Today I left the Victor Vortex and my friends up at the yurt. Although I miss everybody, it feels great to be back on the road again. After saying goodbye to everyone and having lunch at a casino with Phil, I once again started down Shelf Road. Phil walked with me for about a mile, but then he had to turn back and get ready for work. It wasn't that hard to say goodbye, because I know I will see him again someday. I walked about four miles and found a little creek flowing out of the mountains. I followed it upstream, past some "Restricted Area, Members Only" signs. I declared myself a member of the human race and found a beautiful little flat spot that I will call home tonight. It feels kind of strange to be all alone again.Shelf Road connects Cripple Creek to Canon City. It is about thirty-five miles long and all downhill. I will be walking from 9380 ft to 5300 ft, which means I will be leaving the mountains for a long, long time. I have four days worth of food, and the plan is to savor my last four days in the mountains. The scenery on my trip is about to drastically change. I first entered the rockies all the way back in Idaho last year. Now, America's heartland is about to be experienced. I look forward to it. The trip has become so much more about people than scenery for me. The sun is shining again today. Two days in a row, it's amazing. I'm sitting here waiting for my tent and sleeping bag to dry, and using the time to catch up on some writing. A disappointing part of my morning was washing my face in the little creek next to my campsite, only to look over and see a cow pie in the middle of it about 5 ft upstream. Good mornin'.Last night, my flashlight decided to stop working. I took it apart this morning, and the bulb is done. The next store is thirty miles away. There is a full moon at this time, but you can't count on clear skies. Most of the people that drive on Shelf road work at a casino in Cripple Creek and live in Canon City. If people stop and ask me if I need a ride, like they did yesterday, my response will be: "No. I'm walking across the country. Could I borrow a flashlight and return it to you when I reach Canon City?" At this point in my life, it wouldn't really surprise me at all if someone says, "ok." I just kind of expect it now. Kind of scary, huh?--just expecting strangers to be kind and to trust me.Two people stopped. The first guy was going the opposite direction and was just curious as to what I was doing--or as he put it, "What's the scoop, man? You just hiking?" He said that he would just give me a flashlight if he had one in his car. The other was an older couple on a motorcycle. Someone had told them that Shelf Road was paved just a mile outside of Cripple Creek. Ouch. I told them that they had been sadly misled. They were eight miles into it and probably still at least fifteen miles from pavement. I felt bad for them. Shelf Road is a mixture of dirt and gravel. There are lots of curves and steep downhills. They were bummed.So anyway, here I sit next to Fourmile Creek. It is probably around 8:00pm, and my stomach is full of tuna, rice, and tobasco. I just had a really cold, but exhilarating, bath in the creek. Today started out so good, and it turned into not so good. I woke up, dried and packed my things, and started walking down this beautiful canyon again. Then I came to the dreaded "shelf." The shelf section of shelf road can be best described as a ten mile "shelf" carved into the side of a mountain. The road still follows Fourmile Creek, but the shelf sits about 500 ft above the creek. This creates spectacular views; however, it makes it virtually impossible to get water. I knew it would be hard to carry enough water--especially in the heat today. I was right. I was trying to conserve my water while becoming increasingly dehydrated and miserable. I sat down in a little patch of shade. When you find shade on the shelf, you savor it a while. Along came a man named Dale on his bicycle. He stopped to talk, and I told him my dilemma. He told me that I had no dilemma, because his wife was behind him in their van that contained not only water, but water with ice. Yes. They were from Nebraska and on vacation. I could tell that he wanted to stay and talk. I could also tell that long-haired, stinky drifters made his wife feel uncomfortable, and that she was pressuring him to leave. He had read "A Walk Across America" and was fascinated with my trip. When she couldn't hear him, he said to me, "if mom ain't happy, nobody's happy," and they left. However, he gave me his e-mail address and wants me to keep in touch.I walked on with my precious ice water until I reached the outskirts of Canon City. I was on the border of BLM land and about to enter private land, so I stopped for the day. This was when I felt the plague of the gnats. I've never seen them quite so bad. As a constant cloud of them swarmed around my head, one decided that he wanted to explore my inner ear. It was horrible. I felt like I was going insane. I must have looked like I was possessed, because I was screaming, "Get Out!" while banging on my head and dunking it in the creek. I tried Q-tips--nothing worked. He just continued to dance on my eardrum. It was so loud and incredibly irritating. I finally just sat quietly and prayed that he would find his way out. About twenty minutes later, I think he did. Maybe he died in my ear and will remain there for years. I'm not really sure.. While all this was going on, a huge storm was brewing and it started to rain. I quickly threw all my stuff into my pack, crossed the stream, found a flat spot, and set up my tent in the rain. Because I didn't take care in packing, my stove punctured my water bottle. Now, everything I own is completely wet, it is raining really hard outside, and there are gnats in my tent. I'm just lying here in my tent, physically and emotionally exhausted, swatting at gnats and listening to lightning strike all around me. Tomorrow is another day.Things got much better. On Sunday, I was walking into Canon City when I met three boys swimming in the creek. After talking to one of the boy's mother (Caddy), she invited me to their house for lunch. I have been staying there with Caddy, her husband Adrian, their son Antaeus, her father Dave, and their foreign exchange student from Japan, Yuuki, since then. That night I was told that I was welcome to stay as long as I want.Caddy runs a mentoring program in Canon City for at-risk children. Since I was a case manager last year, we have had some really good conversations. On Monday morning, I went with her to work on a garden with teenagers who were completing community service hours. It was a good thing. The kids got to work in the garden while talking to people who care about them. The food that was grown went to Loaves and Fishes, an agency that helps feed people in the area. I was reminded of how much I enjoy that kind of work. Caddy is really doing something for the kids here. She is incredible.Today, Caddy went to a conference in Denver and gave me her car. I cooked dinner for her family, and we are going to a free concert in the park tonight. I will be working on a house with Dave for a few days. On Saturday we are having Thanksgiving dinner so that Yuuki can experience an American holiday, and I will probably hit the road on Monday. I'll write more about my new adopted family later. God continues to put the kindest, most amazing people in my path.Canon City has about 13,000 people, 38 churches and 15 bars. I'm still trying to figure out the math on that one. It is the county seat of Fremont County which has 13 prisons. Many years ago, someone toiled over the decision of which Colorado town would get the university and which town would get the prisons. The candidates were Boulder and Canon City. Obviously, Boulder got the university and Canon got the prisons. It is amazing how much one decision determined the fate of these two towns. There is a state prison right here in town. It is right across the street from the park I am sitting in now. I look at it and try to imagine living life in there. I can't fathom being told by a judge that I must spend the rest of my life in that building, and yet there are many people across the street who have experienced that moment. It really is interesting looking at it from here--makes a man value freedom. I think that if I was in there, everyday I would have to make a conscious decision whether to live another day or just tie one end of a bed sheet around my neck, the other end to a second story railing, and scream "goodbye cruel world" as I leaped. A very unfortunate thing happened on Friday. Adrian's younger brother was killed in a motorcycle accident in New York City. Adrian and Caddy flew out to New York this morning for the funeral. I am going to stay here in Canon City and take care of the kids until they return. I would do anything for this family. They have been so kind to me, and they have made me feel welcome from the moment I met them. Today, I am taking the boys on a field trip to Victor. I am looking forward to seeing my friends up there. Except for the news about Adrian's brother, the past week has been wonderful. Most of my mornings are spent drinking coffee and talking with Dave.Dave is sixty-two years old, a chronic traveler, an ex-professor of English, a published writer, and a hippy who never went yuppie. After receiving a M.F.A. from the University of Iowa, he began teaching at Michigan State. Five years later, it was 1969 and fashionable to "drop out." Dave watched as his best students began to "drop out," then he dropped out himself. Everyone was moving to Aspen and San Francisco, and Dave moved to Aspen. There he became good friends with Hunter S. Thompson and began to manage a horse and pack-mule operation. The man has had a most interesting life. Right now he is finishing up a series of three novels. They are fiction novels about the Lewis and Clark expedition, but written by the "grunts" or working men on the trip. I worked with Dave on Friday and Saturday. We replaced some 120-year-old cast iron plumbing with PVC pipe for a woman here in town. This involved breaking up the existing sidewalk, digging a trench deep enough to remove the old pipes, chiseling a hole through the basement wall, installing the new pipes, and then mixing concrete and pouring a new sidewalk. Dave is the handy man's handy man. I am coming to the realization that the jobs I have been working on this trip are all an opportunity to learn and become pretty handy myself. Handy man skills are extremely important to my journey at this point. They allow temporary work and quick cash (generally untouched by Uncle Sam) wherever I will go. Working with Dave was a pleasure. I love spending time with the man and dipping my cup into his vast reservoir of knowledge through experience.I have also been working with Caddy quite a bit. She runs a mentoring service for kids in Canon City. We take them bowling, swimming in the river, and do work in the garden and other community service projects. The pay is zero, but the rewards of talking and listening to kids and seeing that they are genuinely excited to see you are definitely there. We reached Cripple Creek, parked the car, had lunch, rode a donkey-pulled wagon down Main Street, went to a video arcade, and basically experienced the only entertainment available in Cripple Creek for persons under twenty-one. Then we drove to Victor. We went to see my friend Stan who is getting married August 30th and moving to Bermuda a couple weeks later. I enjoyed talking with Stan as the boys picked hops near Stan's house. Hops still grow wild in Victor. They serve as a living memorial to the gold miners that grew them a hundred years ago for home-made beer. Antaeus' father Adrian brews his own beer, so their harvest will be a present for him when he returns from New York. The Schwann's man came by for a delivery to the neighbors, so we enjoyed ice cream sandwiches, said goodbye to Stan, and went out to the yurt community.Phil and Dharma weren't home, but Catherine, Jeff and Alli were. The folks up there get a few lookie-loos in the summer who explore dirt roads and stumble upon their mountain community. I watched as they were examining our unfamiliar car approach when Alli, Catherine's thirteen-year-old daughter announced, "It's Tom, It's Tom." What a welcome (home, so to speak.) I showed Antaeus and Yuuki the yurt and the house that is being constructed with straw bales, but they were more interested in jumping on the trampoline and riding Alli's mini-motorbike around. We only stayed a couple of hours, though. I had to get back to Canon City and meet my friend Fred, who is passing through Colorado on his way from Minnesota to Tucson tonight. As we drove down Phantom Canyon to Canon City, Antaeus said, "Man, those people are really nice." All I could say was, "Yep, they sure are."When we got back to Canon City, instead of going home to check messages and find out exactly where Fred was staying, we cruised motel parking lots until we saw his 1969 volkswagon bug with Arizona license plates parked at the Canon City Motel. It was the fourth motel we checked. Fred was happy to see us. He gave me a hard time about not being back from Victor until 7pm, and then we went out to dinner. Later, Fred and I experienced a little slice of Canon City night life by attending Kate's karioki night. It was a night to be remembered all right. We laughed (and almost cried) to the sounds of tone-deaf locals enjoying a cherished moment in the limelight.Today we floated on inner-tubes down the Arkansas River, and I got "the idea" (I'll tell you just how great "the idea" was in a few weeks.) The idea is to get a tube for myself, one for my pack and float down the Arkansas River. It seems logical. The route I had chosen to walk (Highway 50) follows the Arkansas River all the way to Dodge City, Kansas, where the river bends north. There I plan to bear south to avoid cold weather. I need to stay close to the river for two reasons. One is for water access, the other is for tree cover that provides stealth camping. I know from growing up in Iowa that most trees in the Midwest are right next to the river. Why not just float down it for a while? I figure that I will meet nice folks that are swimming, fishing or just relaxing by the river. The river also flows right through all kinds of small towns, and besides, it sounds fun to me.Monday was great. We drove up Shelf Road to Cripple Creek, and I got to re-live the memories of an arduous hike two weeks ago while driving a car and listening to U2 on the CD player. It wasn't quite the same. We stopped at an old abandoned gold mine that I had spotted while walking down the shelf. I remember wanting to crawl under the chain-link fence marked "DANGER" and go into the mine, but at the time I was more interested in drinking water than exploring. Antaeus, being the twelve-year-old boy that he is said, "Dude, we've got to go in there." I agreed, and we went in. It was cold and damp, and there were little gold flakes glimmering all over the ground. A very cool experience, but one not enjoyed very long since I was responsible for the two kids that I gave permission to climb under a "DANGER" sign to enter an old abandoned mine. We continued up Shelf Road, and I showed them all the places I had camped and was attacked by bugs.
