Adventioneering

There are so many stories. Many of them revolve around Jim’s chi being totally
fucked from when he creamed some Baptist’s mailboxes six months ago, and
screwed up half his car.

There was the breakfast at the Denny’s in Grand Junction. I chose it because
Grand Junction is a really horrific place, and that particular Denny’s has
been the scene of some really sketch meals. Instead, the food was really high
quality, the people were nice and safe looking. Jim orders a cantaloupe fruit
bowl and instead of bringing him a bowl of cut up cantaloupe, they bring him an
entire half of a melon with a jagged cut.

There’s the train. Normally this is
a story in and of itself, but it’s a story that gets told enough from previous
trips. The information on which train we needed was on my website. Jim called
the ticketing person, and read verbatim off my website. He got a ticket on an
earlier train, we discovered. All our other tickets were right. We scramble to
get him packed, and I take him over there. We figure he’ll take it out there
and wait an hour out there, but at the last minute when we’re loading his pack
into the boxcar we tell the conductor where he’s going, and that train doesn’t
stop there. All for nothing he has to go back and negotiate with the ticket
lady to get on the proper, later train.

They seat him next to some very wholesome Baptists. Very wholesome. I saw them,
and you could smell the wholesome two cars down. Jim, the communist now turned
socialist who will one day lead the revolution, was chatting it up about which
Christian college their girl would go to. They were very taken with him, I
think. The girl had him give her his autograph. Apparently she collects random
people’s autographs, because “one day they might be famous”. The parents could
only smile, “That’s our little girl”. Then Victoria showed up, found something
to complain about, and announced “God damn this totally sucks”. His cover was
blown.

Then there’s the hike in. Surprisingly, it turns out to be uphill. We make it
in about half of the total distance the first evening and polish the rest off
the next morning. The weather is generally warm and good, and typically
unstable in the afternoon with thunderstorms. Jim realizes that we don’t have a
specific mountain that we’re going to peak, and decides he must peak something.
He sets off to peak the first thing
he sees, which is a ridge line right off our camp. We head up the trail as
planned, and then the storms roll in, as usual. He gets caught en’ face in the
rain, which he was unequipped for. We get caught hiding in the shelter of some
rock from the hail and lightning up past the tree line.

He subsequently fails and we meet him on the way down the trail, because the
storm isn’t breaking. He heads up anyways and makes it across an alpine meadow which I should mention is
basically a bowl of water, when the lightning and hail comes. The hail hurts,
and the next thing he know those peaks around the ridge are taking lightning
strings. So there he is laying flat on the ground every time lightning hits
(follow that logic), wishing he had a God to believe in. Eventually he makes it
down to a shack and hides out for an
hour or two. In the meanwhile we’re back down in our tents having lunch.

Then there was the haul out in the morning, thinking we might be able to make
the train and avoid having to spend a night at the tracks waiting. We kill
ourselves to make it, only to have an hour to wait in the heat and insects.
Hurry up and weight. There are two trains that go to Silverton before the one
that will stop for us, so despite the watch and the clearly worded (if
misspelled) sign, Victoria starts freaking out that we’re missing the train. The
train comes. We get on it. It takes us to the car.