, you can't wait for them to.move on. It sounded like that, only worse. Eventually the intensity of that cacophony ,along with the possibility of the waterfall blocking the only escape route drove me from this hole and back into the rain to look for my bicycle. I left it here somewhere, but where was it? All the most likely looking trees beside the road now had fast moving little rivers at their bases, tributaries of the waterfall I had been sitting beside. Panic set in. What if my bicycle and everything on it that I needed to survive had been swept away in the flood?  I ran around a bend in the road and with great relief found it was there, untouched by the maelstrom.
        For all my sudden relief I wasn't out of the woods yet. I needed to get warm ,and dry ,and fed, and out of the still pouring rain. There was little chance of pitching a tent. Where the ground wasn't stone it was quagmire. I headed back up the road to check out an expanse of slickrock ( smooth sandstone). If I could find a good cliffline I might come across some overhanging capstone and a dry place to change and eat and sleep underneath. What would have happened if I hadn't found what I was looking for ? I'd rather not think about it.
      Yesterday I saw only one jeep pass by. That was long before the storm hit. Today there will be none. The road has probably been closed. Until it's dry again I'll have all this to myself. The storm has brought me silence and solitude, rare commodities today. I think I got them at a good price.