I'm on a Roll...

Evidently I am really hard on trucks.  I mean, I think it might have something to do with my job and the terrain on which I travel, but I can't help but feel partially responsible.  As you have probably guessed, I am back in Laramie, with a (once again) malfunctioning truck.  But let me back up, because last week I did go to the desert and was somehow able to stay out for the full 5 days as I had intended (despite the desert's best effort to break me down), and this week I did get a whole 2.5 worthwhile work days in...so at least I'm making progress, albeit in short and frustrating bursts.

So last week I left for the desert on Monday, got there late afternoon, and managed to put in several productive hours of happy and distraction-less inventorying.  I was feeling good, I was remembering everything I love about the desert, and I was really enjoying it.  It felt great, I had my positive energy back!  By day two my positivity was flagging, as I wrestled with a pounding headache in the 95 degree heat of the desert, shadeless and unforgiving.  I drank roughly 3,596 gallons of water, took a 10 minute power nap mid-day, and powered through, still somehow putting in a 12 hour day, but feeling decidedly less happy about the whole thing.

Day 3 proved a tad frustrating when a swiftly deteriorating supply of gas sent me out to town and then, because I was already down that way I tried to access the southern part of the unit and found first that an oil/gas road had been built on top of a portion of one route that I had hoped to use for access, causing the latter half to be difficult to access and therefor abandoned.  Then, a second effort landed me on the path of an old two-track that had also since been buried by a large constructed oil/gas route, but one that had been abandoned, and if you have ever done any traveling in the desert you know that these constructed roads do NOT age well.  After the first washed out and rocky hill I felt hesitant, but continued.  The second had me paying attention, and the third washout left me concerned that I might somehow get myself into a place that I would find I could not get out of.  Frustrated I paced around the truck, mulling over my options: Waste half a day driving back to the part of the unit I knew I could easily access, waste half a day hiking the remainder of this route to decide if traversing this washout would simply land me in the thick of several more, or wing it and risk getting stuck.  Just as I was stomping around proclaiming to the heavens that "this s#!t only happens to me", a wild horse happened by and my puppy exited the truck via a flying leap out the window and took off running through cacti and sage brush to see if it would be her friend.  Fortunately she's a smart dog, and she quickly realized that the retreating horse was not interested in her friendship, so she turned around and returned to the vehicle, not the least bit sorry for having ignored my angry screams for her to come back.  That was it, I loaded her into the truck, buckled her harness into the seat belt (she did not like this), and turned this whole mess around for territory that I knew would present far fewer challenges.

Day 4, opened with a long quiet walk, cool and pleasant just after sunrise.  On a winding road alternating through sand dunes and clay flats, I strolled along happily with my puppy.  A small threatening exchange took place with an offended wild horse, much to the confusion of non-horse-savvy puppy, but other than that the walk was pleasant and uneventful.  And so I naively thought perhaps the entire day would follow suit.  By 2:00 pm the wind had picked up to such an extent that attempting to take a photo with the I-pad became akin to resistance strength training and large, Audrey Hepburn style sunglasses were required just to keep my contacts from blowing out of my eyeballs.  I have no way of knowing, but I'm confident that these winds were in excess of 50 to 60 mph, as they were consistently rocking the entire pickup truck and opening the windward door became exceedingly challenging.  By the end of the day a great deal of dust had blown into and around everything that composed my entire view of the world, my teeth were gritty, my ears had small beaches in them, my hair was an absurd rat's nest of sand and dust, and my normally black dog was an awkward shade of khaki.  It was 5:00 pm; when in the field I usually try to work 6:30 to 6:30 and so I had an hour and a half to kill but had found myself at the mouth of a road leading into the WSA (Wilderness Study Area) where mechanized transport is forbidden, and I knew I had a walk of several hours to capture the entire road.  Rather than quit early I decided to inventory the road as far as the first spur route to a reservoir, and capture all of that so that tomorrow I would be able to race through the first part and start just beyond that spur.  After quickly stuffing water and maps, snacks and a compass into my pack I set out, puppy by my side, onto this two-track, and straight towards an ominous looking cloud.  Experience told me that this giant cloud would, despite it's best effort, drop only 10 or 12 raindrops on the desert floor, the rest evaporating in the insanely dry air before ever reaching the ground, so I felt confident in my choice to continue on.

Unfortunately experiences breeds confidence that some might describe as "false", and in this case that would be an accurate assessment.  Although I was correct in assuming that very little of the rain would reach the ground, I was incorrect in assuming that this would cause no problems for me.  You see, immediately preceding those 12 drops of rain was a wall of wind the likes of which I daresay I have never experienced on foot before, and carried along by that wall of wind were millions upon millions of grains of sand.  So literally the instant I reached the spur route that I had intended to hike I turned to see a dust storm reminiscent of those I encountered in Mauritania, headed my way.  I quickly turned and quite literally ran, full backpack on and dog leash in hand with a confused, frolicking, and tug-of-warring puppy on the other end, back the way I had come, hoping beyond hope that I would reach the truck before the sand reached me.  I didn't.  10 breathless, awkward, lumbering minutes later I dropped to my knees and wrapped myself over my doggies eyes as the stinging sand blasted the outer layers of skin off the backs of my legs.  To make matters worse, the winds barely slowed throughout the entire evening and picked up with a vengeance sometime after 11:00 pm, shaking the truck of side to side and generally destroying any hope I had of getting a good nights sleep.

The final day of this trip was uneventful, ended early, and I was back in Laramie by nightfall.  Thunderstorm warnings kept me from returning to Adobe Town this Monday morning, and my return Tuesday went well; I was even able to get in two full, uneventful days before disaster struck again.  This time I was camping somewhere near the center of the entire unit, but at the southern end of the WSA, generally speaking in the middle of nowhere, on a little eroded two-track route that was frequently buried in sand dunes.  In the morning I got up, fed my pup, and cooked my oatmeal all while still cocooned in my sleeping bag in the 40 degree desert morning.  When I finally felt ready to emerge and take on the day, I stalled out the truck.  Odd, I thought, I've been driving a standard since I was 17, shouldn't I be able to get the truck moving without stalling it out at this point in my life?  A second effort yielded the same result, and on the third I stamped the gas and completely let off the clutch immediately and rolled away without incident.  Now that I was moving I decided to investigate the clutch pedal, because that's apparently how my priorities worked out in my head: 1) get truck moving, and 2) now determine whats wrong with it.  Seems wise.

I found I had no tension in the clutch pedal anymore until the very last instant, and sometimes even with the clutch to the floor it continued to move.  If you knew me when I lived in Saint Thomas, then you know that I have experienced such issues before, only that time with our old jeep, aptly named the adventuremobile, and stuck in bumper to bumper cruise-ship-day-traffic.  So this time at least I didn't have seven safari trucks full of tourists on all sides to watch me shove the darn truck into gear with all I'm worth and quietly pray my way through every stop sign, at least there was that.  At any rate I was so far in, on a road I had already inventoried the far end of, and I really didn't want to have to drive it again.  So I parked the truck and went for what I thought would be a two hour but turned out to be more like a four hour long hike, to finish that road, all the roads coming off of it, and a reservoir smack dab in the middle of nowhere.  When I got back to the truck I locked in the hubs, and wrestled it around, and slow and steady, picked my way all the way back to a county road.  There I called my pops to talk me through adding some clutch (brake) fluid and carefully headed for the highway, and eventually home.

So here I am again, back earlier than I intended, heading back out later than intended, but Grimace the purple truck needs his R&R time too...so that's that.  And hey, at least it wasn't a tire, so I didn't have to go back to Walmart, which I don't think my delicate psyche could have taken at this point.

If you are reading this and thinking "man, somebody should get that girl a better truck!" then I urge you to go to BCA's website and make a small, one-time donation, and feel free to send us an email requesting that the money be spent on fixing up poor old Grimace.  Alternatively, you may call any wealthy friends that you may have and ask them nicely if they'd like to buy me a new truck.  You also might be thinking, "man, that girl kills trucks, I would never hire her to do anything ever because she just destroys everything she touches" but I assure you that I asked a reputable source and I am under the understanding that there is no way the slave cylinder could have been caused to leak by my driving, and it's more likely that it was a re-manufactured part that was faulty and failed well before it should have, regardless of how it was driven.  So if you feel that way you should still go to BCA's website and make a small, one-time donation and let them know that you know I'm not a truck killer, at least not on purpose...

Here, I'll even give you the link!  Because I'm so thoughtful!  http://www.voiceforthewild.org/page.php?id=donate#.UcTlQ_ksmys

Wild Horses

Wilderness Doggy

That's some strong dirt!

Adobe Town

Adobe Town

Sunset Road

DUST STORM!

Ominous cloud...

Adobe Town

My Faithful friends

Sunset

DUST STORM!

Adobe Town Valley

Field Season 2013: Off to a Great Start!

Oh. My. Gosh.  Where do I begin?  I feel as though I have not provided an update in CENTURIES!  So here's a quick run through of some goings-on since I last wrote a post:

First, that last post, begging you to vote...yeah, we didn't get that grant.  BUT we did make it into the top 6 votes-wise, which is pretty impressive for an organization as small as ours, not to mention that we are located in the least populated state of them all, so kudos to you!  Our voting and adoring fans, we really appreciate the support you showed us and it meant a lot to have your support through that process.  So even though we didn't win, we still did in a way, because it feels wonderful to know that so many people are supporting us and the work that we pour our hearts into every day.

Next, obviously I finished my 2012 inventories and submitted them.  The PDFs of these documents are now up on BCA's website, and I have to say I'm darn proud of the final result so I'll give you a link here, to see them.  Check them out, read through a bit of the narrative (don't go crazy, a paragraph or two will give you the right idea) and then if you are in Wyoming, please by all means, VISIT these places!  Visit them, love them, and advocate for them.  Because as of this month the BLM has only found wilderness character in ONE of them, and it's not clear if they even intend to protect it just yet (I'll try to keep posted on this, I'm sure I'll forget to update, but if you have questions then please contact me!).

Now it is just the beginning of field season 2013, and this year I have a full plate, with a ton of units (14 to be exact) to get through, including the amazing and impressive, and evidently very hard on truck tires, Adobe Town!  So I headed out this past Tuesday, the 4th.  I left in the late afternoon, reaching the bounds of Adobe Town in time to make camp, enjoy a beautiful desert sunset, and snooze before starting the inventory work itself the next morning.  In traditional Shelby fashion I merely lucked out in a lot of ways: I have been to Adobe Town once, almost a year ago, and I followed my boss out, missing most landmarks in the cloud of dust kicked up by his car.  This time I grabbed some maps, but obviously missed the one that I really needed, because that's how I roll, and had only the map just east of where I needed to end up.  I got out there and drove west, knowing eventually I would bump into the 130,000 acre proposed wilderness area at some point.  I should clarify that I had all the right 1:24,000 maps and the wrong 1:100,000 map, so I could navigate to the edge of where I needed to be and then drove blindly west until I just happened to show up on one of my 1:24,000 maps.  Magically, and with the luck that seems to follow me around out there (thank the stars!) I bumped right into the most pertinent map fairly quickly and with no back-tracking or getting lost.

So there I am, in the "Crown Jewel" of the Red Desert, maps and snazzy new I-Pad in hand, early on the morning of Wednesday the 5th of June.  The desert looks different in June, it is green and birds chirp, wild flowers dot the hill sides.  This was just what I needed, to be back in action, in the relaxing setting of the silent desert, my new puppy Mia by my side, just inventorying the day away.  This is what I live for.  Of course things never go that well, and I discovered a confusing maze of new oil and gas roads covering, shadowing, and crisscrossing the original two-tracks that I was hoping to travel.  Covered with recently crushed sharp gravel and laying huge swaths of ugly destruction across the desert.  In my line of work though you not only have to roll with such things you have to completely document them with photos and GPS points.  So this is what I did, for a tedious 12 hours, jumping in and out of the truck, enduring the yelled suggestions of passers-by (assumed in general to be oil and gas industry employees, all very nice, all very confuddled as to why I should be out there with my dog, just hanging out in an active gas field) regarding being aware of rattlesnakes and mud, deep sand, and gravel, and such.  Sometimes I wonder if they don't talk to me just to make sure they aren't imagining me, because after all this country isn't exactly beautiful anymore, with gas wells dotting the countryside, so why would a girl and her dog, all dressed up in hiking gear, be traipsing around the place anyway?

So at the close of my day, as the sun is setting and the silence of the desert is closing in (my favorite time of day out there) I prepared my truck for sleeping in and promptly passed out at 8:15 in the evening, the sky still lit with rays from the setting sun, and don't wake up for an instant for a solid 9 hours.  I guess I should have worked back up to this...

Day two of field season 2013 started great, warm breakfast, happy puppy company, and a beautiful sunrise accompanied by singing birds, what could possibly go wrong?  Well see here is where I run into trouble, because as soon as things start to seem idyllic I should always know trouble is on the horizon.  So on this beautiful Thursday morning I start by hiking a long some bits and pieces of an old two-track route that has been mostly covered by a brand spanking new gravel super highway to a not-yet-been-drilled wellpad and the camera on my I-Pad app starts malfunctioning.  It can't focus and sits on a white screen and no matter what I do I can't seem to fix it (here I guess any remotely tech-savvy person would probably tell me to try rebooting the I-Pad, but on this I claim ignorance, I had no idea that was even possible) so after frantic text messaging with our business manager it is decided that I should head back to town and get on the phone/internet and figure this out.

So, after one successful day and two nights in the desert, I hea back towards civilization to try to find a solution to this problem.  It takes nearly an hour to get from where I was to the nearest gas station and I was feeling irrationally confident about my gas situation when I reached the paved road so I decided to not go 20 minutes out of my way to get gas and instead continue on the additional hour to the nearest gas station on my way.  This proved to be possible, but more than a little nerve-wracking as I rolled into the gas station with the arrow on the far side of E a little over an hour later.  Perhaps it was the low-on-gas related anxiety, or just general disappointment at heading back so soon, but for whatever reason I was able to roll right up to the pump, fill my tank, and head inside to grab my receipt without noticing that somewhere along the way one of my tires had become completely flat.  On my way back from the receipt collecting mission I did happen to notice a disturbing tilt to my truck, and the deflated tire soon claimed the spot on the very tippy top of my to-do list.  I slowly drove it away from the pump (there was a line forming behind) and begin the tedious procedure of dragging out all the bits and pieces required to change the tire.  Happily I was at this point in the parking lot of a truck stop, and it only took about 20 seconds of me jumping up and down on the tire iron in an attempt to loosen air-wrench tightened lug nuts for a kind soul with bigger muscles than mine to offer some assistance.

Another set of hands made the whole process so much easier, and so with many thanks to my kind stranger at the Rawlins' Loves, I was on my way again soon at the breakneck speed of 55 MPH required by the donut I had just torqued onto my truck.  The kind stranger's last words to me were "you might want to check out that front one too, looks a little low," and he was off toward the truck that he likely currently calls home.  There are 100 miles of highway between Rawlins and the nearest Walmart Tire Center (where I had a warrantee on my tires) in both directions, I chose the eastern route, as Laramie is where I could sleep in my own bed that night.  Upon my arrival I checked the truck all in, called a coworker to pick me up, and left Grimace the Purple truck in the (assumed) capable hands of the Walmart Tire Center staff.  A few hours later they called to say my truck was done, but a conversation needed to be had about my tires when I return.  Ominous, I thought, so I headed back up there with my coworker only to find my truck still in the bays with no tires, no wheels even, on it at all.  Uh-oh.

The staff calmly informed me that they had thought it was done because they had tested the Firestone (read: donut, that clearly features the words "temporary tire, max speed 55 mph" on its side) and found no issue but later realized that (as I had mentioned at check in) the flat was in the truck bed.  Upon further inspection, they had apparently also found that I had also, somewhere along the way, punctured a second tire as well.  Finally they informed me that these particular tires were not in stock at the moment, and one to seven days would be required for them to come in on order.  Super.

A lengthy discussion about tires ensued, somewhere in the middle of which we decided a slightly higher quality tire might be more appropriate for my line of work and an order was begun, at which point it became clear that the wrong tire size had somehow been taken initially and in fact the tires currently on the truck were actually in stock at this very moment, but it was too late.  We had already decided on better tires, and better tires we would get!  So, order placed, approval received, receipt in hand, we parted ways with Walmart once again under the understanding that I would be getting a phone call when the new tires came in, sometime in the next one to sseven days.  The very next day though, I came to realize that among the gear I had left in the bed of the truck, I had also left behind a few essentials that I now needed to go pick up, so I popped back by Walmart to grab a few things and learned, to my surprise, that at some point during the day my new tires had come in, though they still were not on my truck, and that they were "just about to call me," but had "misplaced my number."  Okay, I said, put them on please.  We again completed a redundancy of the checking-in process of the day before and I was told I would be back on the road the very next day, they took my phone number again (this time even entering it into the computer) and we parted ways on promises that I would receive a call as soon as my truck was ready.  This was two days ago now, and yet somehow I am clearly still in range of internet access, so if my having returned to the desert seems unlikely to you, you'd be correct.

In other, more splendid news, the app problem that I was having with the I-Pad turned out to be easily solved and the solution does not require internet access, and so can be preformed in the field.  So I am thrilled about that!  I am packed and ready to head back out, as soon as I have a truck again, and when that day comes I will be sure to share the trials and tribulations that are sure to occur on my next trip; because if these first few days are setting the tone for the entire summer than it is sure to be interesting to say the least!

Tomorrow morning, first thing, the Walmart Tire Center will be hearing from me, but for now I am enjoying my weekend and having a glass of wine.  Wilderness Inventory Specialist: The impatient and easily discouraged need not apply.

Adobe Town Proposed Wilderness: