Like Jesus…Or John Elway

I got nothing.  I haven’t got a single word to write.  

I haven’t got a thing to talk about.

I ran about two miles the other day after taking about two weeks off from the gym for finals.  I hate myself when I get lazy, but I just had no time.  Now I go every day.

There’s no work in the valley, and I have to find something to consume my hours, and quick.  

There is snow on the ground, it rests in a solid blanket on everything, turning to drifts during the days out on the high ground plains and cooling the valley at night into an icy, frozen, knee aching cold. 

When I do have something to say, I have to save it on to a flash drive or something because the cable company needs another two weeks before I get my media on in the new place.  The furnace functions in this house.  The dirtiest aspects of the old house are left behind.  There isn’t even a single sloppy mess for me to clean off the stove when I give up on common courtesy forcing them to take care of it.  

When I drove up to Devil’s Kitchen yesterday, the snow burned the sun and lit the red cliffs.  My footsteps were the first up the trail.  It was cold, and the wind blew heavy up on top, but I climbed it anyway.  Even up the tree to grab a hold of the last ledge to pull myself to the very top of the Monument monocline.  The valley was tired and sanguine, and the river, boiling over with steam and fog, was a languid trail in the white sand of the snowed in valley.  

I have decided what I miss.  I miss the train rides.  I honestly don’t like anything that much on that side of the Divide, and I really don’t miss the company of the one person I knew over there.  I do miss the train rides through the snowed in canyons and along the rivers and over the ridges.  More than I want anything else right now, I want a train ride.  I want to see the places the Interstate, so cleverly engineered, would never attempt to go.  I want to see the dirty industrial hearts of cities from the shell of windows.  

It reminded me, sometimes of being on a ship at sea.  I enjoy driving, especially the dark interstate community of green lit road trippers, but I enjoy more the rumble and transport of ships and, if no ships are available, trains.  There is something blissful in powerlessness.  I never understood why someone would visit another country and rent a car.  I knew lots of guys that would do that when we hit a port.  I preferred the trains.  I had a very long and beautiful conversation with an Indian women flying over the streets of Singapore on a sleek and startlingly clean train.

Nobody believes me, but once I met a girl with a mid-priced mountain bike on a train in New York City and then met her again three months later at a house party in Wichita Falls, Texas.  If I believed in fate, and I absolutely do not, then I would have believed I would meet her again after those times.  As it stands, the random just handed me diamond from the morass of subducted carbonates.  It happens sometimes.  That fate pretends to exist just long enough to fuck with you.

I have ignored six phone calls this morning.  I know who five of the callers are, and mean no offense in my muting of their call.  I just want to be alone today.

I lied about that.  I just answered the phone.

Go on a hike or earn some money?  Either are good.  Both are better.  Spend the day in the Dominguez back country walking in some fresh snow with her?  Easy decision.  Sometimes life hands you a nice package of awesome, friend.  

But today, I think I’ll sit in my bar, where they know me and wildly undercharge me, and I’ll watch the Bronco’s playoff hopes live and die on this game.  My dad called from Cortez this morning to make sure I was checking up on “his woman.”  He had to head out of town and he wanted to make sure my mom was having nothing short of a perfect, effortless weekend.  Of course, both me and my dad know a perfect weekend for her is anything but effortless.

He said to me, with his Southern Colorado drawl, “So, you get them breaks bled on the Scout?”

“Sure did, but I have got to replace those cylinders soon.  I think I may rebuild the master cylinder while I’m at it and just make it a whole damn weeken’ a’ suck.”  We don’t believe in emphasis as a rule, so if it slips out, it denotes exigency untold.

“Well, do me a favor an’ call an’ make sure I’m gonna be outta town when you do it.”

“Yeah. Yeah, well I figgered me an’ Sean could pretty much do enough damage on our own til you get back from wherever.”

“Sounds good, buddy.  I gotta get to Church, they’re startin’ it up in there.”

“Later, Pop.”

“Go Broncos.”

“Go Broncos.”

When I lived in Hawaii, it confused me that Aloha was hello goodbye and I love you, all in the same word.  

That’s odd since I grew up using “Go Broncos” the exact same way.

Later, folks, probably until after New Years.  I like you guys.  Well, except for you.  And you know who you are, stalker.  You know I love you.  

Go Broncos.