Being somewhere left of a box of rocks when it comes to things mechanical or electrical, I called my friend Lyle. An hour later, he wiped his hands and admitted defeat. So I called a couple of shop mechanics to see if they'd make house calls. They thought I was a David Letterman talent scout searching for suckers.

Meanwhile, the ponies were pawing out the floor boards on the trailer, Jane grew more irritable by the minute, and our accompanying friends looked as though it was "Black Friday" during the '29 stock market crash.

I called another mechanically inclined friend. He came, he saw, he conquered, diagnosing a failed control module. And thus, three hurs after our planned exit time, we were at last under way. Four hours later, almost within sight of our destination, our friends blew a tire on their truck.

Since the day had progressed to the point it rubbed shoulders with the coming night, Jane and I left our friends to change tires while their horses stamped and pawed the floorboards in their trailer. Jane's and my plan was for us to make bushwhack end-of-the-road camp and prepare supper. Our plan was not for our friends, with only four miles to travel, to lose their way to the trailhead.

Tired and cranky, it was well into the night when we finally got things sorted out, all ponies unloaded, watered, and fed. Then it was our turn for the feedbag.

We'd expected all along to camp at the trailhead -- but had not anticipated such a late arrival. Jane had pre-cooked the chicken. She set out melon slices, ambrosia salad, cheese dip and chips. There were pastries for dessert. Unfortunately, everyone was too tired to eat. Which created a problem: what to do with all this leftover food?

Ours was a full-course meal for four. Our packs were already prepared for an early morning departure. We planned to be gone nearly a week. Although no one wants fermented melon slices or rotted chicken breasts on their hands at journey's end we finally left our garbage inside the cab of our pickup truck; to do anything else would invite bears. Still, grizzly bears in our part of the world have been known to pop out windshields to get to a vehicle's smell-good contents. But what else could we do?

This is a question I've not heard put to bear experts who are concerned about we humans leaving bear attracting garbage where bruins could get it, but it poses a thorny conundrum -- what are folks supposed to do with leftover food when events overtake them in bear country?

I'll predict their answer will sound easy, but when Murphy's Law takes over, the doing will be hard.

 

Next week? Another walk on the wild side.