Day 13: July 18 Tuesday — Moab to East Coast

Highlights: Moab Diner; book store; map store; agent sends all bags to Boston; no booze in Grand Junction; bar in Denver; drive home late at night

We awoke in the usual 5:30–6:30 time frame and had our green chili and breakfast burritos at the Moab Diner. After breakfast we gave ourselves an hour to separate and go shopping in town, most of us visiting places like gift shops, bookstores and the map store. I stopped by the BLM office in town and asked for information on Wilderness Study Areas like the one we encountered at Keg Point. They knew nothing about it, and all they could give me was a tiny map showing the general coverage of all the Wilderness and WSAs in Utah. I have since written the BLM complaining about this lack of information.

We left Moab at 9:45 a.m. and arrived in Grand Junction at 11:45 in plenty of time for our departure at 1:30 p.m. At the airport we utilized Lou’s negotiating skills with great success as he conned the agent into checking ten duffels to Boston, even though it was only legal to send eight, since only four of us were headed there. This would save a lot of trouble later, getting those two extra duffels back to Greenshit Headquarters.

Everything was going well until we suffered a major blow trying to get a beer at the airport. The lounge was closed because the proprietor had forgotten to renew his liquor license in time, an excuse I still find hard to believe. We were relegated to sodas and hot dogs at the cafeteria. But this did give us time to browse a couple of interesting exhibits: a 40-foot unicycle that once held the Guiness Book of World Records until someone exceeded it with a 100-footer, and a display of minerals which I always enjoy.

It was a nice flight over the mountains to Denver. We made it back to the same old bar at the center of the United concourse with just enough time for a draft Pete’s Wicked before saying good-bye to the North Carolina folks. The Boston contingent departed Denver on time at 3:30 p.m. On the plane, I spent most of the time trying to reconstruct the events of the last five or six days, because the efficiency of this crew gave me no time to keep my log, Pelcil, up to date. What you have been reading for the last several hours is my best recollection, aided by an occasional email clarification.

We arrived in Boston at 9:20 p.m. to incredibly thick, humid, muggy, dismal, gloomy, stifling, dreary drizzling pea soup in the 60’s. The clammy murk was overpowering. Okay, so it was just a normal New England evening. The luggage arrived quickly, we each met our pickups, and we said our final, final good-byes of the trip.

Postscript

Lou reported that the American Airlines flight back from Denver to Raleigh was overbooked, so he and Chris were put in first class and actually enjoyed the trip home. What a coup, considering they were both flying on free tickets!

A couple weeks after the trip, when I finished most of the unpacking, I was unable to place the owner of two five-gallon water jugs in my garage, until I realized they were Rick’s! This explains why we had so much trouble fitting everything into the same duffels.

Three weeks later several of us along with friends and relatives gathered at Greenshit Headquarters in Hopkinton for the Greenshit Family Outing and Reunion. We premiered our raw video tape, slides and photos. We finally had those ribs that Mark couldn’t get in Green River, along with several exotic dishes like a mile long Italian sub and Guiness-and-sardine Jello.

At the time of this writing, fall '95 is closing in. It’s time to get to work on Greenshit ’96.