Today I scouted the Rock Springs location, and it’s lucky I did. Having never been here before, the maps gave me the wrong impression, and I tried to put a secret base smack dab in the middle of a recreation area. Not totally impossible, but not very believable either. When I drove into the BLM lands (that’s Bureau of Land Management), I realized something was wrong — there wasn’t a building of any kind in the whole area. Then the flying rock from a passing pickup gave my windshield a brand new star, about five inches by seven.
So, I drove around a bit and located a couple of candidates, and chose the location that best fit the events in the outline.
Then on down the road. Although, being within striking distance of Yellowstone made it very hard to drive west instead of north. I could have done it, but visiting my favorite places would have used up all the slack time in this trip, and I’ve already done the ‘visit Yellowstone for five hours’ thing, but that’s a story already in the archives, check 9/6/2000.
A couple of times today, I almost looked over to the passenger seat to point out a national wildlife refuge, or the wild horses tour, to Mary Ann, but of course, she isn’t with me on this trip. While I enjoy my home in Hutto, and while I need these trips alone for tactical and emotional reasons, I’m happiest on the road with Mary Ann.
But finally we get to the title. While driving on interstate 80, I suddenly realized my left shoe had gotten tangled up with the clutch. The shoelace had looped over the pedal. I could no longer move my foot around on top of the clutch. I’ve been driving long enough I had confident that I could get out of gear and coast to a stop if I needed to, but I wasn’t comfortable. There could be an emergency, and I wasn’t about the reach down to try to untangle the shoelace while driving. Remind me to tell you about the Post Office Crash some time.
So I slipped out of the shoe and pushed it to the side until I could reach the next Rest Area. It was a hot time for the stocking foot, but everything worked out as planned. Time to re-tie that shoelace a little tighter. It’s never worked right since that kitten got her teeth into it.