Anticipation (Cigar Smoke 6-12-08)

There aren’t too many things better than the anticipation of an adventure. (Oh sure, I anticipate dating a sex surrogate who has season seats in Section 112 for the Kings, but that’s just a false anticipation.) Getting ready for a trip is just plain old fun. The actual trips may be great or not so great, but the thinking about them ahead of time is always well worth the delusion.

I’m getting ready to go see my buddy, Vic Vieira, who lives on a ranch in Colorado. I’m taking Hadley, my 11-year-old Airedale, who is literally on his last legs. His legs are in pretty bad shape, but he just loves it out there in Hicksville. Once I actually said the word “Hicksville” while I was there and I learned the meaning of a new term — shotgun blast. But that’s another story. I kid the hicks.

I think this is probably Hadley’s last trip over there. The ranch is about 80 acres or 120 acres or 5,000 acres. I don’t know. It’s pretty big. And Hadley just loves to explore and sniff and pee and dig and run around. And Vic has a chicken coop (yes, Virginia, there are actual chicken coops) and Hadley turns into a chicken-killing machine when he smells that place. One time we went there and we hear this commotion and serious clucking and we see Hadley tearing into the chicken coop and he’s got fire in his gut and death in his eyes and a chicken in his mouth.

Hey, I felt bad for the chicken, but wow, that city-slicker dog had gotten in touch with his inner wolf and it was kind of primal, baby. Jeez. He ate that dang chicken. Feathers and all. I wasn’t gonna stop him. I’m dumb, but not that dumb.

I’m getting ahead of myself a little. (There’s a flash.) I was talking about the anticipation of the trip. Not the actual trip. So I am anticipating the kind of fun I have already related to you a little, and I go to Ralphs to get some stuff for the trip.

I’m at the check-out counter and I pay for my items and the helper-guy says, “Enjoy your hog pood and penis.” I kind of look at the checker and she has a quizzical look on her face, and she kind of nods her head towards the helper-guy. And I’m contemplating if I will enjoy my penis and my hog pood. And then I realize that Ralphs, to their credit, hires mentally challenged people to pack the groceries. And I realize that he slurred his words a bit and he meant dog food and peanuts. Not hog pood and penis.

But I didn’t want to offend him, so I said, “Thank you for your interest. I will enjoy my hog pood and penis. It was very thoughtful of you to have my welfare in mind.”

Well, now that I had my supplies, I was ready to get fully involved in the anticipating of the trip. And let me tell you, I anticipated my butt off. And with my butt, that’s a whole lot of anticipating. I thought about just getting on the road and heading out towards Palm Springs and seeing all those wind turbines spinning and then cruising past Joshua Tree and into the California desert with the wind in my hair — which is kind of tough without a convertible — and stopping at a Denny’s for some nice hog pood and relieving my peanuts.

And then I thought about going through Kingman and Flagstaff and other cool-sounding places and venturing into the northern Arizona desert and driving for, literally, hours without seeing a gas station or a cafe in 115-degree heat and then feeling the excitement of running across an Indian trading post in the middle of you-know-what Egypt.

And I thought about going in there to get an overpriced soft drink and being happy that there was overpriced anything. And I thought about seeing that old Indian guy in there, whose face you could make a saddle out of, who looked at me like I was Custer, and he would have spit on me but he wanted to save his spit to roll a ciggy. And I thought I’d probably buy some $14.95 Kachina doll so he would think I was really OK and evolved and that my ancestors weren’t cavalry officers. Yes, I anticipated all of that. As I said, I am an anticipator.

And then, because I was anticipating having hunger pangs, and I couldn’t keep anticipating about anticipating that I would be hungry on an empty stomach (an empty head, yes) I anticipated stopping at one of those little side-of-road semi-hogan-like places to get a couple of flatbread tacos. That charred bread and spiced-up coyote meat. And cilantro. With that red stuff. I think it’s the blood of an Englishman. Hadley and I love those suckers. Of course, he has his taco with, you guessed it, chicken.

And finally I anticipate rolling into Cortez, Colorado, and going out to Vic’s ranch, and driving down his dirt road and squishing a few cow pies and having him greet me with those seven words that have to come to define our 50-year-old friendship, “Did you bring the damn steaks, dickhead?”

Oh, it brings tears to my eyes. And then I anticipate having Davy Sanford, another great Humboldt buddy of mine, who has a farm nearby, come over with his two sons, Paul Bunyan and Bigfoot, because he heard the city-slicker butt-face who brings the steaks is in town. The warmth is just too much. I have to stop this anticipating. A man of my age, a man with only 7.9 years left, has to ration his anticipatory glands. I’ll try.

OK, one last anticipation. I think ahead and I know Vic and I will sit up on his great log deck overlooking the Mesa Ass Mountains and, yes, we will be sitting in old padded rocking chairs and puffing on a couple of bad-boy stogies and he will shoot at some raccoon or varmint 75 yards away with his 30-ought six rifle (I’m not making this up) and we will talk about life and love and enlarged prostates and we will acknowledge each other with a manly and rugged, yet non-Brokeback Mountain kind of love, which is accepted by most enlightened people nowadays, and he will lift his left butt cheek just slightly and say, “Pull my finger.”

I can hardly wait..