The Final Voyage Chapter 3

                    The Final Voyage

                          Chapter 3

                               North of Denver with Denver

I hitched north out of Denver and then down a state road to see an old navy buddy (Denver) living up in the mountains. I gave him a call from a pay phone in Fort Collins and he wound down the mountain to pick me up in an old Dodge 4-wheel drive pickup. He drove us up to his cabin high in the Rockies where in a few hours the only thing higher than the mountains was us. The views were amazing. We sat on a rocky cliff with our feet dangling over a thousand-foot drop-off as we marveled at the wonder of it all. Two old men sitting there talking about the old navy days together. We ran out of beer, weed and several bags of chips before crawling back to his cabin for a long night’s sleep.

The next morning, still hungry, we fired up the wood cook stove and had a dozen eggs and several potatoes. We heard gun shots nearby so we walked out to see what was going on outside. Several of Denver’s buddies jumped a big buck and came rolling up on their 4-wheelers with the big buck strapped on the back of one of the four wheelers. We spent the next several hours drinking beer, skinning and dressing the deer before hanging him in the smokehouse. It probably wouldn’t have taken so long without all the beer, but it might not have been as much fun either. We saved part of that deer and roasted it on a spit over a campfire near the cabin. Deer and canned beans, you can imagine that scene if you have ever seen the campfire scene in Mel Brook’s movie “Blazing Saddles,” enough said about that.

Those friends of Denver ran him completely out of beer that night so the next morning it was time to drive down the mountain and get another truck load of beer. It was fun being up there on the mountain and fun visiting Denver, but at my age I can only go so long before having to back off for a while. I rode down with Denver to Fort Collins and flagged a ride on a tractor/trailer headed toward the west coast. Denver and I were and are good buddies, but we have a tendency to go just too far with fun times together, we always did and always will do so.

I caught another ride with a trucker headed to San Francisco. John was a churchy type, making the run a long one. I listened for as long as I could before starting to question just how illogical the biblical stories were that he related to me. An hour later, he pulled over on the side of the road at the edge of Reno Nevada. John reached over, opened the door, shoved me out and actually showed me the single digit salute as he yelled, “go to hell you demonic bastard!” Maybe John didn’t read the parts of the book that speak of love thy neighbor.

I walked over to a casino and started looking for busses returning west from the casino and found one headed back to Sacramento. The passengers started lining up to board so I got in line with them. An old lady ahead of me stopped to bend the driver’s ear and some stoner behind me passed by and boarded with me following close behind him. The bus driver was busy trying to be polite so we wandered right on by and sat in the back of the bus. The stoner said his name was Daryl and proceeded to tell me stories that even I could not believe. Daryl (at least in his mind) thought he was the Charlie Harper character on the Two and a Half Men TV show. I thought I even remembered one or two episodes. We were nearing Sacramento when I saw a Roseville sign on I-80; Daryl said he needed to light up a fat boy and then proceeded to do so. Soon after, smoke rolled out and another old woman walked up to speak with the driver. The driver pulled into a truck stop and then came walking to the back of the bus. His intention was to remove Daryl from the bus and when he did so, he realized I was not supposed to be there so he shoved me off the bus along with Daryl. There I was again, on foot with dwindling resources. What was I to do?