Gosh golly but this week went by quickly. Not for you, my dear readers, who have had to go without my cheery musings anent the trucking industry, but for me. I had intended to post a few musings, too. So much for intentions.

It’s been a most domestic week. Cleaning the house, playing with the cat, setting up a new laptop computer. Except that they’re called ‘notebooks’ now, right? Cooked some real food, made that batch of gooseberry marmalade, and this moment am baking an enormous loaf of bread to take over to a potluck and another loaf to take on the road.

Went for three hikes and a bike ride, and discovered that my legs have turned to Jello. Not a surprising discovery, that. Most of the time lately, the only exercise I get is pushing down and letting up the clutch pedal, which only uses the one leg, and with a modern truck transmission you only use the clutch to get yourself into first gear.

In short, I enjoyed a week of normal life.

And remembered, as if I needed reminding, just how much I love Colorado.

The drive down to the Springs from Denver was wonderful. It was early in the morning on a Sunday, hardly a car on the road. It had been raining for three days, quite unseasonably, so Colorado was doing its California impression, looking all foggy and moist, which is kind of fun once in a way.

Coming south on I25, Pikes Peak dominates the skyline as you crest Monument Hill. The whole massif was drenched in heavy white cloud billowing up and around it from the west, as if wearing an extra-thick feather boa. A very strange sight in August, and not a welcome one for the runners of the Pikes Peak Marathon later that day. Pretty brutal, from what I heard. The day before had been the Ascent, a piddling half-marathon which even I used to do, and I’m told conditions were so bad they turned a lot of runners back at tree line.

I didn’t get near tree line on my own hikes this last week, and after having spent the earlier part of the summer broiling in Texas, broiling in Missouri, broiling just about everywhere (except for Wisconsin and Oregon, which were pleasantly temperate), I rather enjoyed the tail end of our minor monsoon season. Which soon gave way to clear blue skies in the mornings followed by isolated afternoon thunderstorms: perfect Rocky Mountain Front Range summer weather.

You see what I mean about my domestication? Look at me: rambling on about meteorology.

A strange cat named Donald Barthelme wrote a short story once about someone I’m also interested in: Saint Antony. Specifically, about his temptations. And Barthelme’s take on them is that the most tempting temptation of all, for a saint, is not gold or jewels or sumptuous feats or dancing girls but simply normal life. I think he’s on to something.

Tomorrow morning I’ll be back on the road, stuck in my truck cab, getting further away by the minute from anything resembling that ultimate temptation.