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Big Valley Mud Wrestlers "I loafe and invite my soul, I lean
and loafe A black blizzard howled toward us. Main street Stettler was a dust bowl. We threw on rain gear, departed the friendly Greek restaurant and beelined to a campground. When we found it didn't have hot water - let alone showers - we turned around and headed back to set up on a school field. In the morning, even with ear plugs firmly seated, a loud crash roused me. I glanced at my watch: 6 am. Propping on one elbow, I peered through the tent's mesh. A garbage truck clanged huge steel bins overhead with a front-end forklift. Collection was probably only once a month, but this was the day. I had been using my fleece jacket as a pillow; I bunched it over my head, trying to block the din and grab a few more winks. Not a chance. Shortly after the garbage truck departed, the school loudspeakers crackled to life, blaring forth resinous lounge music. Sharon jabbed an elbow in my back. "Someone must have turned that music on," she said. "I think we should leave before someone finds us camped on school property." "I hope they do," I squawked. "Maybe they'll invite us in for coffee and showers." But, alas, no one came out, or even showed up to do morning calisthenics. Sue demonstrated a few slow-motion Tai Chi movements from a class she was taking. "Sloths in motion," she termed it. I wasn't moving any too fast myself. Sharon helped pack Sue's tent, then kicked me out of our tent. I crawled forth into the daylight. Inhabiting a tent doesn't come without a few bodily complaints. ("This lightweight tent sleeps three," the salesman had said. "Yeah," I quizzed, "but how many comfortably?" "None!" he had chirruped gleefully. "It's a tent.") On the way out of Stettler we spotted a municipal swimming pool that stopped us dead in our tracks. Sharon and Sue sent me in to ask if we could use the showers. "Certainly!" a cheery employee replied. Must be a morning person, I decided, looking through bleary eyes at the smiling face. "Come on in and help yourselves." The hard stream of pulsating water massaged my cramped shoulders. I lathered and rinsed, lathered and rinsed, regaling in the delights of hot running water. After 15 glorious sudsy minutes, the smiling pool employee appeared. "Kids arriving in five minutes for swimming lessons," he said. "They're a little rambunctious," he warned. If it hadn't been for the thought of 50 screaming little hellions invading my private spa, I could have drowned myself in the steamy shower all day. Instead, I exited the shower, slipped on clean clothes, rinsed my previous apparel, and departed the change room as a horde of screeching young 'uns ran in - swinging multi-coloured swim bags like tiny catapults before releasing them at the ceiling, the walls, the lockers, and, most importantly, each other. I exited to the safe haven outside and waited for Sharon and Susan. The sun shone bright - and hot. If it stays like this, I thought, it won't be long before I need another shower. "Ahhh," Sharon sighed as she emerged from the women's locker room fresh and clean. "Puts a whole new perspective on life!" We slathered on sunscreen and followed Highway 56 south. Before long - necks scorched and tongues dragging in bicycle spokes - vultures began to circle (just kidding about the birds of prey; just me imagining I was near death). Pulling to a stop at an artesian well to regenerate our minds and bodies, we soaked bandannas, sopping up cold water, and draped them around our necks in hopes of evaporative coolness. Back on the tarmac, in the blistering sun, it wasn't long before Sue called to me. "Hey, Mick." Sun, wind, and stress had combined to create a monumental cold sore on my lower lip. I guess Sue figured my lips rivalled Jagger's. Too bad I can't sing. I ignored her. "Want to stop at Big Valley for something to eat?" That got my attention. Not one to refuse a chance to eat, I swung off the main highway into Big Valley. The village's façade appeared ripped straight from the tattered pages of a Louis L'Amour novel. Wooden boardwalks, false-front buildings, saloons, and chairs fashioned from old whiskey barrels lined the dusty streets. On the edge of town, railway tracks loped past grain elevators; iron rails shimmered in the dry heat, running off into the horizon and fading to hazy parallax convergence. An ancient mossy-trunked tree grew in the station's yard. Its full branches spread earthward, bending along a white picket fence, producing a tranquil, Mark Twain, back-in-time atmosphere. We lounged under the tree, enjoying the soft grass, while escaping the day's hottest rays, inhaling carrot cake and cinnamon buns as if there was no tomorrow. Two boys snuck past on the other side of the fence. One pointed at Sharon and Sue. "They look like mud wrestlers," I overheard him blurt to his buddy. Unlike me, did he think muscles on women unattractive? Lucky for him, Sue and Sharon, deeply engrossed in conversation, didn't hear him. It'll be our little secret. A strong southeasterly tossed us out of Big Valley and down the road toward Drumheller. Towering cottonwoods produced a swirling flurry of fluff as we swept along in a near whiteout. Propelled by the tailwind, we sped down the smooth flat pavement, legs spinning like windmills. Pedalling on the flat, in my top gear I easily hit 52 kilometres per hour. Tailwind high! Sue found the wind uplifting in a different manner. Being in the lightweight category, gusts caught her and flung her willy-nilly across the lane. "This is the windiest I've ever ridden in," she confessed, her pale face the colour of birch ash. The wind picked up and howled at our backs, pushing us along at a rollicking 40 kilometres per hour. Grape-purple thunderheads ripened in dusky globules overhead. Cloudbursts soaked us on three separate occasions. After each downpour, the sun reappeared, hot and bright. Our attempts to stay dry proved fruitless - we didn't know whether to put our raincoats on or leave them off. Our smooth pavement ended abruptly at a construction zone. Worse, the downpours had succeeded in turning the entire site into a mud bath. Trucks passed us, big tires spraying fans of water and muck. For 15 kilometres, we slogged through a sticky black quagmire. Shoes, socks, and legs (along with bikes, packs, and backs) became coated in layers of waxy grime. The Big Valley boy's words proved prophetic: Sharon and Sue had become mud wrestlers after all. The work zone ended. But our poor-surface ordeal didn't. We found ourselves deposited onto grooved pavement. The furrowed surface assailed our skinny bike tires, causing us to creep along, our rides hopping and wobbling like inebriated bullfrogs, threatening to dismount us. "Preparation for cobblestones in Europe?" Sharon asked. "Preparation for something," I replied, wondering how long the dead-genital syndrome would last. I was still lamenting my lack of feeling when red necks in a rusty pickup passed too close for comfort, honking, scaring the blue blazes out of me. "Jeez!" Sue screeched, practically jumping out of her skin, too. "They have no idea how loud a horn is on the outside!" "Just trying to be friendly, no doubt," I grimaced. "Yeah, right!" After 108 kilometres, a Drumheller campground popped into view. It even boasted hot showers! We checked in, then waded into the shower room to scrub the muck from our arms and legs. From the amount of grime adhered to my shoes and socks, perhaps I should have worn them into the shower as well? Warmed by the hot water, we searched for a suitable tent spot. Everything along the scenic Red Deer River was a trampled mass of muddy grass. We chose a site on higher ground, beneath a trio of sturdy (or so we hoped) cottonwood. Another downpour began. Our arboreal umbrella leaked. We watched in silent horror as a torrent of water raced down the curb. "I don't think this is a usual summer storm," I said, seeing the water rise and climb onto the sidewalk. We huddled beneath our leaky umbrella trees, and watched in stark fascination as water rose all around us, stranding us on a small island like modern day Robinson Crusoe castaways. "I think we better abandon ship!" Sharon declared as the ring of water encroached ever closer. "Let's swim for it, mates!" Dripping wet, we deserted our bikes. Doing our best to jump the swirling wet stuff we splashed through ankle-deep water (so much for dry socks), and bolted for a yellow-striped awning, emblazoned with one sweet word: Bakery. The enticing sign lured us in. However, once inside, we discovered it wasn't a bakery at all. It didn't even have day-old goodies for sale. A pimply-faced teenager behind the counter rubbed his eyes, looking as though he had just woken up. "Looks like it might rain," he yawned. "Yeah," Sharon grinned, water trickling from her soaked shoes and clothing onto the floor. "If it keeps up like this it might." I wondered if he was one of those people who thought pineapples grew on trees. I decided to hassle him, even though it's not entirely fair to have a duel of wits with an unarmed opponent. "That's a fake bakery sign on your awning ... ever heard of false advertising?" "Well," he retorted in a tone somewhat less than 'the customer is always right,' "it came from a real bakery." "I can tell," I said, rubbing my belly. "It still smells like doughnuts." My stomach growled. "Anywhere around here we can find something to eat?" "If you're looking for somewhere to eat," he said, sunnily, "Dinny's is, like, only a block away." "How do we get there?" Sue asked, desperate for food. "You don't know how to get to Dinny's?" Sue glowered. The kid wisely continued. "Okay ... go...," he stammered, like he wasn't the most milk-filled coconut on the old palm tree, "a block out, turn right, and go, like, a block, and then, like, take the alley for a block." "That's three blocks," Sue curtly informed the mathematically challenged youth. It's difficult to fool an accountant ... even when she's on vacation and doesn't have her trusty calculator. We exited the falsely advertised bakery. "Kids these days," Sue muttered. I thought he was lucky she hadn't called him a blockhead. |
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