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December 31, 2006
Farts Like Gold: 50 - the Bridge
Back at camp Lucy walked down to where my tent used to be. She sat down on the log I used to sit on to put on my boots in the morning and took a sip of her coffee. Her sleeping bag and several of her clothes were strewn about the ground. Fortunately for her, I hadn't thrown them that far and so, for the most part, they were on ground that had been shielded by my tarp and was fairly dry.
It was a good camping spot. The ground was flat and well drained. The log she was sitting on was a convenient feature, and I'd left a laundry line up between a couple of trees. There was a good view from the log through the trees down to the creek we got our water from. The best part was that it was on its own. Towards the creek, the ground started to slope down steeply enough that you couldn't camp on it. Above the camping spot and on one side the trees were dense enough that there was no room to put up a tent. Above this, the hill started sloping up again.
Lucy absorbed all this as if seeing it for the first time. She balanced her coffee mug on the log. Then she gathered and folded up all of her clothes and placed them carefully on the log beside the coffee cup. She hung her sleeping bag on the laundry line to dry and in general, tidied the area up a bit. Then she went back to her own tent and stuffed all of her belongings in her backpack. She spent the next hour and a half moving her tent from where she had originally set it up to where my tent had been.
While Lucy was stealing my tent spot, Tony and I were checking out the remains of the bridge. What had been a small, quiet river was now a raging torrent. The bridge had been supported on either bank and in the middle. The middle support, along with most of the deck of the bridge itself, was now gone. In its place was a new rapid where the water roiled over the foundation of the missing support.
"Are you sure this is the way we came last night?" asked Tony.
I looked at him in a way carefully calculated to inform him he was an idiot. "Yes," I said. "I'm sure we came this way. This is the only road into camp."
"But not the only road out of camp?" he asked hopefully.
"Yes, oddly enough, the only road into camp is the only road out of camp," I said.
"But there was a road heading up the mountain. That must go somewhere. What if we turned left instead of right when we left camp?"
"That road goes up the mountain. It's a logging road. It doesn't go anywhere useful."
"Surely it must connect with something."
"I suppose it might," I admitted. "Brendan and Joe might know. I haven't looked closely enough at the maps. But I'm not optimistic. It basically just ends in a maze of cutblocks."
"What do we do now? Should one of us swim and go for help?"
Despite the insanity of this suggestion, I was oddly tempted by it. Yes, there was a good chance I might die attempting it, but at least I wouldn't have to go back to camp.
On the other hand, the water looked damn cold.
"Or we could just use the phone back at camp," I said.
"Oh yeah. Good idea."
Posted by YandaMan at 11:41 PM | Comments (1)
December 27, 2006
Many many socks
I received eleven pairs of socks for Christmas. I wasn't in desperate need of socks, but I do like them. I've had a few traumatic experiences in the past where I lacked clean socks and it's still a bit of an obsession with me. A pair of comfortable clean socks fills my heart with unreasonable glee.
These eleven pairs mean I have an awful lot of socks now. In fact, as I went to bed on Christmas night I found myself for the first time thinking, "Gee, I really need to organise my sock drawer." For me, this is no longer a facetious excuse to get out of going to dinner with Stephen Fry and Scarlett Johansson. My sock drawer truly has become so extensive that it demands organisation.
Basically, I've got two main categories of socks: summer socks and winter socks. Each of these categories can be further subdivided into cycling socks, dress socks, and socks I wear on my johnson when no one's around.
I'm thinking of building a revolving two-layered drum thing that reacts to the ambient outside temperature so that my sock drawer will present me with my summer or winter selection as appropriate. Or perhaps it should be based on the length of darkness. I seem to recall this is how trees tell when spring is upon them. Basically, if it's dark for too long they get all depressed and shut down for the winter. Once the period of darkness shortens past a certain threshold they know it's spring and start showing off their gonads again, literally extruding them from within their own flesh.
That's what I need -- something that reacts to what the weather is like outside and what season it is and extrudes an appropriate pair of socks from my wardrobe. "Extrude" may not be completely the correct word here, but I'm sticking with it because it sounds cool. And, hey, maybe my magic sock drawer really could extrude my socks -- or, better yet, the footboard of my bed could extrude them right over my feet in the morning.
Think how wonderful it would be to be woken up this way! Rather than an annoying clock radio suddenly blaring out "thought for the day", you could be woken by a considerate footboard, lovingly extruding socks over your feet. Someone please build such a wonderful device! I would love such a thing as a Christmas present next year.
Actually, I would love anything besides socks next year. If any of my friends or family are reading this, please take this as a hint. For Pete's sake, enough with the Goddamn socks already!
Posted by YandaMan at 10:58 PM | Comments (1)
December 3, 2006
Farts Like Gold: 49 - Lucy and Kent
Lucy was making coffee when Brendan and I walked into the dining tent. I felt like I was looking at a ghost. It was silly but my instinct was to turn and run.
Instead I stood there and took one slow, deep breath. She looked up just as I started moving again. She smiled and I thought, "Okay, don't be foolish. Everything's fine." I decided then and there that I wasn't going to ask any questions. What was the point? I was leaving camp. It was one random night. She didn't expect me to be here. If I hadn't been here I wouldn't have suspected a thing. And, besides, most likely she was innocent.
"Hi Kent," she said.
"Hi Lucy."
I leaned forward and kissed her. She took a sip of coffee almost as soon as my lips left hers. There was something about that one small gesture that made me change my mind. My resolve had lasted all of ten seconds. I sat down on the bench facing her with my back to the table.
"I couldn't find you last night." I said. "Where were you?"
"Well, you know - party night. It was pretty crazy."
"It wasn't that crazy. And this camp isn't that big." I was angry now. "You weren't in your tent. You weren't in my tent. You weren't in the dryshack, the dining tent, the cookbus -- any of the trucks. And it was pouring rain."
"Well, you know. I just got to talking to someone. And we wanted to get away from everyone. And it was raining and so I just spent the night there. It was no big deal."
It took a lot of effort to stay sitting down. I knew if I stood up, I wouldn't be able to keep still. Standing would lead to pacing. Pacing would lead to arm waving. As it was, my voice was getting louder despite my efforts to control it. "Whose tent was it, Lucy? Who did you just get to talking with? Who did you spend the night with?"
She backed away slightly and leaned against the breakfast table. She held the cup of coffee in front of her mouth. "It doesn't matter - just a friend."
"Well, it wasn't Kathy. It wasn't Cassie. It wasn't April. It wasn't Amber. It wasn't Matt. It wasn't Paul. It wasn't Alistair. Do you want me to go on? The camp's not that big. Even if it's a secret, it's not going to stay that way. Somebody's got to know and they're bound to talk. You know what it's like."
"Well it doesn't have to stay a secret for long."
"What?"
"It doesn't have to stay a secret for long," she repeated. "How long until you leave me again? An hour? Two? It only has to last until you're out of camp. And then when will I see you again? A couple of weeks? A month? At the end of the season?"
"Leave you again!" I said. "I broke my hand! It's not like I said I was going out for a pack of cigarettes and never came back."
"Look," she said. "I'm not saying I did anything wrong. I'm just saying -- how was I supposed to know you were in camp? If I'd known you were in camp, I would have been with you."
I stood up. I didn't care if I started waving my arms now. "You're crazy. I don't know why I hadn't seen it before. You are completely amoral. Keep your little secret. I don't care who you were with last night. I don't even care if you slept with them. I don't care if you talked all night. And you're right. Who knows when we'll see each other again? Maybe we should just pretend we've never met. Maybe it's time to start pretending right now." I walked away.
"Kent... Don't go."
"Tony, have you got your shit together?"
Tony was standing by the door, goggle-eyed. "Yeah, Kent. All ready to go. But what about your tent and stuff?"
I'd forgotten all about my tent. I'd meant to pack it up once I got up but Tony was still sleeping. And now I just wanted to get the hell out of camp.
I looked back. Lucy hadn't moved from the breakfast table. She looked distraught, but she hadn't actually moved. She still held her coffee up near her face. I continued through the door. Tony followed.
I went straight to my tent. I untied the tarp and flung it onto the path. It got a bit tangled in the brush on either side but I ignored it. I opened the tent and threw everything I could find of Lucy's out the door. I left all of my own stuff inside. I zipped up the tent and collapsed it. Tony stayed on the other side of the tarp and watched as I pulled up the tent pegs and removed the fibreglass supports from their sleeves. I pulled the tarp forward overtop of Lucy's stuff and dragged the tent and its contents onto the tarp. I wrapped the whole mess up in the tarp and hoisted it onto my shoulder. Tony started picking up Lucy's clothes. "Leave them," I said. I turned and walked down the path, dragging my load through the branches on either side.
At the truck Brendan helped Tony and I pack our gear and some bags of garbage around the quad.
"It's none of my business, but maybe you should give Lucy another chance," said Brendan. "You know what party nights are like. Everything will probably work out all right. Don't take it too seriously."
I didn't say anything. I just tightened up the ratchet strap on my side and got into the truck.
Tony waved to grab Brendan's attention. "Don't worry about him," he said. "He gets this way sometimes. Strong silent type. You know the kind. I'll talk to him."
"Well, have a good trip." He shook Tony's hand and then said to me, "And Kent, give me a call when you get to town."
I nodded. Tony got in the truck. I started driving as soon as he shut the door.
The road was much drier but still slightly slick. I drove angry and the truck slithered around on the road.
I could tell I was making Tony nervous. "Maybe we should stop for a couple of minutes," he said.
"Not yet. In a while." I wanted to make sure I was well and truly out of camp.
After a couple of miles we came up to the bridge. On this side of the river the road curved down and then up as it approached the bridge. As soon as we started going around the curve I could see it was gone. It had washed away during the night. I kicked down hard on the brake pedal. The truck skidded into the ditch. Without taking my foot off the brake, I yanked the transmission into four wheel drive, then got off the brakes and onto the gas. The truck bounced through the ditch and up on to the other side. Tony hit the ceiling of the cab. I turned the wheel and the truck bounced through the ditch again and it managed to crawl out on to the road. When I stopped, it was almost perfectly sideways in the middle of the road.
Posted by YandaMan at 11:53 PM | Comments (1)