For All You Do, This Mud's For You

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Our invasion took a pleasant turn when Slim showed up last Wednesday. I swear, his company could take the horror out of a nuclear winter. I started one of my long simmer spaghetti sauces that morning and we gorged ourselves silly on that and the French bread he picked up before heading into the canyon. He's very good about calling ahead to see if we might need something. As usual, we kept that dear cowboy up far later than he is used to and he headed out late the next morning to do his pasture planning for the coming winter graze and some needed maintenance around his headquarters 'up top'. He came back the next evening and I had marinated and slow-roasted a big chuck roast from his own private beef supply. His reaction was absolutely worth all that fussing around the oven all day. Again we stayed up way too late but you make the most of good company when it shows up here in the boonies.
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It was probably a good thing that we had mentioned Brou's new profound talent with flatulence since Brou decided to bunk in with him in the guest room. You could have predicted Slim's exclamation in the morning; "Well, you weren't kidding about that fartin' hound, were you? I woke up in the middle of the night thinkin' that a couple of your batteries had blown up or something. I mean the hairs in my nose were burning, know what I'm saying? Gawdamighty, it was THAT bad! I almost booted his butt right out the front door right then and there!" I have to admit that we fell asleep at night chuckling about it and glad that Brou had given us those aromatic evenings off for a change.
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We all woke up to the sound of heavy rains hitting the Rat's steel roof. Mark had the coffee on early and we all lounged around over steaming cups before Slim wisely headed back up to his place. Knowing these roads as we do, we were concerned that he had several options for getting stuck in that slick, thick clay mud. He was very good about letting me know when he was eventually back on pavement (I take after my mother when it comes to pacing and worrying).
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The next day brought even more rain and we saw the roads turn to a clinging, viscous slurry. We didn't have to go anywhere so we just sat back and watched the mud bog show. Semis were still coming in and, towards the end, a few of them slid off the road rink and rode the deep bar ditch at an alarming 45 degree angle with their top-heavy loads until the wheels hunted themselves back out. They must have been butt-puckering themselves senseless during that whole process. The truck above (look to the immediate right of the semi cab exhaust stack) fell prey to those inverse railroad tracks into the muck. It was a while before the rescue came in the form of a 'SKYTRAK' which also fish-tailed precariously down the road. The semi cab just happened to be following along close behind. These 'SKYTRAK' type machines are definitely a very versatile little machine and very much fun to watch under skilled operation. You can also see them at work in the photos below.
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Yesterday's entertainment was some poor sod trying to deliver a replacement SKYTRAK. He got stuck BIG TIME in the site access road. The irony was that the replacement unit on the trailer and the existing unit had to both come to the semi's aid, several times. There was a point when the semi made it all the way down to the intersection of the access road and main road (third segment of photo above) before getting mired again and I will admit that I almost hoped that it would stay there, blocking all further ingress and egress. Shame on me ... well, perhaps, kind of, sort of.

By the time the precipitation had stopped on Sunday, our gauge had registered over an inch of rain and we got to see the ongoing mud drags as the ruts got deeper, the fish-tailing more frantic and the plumes of mud getting higher and higher. It helped our viewing pleasure to know that a couple of trucks worth of rig people had blown by one of our regular field guys while he was mired in the creek crossing that they had messed up. This despite his attempts to wave them down. You don't cross 'our boys', period. The downside? We have to get into town soon for a number of overdue reasons, including bringing our supply of windows and antique doors into the people who are constructing our two new buildings. In the meantime, it sure was great to watch God and Nature administer a little poetic justice.
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