I think it somehow strikes at the core of our species - to be in motion.
The earth rolling before me, ever changing, turning, but always forward. Day and night, blue skies and rain, wind and clouds, sun and stars. Hours. Days. Weeks. To think. To dream. To heal. To satisfy. To be inspired.
For the 4th of July, I made a two week trek from California to Minnesota to Montana and back to California. I packed up the Dodge, tossed a motorcycle in the back and hit the road with super pooch Charlie.
I spent day one driving like crazy. I left Los Angeles at 3pm and was in the sweltering Mojave desert by 6. It was only 113 degrees...quite cool for the 30th of June. The trouble was, my air-conditioning wasn't cool and Charlie was about to die.
I pulled into the desert town of Baker and, after some nonsense, found a mechanic named Dan Chuy who hooked me up with some R134 refrigerant. The good news was that it worked and the Dodge was blowing cold air again. The bad news was that it means I have a leak.
Dan Chuy is one of those rare finds in the desert. A good soul and a smart guy with a great sense of humor. We chatted for about an hour in the heat, next to his over-sized swamp cooler. He showed me his 13 year old daughter's artwork, which was all along the walls of his shop and in boxes spread out over the tables next to engine parts and mystery liquids. His daughter is incredibly gifted and he is wonderfully supportive. I was inspired.
Originally from Detroit, Dan moved out to the hottest place on earth 20 years ago. He broke life down to me like this:
Mathematically, we have 100 years (or much less) to live. That is roughly 876,000 hours. 1/3 of which we sleep away. Leaving us with 584,000 hours of waking life. Of that, we work 8+ hours a day, which leaves us 292,000 hours of free time. Of that, we spend 2-3 hours a day eating, prepping for work, dawdling, chatting on the phone... add an hour of driving...and we've basically cut that 'free' time in half again. Ok - now we're at 146,000 hours.
Now he says "How old are you?"
To which i reply 32.
"Well, then cut that number by a third." 97,333 hours of free time left for me. He's 60, which leaves him with less than 50,000 hours.
"Does your time have value now?"
Yes.
"Why would you waste your 97,000 hours doing something that doesn't matter?"
"Why would you waste your precious time on people who don't make you smile?"
I smiled and he smiled.
I did the math, and figured I would spend 336 hours on this trip....
Onward.
I drove straight through Vegas, longing to sit at a poker table and waste 12 hours drinking for free, but Charlie looked at me, his white fur blowing in the cold, refrigerated air as if to say..."drive on young lad. Don't waste your time." And so I did.
I made it through Nevada, across the tip of Arizona and into Utah in the dark. And I drove and drove and drove.
Around 3am, I was gaining on a huge thunderstorm and decided to find a place to sleep. The lightning was fierce and the roads were wet and if I'd driven another 30 minutes, I was going to catch the storm and thought better of it.
I found a muddy trail off a lonely highway and curled up in the back seat. Charlie had slept all day so he sat on the arm rest, woofing at the wind as I finally crashed.
At 8am, I woke.
Utah has it all. Well...almost. There's some strange things going on there, but geologically, it has everything. And it is simply a pleasure to drive through.
Around noon, I entered Colorado.
Interstate 70 travels along the Colorado River and is probably the most insane stretch of freeway in the USA. An engineering wonder of the world!
It took 8 hours to get through Colorado and the rest of the day to get across Nebraska, where I stopped just short of Lincoln and slept at a dumpy truck stop.
By Friday morning, I was home. Minneapolis.
For the 4th of July, we had a giant family reunion at my brother's new house.
Family.
It was also a celebration for my grandparents.
60 years of marriage.
Congratulations on an amazing life together.
We ate.
We played football, bagz and ladder toss.
We watched the fireworks.
It sure is nice to come home. It is easy to forget sometimes, but there is nothing more amazing and important than family.
The following Tuesday, I was on the road again. North through Fargo and into North Dakota.
Charlie slept.
And I couldn't believe the beauty. The sun rays breaking through feathery clouds over isolated farm houses and the expanse of green corn stretching to the horizon.
Sometime around 11pm, I reached Medora, ND. And 4 miles west of Medora is a cool little place called Buffalo Gap.
And off the interstate a couple miles is a little B&B called the Buffalo Gap Guest Ranch.
On their website it says, "Warning!
DO NOT USE GOOGLE MAPS for directions to the ranch. You will have a nice drive but you won't get here. "
We got there. Charlie and I spent the night and woke to blue skies and green fields.
It'd been raining for 3 weeks and the owner said this was the nicest day since. Ah, my luck continues. I had breakfast in the bar.
A few hundred miles later I was in my second home. Montana.
You'll know when you enter Montana.
The new green energy initiatives are in full effect. You can see it in the wind farms all over the country. It is really quite amazing. But driving next to a giant windmill blade on the freeway is not safe.
I made it to Absarokee, MT, where I met up with Keith (Turfmeddler).
Charlie was reunited with his best friend Zambi and it was like old times.
(It isn't obvious why Charlie has no shadow...look closely....super pooch flies!)
Keith took me to the Brimer's home, where i was going to sleep and drink for the next few days.
The Brimer's are fantastic people. Ernie and Julie.
Ernie Brimer has been a miner for 20 some years. The day we met, he'd spent the last 11 hours underground - digging, mucking, and blasting dynamite for paladium and platinum. 11 hours a day - 4 days on, 4 days off. He's got arms thick as railroad ties and a grip that crushes the spirit.
And he's got some great stories.
The Brimer's welcomed me with food, beer and a bed and I can't thank them enough. This type of open-armed hospitality for a total stranger is rare and humbling.
Their house sits on a couple acres just on the skirt of town with dogs, chickens, kids, and plenty of big boy toys. It's a fun, hardworking place and it felt good to be surrounded by these people.
Keith guides whitewater rafts for Absaroka River Adventures. If you get the chance to head up North, these guys are the best in the business and have plenty of wild places to get you wet. It's so fun.
When I arrived it was the end of the day and that means beer thirty.
(Owner Matt (center), guide Tim (standing), Keith (off-screen) and friends.)
The following day, I was invited to join Matt and his motley crew of guides on a float down the Clark's Fork of the Yellowstone. The portion of the river we were planning on running had some nasty rock gardens of Class IV rapids. From what I determined through conversation, Class IV means that if you fall out, there is a good chance you will get severely injured or die. Noted.
Keith set me up with a helmet, vest and dry suit and all the other bells and whistles to survive snow melt water temperatures.
We were up and on the road by 9am, making the 2 hour drive around the mountains and into Wyoming.
We headed along the southern edge of the Beartooth Mountains and Keith pointed out the giant Box canyon we'd be heading into.
This should be interesting.
We reached the end point for our float and dropped off one of the trucks.
But the sign says "Launch Point" not "Take-out." What does this mean?
And so we piled into Keith's 1997 Dodge 3500 (just another 12 valve CTD). Matt and Keith jumped in the Cab, while John, Matt's twin sons, Levi and Michael, and I jumped into the raft, which was not quite safely attached to a rickety wooden structure that Keith and Matt built the day before.
A beer eased the butterflies in my stomach.
We were headed up the canyon, into the thick of it...the best direction.
It was stunning. It was bumpy. It was awesome!
Matt and crew would hop out and discuss the best solutions to the hazardous river cruxes.
I stayed back and snapped photos, somewhat oblivious to the dangers. I felt a sense of calm, actually. I mean, if I was going to float down a river with 5 whitewater guides, it didn't matter what I did or said. If they couldn't do it, I wasn't going to add anything.
So relax and enjoy...
I donned a dry suit for the first time. It's an experience. The neck gaiter chokes you for about 20 minutes until your body figures out that it needs to pump the blood to your brain a little harder. I almost passed out and my Adams Apple was sore for a week.
We put in the river about 5 miles upstream from the take out (Launch Point?). Further up the canyon, the river gets absolutely nutty. Apparently, there's a section of the river that flows through "multiple sieves, underground tunnels, and drains" all while cascading 100's of vertical feet. Here's a harrowing description of how crazy the river gets. Sad story about a group of kayakers who battled through it. One died.
Our float was incredible. The river was flowing quite low, which made some of the rapids very interesting. Lots of sharp rocks poking up through white rooster tails of gushing water.
We pulled the boat to shore twice along the way and walked ahead to survey the most important sections. Matt would have his trusty guides tell him how they would run each section. They would point out paths and ideas and ways to negotiate the rocky water. Then he would tell them how we were going to run it, usually followed by, "You probably won't survive a swim through this section." Great.
Video to come...
It was a blast. And in my oblivious mindset and with the expert navigating by Matt on the oars, I never felt in danger, except when we almost went backwards into "that hole will swallow the boat and we'll all be swimming."
Another hour downstream, the guides got restless and starting pushing each other into the water. We all swam for fun and Matt thought it'd be funny to paddle the boat as far away as possible. You can't catch a boat when the driver is determined to get away.
We climbed back in and pulled out at the "Launch" and we cracked the warmest beers on record.
Matt and son's drove us to where the road got stupid and John, Keith and I walked the 3 miles back to the Dodge. I think this walk is what created my heat fever that would haunt me for the next three days.
We walked in the canyon cooker heat for 45 minutes, drinking the hottest bud lights on the planet.
Ahhh...but it was so magnificent!
A memorable day.
The next day, I was determined to go skiing in the Beartooths. It was July 9th and apparently it snowed on the plateau a week before. I had dragged my skis 2500 miles across country in July and I was not going to let them down.
I stopped in Redlodge for lunch before heading up the Beartooth Pass Highway. I felt the fever set in and my throat was sore. Not a good sign, but not worth quitting yet.
(Redlodge, MT)
The Beartooth Pass is another remarkable feat of engineering. This road winds upward from Redlodge to over 11,000 feet.
(The Bear's Tooth)
The pass is usually open only 5 months a year due to the snow and wild weather conditions. The road opens each Memorial Day and is a major tourist draw for people heading to Yellowstone and Cooke City. It is also the best summer relief for skiers in the Northern Hemisphere.
This place helps ease that longing for winter...
When I was going to college in Bozeman, my friends and I would pack up the trucks and camp high up in the Beartooth's. We'd usually try to be there on Memorial Day for the best snow, but in the final years it truly became a zoo.
We had a secret camp spot halfway up the mountain, near the bathrooms, that was never used.
Here's the crew in 1999 -
The skiing is typically consistent. Corn snow, created by the constant melt-freeze-melt-freeze, feels like an inch or two of wet paint. It's actually fantastic skiing. It feels like spreading butter over a giant loaf of bread.
(Above) The Gardner Headwall. If you look closely you can see the ski tracks covering the snow.
(Above) One of my favorite and longest runs. We called it 57 chevy. There is a wreckage of a blue vehicle at the bottom of a 1000 foot cliff. But there's no way to tell what type of vehicle the heap is.
The run starts at the top of the snow field and runs down the chute, ending in a boulder field. The hike out is about 30 minutes.
I sat on the tailgate of my truck, near the Headwall for about 2 hours. Charlie ran around in heaven.
I had bet that I wasn't the only one stupid enough to be up here to ski in July. But no one came and I was either too scared or too smart to go alone. I put my ski boots and gear out like a garage sale, hoping someone would drive by and say, "look, there's an idiot with the same idea we have." But I was the only idiot.
Charlie was starting to look like 11,000 feet wasn't doing him right and I definitely had a fever by this point. So I tucked my tail and imagined I'd ski another day.
It was a great drive regardless.
That night, Keith and I drank, and by morning I was done. I hopped in the Dodge and spent Saturday and Sunday on a 1400 mile, fever-bent race to Los Angeles. I was sick, dehydrated, sunburned and feeling the pressure of work calling me home. Reality bites.
Driving with a fever is for the birds.
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