Patagonia Bar
It was a bright, sunshiny day one austral summer when I found myself walking along a dusty road in Patagonia. It felt hot, probably because of the big pack I was carrying, filled with all my climbing gear, although it wasn’t above 60 degrees. I was somewhere west of the town of Comodoro Rivadavia, and shimmering in the distance I saw a lonely building at a crossroads. By the time I got there, I saw it was a bar – just what the doctor ordered. I went inside and dropped my pack – what a relief to get that thing off my back! It was dimly-lit, and pleasantly cool. I ordered a beer and sat back and relaxed. There was only one other patron, a young Argentine woman. The proprietor, realizing he now had a crowd of two, decided he’d better do something to keep us there a while. He popped a VHS tape into the machine and we found ourselves watching a concert of Genesis performing in Buenos Aires. Not a bad way to spend some time, I thought. The gal was in seventh heaven, though, as she said aloud more than once “Soy fanática de Phil Collins!”
Lake Louise Beggars
Sometime in the early 1990s, Brian, Harry and I were climbing in the summer in the Canadian Rockies. The weather had degenerated into the usual, grey, rainy crap that can be all-too-common in those parts, and it seemed we were always trying to find a bit of a sunny window in which to get out and climb something, anything. One day, desperate to bag something, Brian and I decided to tackle nothing less than the classic Mount Victoria. We were camped near Lake Louise, so it was about as close as you could get. The day looked threatening, and Harry wisely decided he’d have none of it, opting instead to get some extra shut-eye.
Brian and I drove to the parking lot by the lake shore and walked the trail south to the end of the valley, eventually to the very foot of the peak. As we climbed higher up the glacier, we were stopped dead in our tracks by the nastiest bergshrund one could ever hope to meet. It barred all forward progress, and none of our skills could get us beyond it. There was nothing for it but to return the way we’d come. Some time later, we arrived at the last vestige of civilization, something called the Plain of Six Glaciers Tea House. This rustic structure had stood for many years, and catered to those touristy folk who chose to walk up from Lake Louise to get a closer look at the amazing mountain scenery. By the time we arrived in the drizzle, we looked like a couple of drowned rats.
Normally, we would have just kept going on past and back to our vehicle, but for some reason that day we decided to stop. They had a nice, open-air veranda – we took off our packs and plunked ourselves down in a couple of chairs. We stripped off our sodden rain gear and laid it over the railing to dry. A young waitress came over to see if we’d like to order something. For some reason, neither of us had so much as one thin dime with us that day. Brian turned on the charm to see if he could bum a pot of tea, but she wasn’t having any of it. Too bad, because by now the idea of hot tea and a bite to eat seemed quite appealing. Before long, a couple arrived and sat at a nearby table. After waiting until they had ordered, I sauntered over and struck up a conversation. Basically, it was a sob story about how we’d started off in the wee hours to climb Mount Victoria but poor conditions had forced us back, and now we found ourselves at the tea house – cold, hungry and tired. All our cash was sitting in the car back at the parking lot, so we found ourselves in an awkward situation. Was there some way we could borrow some money from them – strictly a loan, of course – and pay them back when we all returned to the vehicles? They seemed a bit uncomfortable with my pitch, but in the end kindly agreed to give us some cash – it may have been as much as ten dollars. They insisted there was no need to pay them back. So, on the kindness of strangers, we enjoyed hot tea and a scone. After we left that fine establishment, Brian and I couldn’t help but wonder if they simply wanted to get us out of their hair and not have to deal with us any further, avoiding a meeting down at the parking lot with such scruffy-looking guys. In any case, we were grateful.
Almost Bought The Farm
Honest to God, I took this picture of myself because I thought I was going to die. My reasoning was that if my body was found, they’d find my camera too and have a date and time which would narrow down the time of my demise. It was 10:31 AM on August 28th, 2005, the same day Hurricane Katrina slammed into New Orleans. I had pushed my luck in a remote part of the desert, climbing 3 peaks when, if I’d had any sense, I wouldn’t have climbed any. So here you have it, an idiot in distress. My troubles had only begun when I took the picture. If you’ve the stomach for it, you can actually read all about it right here.
The picture was taken at the point in the story when I was on top of Peak 3210, the third one.
Rocky Point
Back in the 1980s, Puerto Peñasco was a much smaller town, not all filled with big touristy hotels the way it is now. After a few idyllic days of camping right on the beach, I decided to take a totally different way home. Instead of the paved highway heading straight back north to the US border, it seemed like a fun idea to head east. I’d never driven that way before, and my primitive map showed about 110 miles of dubious road that needed to be traveled to end up at the city of Caborca. I hadn’t gone terribly far east from Rocky Point (that was the name those of us in Arizona gave to Puerto Peñasco) when, what to my wondering eyes should appear, but a roadblock. There was a primitive shack and some barricades, with several Mexican soldiers with big guns, all looking bored as hell. As I rolled to a stop, the head honcho walked up to me, telling me in no uncertain terms that the road was closed to all traffic. I told him that it meant a lot to me to be able to drive on through to Caborca, but he said there was no way. He offered no explanation as to why it was closed.
I pulled off to the side of the road and parked my pickup. Maybe I’d just organize my camping gear a bit better and plan my next move before heading back the way I’d come. One thing I had in the back was a large cooler filled with ice and beer, lots of beer. I cracked open an ice-cold Pacífico and took a few sips, then a bright idea popped into my head. I motioned the head guy over and offered him a cold one, and he hesitated only a nanosecond before accepting. Perhaps his men would like one too? After all, it was a hot day, and a cold beer would probably taste pretty good about now. He agreed, and before you knew it we were all shooting the shit in Spanish and solving the world’s problems. Well, that beer went down really well, and when I showed them that my cooler had more beer in it than I needed and what did they think about having another one, they didn’t put up an argument, so we all enjoyed another.
Finally, I told them that I’d better head back to Rocky Point and start for home. I twisted their arms and made them agree to each have one more for later in case they got thirsty. At that point, the head guy motioned to his men to move the barricade aside and waved me on through with a handshake and “Vaya con Dios!” I nodded my thanks and headed east. I never did find out why the road was closed, and by that point I didn’t give a shit, motoring on with just enough of a buzz to make the day more interesting.
Latin Motto
Once upon a time I was a licensed general contractor here in Arizona. For 25 years I had a company called Sierra Madre Construction. The company had a nice letterhead on its stationary, and written beneath it was a Latin phrase which gave me great pride. Here is what it said:
ASCENDENDI MONTEM PESSIMUS MELIUS QUAM OPTIMUS DIES LABORANDI
Not one single customer in all those years ever commented on the phrase, either because they didn’t translate it or they didn’t care, one way or another. Here is what it means in English:
THE WORST DAY CLIMBING IS BETTER THAN THE BEST DAY WORKING
Maybe it’s just as well that my prospective customers never knew its meaning!!
Chemistry Exam
It was the summer of 1966. I was working at a sawmill in a small town in the Canadian Rockies. During my second year of studies at the university I attended, I had failed a brutal course in organic chemistry which was 2 semesters long. Since my grade was almost a pass, the university gave me an opportunity to write an exam, a second chance if you will, for all the marbles – all I had to do was get a 50% grade in that exam and I would get full credit for the course. I studied for weeks to prepare for the exam. The nearest place where they had someone who could proctor the exam was in Banff, Alberta 90 miles away. The big day arrived, and since I had no car I had to hitchhike to Banff. I was lucky enough to get good rides and arrived well before the scheduled time to sit for the exam. Once settled in, I began – they allowed a full 3 hours to complete it. I had spent so much time cramming in the days leading up to the exam that I hadn’t had much sleep and was overly-tired. You guessed it – I nodded off during the exam! Well, by the time the 3 hours was up, I felt I had done poorly. Weeks later, the results arrived in the mail and verified what I already knew – I had failed once again.
Old Cars
Here in my Sonoran Desert in Arizona, sometimes I come across old, abandoned cars. When I say old, a lot of them are from the 1930s, but I’ve seen plenty from the 1940s, 1950s and even one from as late as 1961. Nearly all of them have been on an Indian reservation or a military bombing range. Why those places, I’m not sure. They are still there after all of those years because the public is not allowed to go there, otherwise I’m sure that collectors would have spirited them away long ago. They are far from intact, as all the good bits have been removed, but for the most part, the shells are still recognizable, like this old-timer.
I have found a lot of them in groups of as many as 6, clustered closely together. The big question for me, though, is why were they left there in the first place? Did people just strip them of all their good parts and then leave them there to rust back into the atoms from which they were made because they had no other place to leave them? Back then, 80 and 90 years ago, perhaps there was no such thing as an auto salvage yard. Curious.