[295] Screed City

[295]

08/08/2024 Thursday. Milk Crate. Stabbin' Cabin. Worland, Wyoming.

Note: This is obviously from six days ago. I am, in fact, going to write an entire treatise on this trip, but I think I might submit it to a travel magazine. If I dont I will post it here. J_0e [ j-naughty ]

Its been four days in Worland and it feels like quite a bit more than that. I wont say that it has been action packed, more like action positive. We are travelling with an eighty four year old who uses a walker and is having a Live, Laugh, Love moment. A man that refuses to do anything as per usual, as the bridesmaids say. A man so dedicated to wringing every new experience out of every single moment to the degree that he has declared, "I will never watch tv!" to, "We went there yesterday, I will not go there again!" to, "I refuse to eat Mexican!" to, "I'm cold! Can't you turn it down?" This last missive directed at the woman in the restaurant who clearly had no ability to turn anything down, let alone the air conditioning. I wont lie, I am impressed. The vigor and spirit pouring out of this man is impressive. Im not joking. I think he is having something akin to a new growth. He has gotten his groove back as those same bridesmaids say. I half think that sometime in the near future he is going to tear his mask off and reveal himself to be Johnny Knoxville and then skateboard away into the setting sun.

There are too many details to go into. I have been keeping notes and plan to write an entire treatise on this trip, about how cross-generational life all comes around full circle in the end. The teenager, the elderly father, the middle aged daughter and the middled aged father. What life looks like to each of us and how we compromise and learn from each other as we age. How important it is to communicate and how hard it is to break away from old habits. How even teenagers are set in their ways as they approach independence.

But nobody is more set in their ways than a 84 year old man who uses a walker. But I swear, I tell you, I swear, that Daddy Dick has a new bounce in his step. He is experiencing life in its fullest. Living in the now, the right now. Everything revolves around the next experience. Everything must be new. At all times, new. He just wants to see all of it. He has no patience for anything mediocre. He wants newness streamlined, stabbed directly into his veins. He refuses to compromise. Life is for the living and god damn it, if you refuse to give it to him, get out of the way! I swear, I really do, he did a fancy trick with his walker yesterday that seemed like a maneuver. I think he even hopped when he did it. And then afterwards he said, "Good job, Dick!" He was talking to himself. And it was a good job! He's eating ice cream for breakfast. Chewing on cigars. I think tomorrow he will want to stop and get a tattoo on his lower back and maybe even shave his hair into a mohawk. He has become a junky for the Right Now.

I wont lie, I am a little exhausted from it. I need to get some sleep so I can keep up tomorrow. We are driving up to Shell Canyon, a canyon with such sharp curves it'll put hair on your balls. My guess is that Daddy Dick is going to get up early to sharpen the edge on his switchblade before he scoots his way down to the hotel breakfast nook and eats his frosted mini wheats. Striking up a conversation with one of the bikers staying at the hotel on their way to Sturgis.

[Insert Thermopolis Bath House photo with Tom]