a jeep experience

May 15, NM: Driving someone else's jeep through Ice Canyon without headlights was an experience I have no wish to repeat! After our shift at the Roadhouse last Sunday, Pat announced that I had to drive her jeep home: 19 miles down the dirt road called the General American. I usually sleep all the way home! She would be driving the welding truck pulling a trailer load of hay bales for the horses.
Things were fine while we were on the highway but once we hit the rutted dirt road my bladder began to protest all the tea that I had drunk that day. As I wrenched the steering wheel from side to side to avoid the deepest potholes, slowing to first gear over the cattle guards, I kept telling myself that I could hold on till we hit the half-way mark at the pond. When I hit the horn repeatedly with no response from Pat except a speeding up in the fading light, I began to get really concerned. I had to drive faster & more aggressively than I really wanted to just to keep her dust in sight. I couldn't afford to lose sight of her as there are many forks in the road through the mesas and it's easy to get lost.
My bladder concerns were shortly forgotten as I realized that although I could turn the wipers and washer on, I couldn't find the headlight switch. My vision was fading with the daylight. Pat was continuing to drive fairly fast without headlights, I was sure that she was part owl. Just as I was about to stop because I could no longer safely drive in the twilight to keep up with her (or ignore my bladder issue), she pulled to the side of the road and ran over to the Jeep saying "I have no headlights, I've been driving as fast as I can to get home before dark but now I need you to drive first with your lights on to show me the way!" just as I was saying: "I have to go to the toilet and I can't find your headlight switch!"
Well, after answering nature's call and getting Pat to turn the Jeep's headlights on, we were off again with me in the lead, at a much slower pace needless to say. Just as I turned the corner into the steepest & most dangerous part of the drive, Ice Canyon, my headlights went out! I hit the brakes to a complete stop & they came on again! I started forward & they went off again. I felt like they were on an automatic flash mode, on and off every few seconds. Luckily there was moonlight & I could see the road fairly well when the light went out but then I would be momentarily blinded as they continued to flash on & off all the way down into the Largo and home. I could only see Pat's truck as a dark looming shape behind me.
As we hit the final turn into the school driveway, the back window & door opened on the Jeep & swung upwards & outwards respectively. I stopped the Jeep, turned off the engine & refused to drive it any further!

channeling Rita-Mae

May 07, NM: John & Pat bought a cafe last year, The Navajo City Roadhouse, which is about 1&1/2 hour drive from here. Pat works there on Sundays & I go to help her & keep her company. When I was here last year and first worked at the cafe, I wrote on Pat's blog as Rita-Mae, the waitress with a heart of gold and a chest to carry it. So, I've felt like a Rita-Mae ever since.
I have worked as a waitress before, all during high school, & it quickly comes back. I'm a little slow on the cash register but all the customers (99.9% male) are very patient with me. I've had one proposal, not sure of what but he kept saying: "I'm single & I own my own house, a really nice house". He never actually asked me out on a date, sounded more like he was asking me to move in with him! Not sure what a date might comprise of as I live 30 miles off the main road down a bumpy,often impassable and always impossible, dirt road! Apparently single Caucasian women weighing less than 200 lbs are a rarity in these parts and clean ones without facial hair are even rarer.
We serve mostly New Mexican cuisine - everything with chiles on it. The NM State question is red or green, meaning how do you want your chile sauce? The special is a huge hamburger called the "Roadkill" and it takes a big man to order one & a bigger one to actually eat it. Our best seller is the take-out burrito with salsa sauce, I sell a lot of them at under $4.00 a piece. Everyone down here drinks gallons of iced tea with scoopfuls of sugar in their glasses. Very little coffee or hot tea!
The customers are oil field workers who spend all day in their truck driving from rig to rig to service them or they stay on-site for 10-14 hours at a time with no one else around so they really appreciate having someone to talk to. The shy ones are my favourite, they act like no one has ever been interested enough in them before to ask them what they are doing out there on the rig. They act all embarrassed and mumble their replies. But I love it here!

April in Largo Canyon

April 07, NM: Back in the Largo again.... Weather hot and sunny, cold at night. Learning new skills like spreading compost over a 2500 sq' area, levelling it by pulling a section of chain link fence over it, seeding it by handfuls tossed into the wind, then covering seeds by pulling afore-mentioned fence piece again. Front area looks great & just as we finished seeding (after 3 days of moving compost and spreading with a rake), it rained. Perfect, we should have little green grass shoots coming up in a few days, if we can keep the donkeys off the area.
There is a mule here called Chester & he is quite ornery but incredibly clever-he opens the stall gates with his lips/nose/teeth and escapes, often taking the rest of the herd with him. Luckily the perimeter of the property is fenced. Chester has managed to escape his pen every day I've been here. Today I was able to close his gate behind him, keeping the rest inside as I was in the stalls mucking them out. Not as bad as it sounds, the horses and donkeys find me quite fascinating and it's more of a problem trying to work around them than anything else.
Paisley is not quite ready for me to practice riding on, so I've been practicing mounting and emergency dis-mounting and rein controls on a really sweet little Hinny (donkey mother,/horse father) named Cracker Jo. He is more my size as Paisley is so huge, I'd have to climb to the top rung of the fence to mount her and I'm sure I'd break a leg trying to dis-mount she's so far off the ground.
Sunday was my first stint as a waitress but as it was Easter Sunday there was very little custom. And everyone who did come in said: "Oh, You're the Canadian!" Guess it's good to be remembered. Getting used to "Yes, Ma'am" again.
Today weather is brisk with a totally wicked wind from the north running down the canyon...it's difficult to work outside but the sky is a brilliant blue with sunshine. I saw a blue heron at the pond yesterday, hoping it is nesting. The red-winged blackbirds aren't here, yet. The cowboy, Clay, has moved on to Arizona...guess there is some reason why his email address is "lostcowboy".