This is not how I expected my evening to play out. I was winding things down, experimenting on bake times and temperatures with my first attempt at creating a recipe for grain-free ginger molasses cookies. I was trying not to eat the first test batches with all the enthusiasm and gusto of a mid-1970s Cookie Monster (before they made him eat like a gentleman). The cookies were the opposite of cakey -- they were super thin, very chewy, almost candy-like. Honestly, this is exactly how I like cookies, but I'm trying to create a recipe that is more mainstream, to put in my cookbook. So I need to keep tweaking the proportions, and sharing with my husband and my neighbor for feedback. I had just found the discipline to turn away from the cookies and start making a chicken Alfredo for dinner, to be ready right about the time I guessed Mr X would be back from taking his mountain neighbor up to their adjoining properties, making sure each was doing well in mid-winter. Mr X called, but the signal was terrible, and I couldn't understand anything he said. Not one syllable, when they haltingly came through. The line went dead, and I shrugged and went back to making dinner.
A few minutes later, he called again. I hadn't seen his text come through, so I was surprised when he told me what was up. Or rather, what was down. Down off of the side of the road, about ten vertical feet below the road surface, sat the 4Runner, in ice and snow. He'd hit an icy patch, and skidded off toward the edge, and once one wheel popped over the edge, it was unstoppable. He slid sideways down the slope, started to roll, but instead smacked into a dead aspen tree (or if it wasn't dead before, it is now), knocked it over, and eventually stopped. He really wasn't going all that fast when it happened. He was just on a steep grade, already in four wheel drive, and was in the process of downshifting to first gear when he hit the ice. As the conversation went with our daughter, whose beater truck this actually is, there is no frame damage apparent, and just some new dings and dents from where he hit the tree. She said that it just adds character, and since she calls that thing her Doomsmobile, I think she is telling the truth that she's okay with it.
So once I got the word that I was needed, I swung into action. Actually, I waited until he said yes, come get me in Idaho Springs, and then I turned off the heat to the chicken, threw on jeans and boots, and sent the dogs outside for a pee, and THEN I drove to get him. I had made it about halfway between Boulder and Golden, when I thought, did I really turn the stove off, or did I just think about it, and walk away, and now my house is burning down? So I asked my neighbor to verify that yes, it was all off and cool, and I drove the rest of the way into the mountains with less worry.
Idaho Springs is a tiny little town along I-70, and I have rarely had reason to go visit it. So I suppose it's not too surprising that I took the wrong exit (twice), got totally turned around, and missed the restaurant where Mr X was waiting. I was so flustered and frustrated from getting lost in a one-horse town that once I finally found him, it took me about twenty minutes to settle down and stop talking uncontrollably. We have to go back up in the morning to try to have the truck towed back to the road, so maybe I can pay better attention about how to get there and how to navigate near or in the town. The three hours of driving I did tonight wore me out, from all the dark, twisty-turny canyons to the foggy, pretty, almost spooky lights along the ridge between Golden and Boulder. I'm almost too tired to sample one of those thin, chewy cookies before bed. Almost. Or not too tired at all.
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