From: RDJT76A@prodigy.com (MR RICHARD J LIMACHER)
Date: Wed, 24 Jun 1998 03:39:04, -0500
To: ULTRA@LISTSERV.DARTMOUTH.EDU
Subject: Legend of Pecos Phooey at WS100, Part 21

No notes this time, just Mozart:


      If You're Feelin' Kinda Lucky Kinda Loose 'n' Kinda Plucky
        Then Whuddaya Say Ol' Bucky Let's Join With Uncle Ducky
         An' All Go Yucky-Mucky 'n' Do The Rucky Chucky Rag


          And it's one-two-three, what're we swimmin' for?
          Don't ask me, I don't give a wink
          Next stop an' we're in the drink
          And it's five-six-seven
          Close up all the flood gates, please
          Well, this ain't no time to try a tri
          It's 'sposed ta be th' Western States

          Well, come on all you women an' men,
          Uncle noRm needs your help again
          Got himself into some terrible fix
          Way down yonder by the River Styx
          So rescue those, never mind these
          We're gonna plunge in an' freeze

          And it's one-two-three, what're we swimmin' for?
          Don't ask me, I don't give a wink
          Next stop an' we're in the drink
          And it's five-six-seven
          Close up all the flood gates, please
          Well, ain't no time to be tryin' a tri
          It's 'sposed ta be th' Western States

          All right, shufflers throughout the land,
          We found a guy needs a helping hand
          I take it all back, on second look
          Really turns out, he needs a helping foot
          Fell off the boat an' singin' the blues
          He doesn't have a change of shoes

          And it's one-two-three, what're we swimmin' for?
          Don't ask me, I don't give a wink
          Next stop an' we're in the drink
          And it's five-six-seven
          Close up all the flood gates, please
          Well, this ain't no time to try a tri
          It's 'sposed ta be th' Western States

          Well, come on lurkers, don't be slow
          Man, this is "health a go-go"
          There's plenty good legs to be saved
          Supplyin' the runners with gator-aide
          Just hope an' pray that when they all go thru
          The critters are in the zoo

          And it's one-two-three, what're we swimmin' for?
          Don't ask me, I don't give a wink
          Next stop an' we're in the drink
          And it's five-six-seven
          Close up all the flood gates, please
          Well, ain't no time to try a tri
          It's 'sposed ta be th' Western States!


(Honest to God, Steve and I sang that song.  Honest.  Didn't we?  STEVE??
You still out there, buddy?)

All right.  In deference to the more serious, hard-driving, performance-
enhanced runners among us, I apologize.  We really didn't sing that song.
Of course, Country Joe and the Fish didn't either. (But, they inspired it!)

And speaking of inspiring...

You know, when I saw "those shorts" again (all size 0 of them), I greeted
the vision with a kind of false saliva.  I wasn't sure whether to break
stride and finally embrace my doubtless fate then and there, or, on second
thought, keep still and keep running (behind her).  Steve broke stride, of
course.  But I chose the latter, and held "back."  (Not hers, of course.
Just, you know, held back--so's I wouldn't alarm in the dark the stark
Amazonian raving beauty, especially since she hadn't changed in awhile and
wasn't quite dressed to receive me, I reasoned.  What Steve was reasoning,
I'm not sure.)

All right.  That's another feeble attempt at a joke.  Actually Steve was
proving himself a most capable pacer.  And I rather believe he hardly even
noticed my gorgeous Germanic heartthrob passing, trippingly seemingly ever
so slightly, in front of us.

She said not a word but went straight to her work.  Not filling any
stockings, she neither turned, nor said, "Jerk!"  And, not even laying a
middle finger aside of her nose, down the trail she goes.  And I turned to
my partner as she sped out of sight, "Marry Kraut's mass?  An' to fall a
good slight?"

"You're stretching it, Phoo," he said.  "Let it drop."

"Besides," he added after we watched her disappear ahead of us into the
night, "how do I know she's single?"

All right.  Once again, I apologize.  Nothing like that was said at all.
She just, you know, passed us!  A long time after I had first passed her,
climbing up the hair and knuckles of Devil's Thumb.  And, well, it just
simply kills me, that's all--practically a whole year later--that I let her
slip slip away from me that night without saying anything. Without tempting
my obvious fate.  Without even offering to launder her shorts.

In the river.

Which, of course, we were slowly coming to.  And when we got there (Lordy,
we could HEAR it for miles!) we were treated to a sublime, nearly
surrealistic, vision:  of lights, hammering gasoline-powered generators,
vague colors, and mystic tents.  I actually think it was Tropical John
Medinger himself who, during one of the pre-race clinics, described it as a
scene right out of "Apocalypse Now."  He was right.  It was.  (And now you
wonder why we were singing that classic Vietnam-era war protest song?
Well, a mockery of it.  Which, of course, we weren't singing at all.)

Now with the noise and lights and darkly shrouded figures milling about, I
half expected to be rescued--or shot--by helicopter.  It was really a weird
scene.  Everyone was huddled and hooded and greatly overdressed, I thought.
Everybody was shivering.  Freezing!  And we hadn't even crossed the river yet.

Big floodlights! Big, tall, beams focused down from towers, like Woodstock.
 The volunteers were huddled inside a long open pavillion-type tent.  No
sides to it.  Long table spread out in front.  They had soup!  We gobbled
down the soup.  They had coffee, even.  And a radio!  Crosby, Stills and
Nash were on the radio (I think).  "And the darkest hour...is just before
dawn."  There was even a kitchen clock hanging on a tent pole behind the
volunteers.  It said:  "2 a.m."

We pressed on.

What we had to do was make our way down in front of where the floodlight
towers were, where there was this Jeep--no kidding--parked on top of a
bunch of huge boulders (and you think they make this stuff up for those TV
ads...hey, my next vehicle is a Jeep).  And tied, very firmly, to the front
bumper of that Jeep was a rope.  A very thick, very taut, rope.  There were
many helpful volunteers there (God love 'em) and they told us what to do.

"Make the sign of the cross," they said.  "And repeat after me..."

No.  That's not what they said.

"GRAB THE ROPE!" is what they said.

We did.  And they told us to inch our way carefully out along these huge
rocks toward the RAGING, RAPID water, all the while holding for dear life
onto the rope.  It was stretched--magnificently, I thought--across that
section of the American River at its seemingly narrowest point, which was
still about a hundred yards across, and the other end of the rope was also
tied--wondrously, I imagined--to the front bumper of yet another Jeep
perched atop yet another pile of impossible rocks.  Can you imagine the
incredible feat of civil engineering it must have taken to accomplish this?
Wow!  Taut rope stretched between two facing Jeeps on top of boulders at
opposite sides of a raging river?  Without either vehicle ending up in the
drink?  My hat goes off to the people that accomplished that.  Mostly,
though, after looking at that clock and thinking of the trail we'd just
come down on, I kept wondering if they had enough gas.

Spaced at about ten- or fifteen-foot intervals all along the rope were
these great guys in hipwaders (and WARM clothes) who looked like they might
otherwise be fishermen who offered to lend a helping hand.  Except, of
course, it was two o'clock in the morning, and most fishermen at that time are...fishing!

But these guy were wonderful.  They held the rope real steady for us as we,
trippingly ever so slipperily, inched our way across along the other side
of the rope.  They told us to feel the rocks under our feet and step
carefully, lest we either: a) slip and fall, b) get eaten by a critter, or
c) both.  But, what they DIDN'T tell us was...

THE WATER WAS FREEZING!!!!!!!!!!!

Wow!

Take your breath away kind of freezing.  Flash-frozen Birds-eye peas kind
of freezing.  Microwave on HIGH for eighty-five minutes kind of freezing.

Whoa!  Wasn't this stuff snow and ice just yesterday?  Man, was it COLD!!

[Be warned, WS-doing friends.  Oh-oh.  I just read here tonight...this year
y'all get a BOAT!  Good Cryminnie!  What a buncha...  No.  I won't say it.
This year you'll all be just as brave as Steve and I were last year.  Only
warmer.  And drier.  Aren't you lucky.  Rucky Chuckies!]

Oh, one more thing:  The damn FREEZING water came up over my waist!  Almost
chest-high!  Hey, littler people might've drowned!  Except, of course, for
our friends the off-duty fisherman.  They'd've saved ya, surely.

Well, by the time Steve and I finally made it inch-by-inch across that
unbelievably frigid body of water...we were immediately shrunk wrapped,
vacuum-sealed, labeled, UPC-coded, boxed, and trucked (by Jeep) back to the
Holiday Inn at Foresthill in time for Sunday brunch.

We were peas.


[Back tomorrow with Part 22.  Aren't you lucky.  Rucky Chucky!]


Rich Limacher
The Ultra Nutty Troubadour
RDJT76A@prodigy.com