Category Archives: Alan’s stories 2026

Car Wash Meditation

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Do you intentionally meditate?

I’ve been trying to slow down by gardening, getting rid of my stuff so I don’t have to worry about what to do with it later.

I showed up at the gym for a drop-in class and didn’t make the cut.

Too many people, not enough spots. One of the hazards of spontaneity.

I had an hour to kill.

My Volkswagen ID.4 looked like it had recently crossed a biblical insect plague. I’d just returned from a couple of road trips: one to Casper for the Wyoming Writers Conference and another to a summer solstice party in Cheyenne.

Hundreds of miles of highway had transformed the front end and the windshield into a natural history museum of insect remains.

A car wash seemed like a productive use of my unexpected free time.

I picked up a Soccer Sandwich Special at Subway, fought my way around road construction, and pulled into the Gloss Auto Wash next door. The menu offered several packages. I chose the basic exterior wash.

“Do you want to drive it through or do you want us to do it?” the attendant asked.

“What’s the difference?”

“It’s faster if you do it,” she said. “Just follow the line.”

I had never driven through one of these conveyor-style washes before. Usually, someone would climb in while I waited outside wondering if my car will emerge intact.

The guy doing the prewash pointed toward a sign.

“Put it in neutral and keep your hands off the wheel.”

I turned off the radio.

This must be what riding in a self-driving Waymo cab feels like.

The car rolled forward on its own while workers sprayed down the front and back ends. This wasn’t one of those fully automated washes where machines do everything. It was a labor-intensive operation with people hosing, scrubbing, and prepping each vehicle before the machinery took over.

As I entered the tunnel, I couldn’t help thinking of a “Curb Your Enthusiasm” episode. Cheryl takes a colon cleanser to cure a cough, gets trapped in a car wash, exits the vehicle for a reason that quickly becomes too much information, and leaves Larry to deal with the consequences. It remains one of the more memorable, and uncomfortable, television depictions of a car wash.

Fortunately, my experience was considerably less dramatic.

The brushes never touched the car, but water thundered across the glass from every direction. I could feel the vibration. For a few minutes I sat in a cocoon of splashing water, humming motors, and blurred blue light.

The outside world disappeared.

No traffic. No road construction. No deadlines. No gym class I wasn’t getting into anyway.

Just water.

It struck me that we spend a lot of time looking for relaxation. We schedule it. Pay for it. Download apps designed to teach us how to sit quietly.

Yet here I was finding a few unexpected moments of peace in the middle of a midday car wash.

The conveyor eventually carried me back into daylight. One of the attendants pointed at an open drying stall. Four guys descended on the ID.4 with red rags, wiping away every remaining drop, even opening the doors to dry the jambs.

A few minutes later, the bug cemetery was gone.

I drove away with a clean car, a good deal on lunch, and the realization that the best part of a missed appointment is the unexpected place it takes you.

In my case, it was a moving meditation wrapped in soap, water, and a bunch of guys drying my car with a personal touch, a reminder that the universe knows when I need a pause, even if it has to disguise it as a car wash.

My $33 tomato

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How’s your garden this summer?

Last night, I decided to make a Chicago dog.

I had all the essentials lined up on the counter: a hot dog and bun, relish, peppers, sauerkraut instead of pickle, celery salt, and tomato.

The tomato was supposed to be the star of the show.

Earlier this summer, I decided to turn my brown thumb into a green thumb. A local nonprofit, Growing Gardens, held its annual vegetable plant sale. I came home with a single Beefsteak tomato plant. I repotted it, gave it fresh soil, watered it faithfully, and watched it take off like it had discovered its life purpose.

Every day I checked on it.

Every day it got bigger.

Eventually, one tomato emerged as the chosen one. While a few other blossoms appeared, the plant seemed determined to pour all its energy into producing a single magnificent fruit.

Today was harvest day.

I picked the tomato and admired it for about 30 seconds before noticing a blemish on the bottom. No problem, I thought. Tomatoes get spots.

Then I cut it open.

Half the inside had spoiled. It looked like a melanoma had taken over the fruit. The plant had spent weeks concentrating all of its resources on one tomato that had gone bad from the inside out.

I trimmed away the damaged sections and salvaged what I could. The remaining pieces made it onto the Chicago dog and, to be fair, tasted pretty good.

Still, I couldn’t help doing the math.

The tomato plant, $9.

The pot, $14.

The potting soil, $10.

That means the tomato on my Chicago dog carried an investment of $33.

Even by Boulder standards, that’s an expensive tomato.

Of course, gardening isn’t about return on investment. If it were, nobody would do it. Gardeners spend money on plants, soil, cages, hoses, and tools, then celebrate when they grow something they could have purchased at the grocery store for 99 cents.

Yet next spring, I’ll try again.

Gardening is an act of optimism. I planted the tomato because I believed that with enough sunshine, water, and patience, I’d harvest a bumper crop. I hoped for a basket of tomatoes. Instead, I got one expensive tomato with a tragic flaw.

Wall Street investors chase quarterly earnings reports. Gardeners stare at a few blossoms and convince themselves that next year’s harvest is going to be spectacular.

My first tomato may have been a financial disaster, but I’ve already caught myself checking on those remaining blossoms.

That’s how gardening gets you.

No matter what happened this season, there’s always another tomato growing somewhere on the vine.

My Pinto’s last ride during the Big Thompson Flood

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In July 1976, I was working for the US National Park Service at Rocky Mountain National Park in Colorado for a second summer. I don’t know if this had any influence, but I had befriended Wayne Aspinall who was a guest scholar at the University of Wyoming political science department when I was in grad school there.

Wayne was the former chair of the US House Committee on Interior and Insular Affairs, a position he held for 14 years. I collected one of his campaign license plate toppers.

Back in those days I was a College Republican and we had some spirited discussions in class. Despite our ideological differences, he offered to write a few letters of recommendation for me to the USNPS in support of my job application.

I was told park ranger jobs were hard to come by and was happy to be hired to my first choice, since I applied all over the country.

Anyway, I drove my pea green Ford Pinto to Cheyenne Frontier Days the last weekend in July. I met up with my friends Rick Thamer, John Accardo et al. for a weekend of jocularity. The Mayflower was still open and Downtown Cheyenne was still a happening place during CFD.

I don’t know what got into me, but I’ve never been one to miss out on the last weekend of “The Daddy of ’em all”.

It was Saturday night and rather than crash in Thamer’s basement, I chose to drive back to Colorado, over the very logical arguments posed by my friends. I had to work at the Glacier Basin Campground at 11:00am.

I would have made it in plenty of time.

When I turned onto Highway 34 into Loveland, the horizon was crimson red and solid black. “Red sky at night, sailor’s delight” – should be no problem.

After driving through town and entering The Narrows, a caravan of cars, trucks and RVs headed east on US 34. Why was I the only one heading west, toward the park?

I met a Colorado highway patrolman. He told mee there was some “bad water” ahead and to turn around at Drake.

I didn’t quite make it that far.

There was water streaming across the highway. All of a sudden, something that I couldn’t make out, was in the middle of the road in about six inches of run off. Then, uprooted trees, unrecognizable junk and debris floated by. I expected to see the Wicked Witch of the West hover by.

The car careened into the rising wall of water and suddenly the deluge came up to the hood of the car that stalled. There was a car filled with a family heading the opposite direction that had the interior lights on. That sedan floated to the edge of the road and then was swept away into the canyon’s darkness.

A porta-potty floated over and caught my bumper and ruddered the Pinto towards the canyon wall and not into the torrent. I wasn’t able to open the car door, but climbed out of the driver’s side window and waded to higher ground.

A few minutes later a State Highway Department truck pulled up with a bunch of other people. I climbed up and we were all dropped off at Rainbow Bend where we were allowed to crash in the guest bungalows there.

I can sleep through anything.

The next morning, when the waters subsided, the road was totally washed out, trophy-sized fish lay on what was left of the highway. The canyon wall was plastered with pine trees, crumpled trailers and cars. The little store at Rainbow Bend had food, I ate some cold hot dogs.

I don’t know how the rumors started, but we spent the day on high ground since word came from someplace that the Estes Park reservoir dam was ready to crest.

A Chinook helicopter eventually dropped in and flew us out to a Red Cross station in Loveland. The only thing I took from the provisions was a dry pair of socks.

When the big floods hit Colorado’s Front Range in September 2013, I had no desire to get out and inspect any of the high water or its aftermath. As it was, the radio news didn’t indicate any problems. I decided to leave Cheyenne and was stuck in Longmont and being anecdotally guided through town by facebook cronies.

All the routes on the Diagonal and SH 66 were all flooded out, except SH 66 to I-25 to Thornton – SH 402 exit closed; Johnstown exit closed, Berthoud exit closed.

I eventually snaked my way from 120th to US 36 and luckily the westbound lane was open. Overnight, the St Vrain River crested and filled the low spot between US 34 and SH 402. I would have been stranded for several days somewhere north of Longmont.

Okay, back to the story.

There was no reason to stick around Loveland. I bummed a ride to Cheyenne and was dropped off at the Leeper’s house on Oak Court. My family in Laramie was trying to make contact, but there was no phone service. I called home from Cheyenne and was picked up and carted over to Laramie.

There was no access to Rocky Mountain Park for several days. I was eventually able to drive the “family truckster” – an olive green Mercury station wagon with the fake wood paneling – back to work. My boss, Perry Thompson, was gracious enough not to dock my pay for the days I was gone.

The big regret at the time?

All my ranger pals were getting double time and a half for working the rescue, while I was one being rescued. I never did find out if my car turned up anywhere. It probably became rip-rap in Nebraska.

When it was all said and done, I was immediately issued a check by my insurance company and I purchased a sky blue Pinto wagon. I might add, it was involved in a rear end collision with an oil field truck while I was living in Gillette, Wyoming.

My housemate at the time, Tom Padget, worked over the insurance company for a settlement. The differential bolt was dented up against the gas tank, which, had it burst, the tank would have caused at least a fire.

The Pinto goes full circle.

I ended up selling the car to Rick Thamer who drove it to law school in Lubbock, Texas, where he and his wife Janie live today.

After the Big Thompson Flood event, I thought I was living on borrowed time and lived life a bit recklessly while in wild and crazy Gillette. I altered my perspective that I was given another chance, for some reason.

Hmmm, next up will be the attitude adjusting UFO incidents.