This is an experience. A REEEEEEEEAL experience. In Eckhart Tolle's book, A New Earth, he says "If you think your enlightened, spend a week with your parents."
I'm not enlightened.
I'm currently sitting in a warm coffee shop in a cold town. A very small cold town. I'm in West Yellowstone, Montana. In one day I hit three states, Montana, Wyoming and Idaho, on a snowmobile. The next day I did one hundred and twenty miles through Yellowstone National Park. Although it's been a fun and adventurous vacation, it hasn't been the easiest one.
I'm on this trip with my father and his shriner buddies. They are all motorcycle escort guys (like my father), all republicans (like my father), and nothing like me (like my father). In fact, when my father found out that one of the men invited his wife, he wasn't happy. It was supposed to be a boy's trip. He came into the kitchen one evening as my mom and I were cleaning up after dinner (we cook AND we clean while my father watches fox news, he's a traditional type) and with a somber tone and sad face said, "Do ya'll want to go on the snowmobile trip to Montana with me?"My mom and I were flabbergasted. "Yes!" we replied.
"What happened? I thought it was an all guys trip?" I asked.
With the usual annoyed tone in his voice my father answered, "One of the other guys invited his wife so I figured I should invite ya'll."
We couldn't believe it. We'd never been invited on one of his guy trips before.
So here we are, day four of the guy trip and I'm feeling very mal-nurished. We spent day one and three riding through Yellowstone with a guide named Barney who my dad's friend Horace requested because he was his guide last year. This guy is the reason for my mal-nourishment. This guy is a grizzly bear of a man. He's about six foot four, three feet around in the mid-section, and has vericose veins popping out of his huge red cheeks. Needless to say, he's not the healthiest man I've ever met. This is who my dad's friends asked for dinner suggestions. I didn't quite realize the fate he set for my vacation until I sat down for dinner on night two and once again searched the menu for some sign of vegetable nourishment, but to no avail. Barney had once again sent us to a place where the only vegetarian item on the menu was an iceburg lettuce salad or a caesar salad. I asked the waitress if I could have the dinner salad with romaine and once again, same as the night before, I was shut down.
The next day we embarked on what should've been a one and a half hour ride to find the best cheeseburger joint on earth that you could only get to by snowmobile. It ended up taking four and half hours to find it because at every trail intersection all five men had to get off their snowmobiles, stare at the map, and try to figure out exactly where they were as my mom and I sat on our snowmobiles, silently staring at each other, our eyes saying it all, "Men."
"Crystal, you need to go ever there and look at the map. They're never gonna find this place," my mom pleaded.
None of us really minded the extra hours of travel this cheeseburger adventure took (even though I'm a "pescatarian" which means that I only eat stuff that swims in water or grows from the ground) because it was some of the most beautiful scenery any of us had ever seen. It was like something you'd imagine seeing on a sleigh ride through the north pole with Santa Claus. It was truly breathtaking. Faultless snow covered pines among sparkling crystal like hills edged the trail and winding rivers ran along side and under it. We even saw a moose which is very rare.
After acquiring directions from numerous strangers we finally found it, just as we were about to give up. The only vegetarian item on that menu was a grilled cheese and french fries. I ordered it with tomato to get at least some form of nutrients with it however small it may be. After we finished lunch the men all agreed that regardless of whether or not it was the best cheeseburger on earth, it was definitely the hardest cheeseburger to find. The group was worried about getting back. If we got lost again and took another four and a half hours to get back, we'd be riding in the dark. As the men were once again staring at the map and asking strangers what the quickest, easiest way to get back was, my mom finally lost her patience for their lack of intellect and suggested that they let me look at the map and guide them back. Surprisingly they were very willing to rid themselves of the map burden. Here I was. My chance to prove to them all that women are actually smart and capable beings. It was also my chance to pick up the pace a little. There were only a few of us that liked to ride fast. One man, Horace, acted like he liked it fast but every time we went over thirty miles per hour he complained. He was so bad that on his and my dad's motorcycle trip to the Artic Circle a year before, they fought like little girls over the pace my dad set for them, a mere sixty miles per hour on open road, but he wouldn't lead. He eventually had to call his son to come and pick him up in Tennessee.
I was by far the fastest rider and also the youngest by thirty years. I gave them no mercy though. I didn't take into account their aged bones and susceptibility to heart failure ONLY because of their machismo. No way was I going to let these guys continue to live with their false impression of the woman-being. It was on. I left those guys in my snow dust. On one straight away I got my beastly snow machine up to seventy miles per hour. At the end of the stretch there was a stop sign. I looked behind me to see them slowly catching up with me. Horace was so far behind that he was a little black dot on the snowscape. The path I was shone by the local man was not an easy path to follow. It crossed the highway and continued along it for awhile until suddenly we were riding perpendicular on a steep hill in soft snow and no trail could be seen. The fastest three of us went as far as we could until we reached a snow berm that blocked us from going any further. We turned around to see where the others were. They had stopped just a little ways back. I turned around to see what the problem was and just as I realized they were stuck I felt my snowmobile bog down in the soft snow as well. Five out of seven of us were stuck and it is no easy feat to dig an eight hundred pound snowmobile out of three feet of snow. As the men were still working on mobile one, I sat there wondering where I went wrong. I stared at the map and was exactly where I was supposed to be, so why wasn't there a trail? As I stood there confused and pondering our options - A. turn around and go back another twenty miles out of our way or, B. Call the snowmobile people to come and get us, I saw a burly, round man waddle his way across the highway. Thank god, it was a local. His first order of business was to show us idiots how to get a snowmobile out of three feet of snow.
"First clear the tracks of snow. Lift the back in, and you over there" pointing to me, "press the gas."
Second he asked us to get out of the way as he hopped on it and gunned it down the hill, through the field and back up to the highway without ever slowing down. He proceeded to help with the other machines and when that was done, he showed me the path. It turned out that the path had crossed the highway a little ways back, a minor detail the map had failed to display.
"Who ever drew this map didn't do a good job of it," he said.
He continued to give me very confusing directions and I half-heartedly told him I understood, only to ask him two more times to repeat the directions.
"Cross the highway, then cross it again and go between the stop sign and sub station [Like... a subway? Or a gas station... ? Or...?] then through the gate into the field and around that mountain toward the other big mountain then straight across to West Yellowstone."
I had my work cut out for me.
But I had to do it for woman-beings everywhere. I had to get us home.
We crossed the trail and somehow made it to the gate and into the field where the poles with the little orange triangles showed the way "around the mountain." Apparently I was going too fast because at one point I looked back and there were only three of us. I then saw my dad across the field and up a hill looking toward something else. I rode over there and it was my mom, stuck once again. She had lost site of everyone else and, in a panic, fled up a hill and off the trail... um, how was that supposed to help her catch up to us?
We dug her out and continued the mission of getting back before dark. Shortly after we reached an intersection with the first sign that had an arrow pointing toward West Yellowstone. The remainder of the fifteen miles back was extremely bumpy and curvy. I kept up my pace though because I was ready to get back. To my lack of surprise, Horace complained to my mother that I was going too fast. Remembering the stories of the Arctic Circle trip, I chose to ignore his complaints.
After a few sharp turns and lots of bumps I saw the last sign, "West Yellowstone 3 miles." I pictured the men patting me on the back, telling me what a great job I had done getting them home. The trip back had only taken an hour and a half of actual riding time.
When we got back to the large field that marked the entrance to West Yellowstone, we tested the machines to see just how fast they could go. I got mine over seventy and could have kept going, but didn't want to. At that speed it became harder and harder to hold on to the handle bars. The MEN got to about the same speed and made the same decision to not risk there life for another ten miles per hour.
We headed back to the rental shop and turned the machines in. No one said a word about the trip until our nightly "happy hour." The Iceburg and Whitebreads' version of happy hour was buying a twelver of bud light to drink in the lobby of the Kelly Inn (basically a Holiday Inn).
"Boy, that on there," pointing to me, "is a hard one to keep up with," Horace said. My dad chuckled a pridegful laugh, knowing full well that my love of speed was something he gave to me before birth. It was in our genes. He knew it. And I knew it. As much as he pretends to dislike my ways, he knows deep down that everything he dislikes in me, is him.
The others agreed. I was a fast one and their aching bones were not willing to try and keep up. Surprisingly, my mom and the oldest man in the group, Charley, who I LOVED, were the only two that didn't complain about my speed.
These were the only comments made. My mom later asked if any of the men thanked me for getting them home. I told her "no."
"That's men for you. That is just like them."
I didn't really think about it much until the next day. I overheard Horace telling Barney, "Crystal got us all kinds of lost yesterday."
"WHAT THE FUCK!" my insides screamed as my outter voice said, "I'm the one that got you home."
Barney knew. He said, "That's what we gotta do, call the women in to mop up our mess."
But Horace kept on. My blood was boiling.
"You got us all stuck and lost."
"No. You guys spent the entire morning lost. I was the one that got you home." I explained to him the complexities of the map vs the actual trail and he eventually said he was just kidding.
But he wasn't. I knew that little muthfucka was tryin to make me look bad and cover up his own inadequacies. He even brought it up again over our third meal of the week that consisted of iceburg, whitebread, and groundbeef: cheeseburgers, and anything else under the sun fried and overdone. I told him, "I am starting to get mad." I said it with a smile on my face, but just under the surface there was another old faithful that was about to explode: my temper. Thankfully someone changed the subject before I opened my can of woop-ass.
My mother and father later agreed in our hotel room that old Horace was definitely full of some... well, I won't go there.
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