Racing the Rains Home

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I had planned to show you intriguing photos of the ghosts of metal victims of the running washes but this was probably my worst emotional week since Terry died. I had been carefully avoiding anything that might trigger the worst of the sorrow that I knew I could not deal with yet since the stress and the upset of this rapidly approaching move from our canyon will certainly provoke its own lion's share. That didn't work out as planned however. So, instead, I will share photos with you of our access road condition which weighs so heavily on me right now after last night's rains.
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The rain had mostly held off for my three solo trips out of the canyon. And other than seeing this odd bird (above) on Friday which appeared almost double-winged, the trip in went well and without too many excitements other than the usual one or two oncoming vehicles sliding into sudden view from blind corners at impressive speeds. An adrenaline rush trumps coffee any day for waking up fast and fully.

This necessary trip on Friday let me almost beat the storms home. I had made it across the creek and was only a mile away from the Rat when the skies dumped their full load suddenly. I could now see the Rat and picked up the pace, fish-tailing a little here and there on the newly slick dirt. Having picked up Virgil's bed full of moving boxes, I didn't want to dally in the deluge any longer than necessary and heaved a long sigh of relief when the Dakota finally dove under the shelter of the barn's tin roof. Good, only the top layer of boxes had been soaked so I now ran to the Rat in my favorite go-to-town moccasins through the mud slime. I should have brought my tall rubber boots with me, I knew better than to leave them at home, in fact. At least I had remembered to bring a flashlight and a roll of toilet paper just in case. You will only need the items you don't remember to bring - it's another quirky law of the wilderness.

I jettisoned the mud-caked shoes on the porch and all dogs and cats were on deck to witness me blow through the door and collapse breathlessly into my wing chair. They had been very good, not leaving me any 'chocolates' of desperation to deal with. The five of us just sat quietly listening to the thunder and the roar of rain on the Rat's tin roof. Then it subsided unexpectedly within a half hour and the dogs were able to go out to execute their withheld duties with exuberance. I was just thankful that this sudden but short-lived downpour might not force the creek to run that day.
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The creek had been a major, ongoing source of concern for us this year since its meandering course had begun to claw away ruthlessly at two sections of our road in. It had been narrow but sturdy and nicely passable upon our arrival here three years ago although the man who moved the Rat in for us had noted that we lucked out in buying a 14' wide trailer and not a 16' wide one because of those narrow road widths.
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This photo was taken during this last dry spell, well before Sunday night's downpours. I don't have the heart to drive down there to see what's left of the road today. News, good or bad, will reach me soon enough.
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So call me a wimp but I don't like the thought of having a section of road collapse beneath me as I am driving over it, especially when it's a long way down to the creek below. It could ruin your sterling insurance rates in a hurry. I find it even more disconcerting when it involves a heavy vehicle full of your treasured and often irreplaceable belongings piloted by even more irreplaceable friends. The water haulers announced last week that they would no longer let their tanker drivers cross this section of road. This news did not impart a warm and fuzzy feeling to me at all.

We have planned the big move for this coming weekend. This might just be my biggest unofficial heart stress test coming up. Please keep us all in your best thoughts and prayers this week.
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Home Cummins, Part 2

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Retrospect: Mid-September 2006
Continued from Part 1 (for logical reasons) . If you haven't already done so, please read Part 1 posted below or you will miss the flow of the story.
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There is a reason why I believe in unseen benefactors. While this could not be considered one of their most spectacular saves in my experiences so far, it stills deserves noting.
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When the front wheels broke through the berm as though it wasn't even there, we both closed our eyes, at least on a psychological level. The nanosecond functions of our analytical brains told us that the mass, inertia and lack of friction would make our plummet into the raging wash below a guaranteed result of physics. We were toast.

The front wheels slid completely over the embankment and then the truck simply stopped dead. It took a moment for either of us to acknowledge this strange stay of the inevitable, finally voiced by simultaneous gasps of relief. When both of us returned to normal damage control thinking, I volunteered to get out and apply reverse force to aid any traction the rear wheels might still have.

I stepped out in my 'go to town' shoes and immediately had my feet slip out from under me so that I was at a 45 degree angle to the road, held there only by the grace of a hand clutching the bed of the truck. It was obvious that I had no more traction than the truck did. Despite my new frustration and despair, Mark decided to give reverse a try after I slid myself and my mud-caked shoes back into the cab. How the truck managed to gain traction with the remaining two wheels and free itself on the first attempt still defies all logic but it did.

We made it to the intersection at the second nearest neighbor's house and were tempted to ask them for lodging for the night but remembered that we saw their parking lot full of visitors' cars when we first passed by. So ... we took the turn towards the bridge and what unknowns lay beyond.

There were blessings to be had in that the two washes which lay beyond the bridge had not collected enough rain to run yet. I suppose this could be called a blessing in that this allowed us to commence 'the goat path' run. To imagine this 'road', remember back to the Roadrunner cartoons and the precipitous paths carved into mesa walls where the coyote always met a semi head-on. No, those depicted super-highways in reality. This is a one lane dirt path with climbs, falls and turns so tight that you expect to see the truck's rear-end as you swing back sharply into the skirt of the mesa. The other option is a 30 foot fall into the creek below.

To make the drive more challenging, the rain run-off not only turned the clay into slime but brought down boulders to obstruct the path. There were occasions when I would have sworn that we would leave paint on those boulders as we squeezed by. In this two mile run, the terror of hoping for traction on the steep climbs and again for the steep descents into sharp turns had drained us of all the adrenaline that either of us possessed. Numb floating sensations in the limbs and shallow breathing had become normal now.

I heartily thanked our unseen friends as we finally dropped down into the canyon flats again. We both knew that only one more wash crossing and a few less harrowing rim rides lay between us and home-sweet-home. After a few more fish-tailing blasts through boggy spots in the road, we finally made it to the last wash. We stopped at the top of the approach and rolled down the windows to listen. What we heard sounded like wild applause at Carnegie Hall; the creek was running full and hard. We stepped out long enough to confirm that we were now stranded in place. Despite the seasoned advice that a couple of hours waiting would see the washes slow enough to cross, the creek did not die down that night and so we settled in to our predicament. The black hood of night descended and the temperatures dropped rapidly ... and the rains persisted, everywhere, it seemed.

Eventually we realized that neither of us had eaten that day in the rush to pick up this new truck. I hauled the meager bag of sale groceries into the front seat. "Tonight's menu consists of, uhm, this package of ham, this loaf of pumpernickel and ... these itty bitty pecan tarts!" The prospect of sand dry sandwiches prompted Mark to ask "Anything to drink, I hope?" "Yes! I also bought a case of beer! Mind you, they're 'shelfer' warm. That okay?" As though we had other options. And so we had our cab front supper and talked as though we were comfortably home in the Rat. The warm beer helped lighten the mood but also caused several exits for relief. Each time we did the dreaded potty run, we returned with another pound or two of clay on our already cemented shoes but grateful that we had not lost balance in the ooze and fallen down. The dealer's paper floor mats were soon stuck to our shoes permanently, impeding the comfort factor considerably.

It was around midnight when we abandoned all hope to still make the crossing before morning. The creek had shown no signs of calming at all and the rains kept coming down. We gathered our light jackets over us and pushed the seat backs as far down as possible. And I thought of Brou, the poor young pup who we had left outside since we would be back soon enough. I ached at the thought of him surviving his first night out alone in the company of rains and crashing thunder and, forbid the thought, the coyotes.

With such concerns on my mind and the plummeting temperatures, I would awake shivering and chattering from a cramped and fitful nap every few hours and nudge Mark to start up the truck for more heat. This was going to be a very long and torturous journey to morning, resting in this very place which the native peoples will not venture through after dark.

To be continued
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Humor of the day: It may seem odd to include humor in this post but you fellas will appreciate it given that Mark had to navigate the goat path with 'the help' of a passenger. (sent in by buddy Jim in upstate NY)
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A wife was making a breakfast of fried eggs when her husband burst into the kitchen.

"Careful"' he said, "CAREFUL! Put in some more butter! Oh my GOD! You're cooking too many at once. TOO MANY! Turn them! TURN THEM NOW! We need more butter. Oh my GOD! WHERE are we going to get MORE BUTTER? They're going to STICK! Careful . CAREFUL! I said be CAREFUL! You NEVER listen to me when you're cooking! Never! Turn them! Hurry up! Are you CRAZY? Have you LOST your mind? Don't forget to salt them. You know you always forget to salt them. Use the salt. USE THE SALT ! THE SALT!"

The wife stared at him incredulously. "What in the world is wrong with you? You think I don't know how to fry a couple of eggs?"

The husband calmly replied, "I just wanted to show you what it feels like when I'm driving."
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Home Cummins, Part 1

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Pre-Ramble: Current News
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The roads are still a mess out here, declared an emergency by some estimates. Mark dutifully made the supply run into town even though we were hardly in dire circumstance. The prospects of it deteriorating further made this small window a wise decision. He got out on the freeze but ran into the mud on the way back in. Still, it was great to get fresh supplies and pick up the mail in the process.

In one of the town newspapers, there was an article about volunteers making 4WD supply runs into the boonies, how some people were down to one quart of orange juice in the fridge and their animals already dying of starvation. Is it just me here or have people who have lived out here all their lives lost any common sense about how to be prepared for nature's expected twists in this harsh land? Has every one of us become so nannied that we need to rely on outside help to save us from our own responsibility to think and plan ahead? How prepared are you if your power goes out for almost 70 hours like Bruno's did recently? He had back up plans, do you? Can you keep warm, do you have enough stored food to survive a week while waiting to be bailed out? Please give it some thought.
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Above is one of the few vehicles that made it out here this week. Note the mud covering the headlights and windshield - they had obviously run through some good mud already. I took this photo merely seconds after both occupants stepped outside to relieve themselves well within view of the Rat. Why they couldn't have planned ahead and done so behind the berm of the new well site is an annoying mystery to me. Apparently planning ahead is a vanishing human trait.
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We awoke to another inch or two of snow this morning, a remarkably small accumulation since the storm had disabled our satellite connection last night.

I stepped outside and noticed that Mark's Ram looked great considering the road conditions. Then it occurred to me that this fine beast had endured unusually hard assignments from the get-go and that I was very grateful to have it here. That, in turn, has prompted me to journal the story of its arrival. It experienced a baptism of mud within hours of rolling off the dealer lot. That mid-September of 2006 was loaded with tales and trials, some still untold.

Retrospect: Mid-September 2006

After months of research, Mark found this most suitable truck up in Colorado. We piled into my Dakota and headed up there. Mark hung firmly to the agreed price despite the dealer trying to slip in profitable unannounced add-ons like the $127 piece of chromed plastic they called a bug shield. A quick $80+ profit times a couple of hundred trucks off the lot adds up but we weren't buying into it on principle alone. As they played the 'wait 'em out' game, thick thunder clouds formed and rain started to fall so we set off in a full blown thunderstorm. I will not forget that trip or that dealer for delaying our departure by three hours. Their cheesy profit ploy could have cost us our lives that day. Also, since they wanted to charge us high retail on a set of fully necessary BFG Mud Terrain tires with no credit on the factory installed tires, we still had one more stop to take care of that before heading back in. But without those tires, I probably wouldn't be here now to write this journal.

I followed Mark as we climbed back up the mountain on the steep roads, ever mindful of the sheer drops hidden by the blinding rains and that uncomfortable feeling of greasy pavement beneath the trucks. We raced on to the tire outlet, beating the storm back to New Mexico only temporarily. Now there was no time left to peruse the sale ads and pick up groceries but I was able to dash in and pick-up a few clearance items to salve my thwarted sale-lust while Mark picked up parcels.

The clouds caught up and let loose before we could even run back to the trucks. Mark called down to the nearest neighbor and was told that it was still all clear down there. We might have never attempted the trip back that day otherwise. By the time we began the 35 miles of dirt roads, the rain had already turned the clay into flowing gumbo and my old motorcycle sense threw me into high alert even though I was highly unlikely to hook up and fall down on four wheels. This acute sense of contact with the road and balance is not necessarily a plus in these conditions, at least as far as adrenaline output.

For the next two hours, we gingerly crawled up hills and hugged the inside of off-camber curves to allow for 'side slide' outwards. I didn't start getting antsy until we hit water running down the road at such a rate that Mark later noted that he was almost convinced that he had led us up a running wash in the blinding rains.

With my lower Dakota, the waters rushed beneath and against the body with a deafening roar and I could feel them draining away my connection with terra firma. It is here that our approach to driving departs radically. Mark was slowing down ahead while my urge was to stick a foot in it, fishtails or not, and just get it done. I pounded the dash with a free hand, yelling "Move it, MOVE it!!" like an old drill sergeant as the Dakota started to lose resolve and drift towards the ditches and sage.

Just when I thought I was going to play clam in the undertow, Mark reached the far side of the torrent and booted it. I was now lathered up and hot on his bumper all the way. I had a good twenty minutes to calm down before reaching our mailbox at the neighbor's place. She came out and, without thanks, grabbed the clearance bread I offered and announced that the washes were still not running. That was when I pointed out a very large tree limb that bobbed frantically as it passed by in their normally small wash which stands between us and our main wash crossing. Within another minute, we all witnessed a roiling tawny head of foam vanguarding the brown waters raging down the main wash. We heeded her insouciant command to head back a few miles, take the bridge there and use what we now call 'the goat path'. We hadn't had that pleasure yet. Meanwhile, I made a mental note of how, in her position, I would have treated what she clearly thought and often derisively voiced were a couple of clueless green horns in the neighborhood. I would have been concerned and asked them to stay. Then again, I did not have the poop-chute genes that we later heard have infamously run in that clan for generations. But you eventually learn and that is good.

So we left my Dakota there, unloaded the mail and my small bag of remaining sale groceries into the Ram and started back down the road. By now, the little daylight hinting through the storm was disappearing. While edging down a slick grade, three elk charged out in front of us to add to the already pounding blood rush of adrenalin. We had been rolling on tires now so thickly coated in clay that they no longer had treads to grip, not even ABS brakes would stop us now. The main wash had rushed ahead of us roaring bank to bank, 60 foot across. We had a good view of its fury from this ledge 30 feet above as we approached a sharp right angle in the cliff road. I felt an ice-watery pang when my stomach snapped up against my lungs as I sensed a complete and hopeless loss of traction. We both inhaled the seat covers with our buttocks as the Ram slid helplessly towards the cliff's edge. I vaguely remember saying "Oh, man, we're . . . ." as the truck's front wheels burst through the small grader berm at the edge of the cliff and the murderous waters below came into view front and center.
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To be continued
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Just Another Monsoon Day In Eden

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Two days in a row now; eight tenths of an inch of rain. I remember our very first big rain and Virgil describing it as either a 'gully washer' or a 'turd floater'. The latter nomenclature seemed most fitting when that rain hit because, sure enough, all the collected cow turds that Mark had so carefully scraped out of the old barn and herded into a sinkhole came floating up and past like a sail-by at the Royal Yacht Club. Virgil looked like he was about to execute a back flip amidst his laughter when Mark recounted the event and erroneously used the term 'turd washer'. And so the term 'turd washer' stuck, so to speak.

The first image shows a classic 'turd floater'. Any ground that is very light in color is really a sheet of muddy, flowing water. You can see the rain drops bombarding the surface. Meanwhile, I was out back with my shovel in the lightning, trying to divert the torrents which had crested over our old, sanded-in ditches and were threatening the foundations of the new addition and the rat trailer itself. This is my Zen time.

We were waiting inside for the sun to dry things out a little when we heard an unusually loud shooshing noise. Our first concern was that our propane tank had let loose but it sat there well-behaved and the noise was simply rebounding off the mesa wall behind us. We tracked it down to the second nearest gas well from us where impressive amounts of gas were venting under serious pressure. It's amazing how you can know nothing about the strange plant around you but eventually come to know when something is just not right. In this case, we were both glad that we are not habitual stogie chompers. We called the producer and a recalibration occurred in reasonably short order.

Later on (WELL after the escaping gas dispersed), Mark fired up Robin's homemade barbeque grill. At 88 cents a pound, Mark had recently brought home a rack of pork ribs so big that it looked like the keyboard off someone's Steinway. It was time to cook them up since the freezer was not about to hold them. I made up a good and gooey soy sauce-based sweet and sour glaze for the event and would occasionally go out and massage a bit more of it into the ribs.

During one of my looks out the window to make sure the grill hadn't blown up yet, Ming the Merciless caught my peripheral vision. Right dead ahead of him, I saw what looked like a short length of variegated garden hose disappear into the big chico bush. Ming was in HOT pursuit. A sudden flash back to a comment made by an Indian gas field tech: "The heavy rain brings the rattlers down from the mesa tops." Two and two came together. "Mark, grab some iron, come QUICK!!!" I threw open the window to yell "MING ... NO-O-O-O-O!!!!!!!!!" Ming's prey had disappeared into the bush completely by then but I was able to do a running scoop on Ming like he was a fumbled ball. I dashed him back into the rat before he could get a bad attitude about his ruined hunting trip. Brou, the ever good dog, also came in when I called.

Meanwhile, Mark saw the snake exit at the far end of the big bush and yelled "All clear, no rattles!" What a relief! Mark suggested I get the camera out and he promised to do a little snake herding to keep it around. By then, this six foot long snake was heading into that open area that you can see just beyond the semi. This fella was no water moccasin and you can see in the second image how cleverly it is bridging itself across the puddles to avoid getting wet. Much to its frustration, I ran around to the other side of the puddles and was able to get a head-on photo before he swerved off into the brush again. Sigh, I still have not mastered the close up shot in focus with this digital camera.
Click on image for larger view
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