I've been home this week. Not at-my-apartment home, but in G-Town and Laradise home, visiting my old 307 stomping grounds at what is possibly the very best time of year to do so. The snow has melted; the grass is green; there's some flooding; but nothing has turned brown and dead and fire tinder-ready. Hurrah!
Some things I noticed:
- The altitude. I've lost my high-altitude toughness. I ran my 5-mile route around Mom and Dad's neighborhood, and the first quarter-mile was torture. My lungs were certain they were suffocating, so they instinctively reacted by trying to suck in as much air as possible as fast as possible. My brain, level-headed for once, won out, and I was able to run three miles, walk one and run most of the last mile, without much loss as far as my time before I left. I feel good about that, but I feel as though I've forfeited some badass status. *sniff*
- My skin is flaking-off-my-face DRY. Holy crimeny. What IS this? There isn't enough lotion in the W-Y-O to fight this. Sad.
- "Leaving home" is ... weird. Driving around Gillette and Laramie, it felt like I hadn't left at all. Like I'd hit a "pause" button when I left, and then hit "play" again for a few days. Same people. Mostly. Same places. Some with new roads accessing them, some with new buildings around them. Same beautiful, loving family and friends. Same erratic, adorable dog wagging his entire body when I came home.
- I may have left the 307, but the wind stayed here. And it came back yesterday and today. With a blustery vengence. Heck.
Anyway.
I spent Friday through Tuesday in Gillette with my folks, hanging out with BHS and her kids, spending part of an afternoon with KJW and her new car, meeting my dad's doctors, getting a crash-course education in wound therapy and learning what a veinous stasis ulcer is versus an arterial ulcer and how the combination of the two in a leg wound could be a very, very bad thing. Who knew? We celebrated my birthday at The Prime Rib, where a lovely waitress carded me for my wine (bless you) and brought out a tall glass of my favorite TPR dessert - raspberries and Russian cream - with a cheery candle on top. My wish had already been granted; it was a happy, content girl who blew out that candle.
Wednesday saw me driving a rented, shiny new 2011 Chevy Cruze to Laramie for a (too-short) rendezvous with as many of my friends as I could corral into a 30-hour window. Mission: Accomplished. EM&RM (now in the throes of packing to move - closer to me!) played generous hosts, complete with Starbucks coffee (bless you! thank you!) and helped me have a wonderful homecoming. We reconnected with the Boomerang, with downtown Laramie, with the Chocolate Cellar, with Washington Park, with Altitude, with the Front Street Tavern and with The Alibi (sans Amanda and her to-die-for vodka sours); with EN and AS, with JM and JW. Found out soon-to-come wedding congratulations were in order for JW and B. Lunch today with Amanda, JM and EM. The UW Bookstore for some 307 goodies to keep my Poke Pride on all my Washington premises. Dumpster-diving with EM for boxes for her move. A last cup of coffee with JM.
Tonight's drive back to Gillette was done in between massive thunderstorm cells, with the giant piles of ominous black clouds moving on either side of me, flashing in ther black depths, glowing pink underneath with an eerie, stormy light. Despite the havoc that storms like that can wreak, I absolutely LOVE this time of summer in Wyoming. Yes, that was me, snapping pictures out my window as I barreled down Highway 287, Highway 34, Interstate 25 and Highway 59. A stormy summer afternoon on the plains; the blazing sunsets that peek beneath the clouds before they dip beneath the horizon ... no matter how much I love my new cloud forest home, my heart aches sometimes for those wide-open spaces. The curves of the prairie surrounding the highways I traveled all those years correspond with the geography of my soul.
While in the sunny, windy confines of Laramie's downtown streets, JM had looked at the clouds hovering over Cheyenne and said: "You know, it's June. This is Laramie. It COULD snow."
*sigh*
Just south of Wright, I was horrified to see a thick layer of white lining the sides of the highway. Thanks, J. Thanks.
A few miles later, I was horrified to see something else: A car, headlights on, way down in a ditch, tires covered over by the white stuff.
Past experience taught me that you're lucky if anyone stops to help you if you've had an accident. So I stopped. I'd been there - literally. When I was 18, KJW and I hit black ice at 75 mph with the cruise control on. We're blessed to still be alive and having new adventures.
I was already shaking when I pulled the car over, put it in park, hit the hazard lights and grabbed my phone. I found out I can run over (what I thought was) snow and down a pretty steep embankment - and I can run fast.
The window was down a little bit when I got to the car, and there was a man (awake) in the driver's seat, smirking a little when I yelled "Oh, my God! Are you OK?"
Yes. He was fine. He'd been sitting there for TWO HOURS, waiting for a tow truck. What the hell had happened? Hail. All of it was hail. I scooped up a handful of ice pellets which, in the course of two hours, still hadn't melted. If I hadn't opted for that last cup of coffee with JM, I'd have been in a ditch, too. No doubt about it. I had been booking it back north to return the rental car on time. And I wouldn't have made it.
Now you know - coffee can save your life. And your rental car.
No, he didn't need a ride anywhere. No, he didn't need anyone to wait with him 'til the tow truck came. No, I didn't need to call 911. Yes, I could go on my way.
"But be super-careful," he said. "The highway patrolman who stopped here earlier told me there was an eight-car accident up the road there where you're going. Be careful."
I was super-careful, and I didn't see any traces of the eight-car accident. I did pass an intersection where the lights had been knocked out, and I went through a lot of lightning, and once I was in Gillette, the rain started to come down in buckets, but ... no hail. No tornadoes. No ditches for me. And I returned the car with three whole minutes to spare. I'm THAT amazing.
Got a couple more days of hometown goodness left before I hop a plane back to the PNW. As I noted to EM, I miss Wyoming - a lot - sometimes. Which is good; I'd hate to think I'd spent so much of my life in a place I wasn't going to miss later. But I don't feel like I have to live here. And that's good, too. It indicates to me that I'm in a place that's good for me for the most part. I did the right thing. I'm doing all right.
Life is good.
And right now, life is on vacation.
Hurah!
