The Strange, Long Tale of Mike and Tim
Part One: Into the Breach

Tim Gorman may never go camping again.

Last weekend, Tim and I spent two nights camping in the West Clear Creek Wilderness, part of the Coconino National Forest. It’s about 120 miles northeast of Phoenix -- Mogollon Rim country.

Tim works with me at a major newspaper in the arid American Southwest. I don’t want to say right out which publication because loyal reader and Jefferson County [N.Y.] Legislator Phil Reed recently informed me that his family computer cannot open my blog because it contains “highly inappropriate terms and objectionable content.” So I fear the newspaper would not care for any association with my modest and apparently vulgar Web postings.

At any rate, Tim went camping once many years ago, but has not logged much time in the wilds since then. I told him I planned on spending a couple of nights under the stars and he said he’d join me. Now my camping gear is, for the most part, 1,300 miles away at my home in Columbia, Mo. and Tim has no equipment. But I figured tramping across the backcountry of Arizona packing light would be fun, like something out of an Edward Abbey book.

I told Tim ours would be a Spartan Camping trip. No tent. No fancy backpacks. No hot food. No turning back. Just a sleeping bag, a bag full of peanuts and dried fruit and a 99-cent poncho.
Perhaps I romanticized this mode of camping. Perhaps I downplayed the potential discomfort. Or maybe Tim is just a little too trusting of a guy; a genuinely nice individual not used to interacting with the criminally insane.

He did say at one point during the trip, delirious from sleep deprivation, that he thought he’d have made a good priest and I see what he means. He’s one of these attentive, quiet trusting individuals who doesn’t have to try hard to behave like a good boy. But ultimately he’s no priest. He’s too thoughtful and has a zest for life not found in any man who purposefully avoids the vagina folds just because he thinks that’s what God wants.

Whoever’s to blame though, Tim ended up throwing his small amount of gear in the back of my SUV early Friday evening and we drove north up I-17 from Phoenix Arizona to the Camp Verde exit. We took Route 260 east to 87 north to forest route 3 to 81E. This road is NOT marked so you must map out the mileage or you will miss it.

Route 81 is a one-lane, out of the way dirt road so we whipped out the 24 ounce Mickey’s we bought at a gas station and rumbled along in near total darkness, sipping at our cheap beer and the closeness of our weekend wilderness adventure.

At the edges of the federal land, close to the road, car campers had set up a few separate bases of operation. We passed the Parson family reunion, the Sato reunion, the Wilson reunion and then the Parson reunion again. We were lost and feared we would have to ask the Parson Projects for directions.

Luckily, we came across a group of teenagers. A group not deterred by the social consequences of giving head to a person they met at a family reunion. They were driving around in what looked like a roll bar, two seats and four wheels wrapped around a large engine. They set us on the right path toward the Maxwell Trail head, our intended destination. The guy in the Carhart jacket helped us out despite the fact that I referred to him several times as Caligula and threatened his cousin with the pepper spray I brought to fight off bears.

A treacherous drive across oil-pan scraping rocks and ruts large enough to swallow an army convoy, oh and through a herd of grazing beef cattle, spat us out at what the next morning’s light would reveal as pretty close to the trail head.

“I’ve smelled the smell before, but I’ve never been in this total absence of sound before,” Tim said, while I marveled at a couple of shooting stars.

Another beer, a swig of bourbon a little more talk under the heavens and we rolled up in our sleeping bags for a sleep interrupted only by the brief and pleasant little pitter patter of a few drops of rain against our bags.


So Big it's The Man.



Pretty.



West Clear Creek



Pell, a watery tart.






























































































Tim Gorman the wilderness is funny.

I Feel Like a Phoenix -- Rising From Arizona!

Dianna has thick blood, like all good Germans. And as a thick blooded woman, she has no patience for the heat. So last weekend, the two of us made haste for Sedona, Arizona, about two hours north of Phoenix and about 20 miles south of Flagstaff.

Sedona’s higher elevation makes it a little cooler than the Valley of the Sun. Sedona sits about 4,400 feet above sea level, where as Phoenix is at about 1,100 feet above sea level. It’s still in the high 90s and 100s in Sedona, but nothing like the 116 degree Fourth of July last week. And at night, the temperature in Sedona dips to a dry, cool high-50s range. Beautiful.

Primary objectives:

1.) To have a fancy, shmancy meal Saturday night;

2.) to enjoy a physical hike during the day.

Secondary Objectives:

1.) Not get taken in by the obvious tourist traps;

2.) To terrorize the staff at the King Ransom’s Hotel with wild antics.

I’ll kill the suspense here and tell you, yes we accomplished all of these goals.

The hiking took place in Coconino National Forest’s Red Rock Secret Mountain Wilderness. This is red rock country, and I’m not talking about that cheap, fake opium people used to smoke in college. I’m talking buttes, sculpted pinnacles, windows, arches and slot canyons. It looks like Mars had a garage sale and Sedona bought up a ton of its furniture.

There are dozens of trails in the area, but we decided on Brins Mesa trail, which has a trail head just north of Sedona. The trail climbs among agave, prickly pear cactus and pinyon pine trees about 600 feet in approximately a sixth of a mile to a -- you guessed it -- a mesa top. Wilson Mountain as it‘s known.

A nasty fire burned over 1,500 acres on the mountain last year. The pinyon pine and juniper trees were twisted and scorched. The blaze was started by a transient who let his cooking fire get out of hand, according to a state Web site.

That dude must be a hardy “transient” to make his home in the desert. I mean, the guy is hardly alone out there.

The wilderness area supposedly is filled with coyotes, bears, mule and white tail deer, javelinas, a relative of the European pig, and even mountain lions. But the only thing stupid enough to traverse the mesa during that summer morning and afternoon, was Dianna and I.

After eating a couple of sandwiches under the shade of a pinyon pine in a sandy little dry wash, we headed back up the mesa. This is when one of the first monsoon storms of the season started rolling across the mountains toward us. As a man once said, “assummmm.” I didn’t want to be on that mountain when the lighting started forking down.

We made it back to the car before the rain hit, but we marched to the tune of thunder. Dianna, once again not acclimated to the heat, had a wee bit of an overheating problem, but nothing a little AC and a chilled Gatorade couldn’t fix.

Thankfully, I had made our dinner reservation for 8 p.m. This gave Dianna an hour or two to nap and me an hour or two to drink Oak Creek pale ales, without having to rush.

(Next time on Lowbrow Truth Serum: Mike gets saucy with a waiter, Dianna gets kicked out of the hotel swimming area and some pre-teen children staying in the room next door get a late-night audio lesson on drunken, wet body slapping.)

An agave.

Revolution!!!

This president of ours sure is a brassy son-of-a-bitch. The idea of Lewis Scooter Libby going to jail put a little itch in my jeans. It made me feel like political reform was more than mere fancy. Like, I was not just a cock-eyed optimist with an inspiring haircut.

Oh, and speaking of haircuts. I had my first Asian the other day. Nothing of a sexual nature I assure you. It was simply a haircut. I walked in off the street and plopped down into a chair without knowing the least bit about the place. She knew what she was doing. Nothing fancy, no texturing, but every stroke of her clippers and slice of her scissors made a precise incision, a surgical procedure. My side burns were mathematically even. It was like somebody was using the cosign factor on my parabola. And even though she pushed the happy ending a little too strong and I had to give her a James-Bond-Sexy-Opend-Handed-Slap as I tried to leave... I'll go back.

Errr... Yes, but back to politics. What's so terrible about Scooter, VP Dick Cheney's former chief of staff, getting a commuted sentence (Bush wiped out the 30 months in prison and left him as he said with a stiff $250,000 fine and a disgrace that only God or Dorian Gray could dismiss) is that it was a solid leadership decision by the judiciary. The decision essentially sent a message to all the toadies in both parties and in all branches of government: If you want to lie to cover up for the disgraceful conduct of your bosses, fine, but the cake walk is over. You lie, you go to jail. Fuck the fines that the corrupt scum you're protecting will fundraise to pay for you. Fuck the disgrace of a penaltyless conviction -- disgrace is something these people honestly don't understand. The one thing they get is getting locked up in jail. Separation from their families, their jobs, their mistresses, this they understand.

Sadly, we the people were robbed of that warning to our elected officials. I recomened sending a letter to your duly elected federal representative, just one, although all three would be better. Send Arlen Spector if you're from PA and tell him you are pissed and you want to see him take a shot at the president, figuratively of course. Tell, Spector you want him to call Bush on the carpet for this repungnant behavior. Tell him, you wouldn't stand for your dog pissing in the house without swatting it in the nose with a rolled up newspaper and you expect no less from your president.

Send your letter to:
Senator Arlen Spector
711 Hart BuildinG
Washington, DC 20510

I only suggest Senator Spector because he's a level-headed moderate Republican who would probably kick Bush in the scrotum if the Secret Service looked away for just two minutes. But look up your own Senator or House Represenatative if you feel like it. Letters work better than e-mail, but if you don't have the time, send an e-mail. It only has to be one sentence, maybe two. Just let them know that you're pissed. Good luck.