I woke up in a room devoid of furniture or décor or anything at all really save the unsheeted twin size mattress I’d been sleeping on. My head hurt like hell and I wasn’t sure where I was. The sun shone bright through the window. The hardwood floor was dirty. I got up. I opened the door. I stepped out into the living room, and then I remembered.
We got trashed on cigarettes and Jack and watched The Dirt and then got even more trashed on Maker’s and watched all kinds of music videos on YouTube and somewhere in the middle of all that music is where I passed out blacked out on the couch. Don’t recall crawling from there to the mattress I woke up on, but I’ve learned to accept the fact that not everything that happens in life can be remembered, and besides when a life dies it takes an entire lifetime of memories with it so in the long run a few blank spaces here and there aren’t really gonna make much of a difference I don't think.
In the morning we sobered up with coffee and aspirin and The Professor And The Madman. After a late breakfast I shook Lawson’s hand and I left. That’s the last I’ll see him for several months or so. Such is life I suppose.
I drove to Salida and parked in the public parking lot and walked to the Brown Dog coffee shop and stayed there staring at my laptop till right before it closed, and then I went over to the trailhead by the old caboose to meet Justin for the group run up the hill in the dark to the gazebo. I arrived several minutes before he did and observed a group of runners standing around looking suspiciously like the group runners I was to join, so I went over and said Hello but forgot to actually introduce myself. It didn’t occur to me until much later how odd that probably seemed to the others. Oh well, too late, what can I say besides I’m a weirdo.
After cruising back down we all wandered over to Tres Litros for beer because as any decent Colorado trail runner will tell you it is considered bad luck in Colorado to participate in a group run that does not conclude with beer. Back at Justin’s place we had a lovely supper of stove-unfrozen pizza and Barkley butterscotch moonshine and talked of ultrarunning and mountain climbing and Niwot’s Challenge. Then Justin went to bed and I went to an air mattress on the floor.