Drunken cowboys don't make good sherpas

In last night's dream travels I was in my lovely Loma Rica, thinking I'd find a more scenic road to take to on the way to Marysville. I headed north, towards Chico and then took the first road west. It was a dirt road and I didn't get too far before I decided to turn around and try a different one. The road was plenty scenic, with a nice brook flowing next to it and pretty level ground, if not the smoothest for car travel.

I got back on the road heading north and decided it was taking too long to veer in the direction I needed to go. I took the next turn-off going west. This road was more promising at the start. It was well-paved and looked like it headed directly where I wanted to go. Just one problem: there was a giant ravine, and the road made an impossibly steep descent straight down and then went straight up on the other side. It was deceptively disguised as a road, but it was one that would require a 4x4 sand rail and lot of skill to traverse.

It was one of those weird dream situations where the car you start out in quickly becomes something else to suit the terrain. I shed my Honda Fit and found myself in the necessary sand rail, gunning it to try to make it up the other side. When that became ineffective, I was briefly on a dirt bike, having the same kind of luck, spinning my tires and sliding backward in the loose dirt and gravel.

Soon I was completely without a vehicle, and was staring up a sheer rock cliff hundreds of feet straight up. I was thinking, "This might be a nice spot to go camping sometime." As I said that, I realized that I was being accompanied by Randy Mitchell, a former service writer where I used to work.

Randy, aka "the Brotherman," was a drunken wannabe cowboy in real life, and he appeared to be no different in my dream. Most notable Randy quotes from my recollection of him are:

 "Yeeeeeeee-Heeee-eeeewwww!" And "See, honey, I'm not a drunk--I'm just stupid," (a positive spin he gave to his wife, on his plowing over the septic tank lid with a tractor while disking their field at night). 

This awesome package of mostly brainless meat was going to be my guide over the last bit of rugged terrain.

Somewhere very close to the top he turned back to look down at me, possibly to wave his cowboy hat in a "Yeee-heeeew" type of gesture. And down he went, sliding on his belly for hundreds of feet, crashing against every bumpy rock on the way down. I thought he'd be dead for sure. His shirt was bloody on the front, but even worse, he didn't have his cowboy hat. He got up slowly and staggered a bit, looking stunned and scraped up, but no worse off than his usual drunken self.

"It's a good thing you're so hard-headed," I called down to him as he began the ascent again. 

"Sure am!"

He smiled up at me with the pride of a cowboy tossed off his horse, who knows full well he's gonna get right back up on that same rank horse, even before his broken bones heal up. Yep, same old stubborn bull of a man that I remembered.

I looked up and saw that I was mere feet from the top, in the same spot from which Randy had plummeted. I was feeling uneasy and beginning to lose my grip. And my white straw cowboy hat started coming off my head. I finagled it back onto my head, preventing it from slipping off into oblivion. I looked down and realized there was no way I'd be going back down there to get it if it did fall off.

I felt safe enough in that spot if I didn't move and was leery of letting go of my grip on the rocks. I somehow felt confident, though, that I could make it the rest of the way, if I took the risk. I was ninety-eight percent of the way up the incredibly steep hill, looking down on my Terminator of a cowboy sherpa as he was tenaciously making his way back up.

I opted out of the dream at that point. I got up to pee and I was never able to re-enter that dream. Later I have a vague recollection of Sharon and I discussing the field capacity of vermiculite, using less awkwardly technical terms. She was trying to tell me that "the pea gravel shouldn't be this wet" and was wringing it out in her hands. I couldn't extract any more information from her, though, and woke up knowing I had overslept.