9/11/(07) in Boulder
On my way through Oklahoma, I got a speeding
ticket. I don’t remember if it was
before or after Oklahoma City, but I’m leaning towards after, which is why I
mention it here. I was driving through a
ghost town. I had exited the highway
because I had to go to the bathroom really badly. I figured there would be some place I could
go off the exit. There appeared to be a
few buildings which might have had bathrooms, but there was not a soul
present. I pulled into a gas station and
realized it was locked and closed. No
way to get inside for the bathrooms. I
got back in my car and decided to head back to the highway and to get to the
next exit. On my way there I might have
gone a little faster than I should have.
I was pulled over just after getting back onto the highway. The cop was understanding and fair. He told me I had been going through a school
crossing at 35 or 40 MPH and it was flashing which meant I needed to go 20. There were no kids around. Nobody was around. It just happened to be 3:00 or so. The cop happened to be there though. He gave me a $165 ticket or so. I don’t know exactly but it’s in my check
book. I wrote the check for the ticket
while in Boulder.
There were also a couple strange incidents involving
traffic stops because of construction. A
whole line of cars would be stopped for twenty or thirty minutes at a time, and
then they would be allowed to go after the “pilot car” could lead the next heat
through the 2-mile stretch of road or so with construction and only room for
one lane on a major country highway.
There were wind farms around there.
It was annoying being stuck with nothing to do for such long stretches
at a time. This happened to me two or
three times that day. I thought it might
be nice if everyone would get out of their cars and chat with each other for
the wait but it didn’t happen.
I made it to Boulder around 9:00 at night or so. The babies were asleep. My sister offered me a beer. I talked about my road trip. She gave me the downstairs guest bedroom,
which was nice. I would smoke more than
my share of bowls down there.
I think my brother was there that evening I arrived
too. Things were normal, or as normal as
they could be. It was September 11. I thought we might watch remembrances of that
day from six years earlier.
I never asked him about the incident and I still
haven’t asked him about it, and he is actually visiting in town for
Thanksgiving right now, and he is leaving today, and I thought about asking him
more detailed questions for this memoir of mine but I decided against it. What painful memories are necessary to
unearth? If anything is to be learned
from his experience, it is that random violence pervades American life. I have been known to almost have been mugged
in New York once. Luckily I showed the
right attitude at the moment. My brother
should have crossed to the other side of the street when he saw the man ranting
and raving. Because he wanted to treat
people equally, because he didn’t want to ostracize a crazy person, because he
wanted to walk past him as if he were any other normal person, he almost lost
his life. Maybe they made eye contact a
couple times and the man took that as a threat of some kind. I don’t know what happened and maybe I never
will but I am happy that things are okay now and that there is a sense of how
fifteen minutes of fame are handed over to one.
Boulder was semi-unremarkable, but it was a nice rest
before the final push to California.
There would be one stop afterwards, in Southwest Utah, an area with very
little to get excited about. St. George
was the biggest town there. Hurricane
was nearby. This also wasn’t far from the
Grand Canyon. I could have visited the
Grand Canyon—I probably could have done it without even staying another night
at the hotel—but it was two hours out of my way and two hours back into my way
was more than I was willing to take being a lone tourist.
We partied with many other people in the area to
varying degrees: my older brother, our friend Matt. There was an odd incident on the second day I
arrived when I went out to an early dinner at a Mexican restaurant with my
sister and her husband’s friends, and their baby. The male half of their friend couple asked me
if I was in town for the gay porn convention.
I don’t remember how I responded to that, perhaps with a nervous laugh,
and I didn’t know what he meant by it.
Regardless, it made me uncomfortable and I spent the rest of the dinner
drinking a couple margaritas and trying to seem cool, like it had never been
said.
The last night I was there I brought out the Ghost
and everyone, even my older brother and sister who never smoked anymore, tried
it out. It was pretty much the only time
I had ever felt like I brought something to the table. Perhaps that is why I smoked so much over the
past few years. It’s the feeling that
you can provide others with happiness.
I also went on a couple long runs there. The first was on the Chattaqua Trail, which
was near the big mountain behind my sister’s house. That was surprisingly hard and steep and
scary to run downhill on. I drove a
couple miles to the base, ran for about an hour, or an hour and a half, and
returned. I also remember getting scared
of the signs warning hikers to look out for mountain lions and bears. The second time I went through the Boulder
Creek Trail and that was a significantly more comfortable run for me, and
arguably just as scenic, since I was not constantly concerned for my safety.
I have ambivalent feelings about Boulder but it is
impossible to argue that it is not a naturally beautiful area to live. I left for Hurricane after four or five days
or six days there. I had babysat my two
nephews, who were four months old and two years old respectively. It had been a good time overall, and I would
be back there for Thanksgiving two months later, but I did not know that yet.
No comments:
Post a Comment