Part 04
I thought a lot about Wendy and John that day, Wendy especially, and wished there was something more we could do for them. There rarely is in these situations except to pitch in where you can, tell them that you're thinking of them, and include them in your prayers.
I tried to immerse myself in my work and put their tragedy out of my head. That turned out to be necessary, because we'd been battling a bad hydraulic seal on a piece of equipment that we very much needed to keep running, and it was getting worse. We'd been waiting for a replacement which was being FedEx'ed to Rock Springs and then messengered out to us.
We had "custom engineered" it for the 5th or 6th time and had it working OK, when our main generator blew. And I mean blew, loud bang, sparks, black smoke, the works. We knew we were done, and had some expensive downtime ahead of us. The smaller generator is only enough to operate the lights in the trailers and a few small appliances. Speaking of appliances, we were toast.
That happened late on a Wednesday morning, and I wasn't due to leave until Friday afternoon, but when it became obvious that only the maintenance guy and mechanics would be of any use the rest of us split.
I didn't even take time to clean up, I was so looking forward to surprising Kristi and having a couple of extra days with her. I pushed my old beater Jeep through the rugged stuff as fast as I dared, and when I hit the paved road after about 90 minutes of bouncing, I pushed it up to the highest vibration level I could tolerate and set the cruise at 82mph.
I had my Sirius radio playing (regular stations out here are few, weak, and bad - farm reports, etc.), and I thought about Wendy and her dad, and John, and Ron and Kori of course, and a lot about Kristi. Maybe this weekend we could set a date, look at wedding venues, that kind of stuff.
It was time she made an honest man out of me, but we hadn't really discussed it much. I intended to ask Ron to be my best man, and I think she wanted Kori and Wendy on her side. My brother could be the other groomsman, and that was enough, we should keep it kind of small in my opinion. My thoughts wander like that when I drive or hike.
The time passed quickly, despite a stop for gas and snacks and some pretty nasty wind and dust devils just north of Cheyenne, and soon I was starting to hit Denver traffic. Yuck. No wonder I liked being out in Wyoming so much! My commute was long, but none of this crap every day.
I pulled up in front of my house and stopped in the driveway, on the right side. I was glad to see her car in the garage on the left, but not too thrilled she'd left the door up. We leave my beater out all the time, and she parks her little Solstice on the left, because my baby gets full-time rights to the other side. It was there, seemingly fine under its cover, but if the door is left open someone could cause a lot of damage. I'd mention it later, but would come back out and close it in a minute, because I wanted to surprise her and she'd surely hear the door go down.
I snuck in quietly and shushed Ralph when he came wagging his old Lab body over to me. I fussed over him a little to settle him down, then looked around. It was very quiet, and I assumed Kristi was either upstairs or out back, so I crept up the steps. I'd probably scare the hell out of her, but she'd forgive me when she realized we had 2 extra days together!