Field Week of Doom Part 4: Back in Reverse

Before I could talk with the Ranger, I had to go back to deal with the truck.  One of the fire guys drove me back to the scene.  He said, "You haven't been having a very good week, have you?" And that's when I was sure that everyone knew all about our adventures that week.  Fabulous.

When we got back, the cops had already shown up and were surrounding our truck with their lights flashing.  We went on into town to talk to the mechanics.  I think this is actually the point when I found out about the tow truck from Luna.  Later, I would find out that the mechanics they were sending it to were also in Luna.  I still don't fully understand this considering there was a shop in Reserve. And also, Luna is tiny.  There's not much there. At all.

But, oh well.  We went back to pick up Egghead and back drove up to the station.  Again.  We found some people who called my boss, who was on the fire in AZ, on his cell phone and told him to call me back on my phone.  Ugh.  I did NOT want to talk to him.  Meanwhile, the Ranger told Egghead and me to come with him into the conference room and explain what happened.  I started to give my account, just the basics, and Egghead kept cutting in with a whole bunch of unnecessary details that made us look even worse.  He was seriously getting on my nerves.

While we were talking, my boss called me.  He didn't sound super angry but I honestly can never tell with him.  He always sounds the same.  He gave me some phone numbers, for the fleet manager and some other people I needed to contact concerning truck repairs.  And more important to me at the time -- how we were going to get back to Albuquerque. 

At about this time, the tow truck had gotten our truck to the ranger station.  So we took all of our stuff out of it and it headed off to Luna.  I went back in the office to make a few phone calls.  I figured out a bit of information about the truck repairs but still hadn't figured out a way to get us back.  It was already getting close to 5 pm.  It looked like we would be spending the night in Reserve.

In the previous summers, I stayed at a hotel in Reserve called the Rode Inn.  Last December, it burned down.  It's actually pretty funny to see, because they landscaped the whole surrounding area really nicely and in the middle there's a crappy looking burned down hotel. But anyway, obviously that wasn't an option.  Firefighters were camped out in the fairgrounds so there wasn't much room for us there.  They decided to let us camp out in some guy's yard, just up the hill from the ranger station. 

A firefighter (one of the guys who pulled us out the first night we got stuck) drove us up with our stuff to our new campsite.  He told us we could walk into town in about 20 minutes and go to the restaurants there.  I hadn't thought of that, but it seemed a heck of a lot better than eating a peach and dry cereal for dinner.

Egghead wanted to put up his tent first, so I did the same.  I really shouldn't have even bothered.  I had the worst time trying to put it up.  It was really windy up on the hill and the tent wouldn't stay down long enough to even get the stakes in.  I ended up losing one in the process, which annoys me very much.  I was getting really frustrated and finally just ended up throwing all my stuff in the tent to hold it down.  We had exactly 20 minutes to get down to the restaurant before it closed so I told Egghead I was leaving and took off, whether he was ready or not.

We made it down there with about 5 minutes to spare.  Dinner was good but there was way too much food and I couldn't eat it all.  I ended up wasting a whole bunch because there was no place for me to store it.  That makes me feel bad, but what else could I have done?  I don't generally like taking leftovers from that restaurant anyway because that's how I got food poisoning last summer.

We were allowed to use the bathroom in the guy's house so I did that and then went back outside.  It looked like the house was being remodeled.   There was nothing in it, really.  Outside, it was starting to get dark so I sat on the ground for a while looking up at the stars as they came out, thinking about things.  It was the first time in a long time that I had felt completely calm, that I had done everything I could do, and I liked that feeling a lot.  I wanted to hold onto it as long as I could.  Egghead stayed in the house for a really long time for some reason, which I thought was weird, but I was glad he didn't come out and interrupt me.  It was nice to just be alone for a while.