Otto

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Hey Kids,I want to share my latest trip across the Southwest United States with you. This trip started in the Bay Area of California from which I went to Lake Tahoe followed by Lake Mono and into Northwestern Nevada. I then slithered Southward through top secret Areas 51 and 54. Kinda creepy knowing that you’re being observed by our government when you are literally in the middle of nowhere. Stranger still, it began hailing in the desert.I finally made it to Las Vegas where I enjoyed for the second time the “Shamanistic” show put on by the Blue Man Group. I then drove through the snow to Winters, Arizona. The hail and snow I encountered was unusual because it was still September. Naturally, I have packed only shorts. From Winters I drove to the Grand Canyon. On this route from Winters, you do not see the canyon until you are literally at the edge. Upon arrival, I jumped out of my truck, my jaw dropped in awe and I eventually uttered,“GGGGEEEEAAAAWWWWDDDD DDDDAAAAMMMMNNNN!!!!”The tourists there at this time were primarily from Japan and Europe with the exception of a middle-aged African American woman who had a major conniption fit. Clearly, we had both experienced our first sight of the canyon. Any wanna-be artist or graphic designer could take a life’s worth of lessons from the canyon with it’s full spectrum of colors and unending patterns that seamlessly metamorphosize right before your eyes. Well anyway, at the canyon’s edge it was a bit drafty as the air was refrigerated from the previous day’s snowstorm. Most of the tourists were clothed in parkas, toboggans and mukluks except for me of course who was in houndstooth linen shorts, polo shirt and tennis shoes. I know just enough German and understand just enough body language to decipher that both the German and Japanese kids thought I must be some strange man from the North Pole possibly Santa Claus.Just about then I noticed someone’s discarded burning cigarette beginning to roll back down the hill towards the historic inn constructed from lodgepole pine logs. Instinctively, I charged the cigarette with the intention of extinguishing it but unfortunately just as I neared it, I tripped on a pebble. The jolt from my stumble dislodged my Diet Dr. Pepper causing it cartwheel through the air and over the edge of the canyon. As luck would have it, my beverage landed on a small pile of loose rocks, about the size of cantaloupes, causing them to slide. One melon sized projectile landed near and spooked the pack mule named Helen Keller, which up to that point had been gently carrying a nervous tourist on the narrow switchback goat path down into the canyon. Needless to say this tourist and the rest of her mule-riding compatriots made it to the bottom of the canyon at a far greater rate of speed than anyone would have wanted.Meanwhile, the culprit runaway cigarette had come to rest at one of the log columns at the entrance of the lodge. As the fire risk was high that day, it didn’t take long for smoke to begin billowing from this ancient log. Thankfully, some Johnny-On-The-Spot Park Rangers quickly snuffed out the fire. However, despite my good intentions, the spotlight of guilt and banishment was shone directly on me. The Park Rangers kindly asked me to get the hell out of Dodge. At this point I thought to myself,“HOLY NEGRA MODELA. GIVE ME A FRICKIN' MARGARITA!”I jumped back into my pick-up truck and drove it down and across that damn canyon. I have no earthly idea how our pioneering ancestors did it in covered wagons because it’s a bitch. After all the excitement of my first trip to the Grand Canyon the beauty of the Navajo Painted Desert, the Federales outside of Amarillo, the thin ice in Dallas, the seventeen dollar Margarita (finally) in Austin and the hurricane in Kemah just seemed anticlimactic and should be saved for another story at another time.Talk To You Soon, Otto Toot