The idea came to me in the middle of the night. I often wake up with story ideas, poems and songs in my head and flip on the light to write them down. This was much more than a story idea, but it was filled with all of the same promise and excitement. I bolted up, plucked my journal from the bedside table and wrote in big letters across a blank page: Golf My Way Home. I stared at those words until the sun rose.
I know it sounds crazy: hitchhiking across the country with golf clubs… but that was the beauty of it: it’s incongruity and originality. And it was totally something I would do on my own for no other reason than the adventure of it. In fact, I had done it before. I’d hitchhiked all over Colorado to ski, out to California to visit friends and down the coast to play Pebble Beach.
The fact that I was doing it for my Dad was just circumstantial. I was trapped in emotional and geographical limbo. I’d spent four months at home with him in the summer and fall, following his recovery from the Whipple Procedure - the operation to remove the tumor from his pancreas. His recovery had been slow and difficult, but eventually his health improved to the point where we were all confident he was going to be around for a while and I felt comfortable heading back out to California. Still, the statistics were not in his favor. He was living on borrowed time. My greatest fear was getting that phone call telling me he’d relapsed and I needed to fly home immediately.
Seeing my dad after the initial surgery had been frightening. The man I’d always looked up to, the man who’d provided for me my whole life, who was always in control of the situation and never had a hair out of place was suddenly lying on a gurney like a frail ghost. I didn’t want the next time I saw him to be like that.
But I also didn’t want to fly home prematurely and sit by his bedside. My dad definitely wasn’t the touchy-feely type. He was much more comfortable with me off doing my own thing than doting on him. And he’d regained enough strength to drive himself around locally and go out to dinner with my mom - they even went on a couple of trips together. So there was the illusion of normalcy. And I wouldn’t normally be at home.
Golf My Way Home was a way to do my own thing, but include my dad. To be off on one of my typical adventures, but also heading towards home. I referred to it as “the long-distance Protestant hug.”
And as far fetched as the concept was, my dad and I actually did have a little hitchhiking history together. Back when I was high school, we were down in the islands together - on a little cay in the Abacos - one of those places where there’s absolutely nothing to do but laze around in hammocks and on the beach.
My mom was content reading her book, but my dad and I were bored so we inquired about visiting the only town on the island - Hope Town. When we asked the receptionist how to get there, he said, “Hitchhike, mon!” Apparently there were no taxis on the island. Not really surprising given it’s size - Hope Town was only two miles away.
My dad and I walked up onto the road next to the inn and put our thumbs out. We were picked up in minutes by a local in pick up truck. He gestured for us to climb into the open bed in the back. We sat on the wheel wells opposite each other and bounced into town, smiling the whole way with the wind in our hair. As far as I can remember that is the first time I ever hitchhiked so it can be argued that my dad, for all of his convention and predictability may actually have planted the seed.
And years later when I was in college in Boulder, Colorado he invited me to join him for a ski trip to Telluride during my spring break, but with an odd caveat… he would pay for the hotel room, meals and lift tickets, but he would not pay for me to get there, even though there were still seats available on his four o’clock Rocky Mountain Airways flight from Denver to Telluride and I lived less than an hour from the airport.
I’m not sure exactly what he intended. Perhaps he was trying to temper my growing wanderlust with a little practicality… hoping that I would spend my last fifty bucks on a Greyhound ticket and after a miserable, meandering twenty-hour ride, realize that it was worth the effort to earn and save the few extra dollars for a plane ticket. And I might very well have come to this conclusion had I taken a Greyhound, but I didn’t.
At noon on Friday, when my classes ended and he was at thirty thousand feet somewhere over the midwest, my friend Jeff drove me to the south side of Boulder and dropped me in front of Doc’s Ski and Sport on Rte 93 in Table Mesa.
I’d hitchhiked to ski before, but the farthest I’d gone was Aspen, not exactly close, but nowhere near the 385 miles to Telluride. And I only had about six hours of daylight.
I knew the chances of catching one ride all the way there were basically nil, so I broke the trip into three chunks - packed three blank pieces of cardboard and a black Sharpie to make a specific sign for each leg. My first goal was to get down to the I-70 West in Golden, about 20 miles south of Boulder - so I penned a sign that said: “Golden, I-70 West, Please.”
I caught a ride to Golden almost immediately and was dropped at the intersection of rte 93 and rte 6 - a beautiful road that snakes up through the narrow cleft of Clear Creek Canyon for about twenty miles to the I-70. This is where I produced my second sign: “I-70 West, Grand Junction, please.”
The next car to pull over was a very familiar looking Toyota Forerunner - the old boxy kind that looks like a big station wagon. I heard a voice yell, “John, what the hell are you doing out here?” It was Dan Velzen, one of my roommate’s close friends from the geology department. He and his girlfriend were heading to Moab to camp for the weekend and driving right through Grand Junction.
Dan, a Michigan native and lifelong outdoorsman, had no problem putting the pedal to the metal and we reached Grand Junction in less than three hours. The sun was still high in the sky.
I sat down on the side of the 50 South and penned my final sign: “Telluride, please.”
Within minutes a sixties model Pontiac GTO screeched up, its giant engine snarling like a rhino.
As I was angling my skis into the backseat, the driver, a twenty-something local cowboy, said, “Watch them snakes.”
I thought he was talking about my skis, until I saw two SNAKES - and I mean EIGHT FOOTERS - curled up on either side of the backseat.
“That’s Matilda there behind me, she’s a Red Tail Boa. That’s Bull on your side, he’s a python.”
I did my best not to disturb them.
When I sat down in the passenger seat my feet crunched into an ankle deep pile of empty beer cans.
I felt a tap on my shoulder and turned to see a hand offering me a freshly opened can of Keystone Light.
I took the beer and the cowboy slammed down the accelerator sending Keystone suds all over my shirt. The engine rose from a snarl to a roar. The sagebrush along the roadside became a seamless blur.
Looking out across the wide flat valley, I felt confident at least that if we careened off the road we wouldn’t hit anything but a jackrabbit.
The cowboy was a man of few words. When I asked where he was from he said, “Ouray.”
When I asked him if he’d ever been to Boulder, he said, “Nope.”
Denver?
“Once.”
The conversation went like that. But it didn’t really matter because you couldn’t hear anything over the noise of the motor and the wind anyway. So I just settled back and enjoyed the Keystones.
He kept that thing pinned at about a buck ten the entire way and was never without a beer in his hand or a chew in his cheek. When he finished a beer he crumpled the can with his hand, chucked it on the floor at my feet and dug another one out of the thirty pack between the seats. Whenever he took one for himself, he handed one to me too.
By my third beer, the hum of the motor and the wind and warm sun angling in through the open windows had lulled me into a blissful stupor. I leaned back and closed my eyes. I wondered if my dad was buzzing along somewhere above us.
The car was so smooth on that flat straightaway that I started to nod off, but I kept feeling this strange flickering on my ear. At first I thought it was my hair blowing in the wind so I brushed it back. Then I felt it again and thought maybe it was a bug so I swatted at it. My hand hit something cold and solid… something slick and boney. I bolted forward and turned around and there was Bull standing in the back seat, looking out the window, his tongue flicking in the wind.
“Don’t let old Bull bother you. He just likes to stick his head out the window when we’re driving.”
“What is he? A dog?”
The cowboy snorted and cracked a smile. It was the only emotion I saw on his face the entire ride.
“Kinda is sometimes.”
He handed me another Keystone.
He dropped me in Ridgway where the 62 climbs up into the steep jaws of the San Juan mountains and hooks up with the 145 into Telluride.
We didn’t shake hands or anything. He just spit a wad of ‘baco juice out the window, handed me a Keystone for the road and said, “luck to you.”
Bull poked his head over the back of the seat and flicked his tongue at me. I almost patted the damn thing on the head.
It had taken us about fifty minutes and seven beers to cover the ninety miles from Grand Junction to Ridgway. It was five O’clock. The valley was cast in shadow now, but there was still another hour of daylight and I had only forty miles left to go. I wondered if my dad had landed yet. I cracked the Keystone.
The way things were flowing, I wasn’t the least bit surprised when the first car to turn onto the 62 pulled over. It was a shiny new rental driven by a clean cut thirty-year-old guy named Neil who was on his way down from Aspen to meet up with his dad.
“Where you from?” he asked.
“Connecticut.”
“No way! Me too. Which part?”
“Fairfield.”
“I’m from New Canaan.”
“My older brother went to school in New Canaan.”
“Really? What was his name?”
“Charley Dunn”
“No shit! I know Charley. We were in the same class.”
I wasn’t surprised. I really wasn’t. I just shook my head and laughed. I’d covered 385 miles in six hours. I’d gotten picked up by a friend of my roommate’s and a classmate of my brother’s and a beer swilling cowboy with two snakes. And I honestly think it would’ve taken me longer to drive myself. It certainly would’ve been far less entertaining.
The gorgeous, sunburnt receptionist at the hotel smiled and said, “Your dad just arrived. He didn’t think you were going to make it tonight.”
When my dad opened the door, I could tell by the look of surprise on his face that he’d been expecting the bellman or maid service… anyone but me.
“I thought you had class until noon.”
“I did.”
He looked at his watch.
“It’s six O’clock. How did you get here?”
“I hitchhiked”
He cracked a little smile and I could see a twinkle in his eyes.
Not exactly an attaboy! But, at the very least, a darned tootin’!
My love affair with hitchhiking was sealed. So much for lessons in practicality.
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