Sandy Miss-Adventures

By Tonia

“Discoveries are often made by not following instructions, by going off the main road, by trying the untried.” 
-  Frank Tyger 

As I’ve posted before, I love to go hiking in the Santa Fe area. It’s beautiful; there are a bazillion trails and the dry weather keeps me from sweating like a whore on nickel night.

So when my girlfriend from Tulsa came out to see me, we loaded up our dogs (Remington and Daisy) and headed out for trails along the Rio Grande. We had been informed that this trail system had some of the best hiking in the area. We were excited; and evidently Daisy was too because she kept trying to take over the driving.

We drove and drove – Daisy and I fighting for the steering wheel.  Pavement turned to gravel; gravel turned to dirt and dirt turned to sand. The sand was tricky but I’ve seen movies where cars drive through Arabian sand dunes so I was feeling pretty self-assured. But then …… suddenly ….. no movement. We couldn’t go forward; we couldn’t go backwards. We were high centered on a sand bar with the tires spinning as uselessly as I do in an exercise spin class.

We got out of the car and, with our bare hands, attempted to move sand around to the high centered wheels. Pretty clever, I thought – and figured we’d get the dogs to help dig. Uh, no. The dogs sat on their asses 5 feet away and watched us like we were on the big screen. I sarcastically offered them popcorn. One of them snickered.

When our clever attempts to get unstuck failed we tried to call Roadside Assistance. Only one of our phones had a hint of a bar so I stood on my tippy-toes on top of the car trying to make the call.

After six “Can you hear me now?”s, the person on the other line asked me if I was in a safe place.

“Uh, I guess so. These bushes don’t seem too menacing.”

“Do you ………” and the signal was gone.

I glanced down and my girlfriend was casually rolling the dog hair off her shirt with a lint brush. I looked at her. She quipped, “Hey, if we get rescued I don’t want dog hair all over on my ta-tas!”

A guy in a truck finally came by and offered to help. I'm sure it was because my friend is well endowed and the tata's were free of all traces of dog hair!  He tied a chain to my car and pulled us out backwards. But, not wanting to try to turn around on the narrow path and get stuck again, we just drove in reverse. That seems normal, right? That’s when a whole caravan of vehicles came down the road towards us. It was a large group of young hikers who had already finished their Rio Grande trek for the day. The first one stopped along the side of us and rolled down his window, “A Prius, huh?” They all laughed and waved as they drove by in their four wheel drive trucks and SUV's. Jackasses.

On the way home my girlfriend looked at her hands and said, “Dammit. I broke a nail.” I came home and drank vodka.

For your next girlfriends' get together I recommend a road trip ..... but in an SUV.