poplar road

Some of you may have heard me talk about a very exciting job I applied for two weeks ago. Well, you can uncross your fingers now. Once again, not even shortlisted, although this time someone in the HR department was kind enough to let me know the hiring was over and done with. That was just before 9 on Friday morning. Needless to say, I spent the rest of the morning sadly job-searching in the comfort of my favourite pair of flannel pyjamas and a very well worn in T-shirt.

Why am I sharing this with you? Because a few hours after the bad news about the job, I was sitting in my tiny bathroom, wishing I could land a decent job so we could afford to finish our glorious master bathroom, when there was a knock on the door. No time to even put a sweatshirt on over the pjs, and anyway it's usually just a neighbour. Only this time it wasn't Jonathan, it was a security system salesman. I got my polite face on, about to tell him not interested, when he said the funniest thing. "I guess your folks aren't home?"

I gaped at him in astonishment. Me, thirty-three years old, no makeup on, only needs to put on flannel pyjama bottoms to be mistaken for a teenager? "I am 'the folks'," I said. He looked surprised, and I cut his spiel short to send him away. When you've got a neighbour like Jonathan keeping an eye on the street, why get video surveillance and motion sensors? (There's a reason Bud calls him the "Mayor".) Anyway, when I got back to my computer I sat there thinking. How old is thirty-three, really? I obviously don't look a day over 20 – gotta love unintended flattery – and I'm still young enough to roll with the punches and keep up with a learning curve, while educated and experienced enough to provide an employer with more than some fresh-faced eager young thing can offer. Right?

Right. So I got out a very short list I made a few months ago, of all the event coordination companies in town. All four of them. Now, I have no credentials as an event coordinator. Nor even as an administrator, for that matter, a BFA being highly irrelevant to employers looking for Business Administration on a job application; but experience should count for something. I'm neither patient enough nor can we afford for me to start over at minimum wage, let's be realistic, but I have to look at every job option, and event coordination has been a huge part of my work for the last 5 years. (And privately, too – Pam's wedding was a crash course in how to pull off a wedding at the last minute without the bride worrying about a thing. She could write me a reference: "I don't know how she did it because I hardly saw her the whole day, but the wedding went just fine.") So I made a mental list of my accomplishments, and called the first number on the list.

The owner/event coordinator answered the phone, which surprised me, and she chatted very openly with me for a few minutes before suggesting I call back Monday re setting up an informational interview. That's all I'm going for at the moment – I need to know more about the potential for the work here, no point shifting gears mid-career if there isn't a market in this town. The woman was friendly and I was reassured by her statement that she values experience and the ability to think on your feet more than a credential from an event coordinator program. Ten years ago when she started her business, there wasn't such a thing anyway. She didn't say if she was looking for staff, and I didn't ask. I'm sure it will come up on Monday, but what I want to start off with is to talk to someone about the business. They're a catering company, so it's a much different viewpoint than my experience as a project administrator, where coordinating meetings, workshops and conferences was just part of my workload, not 100% of my time all year. Does one even get a salary, or is it almost like a comission structure? I have lots of questions, and movies like the Wedding Planner just get in the way of really understanding what the full-time nitty gritty of the job is like. I'm hoping it's the right job to meld my design and writing skills with my customer service and marketing skills, not to mention my love of entertaining; but right now it's just one more place to look in this lousy job market.

Before I talked to the event planner I was kicking myself for not taking myself seriously back in grade 12, when for thirty seconds I considered a career in carpentry. Number of carpentry jobs advertised in Kamloops this month: over a dozen. Number of administrative jobs advertised: one. Trades wages: $3 an hour more than my last salary, and up. Local admin wages: $10 an hour less than my last salary, or lower. (Writing jobs of any sort: nil or unpaid.)

But now that I've taken the leap to make my first real cold call, perhaps I'll get somewhere. If nobody will speak to me after looking at my resume, then I'd better speak first and hand over the credentials later. On that note, a conference centre on my list said call back today, but doesn't have an answering machine so I have to try calling again. When was the last time you dialed a number and it rang ten times? Extraordinary. Then there are two or three other places to call. Ever feel so lucky once that you think it couldn't possibly turn out well if you try again? Maybe that's just me. I'm more intimidated to call the other places since the first gal was so nice about it. I haven't been in that position for a while, but I'd say right now I'd be less terrified asking a guy out on a date than asking someone to talk to me about a job. We'll see how it goes next week. At least I got from moping in my pjs to getting on the phone. It's a start.

We just had a fantastic long weekend with Sharon, Pat, Olivia, and Andrew, and special guests Cama, Flora, and Buddy, who fell head-over-heels for Olivia. Here's Buddy playing King-of-the-Castle on the heap of dirt exposed by our demolition of the chicken pens around the barn. He says, Hi, Olivia!

Buddy scared Olivia a bit at first - when you're only two feet tall, a big fuzzy thing five times your size galloping toward you is understandably intimidating - but despite frequent kisses from Flora it was Buddy who captured her heart. She started saying his name on the second day and he started coming closer than he usually does with Richard and I. I was very impressed. Letting the three llamas in was challenging because they just love raspberry and cherry leaves, and Flora is getting too big to be leaping through my flower beds. But it was worth it to have them closer once Olivia got comfortable with them. She made a beeline for the back door as soon as she got up every morning. Our visit to the BC Wildlife Park was also fun - it was one big wildlife weekend. (Sharon, I'm looking forward to seeing your photos! Thanks for a wonderful visit.)

Whenever Richard and I travel, two small bottles come with us: ground cumin and tequila. The cumin is for my favourite snack, guacamole, which I make using ripe avocadoes mashed with cumin, salt, garlic powder, and lemon or lime juice (I prefer lemon). Neither of us drink tequila, but a bottle of the cheapest kind we can get has to be in the camper whenever we go on a road trip because it's the secret ingredient in Richard's famous salsa. The rest of the ingredients come from the local produce market wherever we're going. Oddly, neither of us are huge fans of salsa, but when we're on vacation Richard makes this for our friends. (And we load up on the guacamole.) In Moab, Richard made a gallon of salsa one night and the group ate half of it on the spot. Lisa took the last of it home, and has requested the recipe, so here you are...

Road Trip Salsa

2-3 bunches of fresh cilantro

6 medium tomatoes

1 small yellow or sweet onion

6 limes

2-3 anaheim peppers (mild)

2-4 jalapeno peppers (medium)

2-4 serrano peppers (hot)

6 cloves of garlic, crushed and minced

less than 1 oz. of tequila

1 tsp. of sea salt

Chop and mix together the cilantro, tomatoes, and onion. Roll the limes beneath the palm of your hand to get the juice flowing, then squeeze over the mixture. NOTE: Wearing gloves, remove and discard the peppers' seeds and membranes. How many you use of each depends on how hot you like your salsa. (Serranos are twice as hot as jalapenos.) You MUST wear gloves or you'll burn your skin! Finely chop the peppers and add to the salsa along with the garlic, tequila, and salt. Stir to combine and let it sit for at least an hour, the longer, the better, so the flavours blend and intensify. Serve with corn tortilla chips, sour cream and guacamole, or on top of quesadillas.

Aside from Lisa, the biggest fan of Richard's salsa I ever saw was a wonderful gentleman by the name of Crazy Joe. He introduced himself to me in Johnson Valley last May, after he watched me drive Mechano up a trail called Clawhammer. He was impressed, and "not because you're a girl", he said. Richard invited him to drop by our campsite that evening, and he arrived just as we were finishing dinner. You know how much Richard and I enjoy feeding people, so as you might expect, we cooked him up a steak and in lieu of vegetables, offered him salsa on the side. What was left of it was watery, in the bottom of a large bowl. He dipped in a chip to taste it and smiled, the same smile with which he'd explained why they call him Crazy Joe. "I love salsa", he said, and lifted the bowl in both hands. He drank it. He downed a whole cupful of it, licking the last bits of cilantro off his dripping whiskers. He regaled us with a few more stories of past and current exploits as a military weapons expert and movie effects consultant, but the image that sticks with me is the gleeful satisfaction on his face as he drained that bowl of salsa the way other people toss back a beer. I remember him every time we make it.

Summer is here: at 30+ degrees all week, it's truly salsa weather. We're having a bit of rain just in time for our long weekend visit with Sharon, Pat, Olivia, and baby Andrew, but the sun came out long enough today to enjoy salsa with lunch (and ice cream for dessert!). Tomorrow I'm looking forward to some guacamole and llamavision in the sunny back yard in addition to salsa. Enjoy!

This year's four-wheeling vacation had its ups and downs (pun intended), but without the Interstate catastrophes that added a surreal edge to our road trips in the past. Last year was a nightmare of expense, delays, and exhaustion that I dreaded might happen again. Instead, we had only minor delays on the road – a highway closure due to an exploding tanker truck on our southbound trip, and a massive prairie storm including high winds and fork lightning on the return – and most of the drama occurred on the trails. But where road trip dramas are usually best forgotten, like the point four hours in when Richard threatened to turn around and take me to my parents for the week if I couldn't stop coughing up a lung, wheelers look forward to those moments on the trail enthusiastically referred to as "carnage". On a scale of one to five, I'd say this Moab trip rates a carnage level 3.

This image Richard captured on day one is on a trail unimaginatively named "Hell's Revenge". Hell it might be on a sunny afternoon in August if you're caught on the mesa without enough water, but as 4x4 obstacles go, Richard didn't consider this trail all that tough for our capable group of trucks. It was a good trail to start the Moab "virgins" (Matt, Gary and Greg) on, with all the spectacular rock formations Moab is famous for but a lower likelihood that the Toyotas and Mog would experience damage this early on in the week. (No sense starting on the hardest trails and risking losing a day to repairs before they'd covered any ground.) I was sleeping off the worst of my bronchial infection back at camp, unhappy to miss a day but knowing the "best" trails were still to come and I needed to rest up.

My spot in Mechano was taken by Cody, Gary and Lisa's 12-year-old son. Given Richard's experience on Moab trails and Mechano's stability, I don't think Gary or Lisa had a second's qualm about letting Cody ride with Richard. He was strapped into the 5-point harness and shown how to cross his arms over his chest in case of a rollover, and off they went. When they reached the obstacle known as Hell's Gate, they crawled down the V-shaped slickrock gully and watched Matt descend after them in his blue Toyota (shown here). Richard tightened Cody's harness and reminded him about crossing his arms, and then they headed upward for the return trip, Matt's Toy close behind them. It's a basic obstacle, after all. Damn, I wish I'd been there!

Here's what everyone else saw: Half way up to the Gate, Richard took Mechano up a line along the steep sides of the gully which caused one of the marshmallowy 44" tires to lift off the ground a little. And then a little more. And suddenly that front driver's side tire was doing a can-can in the air 25 feet above the slickrock and Cody crossed his arms over his chest under his floppy white hat. Richard leaned over to hold Cody in the seat as Mechano flipped backward over the opposite corner and then pirouetted on its lid to land flag side down just inches in front of Matt's Toyota. Close one.

But remarkably, the damage to Mechano was minor, at least until after Richard and Cody climbed out. It lay there, wheels in the air like a ladybug struggling on its back, and Matt attached a winch cable. Sadly, try as they might, they couldn't get Mechano to flip upright. Hell's Gate is almost 100 feet long and Mechano was dragged upside-down almost to the bottom before they finally got it on its wheels again. Greg's video, which I got to see at camp the next night, shows Richard doing the Charlie Brown "good grief!" with his hand to his head as the truck scrapes and scrunches down the hill. My poor man.

Meanwhile, young Cody was gleefully requesting a copy of the video for show and tell when he gets back to school. And when Mechano was upright again, Gary and Lisa let him get back in the truck. If it had been me… well, let's just say I was sorry to miss seeing it, but thank god I wasn't the one in the passenger seat! Otherwise I never would have driven Golden Spike on Thursday. But I'm getting ahead of myself. Here are two more shots from Hell's Revenge, day one.

Kermit D Mog, here.

Kira, Stubby Toy, Big Bird, and the Mog.

The next few hours on Hell's Revenge were spent playing in Mickey's Hot Tub. (The ladies were disappointed to find out that the Hot Tubs are deep, dusty pits in the slickrock that trucks usually have to winch out of. No water involved.) Gary was the first casualty with a blown burfield, which he later realized must have happened several days earlier when he and Rick drove the Hammers in Johnson Valley as a prelude to Moab. Then Matt's differential bound up and he feared another blown burf, but after taking things apart everything seemed fine. Rick also discovered some Hammers damage, sheared steering arm bolts. Everyone drove out but Big Bird needed work the next morning, which kept us in camp until noon. (Note: in Part II, I'll share some of the others' photos, which should include the Hot Tubs and hopefully Richard's rollover.)

Day two, Wednesday, began with lunch at Area BFE, a group of trails including Upper Helldorado, owned by a group of wheelers bent on preserving existing trails when those areas come up for sale. We made a donation to the fund and followed the signs to the boulder-lined sluice called Helldorado. Matt was first in line, at about 2pm. He candy-caned his rear drive shaft almost immediately, and left us to get back to town and find a good welder before closing time.

Matt dents his drive shaft.

Gary's Toyota makes it look easy.

Richard decides to try a different line.

Squeeeeeeeeezed through that one.

Danaeya sits still just for a second with Mom...

… to watch Daddy in Big Bird.

With Matt already out of the game, the guys consult (with some loud input from us girls) and decide not to risk the remaining two Toyotas on the rougher upper half of the trail when it's almost dinnertime. Richard gets ready to turn around and drive back down, but takes a flippant remark from Gary as an opportunity to get behind the video camera and let Gary do the driving, with Rick spotting. Rick, with a little help from Richard, gets Gary to pose Mechano on top of a boulder for photo ops, and then down the other side. He preferred the response of his Toy's steering, but the ride on the squishy tires brought a smile to his face.

At this point, Lisa and I have been taking photos a while and from behind the lens the lower half of Helldorado looks pretty flat in comparison. So Lisa agrees to Richard's suggestion she drive Mechano the rest of the way as Gary and Rick turn their Toyotas around in the bypass. To Richard's surprise I jumped in with Lisa, mostly because I get fed up navigating all those loose rocks on foot. Richard videotaped so again I have no photos, but I bet Gary has a few. When we got to that last large boulder, the one where Richard caught some air in the photo above, he made Lisa brake for a (long) minute, both of us hanging on and wondering how we'd forgotten the steep bit. Rick came around in Big Bird to attach a tow strap, just in case, but it remained slack as Lisa released the brake and we dropped to the ground. No problem. Little did I know, this was a light warm-up for me driving Golden Crack the next day. At least on Helldorado I could see the ground….

Day Three: Poison Spider Mesa and Golden Spike

These are some of the most popular trails in Moab for both rock-crawlers and mountain bikers. The views are spectacular, and at the top of the Golden Spike trail we could look back toward the river gorge and trace our path all the way across mesas and gulleys for the 9 hours we'd spent on the trail. I drove Mechano for most of the daylight hours, through obstacles like Wedgie, a rift through the rock that gave everyone a chance to twist their axles to the limit, and Launching Pad, whose steep slope terrified me until my sheer horror at descending the near-vertical Rim of the World drove all other fears from my head. Not long after that, Greg bent the tie-rod on his Unimog for the first time, and we halted for a while on the hillside where I took this image. The sun was disappearing behind the high rock faces surrounding us as we finally reached the first major obstacle on Golden Spike, called Golden Crack. (Then the sun set and it was another 4 hours before we made it back to camp, minus Greg and the Unimog.) Here are a few shots from Poison Spider, mostly on Wedgie.

The three obstacles I was looking forward to, remembering the last two trips, were Golden Crack, Double Whammy, and Golden Staircase. Had we taken the Rusty Nail trail to Golden Spike, barring any setbacks we would have come out right at Golden Crack, with time for Richard to play on Excalibur as well. But with the wide Unimog and fairly stock Jeep which Pam's friends Tammy and Rob were riding in for the day, Poison Spider Mesa was our best option to get to the head of Golden Spike. However, with a late start to our day at noon, delays when the group got split up for a while, and stops to repair both Big Bird and Kermit D Mog, it was sunset before we were all across the Crack, still a couple of hours from the end of the trail.

My drive across – no photos in the dark, alas – was exciting but over far too quickly. Rick, Gary and Matt were also across easily, and even the ill-equipped Jeep made it unscathed with some quick steering by Rob. Unfortunately, Greg's tie-rod bent again as the Mog crossed the Crack. Without an on-board welder there was no way to repair it enough to continue on in the pitch black of desert night. Not over Double Whammy and Golden Staircase, especially. It was a tough decision for Greg but he chose to stay the night in the Mog, tucked under the rock face at Golden Crack with our spare food and clothing to keep him and Kira safe until Richard and Matt could come back with a welder the next day.

The rest of us continued on the Spike, grateful that the Jamboree staff the previous weekend had re-painted the trail markings across the rock. But between the rock faces up which we all took the easiest lines, and took care to get every vehicle through without damage, there was sand. We lost the trail. Flashlights out and with Richard racking his brain to remember and recognize the route, we found new markings, for Gold Bar Rim trail. This, thankfully, led out, and was mostly dirt track rather than a lot of tough obstacles. It was a long, chilly, and dusty drive but we made it back to civilization, driving over the foot of the rock formation wheelers call the Gooney Bird in thanks for our good fortune. It was one in the morning when we reached the highway. Matt did a few exhuberant wheelies in the parking lot before we headed back to the campground, Richard and Matt to plan the rescue trip back to the Mog, and the others to prepare for the drive home.

The guys blaze through Rusty Nail in under an hour…

…in to get the part, out to weld it, and in again.

While the guys were rescuing the Mog, which required bringing the part out for welding and back again before the Mob could be moved, Greg's wife Barb and I spent the day sheltering from the wind. Rick and Gary loaded up in the morning and they were all on their way by noon, a little later than planned because the late night and the sand whipped up by the wind slowed them down. They missed visiting Arches National Park, which is one of Moab's other main attractions and has the most stunning rock formations in the area. Another Moab attraction is the shopping – one over-stuffed gift shop after another – but the wind, concern about the guys, and my cold were too much for me. Barb and I made a quick visit to town for lunch, then holed up in the campground for the rest of the day while the wind continued. The three vehicles took longer to drive out than Mechano and Stubby Toy alone, so the guys didn't get back until after dark. Understandably, packing up the next morning took longer than we'd have liked, though I didn't realize we were leaving right away, having missed Greg's decision at dinner not to wait for delivery of his replacement tie rod. True to the pattern of the previous few days, we weren't on the road until noon. Everyone was really, really tired.

Highway 6, open again after a nasty collision.

Rimrock Lake – another wheeling destination.

Our road trip home took us up Highway 6, past the site of the tanker explosion, and through Salt Lake traffic. After that we made good time, and were ready to stop for dinner as we neared Boise, when a storm hit. Strong winds, lashing rain, and stunning forked lightning. Tanking up soaked the guys to the skin, so we abandoned the BBQ at the rest area idea in favour of a nice dry restaurant. More delays. I think we spent the night in a rest area in eastern Oregon, but I don't really remember much other than it was 1am when we stopped and barely dawn when we got up. I don't know how Richard does it; I could barely keep my eyes open in daylight, and after dark I'm done.

Oregon flew by, and then north of Yakima Richard and I said goodbye to the others and turned off onto Highway 12, familiar from our wheeling trip to Wenatchee in 2004, and also home to Rimrock Lake, where another wheeling event is scheduled for this summer. Our side trip to visit Tim, Debbie and their family was short and sweet, and we were through Seattle and approaching the border in record time.

However, Moab seems an awful lot farther away now that we live four hours futher north. Crossing the border used to feel like home sweet home, but now it's just the start of another journey. We only made it as far as the rest area at the Coquihalla summit, but the beauty of a camper (old and ugly as ours is) is that tired travellers can stop, climb in and sleep in the comfort of a good duvet and feather pillows, just about anywhere. It was lightly snowing when we got up but we hardly noticed. We were home at 9:30 – and Richard was asleep at 9:35. We both still had the chest cold and he could have used another week off just to sleep, but he has Unimogs to sell, so he was back to work early the next morning.

I can't believe it's been over a week since we got back. I keep forgetting it's already halfway through May. Part II of the vacation highlights will have to wait another week or more, until we get copies of everyone else's photos and I can choose a few to post. Just a few – this has to be my longest post ever.

We're back from our road trip to Moab, Utah. Here is the view from the highest point on the Golden Spike trail, looking back at our path across the Poison Spider Mesa in the top left corner, just one spectacular scene out of the 181 photos that made the first cut yesterday. Then there's the video footage, and equally as many photos, I'm sure, from the others we travelled and wheeled with: Rick, Pam, Matt, Gary, Lisa, Greg, Barb, Mike, Cody, Tristan, and Danaeya.

It's going to take me a while to write up the trip and post the photo highlights, so I'm not promising anything until the weekend, all right? Just picking this one photo was tough! We had such an intense trip... It's hardly sunk in that we're home. And yes, we still have this cold bug. Resting has never been the primary focus of our vacations - it's all about the adventure!