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| Death Valley Beyond. |
Squawking, moaning, groaning, and droning on endlessly like a Seattle Seahawk who had just snatched the sniveling stink of defeat from the glorious grasp of heroic victory, I misplayed one lousy card. Like poor Russell Wilson, I threw a bad ball (Yet I'll not let it define me, either [I'm only sixty-three, after all]). I held a slim lead with the final hand to play in the Victorville Open. We were playing for all of the local single wides, a heady prize indeed. I played a queen to start the pegging. The Wily Cager (Stumpy for Short) played one of her sisters for two, and then it happened. Instead of playing a third lady for six, I pushed out a King (for three, I thought to finish the J-Q-K run). But woe of throws (That's what Russell said, too!), I had misread the hand. Naturally, I tried to pick it up under some lame "It slipped..." but before I could snatch it, the Cager whipped out a small revolver she had purchased at a local Victorville pawnshop and removed my left pointer finger with a shot reminiscent of Dead Eye Dick. "A card laid is a card played," she squawked. And that is the sad reconstruction of this morning's action (ESPN will be rehashing it for some time). Tail tucked between my legs, I merely loaded myself (And Stumpy) into the truck for the 206 mile trek down into Death Valley. Our drive was uneventful (Thank you, Jesus). We saw nothing spectacular unless you call sand, rust, old trailers, abandoned buildings, sage brush, and road debris spectacular. We did see the Ten Commandments posted like an old Burma Shave commercial along the highway. Actually, I'm not being totally fair to the terrain. The desert mountains and the ripple of the hills plays nicely off the senses as the sun moves the light across the day. And, of course, once we dropped into the majesty of Death Valley, we could barely remember the long haired surfer dudes along the coast (This, too, is California). We're tucked in nicely at the Furnace Creek Resort, which is as out of place in this environment as I would be dining with Mitt Romney in his mansion in La Jolla. But who cares, life is good, especially today.
The desert highway.
Some of the pretty light in the distance.
More desert highway (Isn't that part of a song lyric).
The highway to Death Valley.
More light.
Art shot of the day.
California hot rod of the day.
Really?
Steel belted radials on a solid wood wheel.
Water is easy to find here, believe it or not.
It may have been a long way to anywhere in this rig.
Big diesels keep on rolling.
I think this place inspires hallucinations.
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