dog-roasting part of the day. The Lady Who Lives in the Phone suggested that the trail that we were going to hike/run would be 8 miles, but Mom and I were prepared for 10 just in case. We were finally figuring this road trip thing out…!
This trail went up a mountain that had almost no trees on it, and hardly any boulders even, so we could see the other mountains almost the whole time. These were calmer mountains than the ones further up in the sky, and as the sun came up behind the clouds it put stripes on the mountains in a way that looked more like something out of a movie than real life.
snow, and climbing on rocks, and waterfalls in the desert. You will never catch all the jackalopes in the desert, there will always be more. You can never run all the trails. Some of them you can’t get to because your car-house has to stop too far away. Some of them you can’t get to because they are too long, and if you try to do the whole thing YOU are the one who will be too far away from the car-house without supplies. Some trails that you think exist just don’t, but there are others that you find where you weren’t expecting one. It’s a great big world out there, and a dog could spend his whole life exploring it and never get to see all of it. That makes Mom anxious because she wants to see all the best things. But it makes me relax, because it means that I never have to finish and no matter how long I keep exploring, there will be more adventures.
It didn’t take long before it seemed pretty clear that we were going to win our race with the rain. The sun came back out, and the chill left the air. But with less than 2 miles to go back to the car-house, the wet made a surprise comeback. Suddenly, out of nowhere, Mom’s bladder started leaking all over her shorts and down her leg.
[Oscar, that’s not fair. You’re being deceptive. Tell them what really happened…] <~~That was Mom.
So it wasn’t the bladder inside of her body that failed, it was the bladder in her pack-pack that let go and dumped water down her back, butt and legs. We stopped and adjusted everything in the pack-pack, and she squeezed her shirt and flapped her shorts to try to dry it out, but there was nothing she could do about her socks and shoes.
After our run we consulted the Phone Witch and found out that it was going to snow 5-8 inches in the place where we planned to stop next. “Goody!!!” I said.
“I don’t think the car-house can handle driving those mountain roads in the snow…” Mom said, crushing my dreams. “And we don’t have chains.”
“Who needs chains?!” I said. “We’re free now, remember?”
“Sorry, Oscar. I think we should head to the coast instead.”
first morning of our trip, when the car-house wouldn’t start and Mom and I went to the pirate’s beach.
ponies ran thousands of miles to deliver messages, where the bunnies are famous for their running, where people worship mittens, and where the mountains are so high that their dirt turns white.
“I’m sad that it’s almost over,” she said. “We haven’t had all of the adventures yet. There’s still so much left to see and do.”
“But don’t you want to do those people things that you enjoy? Like dishwashers, showers, washing your hands after you use the bathroom, a tea kettle to boil your water, and reliable cell service?”
“True, I do love those things…”
“And guess what? I’m not done having birthdays. I plan to turn 4 1/2, and 5, and 6, and 7… and 84, and 85… We’ll still have plenty of adventures left for those birthdays too.”
“I guess you’re right…” Mom said. “It’ll be hard, but maybe I can find a job that will let me have more dog adventure time, even if it’s for less money. Now that I know it’s not scary to live like homeless people.”
“And Bingo was his name-o!” said the future Nobel prize winner of life coachery. I think that Mom had finally hit on the lesson that we’d come out here to learn.
-Oscar the Coach
#southernsierra #Dogrunning #roadtrip #dogtravel #Trailrunning #LakeIsabella
