Road trips and happenstance
The last road trip I took of any great length was in relocating back to Boulder, CO from Ontario after a summer of living in my tent following graduate school. I don't recommend moving into a tent after finishing grad school, it doesn't make you feel great about your choices. Unless you want to live in a tent. I drove out of Canada, picked up my friend Lionel in Kalamazoo, MI -of all places to find him- and then we proceeded to cross the plains during a terrible drought that had rendered all the miles of cornfields dead and damned apocalyptic in appearance. I've been in Boulder since trying to roll with the flow while the flow has been whipped into a frenzy by the wild gales of life and learning. It has been a year of transition.
It's been a year and change since that trip and the universe in all its conspiracies has propelled me onto the road once again. This time rather then a homecoming, it's a departure for Lionel, off into the wild blue southern Colorado yonder (Durango) to finish his own education. En route, we must go to Santa Fe, NM to visit his aunt and pick up Aviv flying in from Australia by way of Los Angeles and Austin. From Santa Fe we go to Chaco Canyon, then Durango, then Hot Springs near Crestone, CO then back to Boulder making a rather appealing loop of a trip spread over too few days.
We set out from Boulder a bit on the late end and found several hours of traffic to impede our progress. At last we made it free of the greater Denver area when an alarm like dialing up to the internet old school style rudely interrupted the pop radio song to warn us of flash flooding ahead. We continue South undaunted by the storm clouds that look for all the world like they are pulling all the atmosphere down and inward to a dark grey-green world of purple flashes. It begins to rain.
Rain turns to hail. Hail covers the hot ground in ice and makes for eerie late afternoon fog when the weather breaks in pauses between storm cells. It rains again. Pause. Rain. Pause. Lightning. Hail. Flash flooding. Clouds part, sunset and mountains. Rain. Dark. Moments of moonlight in between rain and then stars. We make it past the storms and the night is windy on the fringes but warm and welcoming.
We stop off the Interstate in Walsonburg, CO so I can buy a really awful cup of coffee. When we go up to the desk I, looking down at the lottery tickets, say; “Oh I had a dream that I won 11 million dollars the other day in the lottery by playing the numbers 10 10, we should have one of those.” So we discussed whether to buy the one in slot 11 or slot 10 and decided to go with 10, which I scratched with a 10 cent coin in order to play to the dream as best as possible. We sat on the trunk of the car, I with my bitter, black coffee, facing the refueling cars and the deep orange rising moon, just past full. The freakin game was weird and confusing, I didn’t think I was doing it right the whole time and I got all irritated and I won $100.
The woman at the counter was more excited by our winning the ticket than I was on account of my having mentioned the dream when we purchased it. It all seemed rather surreal to me and I forgot about it until the next gas station when I, finding the $100 in my breast pocket, decided to spend $7.99 on some new sunglasses.
We finally arrive in Santa Fe, hours beyond schedule and retrieve Aviv from underneath the flag at the long closed municipal airport. Un-phased and overjoyed to see us Aviv climbs into our rolling dream and we all proceed on to Heidi’s home to be fed and put to bed around 2:30am.The following morning,
I wake at 7:30 from some dream in which there was a crazy old house with tree forts and a yard I wanted to throw a party in. It was too early to get up at this point so I made a point of remaining in place for another couple of hours until such time as I could have been more rested. We arise to coffee, delicious vegetarian cross cultural breakfast adventures, a cosmos of Adobe and art galleries. Two more cups of coffee into the morning we find some post cards to send off into the world and sit in a café garden patio to compose them and ourselves for the rest of the day and decisions about how, when and where to continue the adventure. Onward.
To be continued.
It's been a year and change since that trip and the universe in all its conspiracies has propelled me onto the road once again. This time rather then a homecoming, it's a departure for Lionel, off into the wild blue southern Colorado yonder (Durango) to finish his own education. En route, we must go to Santa Fe, NM to visit his aunt and pick up Aviv flying in from Australia by way of Los Angeles and Austin. From Santa Fe we go to Chaco Canyon, then Durango, then Hot Springs near Crestone, CO then back to Boulder making a rather appealing loop of a trip spread over too few days.
We set out from Boulder a bit on the late end and found several hours of traffic to impede our progress. At last we made it free of the greater Denver area when an alarm like dialing up to the internet old school style rudely interrupted the pop radio song to warn us of flash flooding ahead. We continue South undaunted by the storm clouds that look for all the world like they are pulling all the atmosphere down and inward to a dark grey-green world of purple flashes. It begins to rain.
Rain turns to hail. Hail covers the hot ground in ice and makes for eerie late afternoon fog when the weather breaks in pauses between storm cells. It rains again. Pause. Rain. Pause. Lightning. Hail. Flash flooding. Clouds part, sunset and mountains. Rain. Dark. Moments of moonlight in between rain and then stars. We make it past the storms and the night is windy on the fringes but warm and welcoming.
We stop off the Interstate in Walsonburg, CO so I can buy a really awful cup of coffee. When we go up to the desk I, looking down at the lottery tickets, say; “Oh I had a dream that I won 11 million dollars the other day in the lottery by playing the numbers 10 10, we should have one of those.” So we discussed whether to buy the one in slot 11 or slot 10 and decided to go with 10, which I scratched with a 10 cent coin in order to play to the dream as best as possible. We sat on the trunk of the car, I with my bitter, black coffee, facing the refueling cars and the deep orange rising moon, just past full. The freakin game was weird and confusing, I didn’t think I was doing it right the whole time and I got all irritated and I won $100.
The woman at the counter was more excited by our winning the ticket than I was on account of my having mentioned the dream when we purchased it. It all seemed rather surreal to me and I forgot about it until the next gas station when I, finding the $100 in my breast pocket, decided to spend $7.99 on some new sunglasses.
We finally arrive in Santa Fe, hours beyond schedule and retrieve Aviv from underneath the flag at the long closed municipal airport. Un-phased and overjoyed to see us Aviv climbs into our rolling dream and we all proceed on to Heidi’s home to be fed and put to bed around 2:30am.The following morning,
I wake at 7:30 from some dream in which there was a crazy old house with tree forts and a yard I wanted to throw a party in. It was too early to get up at this point so I made a point of remaining in place for another couple of hours until such time as I could have been more rested. We arise to coffee, delicious vegetarian cross cultural breakfast adventures, a cosmos of Adobe and art galleries. Two more cups of coffee into the morning we find some post cards to send off into the world and sit in a café garden patio to compose them and ourselves for the rest of the day and decisions about how, when and where to continue the adventure. Onward.
To be continued.
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