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Tall Tales From Texas!

I posted some pictures from my Texas trip. Click here to reach our super-secret-eyes-only “Extras” pictures page.

The first picture (top left) was taken at the Big Bend National Park entrance the morning we arrived. The second picture (top right) was taken somewhere on the river between Castolon and Boquillas. The third picture (bottom left) was taken on the U.S. side of Mariscal canyon, which rises around 3,000 feet above the Rio Grande river and runs along for almost ten miles . Beautiful and rugged country! On that particular hike, up on the canyon rim trail, we ran across lots of “poo”, little pockets of brown pellets left behind by what I can only assume were Texas jackrabbits, which are considerably bigger and scrawnier than our own fat and fluffy Ohio rabbits.

How do I know it was poo, you may ask. Good question (as always).

Well, being the avid outdoorsman that I am, someone always curious about the natural world around me, especially the foreign and exotic world of southern Texas, I did what any good naturalist would do. I picked up the poo, squished it between my fingertips, and smelled it. No, I didn’t taste it. When squished (it was very dry, as one would expect in a desert environment), it was composed of grass fibers and it smelled like the bottom of my lawnmower at the end of summer.

The last picture (bottom right) was taken on the Mexican side of the river somewhere along the Sierra San Vincente ridge, about 2,000 feet above the river and our last campsite.

Poo seemed to be a recurring theme on this trip, as there were countless poo jokes, especially whenever someone would borrow a trowel (click here if you don’t know what a trowel is used for when camping in the backcountry) and wander off into whatever brush they could find for privacy. The poo theme reached new heights on our last evening on the river when we tried to burn horse poo.

Horse poo? you ask. What were you thinking? you ask. I would have to counter with “Is it not obvious?!!”

Think about it – people in developing countries the world over burn cow and horse poo for warmth and cooking (yeah, I know – yuck). These kinds of poo are primarily made up of dried grasses, which are a great fuel source. And since our last campsite was littered with small piles of donkey and horse poo, evidence that we’d picked some kind of local equine hotspot, and it was a particularly cool evening with temps in the low-50s, someone made a joke about burning poo for warmth. That little joke then prompted someone else to try lighting the poo, which prompted me to run off and get my camcorder so I could record the event for posterity (or defense in case of potential prosecution)!

When I got back to the group they were assembled around a selected small pile of poo. Someone then lit the poo and it started burning with a good sized flame. It was working! It was burning! It was very exciting (which says tons about how easily entertained one is after not seeing television for a week)! It smelled like burning grass and sulfur.

Then everyone laughed and someone confessed that they’d poured stove fuel on the poo to get it to burn like that. The joke was on me. But, joke or not, that poo continued to smolder steadily for another twenty-five minutes after the fuel burned off, a valid proof of concept. After careful contemplation, we decided that the poo’s moisture content was just a little too high to burn properly. Then the sun began to set and everyone commented on the beautiful sunset and we all went to bed, sad that it would be our last night sleeping along the Rio Grande.

Heeeeeee Haw, Heeeeeee Haw, Haw, Haw, Haw!

The angry donkey began complaining loudly about 2 AM, in the bushes thirty feet from our camp. Donkey was evidently miffed that we’d decided to sleep in the middle of his favorite late night snack spot.

Heeeeeee Haw, Heeeeeee Haw, Haw, Haw, Haw!

He kept that up for the next two hours, quietly circling our camp then complaining loudly every twenty minutes when he couldn’t find anyplace to dine.

Heeeeeee Haw, Heeeeeee Haw, Haw, Haw, Haw!

I do believe I was more afraid of the pissed-off hungry donkey than I was the coyotes!

So, Señor Jackson. Tell us how you burned Mexico down!

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I think we’re going to take a break during the month of March. Yes, that sounds like a good plan – take some time off, concentrate on preparing for the March floods, maybe take a trip somewhere warm and sunny.

That settles it then.

We’re taking March off from Civil Servitude. We’ll be gone to Texas during the middle of March, so there won’t be any new strips then, so we figure why not just take the whole miserable month off? Isn’t March one of the crappiest months to live through, anyway? Cold, rainy, snowy, icy, gray, windy – it’s hard to be funny in March, even though it’s probably the month when we need humor the most! But March certainly makes one appreciate April all the more!

Tomorrow we move out of our old office and into new digs at work. Our department is consolidating personnel into a new facility. I consider it to be more like moving from one prison to another, only the new prison doesn’t have a nice view and the cell’s smaller. Or, maybe it’s more like being moved from solitary confinement into the general population.

I’m trying to be optimistic about the move. They’re giving us all new office furniture, out there in the cubicle farms! That’s never happened before! We were always happy just to get third-hand furniture that didn’t smell like old farts or have stuffing falling out of it! I’ll also get to interact with people I’ve never really worked with before. We mostly just see each other in meetings, so it’ll be interesting to see how some of these people act when they’re not seated around a conference table.

And I’ll get to park in the lot next to the building, versus parking a mile away like I do now. But I will miss the walk in to work every day. Most times it’s a nice walk, down along the river front, observing the occasional sharp-shinned hawk or coot or mallard duck. It’s a nice way to decompress from work, or to gear up for the problems that await in the office.

And despite what you might think, I really enjoy walking most of the year. Except for driving rain and 100 degree/100% humidity summer days, it’s a pleasant form of light exercise. I honestly believe that walk has helped me stay in shape and retain my shapely figure.

But tomorrow’s move marks the end of an era. I’ll be moving into unknown territory, wandering into suspect terrain. We’re talking new dynamics here, with different social circles and pre-existing cliques that make me the “outsider”. I’m sure I’ll feel just like a freshman starting high school all over again.

And rest assured, my ungainly social awkwardness amongst this new cubicle hell will translate into future episodes of Civil Servitude. But not until after March!

Trying To Figure Out Who The Cool Kids Are!

Difficult People

The Latest News From Jackson Press – The Tension Builds …

More dribble on the “Big Things in ’08″ campaign we’ve got going on here in the Jackson household this year.

Evidently some readers have the curiosity of a cat and just HAVE to know what we’re talking about here. In fact, I was even threatened with Scientology if I did not disclose some of this good stuff that I see coming our way in 2008.

Now Scientologists scare me and I say this assuming none of you are Scientologists. If some of you are, in fact, Scientologists, then I DO NOT apologize for making fun of Tom Cruise, as I really do think he’s lost his marbles, Scientology or not. But I do apologize for taking the Great Alien Overlord Kriminon’s name in vain and I ask that you, dear Scientology fan of Civil Servitude, make sure you are on the Scientology Death Squad that L. Ron Hubbard‘s fifth clone sends to Jackson Acre to eradicate my blasphemousness.

Oh, and bring a boat, cause it’s been raining and Jackson Lake’s back.

But on the plus side of things happening in 2008, we’ve not had as much extreme flooding as in past years, all due to the drain cleaning the county did for us in June. On the down side, there’s another pipe in the yard here that I need to dig up and reroute in order to eliminate all flooding on Jackson Acre and to possibly fix the never-ending sump pump issue. All I need is a week of dry weather and above-freezing temperatures. In central Ohio, that’ll be about May! Oh, and I’ll need a backhoe, too. I’ve always wanted to play with a backhoe …

To satiate some of your curiosity, here are some of the minor things of note happening in 2008.

First off, the wife and I go to see Van Halen in concert on, appropriately enough, April Fools Day. Van Halen was my favorite band during those formative high school years, much like the Beatles may have been to all of the Baby Boomers. Sadly, I never saw them perform live. Well, the old band’s mostly back together and doing a “reunion” tour, so we’re finally going to see them! Should be fun, provided no one breaks a hip jumping around on-stage before they get to Columbus.

An even bigger event takes place in March when I head back down to Big Bend National Park in Texas to kayak on the Rio Grande River! I first did this trip in 1996 with an Ohio State University Phys-Ed class taught by a friend of mine. There were approximately fifteen of us (mostly students) and we drove straight through from Ohio to Big Bend Nat’l Park (36 hours!), then spent four days kayaking in the back country wilderness of Big Bend on the Rio Grande. Click here for more info on Big Bend and scroll down the main page for a link to the panoramic pictures under “Virtually Big Bend.”

That trip changed my life! Before that, I’d never slept outside nor done any real camping. On that trip, I learned to live in the desert wilderness with the basics, to sleep under the stars (without a tent), to paddle a kayak down a river. That trip exposed me to real silence, without cars or planes or people all around. That trip showed me how many stars there really are in the night sky. That trip taught me how good life can be when you boil it down to the basics – eating, sleeping, traveling.

The Rio Grande trip is life with no pretext; an existence composed entirely of simplicity, where your only concerns are how beautiful the countryside is, when you’re going to eat, what you’re going to eat, and where you’re going to sleep. No cell phones, no computers, no distractions. This is life at it’s slowest, a sabbatical everyone should have to undertake at least once in their life.

On top of that, Texas is a beautiful state and Big Bend is a beautifully sparse national park. I fell in love with the desert there, so much so that I went back with the class again in 1997. I’ve wanted to go back every year since and this year I finally am. Very, very exciting!!

Another thing of note – I’m contemplating buying a new motorcycle. I have my eye on a 2002 Honda SuperHawk, a successor to my old beloved 1989 Honda Hawk GT. I’m calling the guy tomorrow to see if it’s still for sale. Very exciting! However, on a down note, I will be selling the Miata to finance the motorcycle purchase.

No, selling the Miata has nothing to do with the fact that the Miata is considered by many to be a “girls” car, or that Miatas were portrayed as squealing girl-cars in the Disney movie “Cars”. Disney be damned, contrary to those jaded beliefs, the Miata is almost the perfect sports car, with front engine-rear wheel drive, nearly 50-50 weight distribution, superb handling and a peppy motor, all in a sexy convertible package! It’s the Japanese Ferrari! And it’s as close to motorcycling fun as one can get on four-wheels. But, alas, I’d rather have a new motorcycle, so the Miata is for sale. Although I will miss having a convertible, so I’ll be looking for a beater drop-top Jeep to play around with later this summer!

One more thing – on a work-related note, my job duties are to be split in half in the next few months. The plan is to have me once again doing the work of only one person, rather than the work of two people, which I’ve been doing for the past three years, much to the regret of my sanity. But I’ve met many interesting people over those last three years, many of which I consider to be friends now, so the job has not been entirely without benefits. But it will be good to not be so stressed and in demand.

Whew, this was a long dispatch, wasn’t it?! My apologies, but we’ve got lots to share here! And the latest Civil Servitude is the icing on the cake. Thanks for reading and enjoy!

Everybody Wants Some!!