Arrant Nonsense

Cyborg werewolf has another END at the bottom. Our little overnight trip to Moab shook the rest of the thing out of my head, and I finished this draft on the drive home between Green River and Wellington. And I'm actually happy with this one.

Moab, as always, was beautiful. We couldn't have asked for better weather. We drove up the Poison Spider trail yesterday and did Moab Rim today. I swear, I saw more ground squirrels (three) on Poison Spider than we normally do in an entire week. I also have a love/hate relationship with Moab Rim. It's awesome and technical and the view is amazeballs, but it also scares the shit out of me because it's tippy and close to the edge of a cliff, and one wrong move will end your day in disaster. So. Yeah. I've never seen anyone actually lose it there, but damn.

I blew right past Snippet Saturday. I didn't have anything anyway, really, so. However, I did manage to hit my goal for all three days we were in Moab, and have now cracked 12,000 words on the thing and moved my Plot forward. Go, me.

Moab was awesome, in case you were wondering, but, then, it always is. I will post up some pix tomorrow, but in the meantime I leave you with more angel wallpaper:



( 1024x600 images under the cut )

Weird Shit You See in Moab!

So, yeah, this right here:

isn't the weirdest thing you'd see in Moab. Not by a long shot. Yes, that's ours, isn't it lovely, moving on...

First, the links and other stuff:

• Splatman.
  
  
• T-shirts dyed with local red dirt.
  
  
• Trails with names like "Steel Bender," "Metal Masher," and "Poison Spider," and obstacles with names like "Potato Salad Hill," "Dump Bump" (now, sadly, closed), and "White Knuckle Hill."
  
  
• A 5,000-square-foot home blasted into the living rock. With a petting zoo. And sculptures. And stuff. I highly encourage you to peruse the website, because, dude.
  
  
• Vehicles with actual six-wheel drive. Oh, and outside roll cages.
  ( Click for a pic, dial-up users beware, because it gets image-heavy from here on out. )
  
  
  
• A car riddled with giant arrows.
  ( Photographic proof. )
  
  
  
• Bison. In a front yard. Being held back by a flimsy fence that wouldn't hold a determined day-old lamb in.
  ( Photographic proof. )
  
  
  
• Golf carts with roll cages and four-wheel drive. Okay, it's a highly-modified golf cart, but show me something out here that's not highly-modified.
  ( Photographic proof. )
  
  
  
• Someone backing up Potato Salad Hill. Yes, he made it. No, I have no idea how.
  ( Photographic proof. )
  
  
  
• A snowmobile going down Potato Salad Hill. No, he didn't wreck, amazingly enough.
  ( Photographic proof. )
  
  
  And that's just a smattering, folks--and just the Jeep Safari.

We wandered into town on Thursday, got the motorhome set up, and toddled down to the Arena to ogle the vendors. In the parking lot, we met a representative from a national magazine, who invited us out the next day to a photoshoot. Sure, sez we, because there's no bad there, right? Did the arena, ate at Moab Brewery, yadayada.

Friday, we hooked up with some friends and headed out to do a little trail called the Pickle (because if you screw up on it, you'll be in a pickle). And that was fun until the battery in the Willys died. Lord knows it was due, but it picked a hell of a time. So, we finished the trail (and did the bypass on the last obstacle) to get out faster, and raced into town to get a new battery and meet the magazine guy. We were a couple minutes late, but so was he, so it was all good.

And then a fuse blew, which shut the cooling fan off. Which is... not good, on the trail. These puppies overheat like mad if you're not careful because they're really stressed. The Hubby hotwired the cooling fan, and we cut our part of the photoshoot short to go into town and attempt (yet more) repairs. Apparently it was just a bad fuse, because the Hubby put a new one in, stressed it, and it didn't blow. Yay!

Saturday, which is Big Saturday in the parlance of the Jeep Safari, we headed out to Area BFE and played around there for the day. It's a privately-run place with all kinds of trails and obstacles for every level of vehicle and driver, and it's a lot of fun. And we were with the Rangely Boys (whose motto seems to be "If we didn't break something, we didn't actually wheel"), so that was quite entertaining too. Also, I got about 1500 words done on the Chains novel, which was nice.

Sunday, we headed out to Kane Creek, where we seemed to be faced (once again) with a dead battery. This time, the Hubby had one of the guys looking under the hood while he cranked it, and we discovered that not one, but both solenoids were loose. But at least that was the last of our trail troubles.

However, the old adage that more people are hurt falling off rocks in Moab than in jeeping accidents managed to hold true. One of the women in our group was standing on a rock, when her teenage son jumped onto it next to her--and the whole huge slab broke into three pieces and spilled them to the ground. The boy wasn't hurt, but she ended up with a dislocated elbow and a half-hour drive into town over rocks and through washes, which was...yeah. Hellish. But it could have been so much worse--she could have hit her head or broken bones or... eek. You just never think that a huge rock slab like that is going to break for next to no reason.

That put a damper on our enthusiasm, so most of us left on Monday. We stayed and went back to the Pickle with the Rangely group and a guy from where the Hubby works. And that would have been a nice short three-hour trail...if we hadn't got stuck behind a group of ten or so. So that turned into an all-day deal too. One of our guys broke his front knuckle joint in his front driveshaft, and another bent his driveshaft and had to nurse it back to camp.

We decided to head out Tuesday morning, which is when we discovered that the alternator in the motorhome wasn't charging the batteries. We nursed it to Wellington, grabbed some Subway, and charged the batteries from the Willys for an hour or so, then headed back out.

And that's when the trip went disastrously wrong for us.

The trailer has a bolt that holds the hitch ball latch in place. We lost the bolt, but didn't think much of it because it's, like, the third line of defense before the latch should fail, right?

Yeah, not so much.

Pulling out of the parking lot of the Walker's managed to bounce the hitch off the ball. So, we're tooling down the highway, not realizing it, pulling the thing by the chains (thank God for the chains, OMG), and then...had to slow down for a school zone. And that's when the trailer hit us. Fortunately, the Hubby is a skilled driver who does not panic or slam on his brakes, and he managed to get us stopped with a minimum of damage. It broke the poop tube on the motorhome and took out the trailer brakes and the trailer lights--but it could have been SO MUCH WORSE. Seriously, that could have taken out all three vehicles had it gone just a little farther south than it did.

We got it put back together, FOUND A BOLT, and got back on the road. With no trailer brakes or turn signals or brake lights and 125 miles to go. And of course, just to make the trip complete, it was snowing like hell over Soldier Summit.

But we made it home, more or less in one piece. And now here we are.

Coming up next: Weird shit you see in Moab.

OMG we're home.

That was way more of an adventure than we either expected or wanted.

More after I've caught my breath.

Had a lovely visit with the handsome and talented kurukami Showed him Moab Rim. Hiked to Delicate Arch. Saw squirrels. Got no pictures, because I foolishly put new rechargeable batteries in the camera without checking to see if they were actually charged. Which they weren't. CRAP.

Broke the Willys. TWICE, on the trail. So, he got the Full Experience!

Ate at the Moab Brewery and Eddie McStiff's. The Steak Mojo was as delish as I remembered it, and they even had the sauce for sale, so I brought some home.

Also managed to scribble about a thousand words, somehow. So stayed on track with my word count goal. Remembered this morning to check to see if Ben's sarcasm circuits were still firing while he was in prison (they were), because I also scribbled one of my favorite lines ever last night and it reminded me.

And this morning I'm tired and sore and I fell down and scraped my leg in Moab and it kind of hurts and I don't want to do school with Da Boy but we sort of have to because we're running out of days in the week and BLAH. All I want to do is sit here by myself and write write write, but I'm not going to be afforded that luxury.

I haven't had a thousand-word day, once, this week. Woe.

Part of my problem with the new novelthing is that I've been lacking a Villain.

The lady!vampire started out that way. And then, as all good characters do (and I don't mean "good" as in "good vs evil"), she evolved. She's not the villain. She doesn't want to hurt Ben and does, in fact, have his best interests--as she sees them--at heart.

Now, what she sees as his bests interests aren't, necessarily. In fact, Ben himself rather vehemently disagrees with her on what his best interests are. But this doesn't make her the Villain. This makes her the Contagonist.

The three main Plots are: Man vs Nature, Man vs Man, and Man vs Himself. I had the Man vs Nature (or the environment) conflict going pretty well there. The Man vs Himself conflict was cooking merrily along. You'd think this would be enough conflict, but it really wasn't. I still wanted to have a Man vs Man conflict as well. Some would say this is because I like throwing 90mph curveballs at Ben's head. They may very well be correct. Because I can be a bitch like that.

Anyway. Now that I've got this vampire guy who is pissed at him for being the Uppity Cur Who Doesn't Know His Place in the Natural Order of Things...my actual Plot is coming together very nicely. Instead of this just being a random collection of "How can I hurt Ben today and make him fall apart in the worst possible way" scenes, I have something that will tie them all together and have them make some semblance of narrative sense.

I've been pounding away at this thing, word-vomiting away. I've been pleased with it, but not Happy. Now? I am Happy. Maybe, just maybe, I'll be able to turn it into something Special.

In other news, we're heading out to Moab tomorrow, as the handsome and talented kurukami is going there. We shall visit Arches National Park, I think, and possibly take him jeeping, I'm thinking up Poison Spider Trail. The Willys is in primo condition after getting the radiator fixed, and this can be a nice little shakeout cruise for it. I may be scarce on LJ for the next couple of days.

Rolled in Friday afternoon, remembered where our buddy Greg's house was, got the motorhome set up. Didn't have much time for much of anything but dinner and socializing, but we hit the arena for some Hubby retail therapy. He didn't buy anything, and we went to the Moab Brewery for dinner. I had the sausage plate, which is always good, and their home-brewed grape soda, which was delicious, and added (yet another) glass to my collection. After that, we hit Potato Salad Hill, which is never a dull moment. Last year, we saw a snowmobile go down it. This year, we saw two rigs go up it backwards. No rollovers, but one guy did get vertical on his two back wheels before his rig decided that it wouldn't mind staying upright. Lucky him, because, while most of the time people don't get hurt when they roll in Moab, Potato Salad Hill can be the exception to that, and it would have been a nasty end-over-end one. Another guy busted a drive line. Make it or break it... We didn't do it this year, just ran out of time.

Saturday, we got up early enough to watch the parade thingy, then headed out to Area BFE. That was really really cool--there's lots of stuff there, from minor obstacles to ohholyshitwhatthehell ones. We saw a couple of people roll, nothing serious. Definitely going to have to go out there again. Our friend Josh (one of the Rangely Boys) broke his front inner axle on some obstacle. Ate at Bob and Ruth's, a couple of other friends. Found out that one of our other friends broke (probably) his pinion gear in his rear axle on some nothin' trail (Porcupine Rim, I think), so...yeah.

Sunday, we did the Rusty Nail with a couple of hardcore buggies and the Rangely Boys. We were going to do the Pickle as well, but got too late of a start. Sean (Rangely Boy) bent his tie rods on the very first big obstacle, which was...interesting. We fixed it by using a bottle jack, a tow rope, and rocks as anvils and a three-pound hammer. Yay? Rest of the trail was uneventful, although the Hubby's radiator decided that it was unhappy and we thought we might be done. An application of Bars-Leak put paid to that problem, so we were good to go. Ate at Pasta Jay's, yummy yummy pizza.

Monday, we were all supposed to get together and do the first part of Poison Spider, and then turn around and do Moab Rim. But we got separated, were supposed to all meet up at the trail head, and we get a call: "We decided to do Steel Bender instead." Problem was that one of our guys was already up at the Poison Spider trail head and we had no way of getting ahold of him, so our group decided to stick with Plan A and do what we planned on. Poison Spider was uneventful, and so was Moab Rim, until we got to the top, when the radiator problem decided once again to rear its ugly head. We stayed with the Willys, while the rest of the group motored up to the sand hills farther up. Beautiful vista from there, you can see the whole town, place was loaded with lizards and ravens, I saw some kind of falcon fly by...it was lovely. Our friends came back, we started the Willys again and it ran like it didn't have a care in the world, and we made it back down no problem. Ate at Eddie McStiffs, where I had the best steak I've ever had in Moab, the Sirloin Steak Mojo: "8-oz. marinated steak in a Cuban-influenced sauce with garlic, oregano, cumin and fresh lime juice." OMGSOVERYGOOD. Also, a Mai Tai and a coffee ice cream dessert that was just yummy.

And then today we came home. It might have been easier to get out of the camp site had the Hubby remembered to disengage the parking brake on the motor home, and we ended up pulling the thing all the way out and to the road with the Willys, which was...interesting. I don't ever want to do that ever again. SRS.

Weather was actually pretty decent. It was fairly warm, only rained at night, and that kept the dust down on the trails. Win.

In between all that, I managed to work on my three-sentence query thing, which now pops like a popping thing--I think I've ironed out the boring words and replaced them with ones that have some life to them rather than just laying there on the page. At least, at this point, there's nothing that jumps out at me and says "Dude, horrible. Call yourself a writer? This sucks."

I wasn't very social, partly because I feel like a little bit of a fish out of water around these guys and their talk of power to weight ratios and all that happy horse poo, but I also just ... wasn't feeling very social. It's tough being the only nerd in the room. I obeyed the siren call of the querything, and this wasn't necessarily a bad thing.

So, yeah. Everyone broke something, libations were enjoyed, food was eaten, and a querything was pretty much completed. I've got it in a GoogleDoc if anyone wants to have a crack at it--you'll need a Google account, and I can send you an invite. Just holler.

And that was my weekend. *wipes brow*

We're home from Moab. Details and pictures later. Just about everyone broke something, so all in all, a successful trip. ;o)

I have no idea if I'll be able to catch up with my flist.

I've got my three-sentence hook/query thing just about done. Now, if the book just had chapters, and, you know, a title, that'd be great. I have six days to do it in...

My inbox didn't go as nuts as I expected. Came home to an Honorable Mention from WotF (which you guys knew about) and a rejection for another story, so need to flip that puppy as soon as possible.

But first, I have to wrestle the taxes into submission. Which has already been an exercise in frustration, and I haven't even cracked open the forms yet...

Well, we're off to Moab. Computer access will be spotty (or nonexistent) until Tuesday or Wednesday. Have a great weekend and a Happy Easter to those on my flist who celebrate it.

*smooches*