My brother and I (he gets mentioned a lot in these posts. I wish my life was more like his. You do, too, and the more you read these posts and his own, the more you’ll see why.) went mountain biking outside of Moab on my last birthday. It was very cool. You know those trips you make and then you get home and you think “I need to think of a way to move there. That place is great!” Moab is definitely on that list. Not as high as, maybe, Jackson Hole, but high on the list.
Anyhow, as usual, I wish I had pushed myself when we were riding. I had fun, but I didn’t go out there and leave it all on the slickrock, you know? I slowed down, and I got nervous, and I thought to myself “I better be careful. I could break a leg out here.” I never even went over the handlebars, which I do around home a lot more than I should. Heck, I did it yesterday.
So here’s your advice for the day. When you do something new or in an out-of-the-usual place, throw a little more of yourself in there. Cut loose a bit. Later, you’ll look back and be glad. Like the Tshirt says, “Bones knit, scabs heal, and chicks dig scars.” I’m not saying you should crack your head for a souvenir of a good adventure, but you might take home some road rash to remember it by.
Happy 11-11-11! I bought a science-based book on calendrics back when the whole Y2K thing caught the public imagination. (Stephen Jay Gould’s ‘Questioning The Millennium‘) And now with people being silly about the Rapture, the end of the world. and the Mayan calendar, I’m surprised that no one thought that something nasty would be happening today, what with the date being all ones (at least, the way it’s generally written… in this culture… at the moment.) Of course, that leads to lots of issues about whether the calendar we’ve chosen for ourselves has numbers on it that mean anything to the stars and planets of the rest of the universe, and whether Australia is gonna catch the &%$# before we do, ’cause it’s tomorrow there already, isn’t it?
Too lazy to make s’mores? Too worried about being in the woods on a campout with sticky fingers and smellin’ like bear bait? They make s’mores and package them. Civilized, and your pants legs don’t wind up with marshmallow smeared all over them where you tried to clean it off your hands.
Or maybe you know a big guy like Lowell whose glucose levels have dropped out…
So I climbed out. The old guy working on the train, or at least working on the overworked mechanism that dragged trains up and down the crack track, said I was the only one who’d done what I did. It’s very possible he didn’t know, though. I mean, if someone else lost a boat under the bridge, chances are he or she could have just ridden the train back up. My failure was in waiting around until the train was broken before losing my paddle and my boat. The story would not be so entertaining or as long, if only my timing had been better.
So the word goes out that some idiot has appeared in the little theme park out of, well, not NOWHERE, but I didn’t come in through the front door. Where, importantly, I guess, the ticket booth is. In the time it took me to stagger off of the track and get my bearings (meaning to see where the nearest water fountain is- I was dying for water) the management sent a flunky. I thought “Oh, what’s this kid here for? To make sure I’m alright? To see if I need assistance? To offer food or rest in an air conditioned medical office before sending me on my way?”
No. He watched me like a hawk without saying more than “Hey.” He watched as I got my long drink of water. He watched as I scanned the area for the exit. He followed me as I slogged out of the little theme park. He was there to make sure I didn’t have any fun or ride any rides or purchase any souvenir candles after having sneaked in the back door. As I walked out into the parking lot, he turned and went back to whatever his usual job is- sweeping, dishing out ice cream, and sprinkling kitty litter on toddler vomit… or something. I DO hope that playing Sergeant At Arms for seven minutes was the highlight of his theme-park career. Punk.
So. The parking lot. It’s a nice one. There’s landscaping and the typical (for the time) faux-carved-wood signage. I looked around, hoping to see not only a truckload of my friends, but lots of boats strapped to the top of the truck. LOTS of boats, including one mottled white Perception Corsica Matrix. No luck.
Honestly, I had no way to gauge how long the rest of the trip was for anyone in a boat. This was my first trip into the area, and I’m one of those tagalongs who doesn’t look at the maps so much. So I could only hope that they didn’t finish the run an hour ago, come by here looking for me, decide I’d already gotten a ride somehow, and taken off to the campground. Surely, if they got here and didn’t find me, they’d have asked someone if a kayaker had ridden the train out of the gorge and come through the park. They’d have then been told the train wasn’t working, and they’d have gotten concerned… you get the idea. Things might have gone differently.
So I sat on a large and generally well-placed rock to await my friends, and to get news of my stray gear.
This might have been boring, except there were fraternity boys in the parking lot, too. They had a big white Econoline van. Never a dull moment with a bunch of fraternity brothers and their van to watch. I need to mention the deer, too. As with a lot of rustic tourist destinations, deer wander around the parking lot of the Royal Gorge Bridge and Theme Park. Black tail deer, I think, but you’d have to ask someone who can tell one deer from another to know for sure. I would have asked Dennis, but he was driving the truck that was… not here. You get the idea.
Deer in public vacation spots learn to think of people as sources of tasty tidbits, and probably as sources of eye-stinging flashes as everyone takes photos of deer taking tasty tidbits from vacationers. Fraternity boys are NOT like other vacationers. Other vacationers do not try to offer tasty tidbits to deer while luring them into vans. There are people who use treats to lure animals and other people into white econoline vans, but the six-o’clock news usually calls them something other than Fraternity Brothers. And the photos of such people are usually taken in front of courthouses while officers shove the photographers out of the way.
But as usual, I digress. I sat serenely, quietly, and happily as I speculated what would happen when the guys got that deer into their van. There were three or four guys in the van holding out chips and things. There were two other guys (presumably the driver and the shotgun) who were luring the deer closer to the wide van door.
I figured that if the first part of the Frat Guys’ plan worked out (“Dude, WE just hold out food until it gets in the van, then YOU close the door, dude”) then the second part of their plan (“And we just drive away with our own deer, dude”) would not come off so well. I assumed that if the deer went in, and the driver got the sliding door shut, that the van would then rock, roll, and generally be kicked into pieces from the inside, and then I could watch as the driver and shotgun piled in to do something about the blood, hair, teeth and limbs that were flying around inside the van. …Then I could tell the police what happened. That was MY plan.
Neither my plan nor their plan worked out. Their plan depended on the deer being hungry, gullible and docile. My plan depended on the deer being hungry, gullible and homicidally panicked. The deer, being none of those things in particular, took one look at the van full of grinning guys holding out Doritos, then turned and left.
Nuts.
I was very grateful then, when the truckload of my friends came for me. Good timing. I don’t know the odds of another vanload of guys showing up to entertain me with their untimely demises were, but probably not so hot.
My boat wasn’t on the truck. Damn. Now, I’d have to get another one- either borrowing from someone else on the trip or buying a new one outright, which is an expense I hadn’t budgeted on. Oddly, I worried that I could drown on such a trip. But knowing the expense would be paid by life insurance, the money didn’t worry me. Being alive and needing a new boat worried me, though.
I lamented the loss of the boat out loud a couple of times on the way to the restaurant, until Dennis broke down and admitted that they were playing a joke on me. He then told me of the sharp-eyed find of my boat, wedged on a rock- the white bottom of the boat nearly lost in the white froth covering it. They’d loaded it on the OTHER truck and were going to spring it on me later. I laughed, relieved… and happy to be part of a gag. After the day I’d had, I was happy to be part of anything fun- meaning anything that didn’t involve finding my way out of a gorge.
My paddle, it turns out, had been spotted too, though not retrieved. Dr. Alan ‘Sonny’ Salomon, who hadn’t felt up to paddling on flood-stage water that day (the man’s a genius), was the one to spot it. He was at the take-out awaiting us. He said it went by, out in the middle of the river, turning end over end . Waving buh-bye, as it were.
It has been uncharitably speculated that it’s probably holding up a clothesline in Mexico now.
I’ve said in the past that I would try not to degenerate into crotch-area humor. But this is a product review, not a cartoon.
The subject of The Camp Shuffle comes up on long outdoors trips. Going down the Grand Canyon for a couple of weeks, say. Or taking your kids to Scout Camp. They warn the kids and warn them good, but you know somebody in the group will neglect to take proper showers or change his underwear or not take the proper precautions in the sweaty days of Summer camp.
I feel bad for them. Because I’ve gotten the Camp Shuffle. I’ve staggered along like the crippled sidekick in an old Western, wishing I could quit the hike, go back to camp and let my tenders heal. It happened this past June. I was miserable. I could have been MORE miserable, but another scout leader told a funny story about a buddy of his that got the Camp Shuffle. The guy had gotten some powder, figuring that would fix it all up. But, the story went, he bought MENTHOLATED powder. Everyone laughed, and I felt better. My drawers were uncomfortable in the extreme, but at least I hadn’t dropped menthol down in ’em. Ha. Hilarious.
This gave me a good idea, though. While the scouts were being taught or tested or whatever the heck during their Camp class, I’d step over to the trading post and see if they had anything for Camp Shuffle. I figured that if it was standard practice to lecture the kids about it during our first few moments at camp, surely the trading post would keep powder or something on hand. And they DID. They had two different kinds of Gold Bond powder. Regular, of which they had a dozen containers, and Extra Strength, of which they had two containers.
It hadn’t been that long since I’d heard the story about the idiot who dropped Menthol down his pants, so I looked over both bottles carefully. ‘Extra Strength’, the one bottle said. ‘Healing’, it said. ‘Triple Action Relief’ it said. ‘Cooling, Absorbing, Itch Relieving’ so far so good, and I’d exhausted the front of the bottle. No mention of ‘Mentholated’. The directions on the back say, ‘Apply freely up to 3 or 4 times a day’. It also says, under ‘Uses’: temporarily relieves the pain and itch associated with: minor cuts, sunburn, insect bites, scrapes, prickly heat (!) minor burns, rashes (also “!”) and minor skin irritations. The ‘Warnings’ say it’s for external use only (good. I had no plans to eat it.) and to keep it out of my eyes. (also, no problems. I’ve never powdered my eyes and couldn’t see a reason to start.) There was some ‘ingredients’ list at the bottom. It didn’t mention ‘menthol’, though it did say ‘methyl salicylate’, which worried me since I had no earthly idea what the heck it might be or if I wanted it on my tenders. But I figured that there were only a few ‘Extra Strength’ bottles left because that was the kind everyone bought. And I bought the Extra Strength.
Then I went to the car. It was very close and mostly, no one goes to the parking lot during the day, so the lot was empty. I opened both doors on one side, stepped between them, and discreetly medicated my nether regions.
Which is to say I set my own crotch on fire.
Fire. fire fire fire fire fire fire fire fire fire fire fire fire fire fire fire fire fire fire!
While I am trying to hold still and wondering if I should, maybe, run around or call for help or die or something, my son comes up from the trading post. He said… something that didn’t have to do with testicle fires, so I don’t recall what it might have been.
Nerve endings, says my wife who was a burn nurse for many years, die. They burn up and the victims of fires no longer feel the pain- not until they begin to heal, that is. I decided, while standing there sweating, panting, gasping and trying to answer my son (I thought, I’ll tell him I’m okay. Everything’s okay and I love him very much. Those would be good last words.) that I would just wait until there was enough nerve damage that I could get on with the day.
Finally, things changed. The fire didn’t go out, you understand, it just started oscillations between nuclear fire and nuclear winter.
fire ice fire ice fire ice fire ice fire ice fire ice fire ice fire ice fire ice fire ice fire ice fire ice fire ice fire ice fire ice fire ice fire ice fire ice fire ice fire ice
I had never thought that I’d be happy to have my gonads light up and freeze over and over again, but I assumed that any change in blinding furious pain was a good thing. Maybe someday I could live like normal people again, and this was the beginning of it.
•••••
Okay, that was about as funny as this story gets. Eventually, the pain turned into a confused discomfort that I was able to see through and deal with. It was probably only a couple of minutes that I had flop sweat, agonizing fire and ice and a sincere concern that I had crippled myself to the point of needing hospitalization. It seemed like longer, but you know how that is.
I finished the day and got back to our campsite. Another Den Leader with us had Johnson and Johnson’s Baby Powder. I used it that night and the next day, and didn’t have another minute’s discomfort.
So here’s the conclusion: If you have Camp Shuffle DO NOT put Gold Bond Extra Strength powder in your shorts. Even if you DO NOT have Camp Shuffle, do not put Gold Bond Extra Strength powder in your shorts. If you have a bitter, bitter enemy for whom you have nothing but a seething hell-born hate, and you find that you have an opportunity to put Gold Bond Extra Strength powder in his shorts, DO NOT do it. It’s and evil thing to do, and you’re not that evil. No one is that evil.
You have some poison ivy rash on your arm or leg? It’s itching like crazy? Use Gold Bond Extra Strength powder. Use it. It’s fine. It feels good. It even smells kinda nice. Need something on your pits before you go out on a long hike? Go for the powder. Back of your neck a little sunburnt? Use it according to instructions. It’s good stuff.
But DO NOT put it on your genitals. Ever. Under any circumstances.
Last thing- I must have been in a desperate hurry to get relief. The label on the back of the bottle? Yeah, at the bottom there’s those ingredients listed? They’re ‘Inactive’ ingredients. Up at the top, Right under ‘Drug Facts’? THERE’s the ‘Active Ingredients’ and the first thing listed is ‘Menthol’ 0.8%. You might want reading glasses to see it, but it’s there. Oh, it’s there, my friends. On the label and in the bottle. It’s THERE.
On an only semi-related note… in this video they are using the non-mentholated Gold Bond:
By the way, THIS is the stuff I’m using next trip. Mostly cause ‘MonkeyButt’ is just too funny not to have on some kind of packaging around here. Click on the bottle if you’d like to buy some too:
The tough part is pretty much over. I’ve done all the confusing, frightening, stupid, dead-ended things that can be done, and now, I’m ready for the part that, while maybe not EASY, is at least straightforward. Climb a ladder. Out. No more questioning the options. This was it. Just one long climb and I would be out.
So I climbed.
The Royal Gorge Incline Train’s incline is, I see at http://royalgorgebridge.com/about/facts.php, 1,550 feet long. I had to have been a little better than halfway up after all this nonsense, so let’s say I had maybe 700 feet to go. 230 yards or so. Rounding up, maybe a quarter of a football field. It seems like longer in my memory, but you know how I exaggerate.
I would now like to point out that the tallest ladder you’re likely to run across in your life, or more specifically in MY life, is one of those 24 foot jobs that reach to the top of your two-story house to let you reach, say, the wasp nest that has been built in some inaccessible and frankly vertiginous corner where you wouldn’t normally go on a bet, especially since it’s full of wasps. But I digress again and the commas are getting plain silly. You ever climbed on one of those 24 foot things at full extension? No, because at full extension, they bounce like trampolines. But that’s not the point. The point is 24 foot ladders. What about 29 of them, end to end? Right. You haven’t climbed 29 fully extended 24 foot ladders because you’re not an idiot. Hardly anyone is, or could even imagine getting oneself into the position to climb that far. But let me tell you that such a climb uses muscles that boot camp workouts don’t reach. You use neglected, dehydrated, twanging muscles that are wobbly from bathing in old adrenaline that went sour in your bloodstream four or five chapters back.
But there is very little incentive to stop, because numbers of feet and dehydration aside, you’re nearly OUT.
My wish for you and your life is that one day, you can have a task that has such single-minded purpose and such dawn’s-awakening results. I won’t say it’s like seeing a child born because saying so can get you killed by some woman who remembers her own purpose and results and knows damn well if you try to equate climbing a ladder to it, she’ll kill ya. And because it’s not really the same anyhow. Frankly, though, it’s affirming to just climb along as best you can,counting missing bolts on the ladder (98 in case you’re wondering) and knowing that you’re on a straight road out of Dodge.
By the time I got to 98 missing bolts that should have been holding my ladder in place, it was no longer my ladder.
It now belonged to the guy whose face suddenly popped over the end of the ladder as I approached the top. I was now the interloper and I was on HIS ladder. He had a genial face, a work-smudged face, a suspicious and a baffled face. He said, “What was you doing down THERE?”
“Kayaking.” I said, “I lost my boat.” After a brief thought I added, “Please don’t tell me that I’m the first dumb son-of-a-bitch to have to climb outta here.”
Without missing a beat, he said, “Well, son, I got bad news.” And he grinned. Ass.
That wasn’t adding insult to injury. That came a few minutes later, and we’ll get to it in the Conclusion Of Boy Gorge, next time.
My brother, on a recent motorbike trip around Tennessee, Missouri and Arkansas, boggled at how he ever could have lived here in the land of Poison Ivy. He’s in Washington state now, where they have poison ivy, it’s just not EVERYWHERE. I thought I was used to it- until a week and a half ago.
On the first day of the school year, my wife tries to walk along to school with the kids, and on the way back, she uses some handy garden clippers to snip off the limbs and things that have grown over the sidewalk in the intervening summer. Snip, snip, and the kids can walk to school without taking a locust branch, with its attendant thorns, in the eye. Very community minded.
I was going to ‘help’. As I was reaching up to snip some high branch, helpfully, my wife asks if that’s not poison ivy. No, I think. Couldn’t be. Sure, there’s sort of three leaves in groups, but they’re HUGE, and they’re way up there… that can’t be poison ivy. But that wasn’t a branch from a tree, it was a creeper coming off a vine that had strangled the tree. Weird.
Poison Ivy has gotten SNEAKY. Must be an evolutionary trick. Anyhow, it fooled me, and as I had snipped, big ol’ pseudo branches had tumbled down along my arm. I guess I wasn’t convinced that it WAS poison ivy, or I had a lot on my mind, or … I don’t have an excuse. Instead of boiling my arm when I got home, I went to work. It was morning. I was probably worried about getting a Hubris cartoon ready for you guys. ‘Cause I love you.
When you sit at a desk and draw and answer phones, and draw some more, you brush your arm against other parts of your body, and scratch, and generally your arm doesn’t mind it own business. And I had peeled my sweaty shirt off when I got home, and probably smeared a towel around so that I wouldn’t leave sweat all over my drawing board and drawings. So a few days later, when it was far too late, I had an exhibit for the local cub scouts- “Here’s what happens when you don’t wash your arm carefully after touching poison ivy!” I refuse to peel the shirt and show everyone the myriad smears and swipes across my chest and back. I don’t want anyone thinking I’m STUPID.
Here’s some modern poison ivy medication. Click on the tube if you want to shop:
