Proposed Travel Itinerary

The following is my itinerary for my trip to Raton. This is what I’m thinking as of this moment, but please don’t hold me to it. It could change while I’m en-route due to certain circumstances such as if my ass hurts bad or because of the fact that I have not made any reservations anywhere. I’m traveling mostly through Indian country where you shouldn’t need a reservation. I plan on using that joke a lot on my trip because I’m sure they haven’t heard that one before during check-in and it should get me preferential treatment. That and my Choctaw heritage should get me in the door most places.

I will have my cell phone with me. It will be off. Generally, I plan on getting as far as I can by Monday morning and then only riding in the afternoon when the weather is worse and darkness is coming. I’m going to try and work from 7AM to Noon and then leave on the next leg. I may end up getting to work late and leaving early so don’t hold me to that either.

I will try to update this blog daily provided I have an internet connection so you will know where I am and where I think I’m going.

Friday 5/9 Departing Redding

Day 1: Redding to Reno, 197 miles
Day 2: Reno to Las Vegas, 448 miles
Day 3: Las Vegas to Grand Canyon Village, 277 miles
Day 4: Grand Canyon Village to Chinle, 258 miles
Day 5: Chinle to Durango, 185 miles
Day 6: Durango to Taos, 200 miles
Day 7: Taos to Raton, 99 miles

Arriving in Raton on 5/15

If you don’t hear from me when you expect to, please don’t worry. While I have spent the last few years, and more recently with a therapist, discovering what a moron I am, I’m not totally bereft of experience and common sense. Besides, I’ve had my motorcycle for like three or four weeks now and I took a two-day class on how to ride it.

New Wife Has a Good Heart

Here is something funny. Not funny ha ha but funny like how it’s funny when you permanently damage your liver by taking Tylenol because you have a headache from drinking too much. My New Wife told me yesterday that on the day I leave to take my First Wife to New Mexico she has to go to the doctor to get an echocardiogram because the Dr. has some concern about her low blood pressure and the dizzy spells she’s been having. The Dr. said, and she relayed to me, that it’s no big deal. Do I buy this? No. I’m a little suspicious about the size of the deal.

It seems to me that it is unlikely that a Dr, this one in particular, would order a test like this on a healthy young woman unless he was concerned. Also, I have some experience with this kind of thing. Bad things happen. Try this exercise: Close your eyes and imagine for a moment the worst thing that could ever happen. Now open your eyes.

Anyway. That’s how it works.

I don’t want to lose my New Wife for the following reasons:

1) New Wife accepts that I am imperfect, a bit on the used up side and a selfish person
2) New Wife and I met when I was incredibly high on daily doses of brain erasing Zanax, went through my realization that I was in shock and depressed for a year after Leigh died, supported me with friendship, love, patience and understanding and still likes me
3) New Wife has experience with dysfunction, and being a fucked up person herself, sets a good example for me to follow
4) New Wife is a survivor
5) New Wife does not drink caffeine or alcohol and can always drive home from dinner
6) New Wife is hot and dresses like a tart

Dr said it’s nothing to worry about and the echo is the same thing that they do “when you have a baby”. Hmmm. I wonder why they are talking to my New Wife like she’s retarded? We’ll at least they are not also going to put her on a heart monitor for twenty-four hours or I’d really be worried (fyi: that is sarcasm because they, of course, are going to put her on a heart monitor for twenty-four hours).

Let’s just suppose for a moment that New Wife has heart disease and starts counting in dog years. Here are some observations I will make:

1) If I’m wrong, and there is a God, then I’m also right in that he is a total dick. Either way, I’m right which is awesome
2) Ironically, I have both really good luck and really bad luck with women at the same time
3) If I’m wrong, and there is a Shiva, I must have been John Wayne Gacy, the child raping clown in a past life and I am now making up for the Karma deficit I’ve run up
4) New Wife’s Dr said that if the heart echo finds a problem, she will have to make MAJOR changes in her diet like no coffee or alcohol. I’m just observing that he’s not listening to her.
5) Personally, when New Wife waves good-bye to me, wearing a heart monitor and asking me to ‘be careful’ I’m going to think that is the pot calling the kettle black
6) If the echo finds that she has a heart murmur on Friday, then I think that’s really bad timing.
7) Get it? Bad timing...murmur.

Jenny, please do not have heart disease.

What I Have Left

This is one of my favorite pictures of Leigh. This was taken many days into a sailing trip on a day of stormy weather, tedium and various little annoyances. You have to look close to see that it was that kind of day. You have to really try and notice the grey sky and how everything is soaking wet. You are distracted by the glowing, smiling, blue-eyed girl.

I have many pictures and videos of Leigh. Over the past two and a half years, I’ve tried to watch the videos and look at the pictures. It is really hard for me.

The first year she was gone, I did not look at them much. There where times when an image would be in front of me and I would have to just close my eyes. Especially when I was not expecting it. If I intentionally opened a photo file on my computer or looked a at a print I would do OK. But if I accidentally viewed a file or came across a photo unexpectedly, my brain would misfire. I would experience a shock and would feel loss and pain. The same thing would happen when I unexpectedly came across anything about her. One time, I was searching on Google for information on a particular piece of software and I found message posted to a internet forum regarding the application. I read the post and got to the signature line and found it was written by Leigh. For a instant, in a moment of confusion, I thought she may have just posted it. But then I saw the date and it was from 1999. Same thing happened when I was looking for some accounting information on my computer and came across the very last instant message she sent me: "lunch is ready". But the photos gave me the most frequent jolt because I have so many of them.

I felt a little betrayed by the pictures. What is the point of taking pictures to remember joy and accomplishment when they end up making you feel loss, sorrow and regret?

At the same time, they are very important to me. When Leigh was still in a coma, but it was clear that she would die, I took all the video cassettes I had of her to some company to ‘back them up’ to DVD. I felt this was urgent. I was afraid of losing any more of her. When I was growing up, my Mom treasured her photographs. She told me, many times, that if the house was on fire I was to grab photographs, as many as I could, and run out of the house. I suppose I felt like that. My house was definitely on fire.

I had a sagging feeling when I looked at the pictures. At the time that I took them, I felt I was taking them so Leigh and I could remember our moments, adventures, accomplishments and milestones. I imagined looking at all this imagery later on in our life and doing a “Remember when we did that with your family? Climbed that hill? Flew over that mountain? Played with that baby? Ate that fish we made?”. I feel let down that by those images because the memories are now laced with pain and I know that reality has preyed on my daydreams. I have not showed anyone the picture I have of the fish I cooked for Leigh on the barbecue on the back of our sailboat. Who would care now if I said “Hey! Look at what I ate!”. Leigh would have liked to have that conversation with me some day in our hypothetical future.

I took a lot of video of my dog Scarlet. I knew at the time, considering how dog years work, that Leigh and I would be watching these some day when Scarlet was gone. Scarlet is in the center of the videos, splashing away in the water, chasing a toy or cocking her head to the side at the sound of our voices. But as it turns out, it is the pretty girl half-in the frame whose image I’m hanging on. It’s her voice coming from behind the camera that I'm straining to hear asking Scarlet about a cookie that she is crying over. Obviously, we had no idea that Leigh was on dog years too.

I have mixed feelings now about having all this media. Even at the time I was taking the pictures and videos, I knew I could focus on taking the shot, or I could put down the camera and take the moment in with all my senses. Living a moment through a small viewfinder takes away from it. Taking a proper picture requires a lot of mental processing for successful framing, light management and focus. The price you pay for taking a good picture is you miss the real-life moment. I would think “I’ll spend this trip to Alaska taking pictures of whales, and next time Leigh and I come I’ll leave my cameras at home and experience the whales for myself.” I actually told her that. She didn’t care too much. She was going to take all her moments in with all five of her senses, every time. She really didn’t care about the cameras too much. And there was no next trip to see whales.

Frankly, it's a toss up. I wasn't always 100% there, but I did manage to get this…