I was thrice blessed as I prepared to leave Bibleburg last Wednesday, an hour earlier than I had planned.
First, I had slept in a bed, in a room, not in my car parked in front of the hotel. I gave a thumbs-up to the stealth camper I spotted as I left to get coffee, for hiding in plain sight in the rain-drenched parking lot. But s/he got two thumbs down for being so obvious about it: a towel tucked into the top of a cracked rear window; clothing, water jugs, and other “not a guest here” hints strewn all over the front seats; and so on. Respect your adversary, dude.
Could’ve been a hotel employee, times being what they are. But still, style counts.
Second, the Starbucks across the road had that very morning begun opening at 5 a.m. instead of 6. Ordinarily I brew my own coffee on the road, but lately the hotels inflict these Keurig monstrosities upon us instead of mini-coffeemakers whose carafes can be repurposed for an AeroPress brew.
Pity that the smoke detectors dislike my little MSR IsoPro camp stove. “Outside use only,” kids. Just ask the guest in the Honda Hilton.
And finally, third: I was leaving Bibleburg an hour earlier than I had planned.
I always like leaving the B-burg, and leaving early is even better than not going there at all. I find myself in sympathy with my mom, who when we were transferred there in 1967 looked at downtown through a prism of memory from the 1940s and recoiled.
Ten years later a colleague at the Gazette would say that anything east of Hancock Avenue wasn’t Colorado Springs, and mom would’ve agreed. I certainly did.
In my Gazette years I was living in an old Victorian carved into apartments at Cascade and San Miguel, right next door to The Colorado College, just north of what was still called “downtown.”
But when the O’Gradys first arrived we set up housekeeping east of Academy Boulevard, 3.5 miles into the prairie from my colleague’s Hancock border. Nearly six decades later, South Loring Circle feels almost urban.
The town goes ever on and on, to paraphrase Bilbo Baggins. In this instance toward Kansas, not Mordor, though the differences between the two may be undetectable to political scientists. (Hint: Mordor had mountains.)
I’ve left the place more times than anywhere else, which probably says more about me than it does about B-burg. And this trip I was ready to skedaddle again after just four days. The rain, the postapocalyptic state of the roads, the endless high-speed conga line of traffic — two final tallboys of Starbucks and I was on my way.
• • •
It was hairy from jump. Pitch black and still raining, with fog to boot, and despite mopping all my windows and mirrors with a towel before leaving I was flying blind for a few scary minutes until the a/c defogged the glass. Not optimal when you’re merging onto I-25 from Briargate Parkway at 75 mph with a few thousand of your closest — and I mean closest, as in halfway into the hatchback — friends.
The weather remained gloomy. I didn’t bother putting on sunglasses until I was past Raton. Creeks had become rivers and rivers were inland seas. Ponds appeared magically like Brigadoon. Folks who parked their trailers in low-lying areas found themselves with rudderless houseboats.
There were enough sunflowers at roadside for a regiment of Graham Watsons, guarded by ravens perched on fenceposts. Lots of fat black cattle living large in the tall salad. I fought the urge to stop at McDonald’s and instead yelled “Go home!” at vehicles with Texas plates.
Skidmarks demarking various unscheduled off-ramps to left and right with “Damaged Guardrail Ahead” signs for headstones. A giant shitbox bearing a plate reading “IH8UALL.” Making America great again, one vanity plate at a time.
In six hours flat, with one stop for gas, I was back at the ranch. My training-log entry for the day reads, simply, “Nothing.”
But the next day I was on the old Steelman I’d hauled with me to Bibleburg, tooling around the sun-splashed Elena Gallegos Open Space, a smile on my lips and a song in my heart.
Home again, home again, jiggity-jog; the desert’s the place for this salty ol’ dog.
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