Day 23 - Nothing Better Than Actual Proof
Trip Start
May 18, 2008
1
24
63
Trip End
Jul 17, 2008
Where I stayed
Wyoming Rest Stop
Rock Springs, Wyoming
Tuesday, June 10, 2008
Morning. Beautiful sunrise right over the mountains. Sleep was cold as it's relatively dry in the area. But I got up and felt like the best thing in the world would be to sit up on a large rock and chant towards the sunrise. It turned out pretty awesome.
We packed up our tent and then decided to get some breakfast before rafting at the local Gunsmoke cafe, a place to eat right next door to the Acquired Tastes Rafting Company. We filled up on coffee and eggs and I got my final rafting jitters outta me.
Nick requested that Tonya be our guide on the trip. She suggested we suit up in wetsuit and booties. At first I wanted to tough it out with my jeans and tennis shoes but I soon realized that that would have been a terrible mistake. It was about a 15 minute drive from the office to the Browns River site. On the way, we talked about how there'd been more deaths comparatively with rafting than skydiving.
The story here is that Nick used to work for this rafting group last summer during the weekends making the 2 hour drive from Denver. He got to know a lot of the raftng guides who spent their time there and came back summer after summer. Tonya was a good friend of Nick's from summers past. They had many stories to tell because of their experience and time together. It was about rafting, fictional stories of the Browns Canyon, anecdotes of Chuck the boss. When we took off, Ryan and I "volunteered" to be in the front of the raft, him on the left and myself on the right. The current was soft at first but slowly turned more and more tough.
It'd been Ryan's second time rafting but the first time was a long time ago. We were pretty much in the same boat... sorry. Tonya gave out commands to row forward, backwards, one side forward, one side back, and the reverse. It was great a training, workout, and adventure. As the rapids approached, there's this exhilarating feeling that drives you to challenge every obstacle (as is my nature), not knowing how exactly one finds their way through hardships such as these, especially back to back. Some of them felt as if I was going vertically into the water. Definitely not an amusement park ride.
The trip lasted about 2 hours and 15 minutes. I was all wet and cold afterwards so the heated van trip on the ride back was amazing. I got a chance to see the pictures that the photographer takes of you on the ride (that part is like an amusement park). They were pretty awesome at the same time pretty expensive so I decided against it. Then fatigue set in.
We get some pizza at a local place and just had some time to lay back and relax. There was where I got a chance to talk to Ryan and about my trip. Nick, Ryan and I talked about how actual proof is the most important key when trying to encourage people to do something important. China. Some might call it hypocritical that the US demands more environmental restrictions on China's economic expansion, since the US did whatever it pleased during it's Industrial Revolution. Dialogues like these.
I'm glad Ryan drove us. It was a long, tired drive back but when we got to Denver Nick actually needed a ride to Fort Collins to his girlfriend, Mona's place. He didn't have a car and he came down with Ryan. Just right. I was driving north anyway.
From Denver, Ryan gave me a jug of water (which came in handy later) and we said our goodbyes to him as Nick and I took off for Fort Collins. On the drive up Nick had a chance to ask me more about Buddhism and about his sister's Buddhist practice. We concluded that to be happy, one has to take responsibility of the world around them, their world. If we are constantly complaining how we can't do this and that, it becomes our limitations itself. And Buddhism is about empowering ourselves and tearing down those limitation that unknowingly set upon ourselves. Becoming aware of how we set these limitations is developing wisdom in Buddhism.
I dropped off Nick and met Mona. Sweet girl. I decided to drive straight to Seattle from there. I'm such a crazy decision maker, its like an 18 hour trip from that point. I also called my brother Eric back home to set up a place that I could stay on couchsurfing.com. I'll drive as far as I can. And then drive some more towards Seattle. I don't know what to expect the next couple of days but here I go.
Miles driven today: 373.3mi
Daniel
