Are You Living It?

Calling a spade a spade, the recent Denver trip was a warm up for the real adventure. One of the keys to enjoying oneself while living in the tight confines of a small truck is to immediately dive into the tasks that you would otherwise put off. These tend to be the least enjoyable ones, like driving in the city, sleeping in the truck even when you don’t have to, brewing up some yerba mate on the tailgate, boiling water for dishes, and for god’s sake, keeping organized.

The art of organization, has the ability to make you feel like the master of your domain or, if neglected, like someone who may have gone off the deep end and just doesn’t know it yet. Some of my friends still have underwear and blocks of pepperjack cheese in the extended cab of their trucks and wagons that could easily be months old. These odors no doubt contribute to their shared dimentia and conversely, their attractiveness as friends. That they tolerate my anal retention at all is due to the likelihood that I make them feel better about themsleves; who else do you know that quotes “The Land Before Time” when everyone else is spewing lines from Anchorman? I’m like the computer geek who gets constipated when someone asks them how to use a Window’s program. A likely dialogue afterward would look something like this:

“Dude, she was really cute!”

“Yeah, but… thh-she couldn’t formulate an if-then… thh-statement on Excel to… thh-save her life,” Jay snorted geekily, as spit flowed off his retainer like contrails from a jumbo jet. Pushing his glasses back on his nose, he pondered the next installment of Eragon: Dragon Warrior…

I digress… My goal for the next week is to get my breakfast cooking/morning tea boiling times down to less than an hour. Part of the beauty of rookie road travel is that you have the opportunity to economize and reorder your living space like a game of Tetris. For example, the stove no longer resides in the rocket box because it is a royal kick in the —- to grab it in the morning. I’m waiting to step off my wheel well into an acute and lonely pain called a “broken ankle,” and like any new Subway employee knows, the more chances you give me for ’success’, the better my odds.

I rode the Alien Trail in Aztec, NM yesterday on my way out of Durango for the last time. It was dry and as tacky as the Four Corners gets, which meant great traction, fun technical descents, and fast singletrack. As I rode, I wondered how long my legs would look like a hedgehog fetus in a bottle of formaldehyde, but thats neither here nor there. Floating down to Santa Fe at an exhiliarting 64 MPH (its a 4-cylinder!) I praised my new cellular calling plan that lets me stave off the impending void inherent to 150 miles of indian reservation highway:

Friend on other line: “Whats up Rushie?!”

Me: “Nothing. Just holdin’ it till the next gas station……….”

Friend: “Never. Call me. Again.”