Wild Wild South?

Anxious to get this party started, I left the comfort of my grandparents' house Thursday morning, destination: Red River Gorge. I had been checking the weather the few days prior, and it appeared as though there was at least one good week of climbing left down in the Gorge before it started to get bitter cold. The drive through Ohio was pretty blasé, but after crossing the river into Kentucky, things perked up a bit. I got to finally put the bus through it's paces on the rolling, green hills; despite putting a bit peppier camshaft in its engine, it was still pretty lethargic -- you get pretty good at swallowing your pride when semi-trucks regularly pass you on hills.

You know that feeling when it's the weekend or you're on vacation, that nagging sensation that constantly reminds you of all your responsibilities just waiting for you Monday morning? I guess it could be categorized as "dread." Well, I completely lack that now. It's really weird to just be floating around like I'm on vacation, but sans angst. I feel like I've unlocked a new bonus level in life, or perhaps I just entered a cheat code -- all depends on who you ask. If you ever get the chance, though, I highly recommend this.

Now this is going to be pretty difficult, and you're probably going to think I'm making this all up, but let me try and relay to you my day yesterday. Keep in mind this is what I consider to be my first real day out in the "wild," free from friends, family, and responsibility. And frankly, I'm not sure I could have even imagined something this crazy.

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I glanced down at the odometer, knowing that I would pull into the parking lot of Miguel's Pizza at around 24,390. Twenty miles to go. I didn't feel excited or nervous, but my bladder assured me that I was; I swear that thing fills up every sixty miles -- I used to be able to go for hours. Through the town of Stanton and onto the Bert T. Combs Mountain Parkway. Only a handful of miles now and I'd be there. Look at the hills! the rock! The feeling of freedom was starting to set in.

I knew I was rolling in too late to catch a group of climbers on their way out to the crag, so I just got my things settled in the bus and then moseyed on down to the front of the store. Outside sat the owner, Miguel, and another fellow who referred to himself as Wood Hippie. I sat there for maybe an hour, swapping stories with the locals about my travels and plans, and listening to theirs' about how you can entertain yourself in these lonesome hills. I really didn't have much to do, so when Wood Hippie asked if I wanted to tag along to his cabin up in the hills, I said, "Sure."

He grabbed a couple more of his buddies and we loaded into his road-beaten Jeep Wrangler and sped off. I had almost forgotten how beautiful these hills down here could be. In no hurry to return or really be anywhere, he took us on a loop around the hills. Off the blacktop and onto a dirt/gravel road we went, weaving our way around the perimeter of the hills, an incline on the left and a drop-off on the right.

In retrospect I can clearly see he was telling me this story as a bit of foreshadowing, but I just thought he was proud of his juvenile accomplishments. He relayed to us how in his youth he was the runner-up in the sub-16 National Go-Kart championship, and how even at the age of 7 he was zipping around in a kart running 45 mph. Never met anyone that had raced go-karts before, but I'm glad he had. What he did next was speed up just enough to make me feel uncomfortable on these back roads, and then continued to accelerate into a gravel-covered hairpin turn. I death gripped the roll bar and peered out over the cliff's edge -- we were skidding almost sideways through this turn. What the hell did I get myself into this time? I haven't even set foot on a rock yet and here I am gonna die.

After that first turn I realized that he knew what he was doing and this wasn't some drunken charade to try and scare us, though I'm pretty sure he did mean to scare us. We sped through a few more turns -- sideways -- before we came out on the other end of the loop, and rolled once again onto blacktop. This guy was absolutely crazy.

We strolled back into Miguel's parking lot a little bit later and hung out for a few minutes, dropping off the other two passengers and picking up three more. This time we were headed up to his cabin for real, at the very top of a very large hill in the distance.

We pulled off the main road onto his driveway, a mile long dirt road that requires a 4-wheel drive vehicle. We crossed a stream, plowed through mud puddles, crawled up 45-degree inclines, hopped over logs, and blazed new trails up the side of his land. We were only doing about 2 mph this time, but I still thought we were either going to get stuck out there or roll sideways down the hill. At one point, in an effort to "clear the trail," he got out of the Jeep with it still moving, and while hanging onto the side of it he steered with one hand through the window and pushed branches out of the way with the other. A couple times he jumped off the Jeep altogether and ran ahead to clear the brush, leaving the 4 of us sitting in a moving, unmanned vehicle wondering how in the hell we were still alive.

After taking the scenic route, we finally made it to the top of the hill where he was single-handedly building himself a log cabin -- in the mean time he was living out of a run down bus with a breathtaking view. We spent the rest of the evening sitting around his ancient cast iron stove (one you might find in an old log cabin -- guess where it's going) on his very own hand-carved furniture, underneath some overhanging rock, overlooking the valley, watching the sun melt in the west. Read that again if you have to.

For dinner we had cocktail shrimp and homemade cheeseburgers, cooked on an old-fashioned cast iron grill over fresh coals from the stove. De-licious. For background "music" we had the endless tales of his misspent youth. I really didn't say much the whole evening; I guess I was in shock, both to still be alive and for having stumbled into such an amazing predicament. Wood Hippie indeed.