Eight minutes until my bacon is done.

I've got a few minutes until my bacon is done, let me tell you a story, a story about an Iowa boy who took to heart the expression Idiot Out Wandering Around .

This fella, whom you may have guessed is me, has wandered from a simple beginning in Iowa across half of America to include Kansas, California, Colorado, Florida, Missouri and more. There was no grand adventure, no treasure won save the treasure of living a full life.

I’m skipping right over the Iowa part and heading southwest to Lawrence Kansas where I went to high school. My mom and dad had left for California and I opted to stay behind. Those of you who were in Lawrence in the early 80s know it was an exciting place to be young and probably understand why I could not leave.

By 1983, after a few years of attempted adulting I was ready to go see my mommy again. Somehow, I managed to find someone else as crazy as me who was also looking for an adventure. Of course, neither of us had a car so we headed out to sunny California the only way that made sense, thumb power.

We thumbed our way south on I-35 to Oklahoma City. Not too much happened on the several rides that got us to and through Wichita without anything that an old fella like me remembers 40 years later. Although I'm pretty sure the two guys who gave us a ride south out of Kansas into Oklahoma City were hauling some.... let's call it contraband.

By the time we got to OK City we were making great time and had no issues. We were able to stop along the way with our suspicious truck drivers and eat at a greasy truck stop and wash a little of the road off of our selves at the truck stop shower. After enjoying a little smoke out under the stars, it was getting late so we decided to camp out in the large grassy areas at the junction of I-35 and I-40.

The next morning brought more good luck with rides getting us west through Oklahoma and the Texas panhandle without much of interest happening. Near Gallup New Mexico it got interesting however. We were still making great time and again night fell upon us as we walked along the famed Interstate 40. We decide to call it a night and choose an inviting highway overpass near Gallup, I think. We laid out our bed rolls and I tried to sleep. As I wavered in and out of sleep, I noticed a couple of guys who appeared to also be hitchhiking along the highway below us and began watching them.

They seemed to notice our dark forms up top under the overpass. I lay still just watching them to see what they would do. Instead of continuing on their way down the road they went up the embankment to the road above. Soon I see one of them sneaking around the concrete abutment and creeping towards his and our gear. When he got about ten feet into the low hanging bridge girders I barked out “HEY”. This startled him greatly and for some reason he stood straight up. To run away, I guess. Unfortunately for the thieving bastard he was under several tons of concrete with about 4 feet clearance. So, when he stood up so quickly, he whacked his head on the beams and BAM down he went, tumbling down the sloped concrete for about 20 feet, landing on the gravel shoulder below with an audible thud.

I laid there grinning in my sleeping bag and watched him. He laid there unmoving for a few minutes and then began to try to gain his feet. When he finally did, he staggered off to the west without even looking back at the source of his obvious pain. His gait improved as I watched him stagger away and soon his partner came down the slope and joined him as they walked out of my sight. That, my friends is how I was able to defend our camp with only a bark in the night. The whole incident didn’t even wake my companion until I finally started laughing at the absurdity of the whole event.

The next morning, we headed off towards Arizona, me rambling on about our visitors from the night before and my companion probably wishing I would shut the hell up. The next leg of our journey was uneventful and as smooth as the first one was. We soon got picked up by a lone trucker who took us all the way to San Bernardino where we met up with my brother and began the next chapter of our adventure. However, that’s another story and besides my bacon is done and I’m ready to eat.