FOLIO OLIO: SOUTHERN UTAH

My foiling her more dastardly attempts to kill me, I am convinced that my wife has now decided to force me to eat myself into the grave. I have gained approximately 20 pounds and she continues to insist that we eat three large (and I might add expensive) meals a day. I tried hiding some of my portions in my napkins, but she is a very observant woman. I just finished a twelve pound Mexican meal and now, less than an hour later, we are planning breakfast. PLANNING BREAKFAST!!! I may have to purge myself after she falls asleep.

I have had several good ideas in my life. One of them was to load the coffee maker, coffee, sugar and creamer into a milk crate and load the milk crate into the truck prior to journey start. Now, every morning we have fresh brewed coffee without having to leave the room.

I finally convinced my wife to just wake up, pack the truck, then drink our second mug of coffee in the truck, while we travelled...you know...like normal people. My wife likes to wake up, check and respond to EVERY email, ad to and post her blog, make comments on scores of Facebook pages, all the while sipping on two or three huge mugs of coffee. But, surprisingly, I prevailed. The crux of my argument went something like this...Every minute we spend in the motel room in the morning is one minute longer I will have to drive before I can open my first beer. Yesterday, we left the room at 7am and we made such good time that we got to the only town with motels at 12:30. The problem with my plan was that no rooms would be available until 3pm. So, my wife decided it was time to have an after-lunch lunch, thus adding to my growing girth.

A funny thing happens when you travel like we do. The first thing to go is day of the week...it just doesn't matter. The next, mostly because of the multiple time zones and zigging over the lines, is that accurate timekeeping plays a minor part of your life. Then the whole notion of where you are on the face of the planet, which used to be a rather straightforward determinant, now baffles me. Right this minute, I have no idea where I am or when it is. Many times people (mostly waitresses, since we eat A LOT) ask me where I'm from. When I tell them, they always ask, "What are you doing way out here?" And I always whisper, "My wife is trying to kill me."

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I learned that I am in Utah. I know that there are many Mormons in Utah. I know that Mormons wear weird underwear. I can't stop thinking about it. I find myself staring at people and imagining them in that underwear. And then I laugh. And then they look at me. Then I have to begin coughing to veil my mockery. Sometimes I even feign phantom phlegm for the hard-sells.

(The phrase "feign phantom phlegm" was created exclusively for my friend, Kent Krell, who I hope enjoys reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it.)

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I am a napper. I have been taking naps at or near 2pm every day for twenty years. I have had one half of a nap since this journey began. The problem is that my noisy wife shares my motel room. I have, in an attempt to quell her noise making, actually discussed the ninja way of moving through one's environment. I demonstrated walking like a ninja. I have shown her how to close a door like a ninja, cough like a ninja and breathe like a ninja. But, alas, the woman will never, can never, and has no inclination to learn the ninja way. I have made less noise building a deck than she does reading a magazine. When this woman finishes reading a page of a magazine, she hurls it away as if disgusted with it..but being attached to the book, it doesn't flutter to the floor, but slams against the opposing pages and bounces back and requires ANOTHER powerful hurl to send it over to the other side. I contend that nap deprivation is yet another example of her strategy for my early demise.

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Miss Garmin (Fergie) is a hoot. How many times have you punched in your destination and heard "Turn left in 284 miles", then not hearing another word from her for hours and hours? Sometimes my wife makes me veer off the road for no other reason than to wake Fergie up, then in a sleepy voice she starts squawking directions to get us back on the plan, and she's always a little snippy after that. My wife is THAT cruel.

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I don't know if it's possible to OD on Pepto-Bismol, but if it is, then it is proof positive of my wife's plans for me not to come home alive. Signs of overuse are already evident. The plumber who came to fix our commode (again) said that I should consider using my stool as a building material. I told him to mind his own business, then got my laptop and let him watch me as I reported him to the Better Business Bureau for dispensing medical advice without a license. This seemed to upset the man very much and he began to rant in some Native American gibberish that not even the Nazis could decipher. I just hope he learned his lesson.

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Some of you may wonder why my wife would want to kill me.

The illustration to the left is one example of things that I do that she misunderstands. No matter how hard I try to convince her that including this image is just my way of educating fellow female travelers in the proper road side peeing technique, I am certain that she will become enraged. It's like I can never do anything right.

What a wonderful drive today. I could have stopped and taken thousands of pictures like the ones below. The land changed colors and topography around every turn as if a different creator had been given an allotted section and was asked to use some imagination. We both found it most impressive.

We even took some side trips to see some special stuff. We saw some petroglyphs but my camera didn't have the right lens to zoom in on them. My wife suggested visiting the Natural Bridges, which I must admit were impressive.

But as soon as I got out of the truck I realized what her true motives were.

This woman wanted me to walk downhill for MILES, only to have to walk UPHILL to get back to the truck. Diabolical.

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About every 50 or so miles there is one of these across the road.

It is a cattle guard. You see, ranches abut open range. The ranches have barbed wire around them...

...but a cow could just walk down the highway to get into the ranch or the ranchers cattle could just walk out. Believe it or not, cows will not cross a grate.