Monday, July 7. Day 8. Mountains of God.
Monday we had a pretty good day. Nothing too eventful either way. But, we did drive far down a few dirt roads to check a few water crossings. We had to go through a few gates which is always somewhat nerve-racking. There's always that chance that this piece of property is the one with the insane and angry land-owner who's going to come out with a gun to run us off. But that didn't happen Monday.
As we drove down the road, it seemed to go forever. We knew we were getting pretty far out from any main road and residential area. But our usual policy is to go until the road ends or until the pipeline crosses the road and there's no better way to get to where we need to be. As we drove north on this road, I happened to glance over my shoulder back to the east. Beauty as far as I could see. The road had taken us far into a small canyon with green valleys and rolling hills as far as we could see. And far to the east, just above the horizon, I noticed a cloud formation that stretched for miles. The clouds looked like the snow-capped peaks of some distant mountains. They were just high and far enough that the sky separating them from the earth was a deep blue hue. Though we had just come from there and I knew there was nothing that way but flat farm land, for a moment I thought I was seeing mountains that we'd missed somewhere. In that moment, I realized that the God that made the Rockies and the Himalayas made those sky mountains as well. They were His and all that was in them. On that winding dirt road in the middle of flatland central Nebraska I saw the mountains of God. They were beautiful. I wish you all could have seen them.
Tuesday, July 8. Day 9. I'll Take A Nice Big Helping of Frustration, Please.
Tuesday morning we left our hotel at our usual 9 a.m. We had spent the night in North Platte, NE and were around 15 miles due north of our line. We got to the line by 9:30 or so and then spent the next three hours of our day searching to find access to four or five crossings down in another canyon. We never got to a single one of them. I was as frustrated and angry as I've been since I got here. We attempted to drive down a field road around a farmers corn field. Half-way down the road we realized that the road, though it looked firm and well-surfaced, was actually mud. I think I said to myself, "This stuff is slick-as-snot." Or maybe I said something else and my brain has already edited itself in the meantime. Either way, this stuff was nasty and we did not need to be down the road. Luckily, we got to a high spot and were able to turn around and make our way out the same way we came in, but not without leaving our mark. I'm sure the farmer was happy when he saw the evidence. Finally, after 3 hours of trying we called those inaccessible and moved on. We made up for it that afternoon and by the end of the day we'd covered some 60 miles of line. That was the most we'd finished in a day so far. It felt good after the frustration of the morning. We called it a day and made our way to Ogallala to stay the night.
Wednesday, July 9. Day 10. A Home-Sick Day Off and An Afternoon of Pipeline Mapping.
I woke up yesterday feeling really down and homesick. We needed a day off pretty bad, but slowing down makes my mind crank up and I immediately started realizing how homesick I was. Being up here has been much better than I thought, but living hotel to hotel has grinded me pretty good and I wanted to go home. I missed Jen. And Aiden and Ella and Jessie Rose and Ainsley and Asher and Chiptole and church and Andrew and the rest of my friends and my bike and everything from home. On top of that, I'd looked at the rest of the line we had to cover and got really overwhelmed and worried that we might have a hard time with it all. I tried to finish up my Rich Mullins biography, but got restless doing that and decided to go try to find some detailed maps of the Colorado counties we'd be working through for the rest of the trip. I ended up finding an Ogallala history museum, a petrified wood gallery, a historic Boot Hill cemetery, and finally, the map I needed at the truck stop next to our hotel.
I spent the afternoon after lunch attempting to transpose our pipeline from the detailed alignment sheets we were given onto the county maps I had. It was actually a lot of fun and made the afternoon go pretty fast. It also made me realize that we could quite possibly be headed home by the middle or end of next week. That raised my spirits considerably and got me ready to go again. Jim and I went to dinner after that and then back to the hotel for the night.
Today, I hope we'll be able to finish up the third section we're covering. We have two pretty long spots that appear to be without road access so that may mean some pretty serious walking. One of them is just about 2 miles, but the other is about 5. I'd actually like to walk to 2 miles but I'm not so sure about the 5. I'll try to update this evening.
Colorado?
Posted by: thad | July 10, 2008 at 04:33 PM