The Melancholy of Another Leaving

Cora and CJ were loaded and hauled away yesterday...

*** Cora and CJ... loaded and leaving :( ***

I got all loaded and hitched up this afternoon... and I'll roll away with the coming dawn.

***an empty corral is a lonesome thing***

With my round pen standng melancholy and empty I need to be gone from here.

Maybe I'll come back in the winter... we shall see.

No plans really past the next few weeks.

***The rig is loaded and hitched***

 Felt very off balance and strange last night. I saw the time and jumped up and was outside... heading over to feed before it registered that I didn't have that any more...

Just a few short weeks ago it was all so different... Just two days before I busted my shoulder up... The light after the latest storm was so bright and hopeful on the Chiricahuas... The horses were coming along so good... I was going to climb on Cora in the next couple of days... then WHAM!

***Just a month ago***

Here it is a month past that now... and past the transmission blow up... My Horses are gone and I'm hitched up again and rolling off into whatever comes...

Last nights sunset was so soft and quiet... the tears were running... I need to be away from here right now but I'll miss it... and all the hopes I had for this place.

I'm going up to a camp I use on the Tonto, and cool out a few days... then roll on way far north to Cheyenne. A bad place to be in February. There's a weather window I may just slide through... The VA is pulling me in for another Thing...

Last summer when I let them run their test... I knew... I KNEW it was a bad idea. It's messing with things that are better left alone. If it ain't broke don't fix it...  It's like I jumped out onto a slippery slope. Now I can't seem to get rid of doctors and mechanics... meh...

 I don't hear no fat lady singin'... so I guess it ain't over.

- Brian

Cowboy Choreographing...

When you're Camped out on the desert some things can be a bit of a dance to get accomplished. Never thought of my self as a dance instructor... but... that's kinda what this is. A half dozen moving parts that seem to want to go fourteen different directions.

Sort of like teaching an epileptic Octopus to dance.

The Truck needs to go to a shop in Wilcox to get the transmission swap done. The Horses need water. A rental car is reserved in Tucson... and the remanufactured tranny is up near Phoenix.

Me? I'm 35 miles or there-a-bouts outside of Wilcox...

It's like a giant jigsaw puzzle with pieces made of balsa wood that you have to shuffle around and hold in place while a gale force wind exposes the faults in your planning.

With a suggestion or two from some others I managed to find the car in Tucson. So... late Sunday I'll haul water and get all my troughs and jugs filled.

Then, Monday morning just after sunrise I'll drop the truck at the Wilcox shop to get things started. I've got a ride arranged that'll  gather me up for a ride to Tucson to pick up the rental car.

As soon as the busted transmission is pulled and the Buckeye shop calls me that the new machinery is ready I'll go back for the broke one in Wilcox. That gets hauled with me when I pick up its replacement... That saves the shipping back and forth (which fitting into my tight time frame was unavailable anyway) ... and also the $600 core charge the remanufacturer charges until they receive the core.

Then, hoping they get it all back together quickly, before the end of the week!... I'll roll by the shop and pay 'em for the work... then roll the rental car back to Tucson where they'll carry me to the bus station so I can ride the old fashioned way back to Wilcox to get my repaired truck.

Yeah, unlimited mileage rental cars and Greyhound busses can be blessings in disguise.

Another few days after that and the colts move along if that plan holds... and then I'll leave here for quite some time.

Honestly the thought of getting as far east/north as Missouri for what's left of the winter has little appeal... so it's likely I'll drag my feet some. There's a few soft camps here in Arizona where I could lay up in a decent situation with water and such... maybe get my head into doing some decent work on another book...

Have to get to doin' a good bit of work to repay the piper for this latest gypsy dance.

... At the least I can start cooling out from the trials of  whatever it is that's been whuppin' on me the past few months.

Duckin' an' Runnin'
- Brian

I've Heard It All Before...

I've heard all the cliches and seen all the memes... keep smiling, stay positive... think positive thoughts, maintain a proper attitude, keep you chin up, it's going to get better, look on the bright side... yadda yadda yadda...

Yeah... I won't run down the litany of the past__I don't know how many years. I can only tell you this; This old buster is used up, wore out, drained dry.

Layin' out here in the desert with a bum arm, thought I'd worked around the latest slap down one more time. The wing is healing if slowly. Cancelled the MRI due to research and the feeling it's healing well enough surgery can't be justified so cut out the expensive procedure. My research shows conservative treatment has outcomes pretty much equal to surgical anyway so I'm not going through that ordeal for questionable gain.

So... all's good and and moving along... right?

Not so fast. Got in the truck two afternoons ago and quickly found out__one__more__time__

It's a bad idea to start hanging an optimistic pretend smile on your face thinking it will "catch on"... It can always get worse.

WHAM! I was right. It just got worse.

December 2013 blew the transmission. Lost 5th gear. $2500 later it had a new transmission and clutch as well. So... having been built with parts that were redesigned to eliminate the "issue" and that "Have never failed yet"...  So that's one part we don't have to fret on! it's all good right?

Nope. Fifth gear blew out__Again.

This time of course I've no bike for transport while the truck is down... on top of nada left in the bank after multiple equipment failures, huge vet bills... yadda yadda yadda... So... working out the choreography to do a repair on borrowed money from a hundred miles out into far country... Maybe by this time next week THIS will be a bad memory... assuming that choreography is worked out...

A semi-plan is also working that should see the horses leave around the middle of the month... soon as they're gone I'll hitch up a hopefully successfully repaired old truck, and drift.

My daughter has a small place in/near the Ozarks that she's prodding me to come visit while I mend.

This chapter of my journey has caved in on me. With no useful alternatives in mind I'm thinking I just may do that into the early summer at least... see if things won't stabilize a mite. Maybe a fresh road will open up to me if I shut off the imagination for a while and just let it all ride.

Beyond that I won't plan... don't have the emotional energy to watch another plan get ground into dust.

There's an old joke; The Boss only hits you with what you can stand... so... either I'm one tough old bastard... or the Boss has really misjudged what he's working with. Either way, I'd appreciate it if he tested on somebody else for a bit.

The only other option that comes to mind is karma... The idea that karma, good or bad always catches up with you. Yeah well... if that's true it's not saying anything nice about this worn down gypsy.

- Brian