Survivor Woman

We have been running “turn and burn” loads between Atlanta and Dallas for the past few days. Which is kinda nice after that negative twelve degree crap up in North Dakota last week. But we haven’t had hardly any time to stop and relax. Luckily when we delivered in Dallas again yesterday we had a few hours off. It was beautiful. The temp gauge in the truck said 65 degrees and the sun was shining brilliantly. After we delivered, I drove us over to an empty warehouse nearby and parked the truck in a relatively secluded spot. Stace went back to sleep because she hadn’t been asleep very long when we got to the receiver, but I decided to take the iPod so I could keep listening to my book and let Maggie out to play in the grass for a while before we went to sleep. Maggie got all excited when I pulled down the long leash and started gathering a few things (fresh diet coke and cigars) together.

We walked across the deserted parking lot of the warehouse to the grass landscaping at the edge of the lot. I found a likely spot and sat down. I hooked Maggie’s 50′ exploring leash to my belt so I wouldn’t have to hold it, lit a cigar and started my book. I have been listening to the “Clan of the Cave Bear” series by that old lady who only writes one book every eight years or so. I’m going to probably give some things away so, if you want to read the series and don’t want to know anything about it, put your hands over your eyes and chant “I can’t see you” while you skip to the purple headline below. The first book is actually pretty good. It’s about Neanderthal and Cro-Magnon peoples and has lots of crap in there about how the Neanderthal peoples might have lived day to day. The star of the story is this little Cro-Magnon chick named Ayla who ends up living with the Neanderthal Clan after her people died in an earthquake. Let me tell you that Ayla is something else! I am only part way through the second book and already Ayla has:

• Invented subtraction. I know you think of Euclid when you think of geometry, but apparently you should be thinking of Ayla when you think of subtraction because she invented it.
• Invented the sports-bra. Oh sure, it wouldn’t become widely distributed for thousands of years, but so what she still thought of it first.
• Tamed the first horse.
• Invented a travois so that horse could pull heavy loads back to the cave for her.
• Created the first fancy parade headgear for her horse.
• Was the first person to figure out how to start a fire with flint.
• Tamed the first Cave Lion cub which presumably either became a domestic house cat thousands of years later or was stoned as an adult by angry villagers for eating too many children — I haven’t gotten to that part yet.
• Created the first primitive version of Fed-Ex. But delivery was very slow since everybody except Ayla had to trudge around in the snow on two feet… and since nobody could read or write, you just had to take the delivery person’s word for it that the message was correct.
• Created the first pizza delivery franchise. Except that it was actually called Mammoth-To-Go and was typically served raw or simply cut into strips and smoked.

Fancy-pants horse gear Ayla invented

Anyway, you can see that Ayla was something of a prodigy. What with being so busy inventing things and all there’s hardly any room for plot in the second book which is quickly turning into a formula romance novel set in the stone age. I may not go on after this one.

Back to Hedon and Maggie playing outside

So the point is that I was just sitting there in the sun “reading” my book while Maggie rushed all over the hundred feet of her new domain. Then it kinda started to get hot with the sun pounding down on me and all. So I double checked that Mag’s leash wouldn’t allow her to reach pavement and possible danger, then laid back on the grass and propped my hat forward over my eyes to keep the sun out. I stopped the book for a while and started thinking:

I don’t know why Stace says we would die instantly in a wilderness survival situation. I know a lot about surviving. I used to camp all the time when I was a kid. I have read about several different ways to make a fire without a lighter. I know how to make a spear. I could probably weave a basket out of some sort of grass stalk or something and then you fill it with water and stick hot rocks in it to cook stuff. Lord knows I heard about how those Clan women smoked meat like 200 times in that book so I could probably do that, too. And besides thanks to watching that Les guy on “SurvivorMan” I know how to build dead-fall traps to catch small animals. I also know how to make a shelter thanks to Les. Hmmm… Oh! And thanks to that idiot on “Man vs Wild” I know that if you’re ever dying of thirst you can get plenty of liquid to drink out of elephant shit… hope I never have to use that particular piece of knowledge. Anyway… I think Stace is wrong about us surviving. I think we know a lot more than she thinks we do. Besides… thanks to the ADD I have extremely good awareness of my surroundings. I should practice that some to keep my senses razor-sharp. Boy that sun sure is warm. Ok… listen now… oh there’s the yard-dog truck over at the receiver we were just at — I noticed when we were there that he has a squeeky brake. And I can hear a plane getting ready to take off over at the airport. That breeze sure does feel nice. And sounds like Maggie has found something particularly interesting to sniff — she’s using her excited sniff right now. Razor-sharp senses I tell you. Stace wouldn’t have anything to worry about if she were with me… we’d survive just fine in the wilderness.

Beautiful sunny day in Dallas

When I woke up about an hour later Maggie was curled up sound asleep right next to me in the position she usually picks when we’re napping. My first thought was I wonder how long the wind has had my shirt flapping all bunched up around my neck? My second was that I probably shouldn’t quit my day job.