Summer 2021 Escape, Part 1
Thursday, August 12th, 2021: 2021 Trips, Mogollon Rim, Regions, Road Trips.
Fat Basketball Players’ Retreat
My temporary living space is dominated by a desk, covered with piles of paper. Each pile represents one of the 6-8 major projects I’m juggling simultaneously. It’s the elephant in the house – I can’t ignore it, as long as I’m in that place I can’t avoid that desk and the obligations, demands, and arguments I’m embroiled in as I struggle to get my life back.
Suddenly there was an unexpected hiatus over at my real, empty, fire-damaged, long-under-repair house – a flooring crew was refinishing the wood floors, and no other work could go on for a couple of weeks – hence I was experiencing no demands from, or arguments with, the contractor. Instead of rejoicing I fell into a deep depression. I still had so much to do, and so many deadlines to meet, and that desk still dominated my living space, demanding that I spend every day working. I literally had to escape, to preserve my sanity.
The only real option was the funky alpine resort village 3 hours north of here, where I’ve always stayed in the cheap, fishing-themed motel. All their rooms were empty at midweek, but the new owners refuse to communicate directly with customers, requiring all reservations to be made online, 24 hours in advance, and it took me two days of calling and emailing and fruitlessly exploring other options to learn this. And by then it was the weekend and they were all booked up.
But I was temporarily flush with “funny money” from insurance, and finally, I located a much more expensive 2-bedroom vacation cabin that hadn’t been booked yet – apparently the last lodgings available in the area. And the property manager actually answered their phone and happily took my same-day reservation.
Fortunately, since I was still following my COVID shopping routine of stocking up on two weeks’ worth of food in advance, I didn’t have to shop. I just had to pack, and this would give me a chance to test my new high-performance camping cooler – one of the few items of fire-destroyed camping gear I’d been able to replace so far.
I called ahead and made a reservation for dinner at the only restaurant in town, and raced up the mostly empty highway through the long series of mountain ranges between here and there. I arrived just in time to check in before the office closed. My heart sank when I walked in the little cabin, saw the furniture, and felt the beds.
The beds consisted of super-soft, 4-inch thick memory foam on top of thin, soft mattresses. When you put pressure on the beds, you seemed to sink endlessly down into them, which is the worst thing possible for back pain. Who actually likes soft mattresses? Fat people? And the living room consisted of an overstuffed fake leather recliner and a futon couch, both of which seemed to be designed for 7-foot-tall basketball players. The ergonomics of this cabin were far worse than the cheap motel room, whose pillowy bed had triggered an episode of severe lower back pain the last time I’d come up here.
But I’d learned my lesson back then, and hoped to avoid back pain now by sleeping only on my stomach, and sitting only on the straight-backed wooden kitchen chairs. There was no wifi, but that was probably a good thing. And the restaurant was only a 10 minute walk away on the gravel roads. It was cool up here, so I changed into warmer clothes and strolled over, carrying my rain shell just in case.
