James Burleigh
Well-known member
The Road to Creston, Part Deux: I Leave My Perfect Moment Back with the Dead Dog
We pulled into Paso Robles, Gateway to Creston with its sidewalks lined in silver, at about noon. The digital thermometer velcroed to my dashboard registered 92 degrees (wasn’t it just 89 two miles back?). Yet under my Frank Thomas leather jacket I was still wearing a Northface sweater designed to keep my core body temperature warm at thirty degrees below zero. Well, it was working all right, helped along by the scarf around my neck and Thinsulate cold-weather gloves from that morning.
At a stoplight in Paso I pulled up to the right of Silent’s maroon ’07 and put my boot down on the burning asphalt. Sweat was pouring off my brow and mixing with the 49 SPF sunblock I’d slathered all over my face that morning, creating a chemical soup that must have been toxic to my eyes because now they were stinging fiercely.
I flipped up my visor and yanked the scarf away from my neck to let some cool (make that hot) air in, and in a half-formed thought regretted that I hadn’t managed my morning constitutional before hitting the road. Also I had to take a leak real bad thanks to that second cup of coffee a hundred miles back. And why in the hell can’t Yamaha make a stock seat that doesn’t feel like a church pew after 200 miles!
I looked to my left at Silent, my eyes blinking furiously against the toxic soup. With his ‘Stitch unzipped to his waste, and sipping out of his fancy-pants Camelback, he looked as cool as McQueen. “Yep,” he had said over Starbucks that morning, strutting in front of me at the table while Vanna-Whiting the features and benefits of the Camelback, “You gotta have one of these babies or you can get heat stroke and DIE.”
As we waited for the light to turn green, Silent bobbed his head to the tunes blasting through the earbuds from his wireless I-Pod. My look turned to a furious blinking glower. I hated him. And as I thought grimly back to the lousy sip of water I’d taken out of my Boy Scout canteen back at that coffee stop, I searched the surrounding landscape for any small clue as to where in the hell we were. Then I searched my bio-sensors for any of the early signs of heat stroke: fatigue, disorientation, irrational anger. All good. No signs yet.
I yelled something across at Silent. He yelled something back. Then we yelled “What!” back and forth a few times till we figured out through hand gestures that we needed to pull over up ahead. Pulling away from the light I thought to myself, “This Creston better be the f**kin’ Wonderful City of Oz,” my perfect moment now somewhere back on the road with the dead dog.
Next installment: We Get to Creston but Don't Find It
Jb
We pulled into Paso Robles, Gateway to Creston with its sidewalks lined in silver, at about noon. The digital thermometer velcroed to my dashboard registered 92 degrees (wasn’t it just 89 two miles back?). Yet under my Frank Thomas leather jacket I was still wearing a Northface sweater designed to keep my core body temperature warm at thirty degrees below zero. Well, it was working all right, helped along by the scarf around my neck and Thinsulate cold-weather gloves from that morning.
At a stoplight in Paso I pulled up to the right of Silent’s maroon ’07 and put my boot down on the burning asphalt. Sweat was pouring off my brow and mixing with the 49 SPF sunblock I’d slathered all over my face that morning, creating a chemical soup that must have been toxic to my eyes because now they were stinging fiercely.
I flipped up my visor and yanked the scarf away from my neck to let some cool (make that hot) air in, and in a half-formed thought regretted that I hadn’t managed my morning constitutional before hitting the road. Also I had to take a leak real bad thanks to that second cup of coffee a hundred miles back. And why in the hell can’t Yamaha make a stock seat that doesn’t feel like a church pew after 200 miles!
I looked to my left at Silent, my eyes blinking furiously against the toxic soup. With his ‘Stitch unzipped to his waste, and sipping out of his fancy-pants Camelback, he looked as cool as McQueen. “Yep,” he had said over Starbucks that morning, strutting in front of me at the table while Vanna-Whiting the features and benefits of the Camelback, “You gotta have one of these babies or you can get heat stroke and DIE.”
As we waited for the light to turn green, Silent bobbed his head to the tunes blasting through the earbuds from his wireless I-Pod. My look turned to a furious blinking glower. I hated him. And as I thought grimly back to the lousy sip of water I’d taken out of my Boy Scout canteen back at that coffee stop, I searched the surrounding landscape for any small clue as to where in the hell we were. Then I searched my bio-sensors for any of the early signs of heat stroke: fatigue, disorientation, irrational anger. All good. No signs yet.
I yelled something across at Silent. He yelled something back. Then we yelled “What!” back and forth a few times till we figured out through hand gestures that we needed to pull over up ahead. Pulling away from the light I thought to myself, “This Creston better be the f**kin’ Wonderful City of Oz,” my perfect moment now somewhere back on the road with the dead dog.
Next installment: We Get to Creston but Don't Find It
Jb
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