Out of the number of maladies I’ve dealt with in my 8 years of chair-dom, I must attest that diarrhea, going on now 9 days, with an ugly, feverish buildup all the previous week, has been one of the most challenging.
I haven’t had to deal with the big D in those years save mild one-day things, but this one, and coupled with ongoing MRSA, and an open wound where the diarrhea, once several showers have been taken and the bandage has come off exposing the wound, now 3 months and counting, to the…flow of effluence emanating 5, 6, 7 times daily…
This one…is trying.
Gut extended like a Biafran, appetite then none, cold, effing cold, and it’s only 70’s. The wound, only days ago looking good, ain’t so lately. A parasite I picked up on the road and should be tested for and probably drugged? A gastrointestinal virus of some sort that just does it thing then moves on, drugs and treatments be damned? A spirit that doesn’t like me and has decided to make my autumn miserable?
It may be, and I’m going to the doc in about an hour, that the MRSA has gathered renewed strength due to my weakened GI tract, and is assailing me big-time. Seems a dormant boil exploded yesterday, and the misery I’m experiencing may be due to its return. Or, MRSA got into my GI tract and that’s what’s been taking me out of the game. Yesterday was one of the worst days I’ve experienced all year, and I slept poorly and am exhausted -and worthless- today.
I’m sharing this with you again with that sense of urgency Fall brings, a clutching of the chest in melancholic reflection remembering -and watching- Time, and its Seasons, pass; and from the idea that this misery I’m living is shared and in many cases oh, so more worse than my own state of decay, but bear with me, the description of the misery, the sitting in rank diarrhea and being unable to immediately clean oneself, like a baby in diapers yet plagued by the very adult awareness of knowing I’m sitting in shit, the agony of humiliation, perhaps not shared by all plegics, but felt deeply in this one, this description must be heard, and felt, too, by our nation, and our nation must respond.
Our nation must invest in curing its crippled. I’m sick of this condition, that’s why I’ve traveled about looking for any sort of relief, and probably will again. The condition is intolerable, yet it must be tolerated, accepted, dealt with; the condition eventually must return you to the world, or you rot.
In my travels now, I have seen much rot; now, my own. An end to this nightmarish shit, geez! Enough!
~
I thought I’d relate the story I mentioned about my lone meeting with Sen. Larry Craig. Not that it’s anything relevant to what’s going on recently, but he played a role and the story itself, one I’d almost forgotten, is really something…
If my memory serves, it was around this time of year back in1990 (or ‘89?). I’d gone up to the Sawtooth range in Idaho for a hare scrambles (cross country) race. Usually, we’d arrive a few days in advance of Sunday’s race to give us a chance to sort out carburetion and suspension and, if possible, to pre-run the course. Most races back then were anywhere from 10-50 mile loops run as many times as you could handle (usually, if 50 miles, 4, maybe 5 loops would be about it), and in this case, the organizers were allowing teams to pre-run a portion of the course on National Forest land; the remainder of the course, some 30 miles or so, was on private property but, given the chance to work out our suspension and figure out hot lines, we said, “Hell yeah!”
Figuring we’d get a leg up on everybody, we arrived a day earlier than the other teams, a Tuesday night, and decided we’d not only pre-run what we could, but spear off and make it a loop by taking some nearby single-track which would bring us back to the trucks/start area. I, along with teammates Mike and Russ, were joined by our guide, whose name I can’t recall (oh yeah, up in Idaho, and several other states out West, if you’re going trail-riding in unfamiliar areas, you have to have a guide, somebody who knows the systems). As we geared up that morning, a couple of journalists wanted to come along with us, and then, shit, look who’s here: one of the Suzuki pretty boys and his support-guy, “We’re gonna go, too!” making up a group of eight (thanks for inviting yourselves along, guys!). I’d ridden with one of the journalists, Tom, a decent rider, and was given the ‘OK’ on the other, and they knew it’d be race-pace then ‘stop-and-take-notes’ time on suspension, etc. We’d do 1, maybe 2 loops, then stop for the day.
If you’ve never seen them, the Sawtooths are absolutely awe-inspiring. Jutting, rocky crags of mountains, steep and angled, technical and rugged, with dense forests and springs and streams everywhere. Unreal riding, and back then, still widely open for racing and trail riding. We hit the race-portion first, which proved to be fast, dusty and hard to dial in suspension-wise due to all sorts of terrain changes: stiffen it up for the sand, or soften it up for rocks? The entire section was only 20 miles long, but we stopped 4, 5 times when we’d hit some nasty terrain and each of the racers would get several runs at that section -a 1st gear uphill, a section of switch-back, or one terrible downhill with bowling balls all over it- before we’d head up the trail. Not a lot of fun for the onlookers, but for guys dialing in bikes and figuring out lines, that sort of practice is invaluable.
As we’d left at first light and hadn’t spoken yet to anybody, we had no idea that, the night before, lightning strikes had plastered the Sawtooths, and wildfires had broken out. That early in the day, we couldn’t detect any smoke, and were focused anyway on the ride before us.
I trust you can see what’s coming.
We stopped for a break, where the race course entered private property, and to assess our gas tanks; low-ish on fuel (in those days, everybody carried a quart or more as a reserve on trail rides; you just never know), we decided we’d take the short loop back to the trucks, 25 miles or less, so the guide led the way up and around a section of simply breath-taking trail which rimmed the mountains and took us through some amazing vistas, deep wooded areas then suddenly you come upon a rise and into gentle, expansive aspen-lined bowls atop the ridges. Some damn tough technical riding blended with let-off-the-throttle coasting. You couldn’t ask for better riding.
It’s early afternoon, maybe 15 miles to go to the trucks, we’d zig-zagged our way up a nasty section of 1st gear switch-backs and had stopped along a spring to take a break. Everybody was in good spirits, no breakdowns or ‘failures of nerve’. I was playing with suspension, as usual, when several of us heard a thundering, not-of-this-world noise ahead and above us. It was like a huge, wide airplane descending on us. What the hell? I got on my bike and took off up the trail; within 100 yards, as I came around a bend, I saw a monstrous wall of flame coming right at me, moving! To my left and up the mountain I could see more flame in weird patterns coming down at me through the trees, fast. The wind had been whipping all day and had sent that fire line right into our faces. Son of a buck, we got trouble now…
I blazed it back to where everybody was sitting; by then, they’d figured out what was happening. Now what: we couldn’t back-trail it, as that would take us only closer to the line of flame; couldn’t go forward into the flame, so what do we do?
The guide jumped in. “We got no good trail, but if we ride this spring, it opens up about 100 yards down and then we can drop right into the river.” Man, no choice; the guide gassed it into the center of the spring and started down, Mike and I at his heels and everybody following; even with screaming 2-strokes, you could hear that fire roaring down upon us.
I know for a fact I did shit I would never have normally done getting down off that slope, leaping logs and boulders with no idea what was coming, adrenaline pumping, my throttle wide open and the rear brake baking under the strain. I’m not sure, maybe a thousand foot descent, maybe more; the first few yards were all dense woods, with fallen trees across the stream, the guide having trouble in places with the slick logs, everybody stacking up behind him at one point. Mike got off to help him bulldog the bike but he yelled at us, “Don’t wait for me, I’ll make it!“ Right ahead of us, though, the stream opened up and there was a bit of a deer trail you could kinda/sorta follow, so, with Mike in the lead, everybody wheel-to-wheel, we took the little trail, 2nd gear, then ripped it when there was open ground, keeping the stream in sight the whole way. Looked good for awhile, pretty open riding, then we hit another deep section of woods but by then you could see the river, so with a few more throttle blips over the tough stuff, we literally landed on the rocks and debris besides one of the forks of the Salmon River. The guide came sliding in behind us after about a minute while we stood taking in this beautiful place, gigantic rocks and outcroppings, crystal-clear, deep pools, waterfalls; gorgeous, but no time for sight-seeing!
With no real plan, as I was bucking my way downhill, I figured we’d hit the river, find a place to cross and ride out the fire; we’d be OK. Once down, though, things were not OK, as we’d come into a section of river with high outcroppings below us, and nowhere to go or cross upstream. Shit. As everybody piled up behind me and started shouting at each other, my mind raced: what to do? I dropped the bike and ran out to a rock in the river; downstream I saw, maybe a 50 yards or so, a long gravel bar. Hell, if we can get there, we can make it, maybe even cross over, but that would mean having to ride our bikes either through the river -not happening- or up and over a loose, steep section of dirt alongside the rock outcrop, maybe 30 yards up, with no trail.
No choice. I yelled at everybody, “There’s a gravel bar downstream, let’s get up over that rock, I’ll cut the trail!”
Not waiting for discourse -that fire was moving, man, I can still feel the thunder of it, the noise of trees exploding- I put it in gear and rode like a trials expert up that embankment, standing on the front wheel to keep it from pulling over. I wasn’t thinking, I was surviving; I knew and trusted my bike and my abilities, and I made it to the top of that rock, flipped the back wheel in the air and dove down the other side, angling straight at the river! The embankment was all loose dirt and I plowed down that hill towards the rocks below. Mike made it up behind me in one go, but Russ had to back down and try again -by then, my ‘trail’ was too loose, no traction left- and the guide took a couple attempts to get over; by the time he made it, you could see that flame bearing down on us, maybe 200 yards above.
There was no time for anything now; the other four guys, even the Suzie Q pretty boy, didn’t even try our route; I couldn’t see ‘em but Russ said, “They’re just standing in the river, looking up at the fire and yelling at each other.”
What a scene: I run to a rock and start shouting at the other four guys, “Get down here with us, forget the bikes, come on!“ and Mike’s yelling at Russ and the guide, “Get the bikes onto the gravel bar!” Water wasn’t too deep and we crossed over and ran those bikes out as far as we could into the river and buried the front wheels in the water; maybe we were far enough away, maybe 20 yards into the river, so the heat wouldn’t melt everything, including us. I look up and there’s the journalists rolling down the rapids towards us. And in one of the funniest-odd scenes I’ve encountered, behind them and hoisting a yellow bike on their arms, were the Suzuki guys carrying a bike into the center of the river, where a flat-ish rock sat. Yep, in water up to their necks, they brought that bike to the rock and then stood it up. I’ll never forget that scene: yellow race Suzuki bare inches above the water line in a breath-taking canyon all by itself. Looked like it was sitting on water. Great shot for the ad department.
Suzuki guys had no time for the other bike, that fire was coming and they knew it, so they swam downstream to us. Our guide had brought rope and several back-country survival pieces, thankfully, including a thin canvas tarp which we soaked and dropped over the back of the bikes to keep them from melting, the rope we strung off a bike frame and had everybody get into the water as deep as they could, ‘cause here comes that fire!
“Get into the water, hang onto that rope and keep your helmets on!”
And here it came, geez! It was the noise I’d say that was most frightening, a roar that was unearthly, almost demonic. Even with my head in helmet totally submerged, I could hear that thundering beast. We hung onto that rope and lay there floating in a pool, partially-defended by a rock that kept some of the intense heat off us and the bikes. I’d say we lay there in the water maybe two hours, hell, maybe more; the fire came blasting down at us, in places right up to the river bank, the wind whipping it to fury. Coming up for air, I’d take longer peeks every now and then, fire engulfing the hillside, logs and trees on fire and rolling down all around us.
The leading edge passed by us quickly, the wind beginning to die down, but those huge trees, and all that underbrush, just burned forever. Geez, it was hot, you poke your head up for a breath and nearly scorch yourself, even at water’s edge. Throughout the ordeal, Mike got out and sank that canvas in the water and tossed it on the bikes; it helped, too, for when the flames and heat had died enough to stand, Mike and I exhorting everybody it was OK to get up (one of the journalists just would not move, though; thought maybe he’d drowned but nope, just spooked), first thing Mike does is check on the bikes, “Hey, only the fenders melted!” Man, did we get lucky; lost some of our seats and a lot of the backside plastic we just cut off, couple grips melted, but the heat didn’t get to the vitals; whew, major victory!
It was an odd moment then; as each of us came out of our daze and recovered our senses, the feeling of relief was intense, people just laid on their backs in the river and splashed, couple guys stripped off their gear, Mike’s shouting, his middle finger extended, “You tried, motherfucker, but you didn’t beat us!” Weird fortune, too: the fire hadn’t crossed the river where we were at, but you could see it way upstream, heading fast, smoke and ash falling everywhere. It was late afternoon, sun was behind the mountains but obviously still hot out; guys were stripped of their gear, Russ is swimming, ducking under floating trees, having fun, “I love this river!” and as usual, Mr. What‘s Next, I’m trying to figure out what the hell we’re going to do now. Suzuki guys made a journey up to the bikes and came back with the news: melt-ation city, even the bike in the river was cooked, and the three on the shore hadn’t made it (they should’ve dumped them in the water but, hell, who’s thinking clearly when a forest fire’s on your ass?).
We’re all standing on the gravel bar, coming to our senses, when the wind really picks up, just blows through that canyon. Everything changed; the air got clearer, you could see the charred hills and the embers everywhere, the river’s full of floating, burning debris, logs, trees, and it’s suddenly cold. Went from hot to cold like that!
In one of the funniest scenes I can remember in my riding career, we’re all standing there looking about, when I turn to one of the journalists and notice he’s shaking like a leaf, fully clothed and dripping wet. I say, “You’re freezing your ass off!” and he goes, “Yeah, maybe we should make a fire,” and right then, as if all our heads were joined together, we all turned to the river to see a smoking, still-burning tree floating by us, feet away. Maybe it was having just escaped death, maybe it was actually funny, but everybody burst out in the most side-splitting laughter I have ever experienced, we just let loose, guys falling on the ground, crying from the comic relief. Mike just died, he laughed and kept coughing, “Maybe we should make a fire!”
So we did, Mike’s laughing but with his soaking gloves, he grabbed a tree branch and pulled that burning tree in to shore, couple guys grabbed debris and started piling it on and, soon, we had one hell of a fire going, my word! Darkness began to set and guys started drying clothes and taking inventory; we laid the canvas down so you had some place to stand while the clothes dried (another funny scene: a bunch of guys standing around on a little square of canvas in jockstraps and riding boots, all huddled together) and I told everybody to get out all their food and water and whatever else they had, we were going to wait it out and try our luck in the morning.
Oh no, not the Suzuki guys, though. “Lemme take a bike and I’ll ride outta here now!” Mr. Hotshot goes, a statement met with much disagreement, I’ll tell ya! Not only was it near-dark, but it would mean having to get the bike across the river then conducting a mad attempt to climb that hill in the dark; not happening, but we argued for a long time, back and forth. I won the day in the end; we’d have two guys go out at first light, not at night.
Finally agreed (you’re wondering how Sen. Craig fits into the story, eh? Hang on), and with night falling and little fires burning all around, we settled in to our ‘feast’. And hey, for an impromptu pre-race/trail ride, we had quite a kitchen along with us: granola and fruit bars, water, jerky, candy, couple sandwiches, 2 cans of sardines and 2 packs of crackers, plus Russ’s flask of whiskey and a few other tidbits. The sardines and crackers were my contribution; usually when I went for a pre-run, and always when I raced, I’d use my butt bag with tools-only plus a couple edibles but, for whatever reasons, Pia had given me my trail bag in the morning and I hadn’t thought twice; good thing she did, ‘cause I always had food in there, pint of water, plus several cigars and yes, a small amount of herb, along with flashlight and some survival gear (and her picture; couldn’t survive without that!). You ask why I carried so much stuff? Well, when trail riding in the places I used to go, things happen, you or somebody breaks down and I’ve spent hours -and on a couple occasions, an entire night- out there on the trail.
We had a feast, let me tell you; everybody did a shot of ‘ceremonial forest fire survival whiskey’, we all had enough to eat actually, and for several hours afterward, those of us not in shock sat around and rather enjoyed ourselves; sure, the cigars were a bit dry, but the food was edible and the smoke…divine! (One of the journalists, and both Suzuki guys, soon excluded themselves from our ‘party’, the journalist just exhausted, and the Suzuki guys…I guess we just weren’t ‘refined enough’ for them or whatever, they made a small camp away from ours, where they sat by themselves). Sitting before a monstrous fire of our making, we told stories/lies, dissed each other, and smoked away our fears.
(Later, I heard the S guys were really critical of our ‘smoking weed during a crisis’; ah, eff off! And let me make this point: I have never smoked during a ride, much less a race. Oh, afterwards, of course, that’s another story, or when broken down and having to wait it out, sure. But it’s suicide to ride stoned, and I never did. Not once.)
Mike, Russ and I took some time to fit the bikes for the morning, check the spark plugs and drain off water, dump in whatever gas we had, all that, and the guide went off several times to assess the fire and look for a route out. None of us thought there’d be anybody coming for us; oh, they’d surely know we were near or even in the fire, especially when we didn’t return (geez, my heart bled for my worried wife), but we all knew we’d be getting out ourselves, unaided. Still, spirits were high, we’d survived and now it was just a matter of waiting it out.
…Maybe 3 in the morning, Russ and I are still up bullshitting, when we hear a roar, similar to what we heard earlier, coming upstream and at us. What the…? The fire, again? We got to our feet, the sound drawing nearer…only to see a helicopter with lights on coming at us, 100 yards above the water. Below it swung a water basket for forest fires, and yes, wouldn’t you just know it but as it nears us -guys are getting to their feet, “Hey, they’ve found us!”- my elation and relief turns to horror. I say to Mike, “They don’t even know we’re in here, that copter/
Yep, came over us and dropped its 500 gallons on our gravel bar with blazing fire!
No shit, Sherlock, we could see that guy bearing down on the fire and then whiiiish! down came the water. Now, in typical government-style, the guy completely missed our fire, the water landing out in the river harmlessly, the copter going right up river. Guys are shouting as it passes, but Mike was head’s up: he gets on his bike, no helmet, no gloves, no shirt, and starts exploding that gravel bar, I mean he tore it to pieces, headlight bouncing around the canyon, rock and sand flying everywhere, guys screaming at him, “Mike, what the eff are you doin’?” Mike’s doing mad circles so the pilot can figure out it’s US down here, leaping off that rock and generally creating quite a scene; mind you, he’s doing this on river rocks, all of ‘em rounded and smooth. You simply can’t ride on marbles, you’re constantly falling over, no balance, but there’s Mike, oblivious to what he can’t do, and riding like a god.
Downriver comes the copter, the guy finally figuring out it was PEOPLE down there; he hovers over the gravel bar, Mike’s still spinning circles, and without a wave or any expression -you could see the guy’s face in the firelight- he just takes off and leaves us.
That was it, everybody’s awake now and shouting, Suzuki guys are adamant, “Give us the bikes and we’ll leave now!” and we’re goin’, “You guys are idiots, they know we’re here and they’ll be here in the morning!” “No, it’ll take a day or more, we’ll find a way out and then bring back help!” and back and forth it went. Finally Russ and the guide agree to give up their bikes, and the S guys, with some help, manage to bull-dog the bikes across the river and begin their idiotic assault. Yeah, idiotic; with the firelight, you could see uphill at best 100 yards, after that it was pitch-black and the lights on our bikes little more than cosmetic. But these guys were determined, so up they go…only to stall, kick, go 5 yards, stall, kick, 10 yards, oops, fall back 20…
For the next two or three hours, all you could hear was Russ’s race-prepped, lovingly-babied bike, and a decent if ancient Husky the guide had, being shredded by those two hacks. Nobody got any sleep, all you could hear was the start-go-stop of 2-strokes trying to get up a hill they had no business attempting, especially in the dark. Oh, they eventually found the trail and were able to get back to the trucks, but they ran out of gas and had to push the bikes uphill then coast the downhills; took ‘em all morning. Ah, hell, the exercise was good for ‘em; mighta cooled their egos, too…
…I’m drowsing, it’s almost light, shadows beginning to form, when I hear another roar: more fire? No, another helicopter, this one coming right at us then hovering, drop lines falling and 2 guys in dark uniforms descending. Geez, we’re getting rescued. Not before or since have I been in a harness like that, an odd experience as I was hoisted skyward. It was a strange, surreal feeling getting plucked to safety, then Mike yelling, “What about the bikes?” and one of the rescue guys going, “Leave ‘em for the next fire.”
On the ride out, we learned the extent of the fire, and who had decided to send rescue when they did: Senator Larry Craig, when he first learned we’d been found. Craig himself was at the staging area, had been since the previous day (he owned some remote vacation property/ranch in the area, which we learned got mowed down by the blaze)when we’d gone missing, and was one of the first to greet us as we came off the copter. And here’s the deal: this was not some publicity-garnishing event for his re-election, some staged moment to make him look good. There were no media at all at the staging area. Craig shook hands with each of us, patted me on the back and brought us into a large tent, where medical people checked us out and we began the return to normalization. Craig wanted to hear about what we’d experienced, all the details of our survival. He was sincere and we learned that, the fire still raging, the Forest Service wanted to wait before things died down, but Craig was insistent we be rescued the moment he got word of us.
I will never forget what was said, when it was time for the senator to head on out to wherever he was going. We were saying goodbyes and thank you’s, when Mike asked, “Senator, why the hell did you send a chopper into a fire area to rescue a bunch of dirt bikers?”
“Dirt bikers are some of our best citizens,” he smiled, shaking Mike’s hand, “too valuable to lose.”
Damn right, Senator, and thank you…
There’s a few more interesting details to the story, like my wife kicking my ass for days afterward (mixed with some sweet reunion lovemaking, to be sure) and our company sending a helicopter crew back into the river gorge with fires still smoking to retrieve our bikes, leaving the melted remains of the others, where I imagine they rest to this day. Race got canceled, obviously…
Russ was able to talk to the helicopter pilot who’d found us, and get this, the guy claimed he wasn’t dumping the water on us, he was signaling that he’d seen us! Uh, I think he was so locked in on dropping baskets on flames, and after however many hours of doing it, there was no way he knew it was us down there. Still, he claimed he saw us, so what the hell…
At any rate, that was my lone encounter with the senator. I will always carry fond memories of what he did for us, and will do my best to remember him as he was then, a man’s man, and not the character he has been portrayed of late.
Onward…
~
(Note: My book, ‘Scouring the globe for a cure: a disabled man’s experiences with stem cell treatment’
can be purchased at the following Web address:
www.booklocker.com/books/2857.html)
