10/22-10/26: Judiciously Dawdling: the Mobile Retreat

Update: Just to let you all know, I'm back in Halifax, as you probably guessed by now. I got a case of positional dizziness due to long hours spent at the wheel and it's taken me about a week and a half to recover. So, I will finish up the blog so you'll know what happened.

October 22: After my stay in Raton, I headed out for Colorado, which is when I discovered I was only a few miles from a pass that had been snowed in the night before. I had hopes of staying at Dorje Khyung Dzong for four days.

DKD is a beautiful Shambhala buddhist retreat center in southern Colorado where I've done a retreat before. But, it was not to be. Partly I was worried about the snow and getting stuck and I wanted to get to Minneapolis by Friday evening to meet Randy, the other Clarence Darrow "expert," so to speak.

So I reluctantly wrote Melissa and said that I wouldn't be able to make it. I would have to do a "mobile retreat."

By this time I'd driven probably about 7,000 miles. There seems to be a wondrous joy in driving off in the morning knowing I won't be back that way for the foreseeable future. It is certainly a lesson in the truth of impermanence. In the most simplistic way, just the instant by instant changing of scene. Sometimes spotting a terrific photo opportunity and zip it's gone, or no, I could stop. Click.

Zip it's gone. Road work ahead. Fines will double. Overturned tractor trailer (that's road work?).

Like in mindfulness meditation where you come back to the breath in order to come back to the present, in mobile meditation practice, it's coming back to the road and panoramic awareness of the space and atmosphere. Sometimes there's a fierce joy to be found in the unconditional travel down the road.

Passion, aggression, and ignorance are to be found in plenty. Someone passing and then cutting back right in front, so I'd have to tailgate. Breath. Maybe I could catch up to that truck way up there. Breath. Spacing out, slowing down and getting passed on the right. Breath.

Desperately searching for a rest area. Road Work ahead. Closed. Next Rest Area 43 miles. Aggg. Doing what I can to not doze off.

My car doesn't turn on a dime, but a Toonie. It has a lot of momentum, gets between 24 and 29 mpg. Basically it's behaved well. Got the tires rotated in a small gas stop in Arizona. I have snow tires on it, so the tread wears more quickly.

So, I just swooped through snow covered southern Colorado. Thought about staying in Boulder, but no one really responded to my rather no doubt too subtle queries. Plus, I might get stuck snowbound. Bipped through Denver. Discovered that Wendy's seems the best of the burger chains -- so a few days I'd get a cheeseburger to eat in and a Mandarin Orange salad to go for the motel for dinner. Stopped in Fort Morgan on the plains past all trace of snow.

Next day, beeline for Nebraska. Decided to stop in North Platte. A kind of surprising town/city. In a quest for a lens cap, I found a pretty decent sushi place called North One, Suyin W. Groesbeck and Wilson Fang (a Chinese man who learned to make sushi in San Francisco). they are both fans of the internet and were quite pleased to let me take a pick and include them here.

They put a great package for me to take back to the Blue Spruce Motel, where I decided to stay (instead of at a Comfort Inn). The price was better (only $32, including tax). The proprietor was local. no question. He had on one of those round necked, sleeveless undershirts and was in the middle of a remodeling project. Pick-up trucks parked here and there. Didn't have a plastic glasses and I almost thought they didn't have towels, but finally found some by the sink in the bedroom area. Unfortunately the bedsheets were laundered in a very odiferous floral-smelling detergent that hadn't been rinsed out enough. But overall, it was good to buy local for a change. And the wireless worked. Called Zeb via skype and Stan on my cell phone to see how he was doing in terms of the fires (already reported).

Next stop was a Motel 6 in Avoca, Iowa heading into Minnesota. I wouldn't particularly recommend it. Small room. Smelled intense -- kind of like a variety of lysol. Wireless was promised but didn't work. "Must be something wrong with your computer." Right. It's only 2 months old.

These two pics give you an idea of Iowa. They were taken outside the Motel 6. Skies were clear as a bell, so I was fulfilling my desire to dance between the sunbeams and not get caught in a raging tornado storm. Quite flat, but interesting in a more subtle way than other vistas. Smells of cow manure indicating the passing of a cattle ranch. Lots of trailer trucks, got some good state shot glasses for my daughter, though I think she's stopped collecting them by now, with too much enthusiasm on my part.

Next Minnesota.