the cowboy [4/5]

Tags

adventure, cowboy, engagement, history, love, marriage, relationship, restaurant, story

the waiting                    the clues[2/5]                    the ring[3/5]

I met him in a bar. Neither of us were there looking for phone numbers. I wasn’t just one young lady with a cocktail, in a bar where he was buying drinks for women until he took one home. That kind of beginning isn’t our kind of beginning. Still, he wasn’t mine for a long time.

I met him in a bar. He was the bartender. I, the waitress. He thought me too loud, dare I say obnoxious. I thought him haughty, conceited even. But then I caught a better glimpse. A striking young man tossing limes in the air, spinning while they slide onto the lip of the glass in his hand. He laughs with his whole body, his smile stays on his face a while after what was funny. When he speaks to customers, he crouches down at the table or leans comfortably over the bar rail; it makes everyone feel like they’ve known him for years. Like he’s charming and he loves them more than as a customer. He says he gets it from his dad.

And not only that from dad.  His middle name, too, which I took to using frequently, months into our slow-paced, casual courtship years ago. His full name is not Bradley, as I once imagined or expected it to be, but just Brad. Brad Alan, like on the disc covers I printed for him once, before studio days, and like he uses on posters for his solo shows in New York City.

When I wasn’t sure how to proceed, I learned most about how he would treat me, the way he was falling in love with me so tenderly. Bursting at every seam, cheeks aching from laughter, we filled sunrise to sunset with adventure and jokes, exploring our Midwestern city creatively. I pretended we were only friends, pretended no one knew I’d fallen for him. He never stepped where I didn’t let him go.

We didn’t make every decision with perfect precision. I could’ve drawn some of our lines with invisible pen, I reckon. But the history of us is something I’ve come to love. For years, I’ve been adventuring and exploring with this cowboy. We’ve dreamed so many dreams together. For years, figuring what makes him tick, dissecting the world together, asking questions, loving the mystery of life.  Only the very beginning of these next forty years. 

This Must Be Fiction

Tags

adventure, automobile, automotive, car trouble, cars, driving, expressway, fiction, highway, Illinois, Indiana, life, Michigan, midwest, night, roadside assistance, story, tow truck, travel

Car skids on the wet pavement, hydroplanes, the wheel shutters and shakes but only a little. She turns the music down. Drives, drives, drives. The car rumbles, she worries. Doesn’t know, but decides to pull off at the next exit. The roads are long, the night’s been dark for hours now. Mile marker, tree, reflector pole-thingy, where are the exits on this highway anyway!? Something shifts, the rumble turns to a grind.

Panic.

She pulls over immediately, as fast as she can get her Taurus over that solid white line, not 200 yards from the exit ramp. As the car slows, she hears the uncomfortable sound of metal to asphalt. Oh no.

Guilty that she doesn’t know more, that she didn’t pull off sooner, that she didn’t see it coming, she breathes heavily and her face feels hot. Fearful that the problem is bigger because of her ignorance, she waits a moment. Afraid to be alone with no answers, she fishes for her phone. Plus, she used to be afraid of the dark. Used to be, right.

She calls dad, calls the insurance helper people. Someone’s on his way. Wait, wait, wait. She drank coffee and ate popcorn all the way here and she has to go. But she has to stay and wait for the man who will fix her tire. Wait, wait, wait. It’s taking a while. He’s going to be late. An hour goes by. She prays for her students with notecards stuck in the mirror. She practices her sign language. She checks the rearview mirror obsessively, but doesn’t mean to.

The driver calls and they figure out that he’s searching for her in Indiana. She’s in Michigan. That’s not going to work out, she thinks. And says. More calls, lots of apologies. A new truck goes out in search of her blinking hazard lights. One in the same state this time.

By this time, she can’t wait; she absolutely has to go. Kleenex, hand sanitizer, a break in the oncoming traffic. She runs up the embankment, out of sight. Two steps out of the car, a ditch. It’s been raining all day, so a muddy ditch. Maybe a foot of muddy water. She nearly loses her shoe, soaks her sweat pants. Anger. The hill is much steeper than she realized. Halfway, she can’t stop to pee; she can hardly stand. Her hands are muddy, her feet are soaked. At the top of the hill, she can hardly stand it. She goes and runs back down. But the hill is steep, and the only way back. She falls, slides down the hill in her clothes, caked in mud, twists her arm to catch her fall.

She has a suitcase full of clothes, but no pants to put on. Distressed, she stands outside the car before getting in and getting everything muddy. Her shoulder throbs from the fall. At least it had stopped raining.

The man finally comes, changes her tire, tells her to drive 50 on the highway marked 70 with the spare. Be careful. She turns the car on and slides back onto the highway. Warning lights pop up all over the dashboard. Emergency break, antilock brakes, transmission something bad. Dad is annoyed with the problem, two hours old by now, and offers no help via phone. So she drives slowly, burned by semi trucks through three states and all the way home with warning lights burning her retinas.

She waits to wake up, to snap back to reality. There’s no way this is real. This just must be fiction.

Pittsburgh, PA: FANFARE

Tags

adventure, Allegheny, Cabaret, Cathedral, city, entertainment, friends, fun, kayak, life, PITT, Pittsburgh, review, road trip, theatre, travel

This post was first: Pittsburgh, PA: FOOD

The incline is kind of like the world’s first roller coaster. Shaky and slow, cords pull massive cars up the hill to overlook this city of three rivers. Heinz field and Pirates Stadium are directly on the Allegheny River. I couldn’t see Mellon arena; it’s on the other side of that tall black skyscraper, the name of which I’ve forgotten in the fanfare, the one next to the one with the garden on the wall, seriously.

From the top of the Incline: Pittsburgh's Rivers

For less than ten bucks, I kayaked the Allegheny in tandem with my dear friend Lindsey. The water dripped non-stop from the ends of the paddle into my lap. But we did cross the river twice without being chopped up by a motor boat. And the variety of bridges never ceased to be beautiful and complex. We got pretty speedy by the last leg of the trip. And very good at crashing into others.

Linsdey and Linda setting up a crash test, probably on Alex

The Cathedral of Learning is the tall, white stone castle on the University of Pittsburgh campus that looks like Harry Potter’s Hogwarts on the inside. It’s cold and gothic, footsteps and breaths reverberate through the walls, ringing inside iron cast gates and light fixtures. The classroom simulations of learning environments from other countries were locked, but we did run down thirty-six flights of stairs in lieu of touring the world. You learn a lot in this activity, more than you’d expect. Kyle, Laura, Dr. J and I collectively recommend it.

on the University of Pittsburgh, hanging out

An additional ten points goes to said Cathedral in respect for the evening use of its bathrooms. A buncha ragtag river-wading, football-punting, lost-dog-chasing, coffee-hunting kids transformed into a good-looking sweater-sporting clan in under twenty minutes. Impressive, to say the least. Sweaters and all, we attended a cabaret late night theatre show for five bucks (steal!). The mystery theatre was interactive, featuring our fearless leader as the evening’s announcer and my gal’s little sister as the coffee mug-wielding winner of guessing the whodunit. Who would’ve guessed?

It’s not the half of what Pittsburgh has to offer, but these are affordable and fun gems of a city with deep history and modern upgrades. Let’s be honest, it could’ve been any city. It’s almost always the people.

Close Encounters

Tags

adventure, Colorado, hiking, mountains, rock climbing, Rockies, Rocky Mountains, section 16, trail, west

Click this flickr link for a few photographic updates.  I started at a trailhead called Section 16 yesterday evening and realized that it connects with a whole web of trails that go on for miles and miles.  The five I hiked were more than enough!

No adventures too out of the ordinary to report, although I did momentarily stand just about nose-to-nose with a white-tailed deer.  I had my headphones in; my beginner’s backback housing a protein bar, sunglasses, and my camera; and I since I hadn’t seen another hiker or biker for about 15 minutes, I was singing Athlete’s Outsiders at the absolute top of my lungs.  I could hear my voice from the inside of my ears, like listening to sound from a long hollow wrapping paper tube.  But I could not hear the hoofs of this deer coming down a steep incline to my right. 

The soles of my shoes stuck to the sticks they were crushing on the forest floor and I tugged my earbuds so they fell to a limp sway at my waist.  Hadn’t read a thing about deer – I wasn’t sure if he would charge at me or run scared.  Did he think like a rattlesnake – that quicker movements increased the threat to his safety?  I stood very still.  His eyes were huge and moist.  They blinked to life twice while he stared at me, which is something the deer heads on my Grandfather’s wall that I used to pet when I was a child never did.  His tail flicked to the side and he turned and ran up the incline, leaving me stunned and laughing on the dirt path. 

I directed some bikers, who wore the full spandex edition and helmet with visor which was hardly necessary, to a canyon trail I had passed a quarter mile back.  I hiked inconsequentially to a dried up waterfall and back to my car, where I mostly collapsed into my front seat.  Close encounters, no near-death experiences.  Happy hiking.

Playing with Rattlesnakes

Tags

adventure, Colorado, Dorothy Falls, hiking, mountains, Queen's Canyon, rattlesnake, Rockies, snake, waterfalls

I had heard about rattlesnakes. I read signs around here that talk about how they come out in the summer. There’s a warning on an office bulletin board about how to move slowly once you’ve been bitten. It says that they’re not typically deadly, so don’t freak out.

I’m still a tourist hiker – I hardly bring anything with me. I can’t even keep track of my sunglasses when I hike, so it’s probably better that way. But I’m learning that people carry half a day’s food and snakebite first aide kits, both of which sound sustaining and very important.

I’m hearing all this detail as I tell “native” (no one is really native here) Coloradans that I touched a rattlesnake on one of my hikes the other day. Their faces are slack and wide-eyed. I stand face to face with people who’ve just been surprised by a man with a knife in a pitch black room, or who turn left at the intersection and witness a three car pile-up. It’s right about then that I reconsider my course of action post-rattlesnake.

Here’s a video of the little dude, sitting on his rock, basking in the sun and the spray from the waterfall. Initially, I jumped back in terror and surprise, when my hand leaned on his rock, and my fingers encircled his scaly body. But after my breathing returned to normal, I took pictures and dropped leaves around him, unaware that he’s able to spring himself off the rock and latch onto my face. For some reason, he didn’t – though he might have been thinking about it with that black split-tongue sliding out of his mouth.

Naivety is less of a gift than I once thought. Ignorance is not bliss, like they say. After watching dozens of Coloradans listen to my rattlesnake adventure in disbelief, I decided to get educated and try to muster some fear for the slithery little guys. Thank you wikipedia and $4.95 snakebite kit at Target.

Creating Chaos

Tags

adventure, Colorado, Dorothy Falls, Glen Eyrie, hiking, pinecones, Queen's Canyon, sunglasses, The Glen

My sunglasses have been a source of chaos on these hikes. The sun starts to think about setting in the late afternoon and the shades perpetually travel back and forth from my face. When they’re not grabbing the backs of my ears, they search for lint in my pants pockets or tug on my neckline against all modesty.

On today’s Glen Eyrie hike to the Queen’s Canyon Waterfalls, they fell into the tortoise of a shallow river. It was more of a brook speeding through the space cushions in a three-lane rush-hour traffic of fallen rocks.

The shades greeted a few submerged stones and twirled inside out in a gentle whirlpool behind a boulder. I snatched then up, shook them dry, and sent them in search of pocket lint. The sun soon slid out from behind a crag and when I reached down for my sunglasses I realized they’d jumped ship again.

I don’t need them, my squinting eyes said. Most of my needs, in fact, can be bait and switched for wants – but I’d welcomed the change in pattern that they brought to my travels. The unexpected creates little one-act comedies just for me. So I picked up a pinecone and stuffed it half in my pocket before hiking on.

So happy to have my sunglasses back!

Update: I found them on the way back down!

Accidental Adventures

Tags

adventure, Colorado, downpour, hiking, mountains, rain, Rockies, thunderstorm

It was a simple loop trail on the map. Walk behind the castle, ascend a set of railroad ties masquerading as stairs, and hike in a clear half circle that’ll take you back to the main road. Simple and sunny, so I took my books along to stop and read maybe halfway and put my iPod in to listen to the stories of Mike Birbiglia and Dan Savage on This American Life.

It had been about twelve steps before I was pausing for a water break. The main road was steeper than the 2-D map showed, but every few minutes I’d get a good laugh from the podcast, so I pressed on to the Queen’s Canyon Outlook sign and took off down a skinny path of mixed stones and earth. I hiked past a series of caves and past an overlook of the actual canyon, where the segmented lines between different types of rock were clear and impressive. Hike, hike, hike.

I rounded a corner in my hiking innocence and my heart quit beating and hid behind my shoulder for a second. There was an overturned car smashed into a dead tree, pushing the tree into a dangerous lean with its weight. I’ve seen an overturned car only once before, right as it was flipping. I was driving with my girlfriend, Kelly (during which, I always fear for my life) from Lake Michigan Drive onto I-96 at the S-curve, just South of downtown Grand Rapids, Michigan. Two cars crashed at the merge and the smaller one rolled over twice and landed on the roof, with two people inside and hurt. When we called 911, there were already authorities on the way. Searched the paper for a few days to find out how things turned out, but to no avail. Regardless, the image of the people trapped in the overturned car was branded in my mind on that day.

My steps toward this car in a similar position were slow-motion steps with a soundtrack of screams and splintering metal. The trunk was crushed and open, the bumper mangled about 6 feet from the car, the airbags had gone off and hung limp and punctured inside open doors. My imagination couldn’t have construed a story of the crash because the summit was hundreds of feet up. And there wasn’t a road system up there. It was a weird conclusion to hold, but whoever drove this car off the cliff did so on purpose.

The thunder started while I was at the car wreck. With no clue as to my position on the path, I guessed that I was more than halfway and hiked on. In only a handful of minutes, I came to a spiky fence and no discernable trail in any direction. I stood there in the approaching thunder for too long, trying to choose a route. Back was the smartest way to go, but it couldn’t have been the fastest. The thunder rumbled loudly, drowning out even the music in my ear-bud headphones, so I ran. I ran for fear of getting caught in the rain, for my books in my bag to get soaked and ruined, and for the likely possibility that I would be struck by lightening on this mountain and decompose for days until they found me. The faster I ran, the more plants I ran into, all of which held little puddles of water in their leaves. I was soaked before the downpour started, but the downpour started just as I could see the main road, about 15 minutes before I could get to it at full-out-of-shape-7,000-foot-elevation-sprint.

The path had looked so simple. Next time I’ll ask for a 3-Dimensional map for better planning. I don’t seek out these adventures, these gambling games with my life and belongings, but they find me with ease. All I wanted to do was hike a few trails and here I was walking to my car, soaked and surely breathing out of one collapsed lung. Then the rain stopped between blinks, but my jeans were wet for hours.

I Could’ve Died

Tags

adventure, Colorado, Echo Rock Canyon, Glen Eyrie, hiking, mountains, rock climbing, Rockies, Rocky Mountains, The Glen, west

The trail went confidently both ways and there was no sign. The three wooden steps to the right were a signal for safe trailing, but I’d surely come down those before. In pursuit of adventure, down the wide, red gravel road I hiked. I hiked as it narrowed and gained elevation, water-bottle in hand. The road became a ditch, shoulder-high on both sides, the wayward roots of the trees grabbing at my belt loops, and I hiked. The ditch became a tunnel as the shrubbery bent low to roof me in. Hike, hike, hike. What looked to me like a trail came and went in the overgrowth. I crawled in and out of the ditch, which I began to think was a dried up river and not necessarily meant for me. If it rained, the rush would float me back to where the road first diverged. But I kept hiking.

The landscape changed at a bend in the river: a wooden wheel, a monster truck tire buried in the dirt, an overturned wheelbarrow. I emerged the trail of trash obstacles into a sort of grove where the only ways to go were up or back. The dried up river had lost its glory, the thrill of adventure reduced to chapped lips and heavy breathing and I had no intention of returning the way I came. Up, then, was the only way to go.

Too quickly, the “up” was uncertain. The dirt was loose. The protruding logs were deceiving, they pulled easily from the ground when I grabbed at them. The holds in the rock, a trick, they crumbled in my grip and disintegrated under my feet. Three risky steps up the decaying rock, I’d changed my mind. It was time to turn back, but my footholds had broken off the mountainside and fallen into the grove below. I was stuck and all I had was up.

I sliced and scraped my hands in desperate attempts as maintaining my elevation, ripped my jeans in two places, saw a snake that decided not to bite me, but not a person for miles. I don’t know how I made it to the top. No idea. I thought for sure I’d have fallen. I was wheezing and dizzy when I finally scrambled to the top, laid on a boulder at the summit in a messy pile for thirty minutes, thankful to be anything but a carcass in that grove.

I turned to the mountain I scaled and saw the dried trails of sliding dirt running paths through the grass. I saw the falling, thin rock broken off in jagged edges. The grade was the steepest I’ve been close enough to see in Colorado. It must have been a runoff, where the water pours down like a fall in a thunderstorm, drowning the route I desperately climbed up. It’s why nothing takes root, why me feet kept slipping, scaring the something right clear out of me. I’ll go the three-step way next time.

8140 Chancellor Dr: Home of the Impossible

Tags

adventure, bee, bee sting, Colorado, hockey, injury, summer

I have hikes and photographs, mornings in the Glen gardens and lightening bolts that could destroy the MidWest. But Colorado’s most mysterious, slightly painful, and sure-to-make-you-laugh story to date is about sitting on the living room couch and how there was a bee in my pants.

It all started yesterday, when Colorado felt like Chicago: cloudy and wet with a fog sliding down the mountains that will just eat you up. I went to work, told time by my bathroom breaks, and got a smidge of editing done. Drove home to cook dinner: stir fry and steak. Hooked up the TV that buzzes when the volume’s too high and watched Corrina, Corrina – my favorite old school flick. It was a typical, very relaxed Penguins day off.

After a phone call from a dear friend and a moment of stirring honey into my freshly brewed raspberry hot tea, I was back to the couch, ready to hit play. No sooner had I sat down and snuggled under the blanket, than my knee was itchy…then pinchy…sort of prickly-feeling. Then I was sure, so sure, that something under that blanket had moved.  I slowly lifted the blanket and swung my legs off the couch cautiously, still relatively confident that nothing could possibly be down there except my own legs.

That’s when it stung me. Poked it’s little spiky butt into my leg right on the inside of my knee. I let out a frightened kinda yelp that ended in a question mark. I still hadn’t seen it. I stood up and threw my sweatpants to the floor, hopping out of them in only my socked feet and a Venice Beach hoodie. And that little sucker calmly climbed right out of the pants I’d just been wearing!

I smashed the pant-dwelling bee with a flip-flop, iced my leg with frozen vegetables, and suffered sporadic fits of laughter at the impossibility of it all.  I’m glad to report that no major injuried were sustained. In my recovery, I’ll be a healthy scratch on the Penguins bench tonight for Game 4 of the Stanley Cup.

Adventure-less Oma-braska

Tags

adventure, coffee, conference, hotel, Letter to a Christian Nation, Nebraska, Sam Harris, vacation, weekend

With best regards to my good friend Josi, Nebraska is a complete bore from the 4th floor window of the Crowne Plaza. From this hill, the view isn’t as barren and farm-filled as I would’ve expected, in the Husker’s defense. There’s a Bag ‘n’ Save with a blue roof that I can see, but as it turns out, I can’t walk there unless I ford the river. It was too cold yesterday, and probably still too wet today.

It’s true, I’ve done things this weekend that I’ve never done before, so I’ll mark that down as moderately risky when I get home to my Adventure chart.  I used the individual coffee maker located (oddly) in the hotel bathroom.  Used it twice, no, three successful times!  Twice: to make hot water that cooked my travel Ramen meal.  Once: to make coffee, which was mostly sugar in the raw and powdered non-dairy creamer.  Yummy times three and, yes, adventurous.

You know, of course, that since I’ve stopped playing soccer, I abstain from most forms of physical activity.  Maybe it’s some sort of protest against the lack of futbol in my life.  But that would mean I’m protesting myself, which doesn’t make any sense at all.  So, no.  The alarming truth is: I rode the stationary bike here at the hotel for nineteen minutes, accompanied by my dear friend, Sam Harris.  Too bored (Sam and I ceased to have profitable convo at this point) to finish the twentieth minute, Mr. Harris stayed on the deck and I then jumped into the pool.  Treading water is more difficult than I remember, but all the working out was good.  Maybe I’ll do it again sometime.  Just maybe, don’t get excited.

I’ve kept up with my internet time-wasters: sites like gmail, goodsearch, and youtube, in the absence of my social life.  I’ll surely find out when I get home, that this aimless network wandering probably cost me another seventy dollars on the most expensive weekend of my life.  Tonight when I go see a movie and eat dinner at a steakhouse, recommended to me by the travel information man at the airport, I’ll front a comfortable cover of solo-living and tip twenty percent.  Then I’ll spend the night sleeping on my suitcase in the airport terminal, like a showered but still tired homeless woman. 

Nebraska brings out the duality in me.  Cheers!