more normal than not

Talking last night with Jenny about driving through the Palouse region out west.

It’s a little south of some property in Idaho where my father spent some of his growing up years.

Talk about something that’s so breathtakingly beautiful that it….takes your breath away.

Takes your breath away…..

It really is a drugless hallucination to be out there and surrounded by all that rolling green.

I don’t think that I’ve ever seen anything like it.

That’s the thing about traveling, though: you take what you see with you, and years later you can call up that memory to help yourself feel like you felt when you where there.

That’s a good thing.

Here’s a song that I heard the other day that I thought was pretty good.

It’s not peaceful like the Palouse’s, but it’s kind of funny…to me….at least…

“burn the honeysuckle” The Gourds

New calf in the field on the drive home….fresh, but already tagged, the tag huge on its new ear.

This is an unusual breed….maybe not so common, but we have a field full of them on the way from Hendersonville to Saluda.

It rained hard today….but not as hard as it must have rained on the coast.

We’re not subject to the kind of hurricane weather that the folks on the coast get.

We get the “leavings” of all that bad weather.

We get the tail end of all the badness.

Still, it’s energizing to see the giant trees bending in the wind high on a mountain road when the weather gets strong.

There’s something about being small in the big space that makes me feel most alive.

Weather reminds me of that every time.

Every day, I’m responsible for driving a bunch of mail through this graffiti covered tunnel.

How cool is that?!

I could put it on a résumé if I was willing to leave such a cool job.

If I wasn’t willing to leave, why would I need a résumé?

Now that I’m calming down about finding all the mailboxes, I’m noticing all the interesting things I pass by and through on this new route.

I’m starting to really enjoy being in a “new” part of NC.

It has to be a well-kept secret, though.

If anyone found out that I like to drive around in the woods and listen to a good radio station, they’d stop paying me to do this.

I need a job that pays money….no matter how much fun it is to drive around and open all the mailboxes.

Don’t tell anyone that it’s fun to drive through the tunnel.

I need to get paid.

Man.

All I seem to be doing these days is working.

Not running….just working….and recovering.

That’s goofy.

What a tradeoff….but, once I settle in to the new route, it will be old hat again.

I’ll be able to do some of it in my sleep.

Then I’ll be able to catch up on my rest.

Change is hard on everybody, though.

New routines are pretty hairy until they become….routine again.

It’s kind of tough on the whole family.

How about Jackson Browne?

“In ’69 I was 21….”

What does that make him?  68?

We’re all getting older.

Everybody….except me.

I take vitamins.

But….I’m not running.

I did the rear brakes this afternoon on the Jeep.

Man, what a bugger.

It’s a pretty straightforward process that is hard because you have to put all these springs back in the right order….some keepers that are spring-loaded and that have to be twisted under pressure so that they hold the shoes on….and get everything seated correctly so that it all goes back together “right”.

It’s important that you’re “right” when you’re talking about bringing a heavy vehicle to a stop.

Some of the stuff that the “real mechanics” did was kind of goofy, though….so I think that I did a pretty good job.

The drums were really hard to get on though….even with the brake cylinders depressed and the self-adjuster backed off all the way.

It was tough.

When I called the parts store, the guy who’s helped me before told me that he’d had troubles with drum brakes, too….and suggested sanding down the shoes a little and maybe the drum would go on.

Of course, all the time I was doing the sanding, I was trying not to breath. I thought that I might be giving myself cancer….and being cheap is a crappy way to get cancer.

I found out later that the shoes didn’t contain any asbestos.

(I read the Spanish on the wrong side of the box and didn’t understand what “sin asbestos” meant.)

I’m glad that I didn’t give myself cancer from this part of my life.

I guess that the tight shoes will loosen up as they wear?

A 75 mile rural route is a great place to see if it’s going to work out.

Right?

“bad brakes” Cat Stevens