Gunnison, CO. Perhaps you've heard the expression, 'It was like saying goodbye to an old friend.' Sometimes the speaker is referring to an old pair of jeans or shoes. I can't say that any of my shoes or hiking boots has lasted long enough to be an old friend. They don't even last as long as a laptop computer. Why did I have to bring that up!
No, I was referring to discarding my first real hat, a wide-brimmed sombrero with mesh sides. It took about three years of full time RVing out West to outgrow the ugly baseball hats of the sunless East. Oddly enough, in Colorado they still wear them.
Then I tried cowboy hats even though I thought I looked silly in them. They are quite good at protecting you from sun and wind, and reasonably cool if they are vented and made of straw. Once I was near Zion national park in southern Utah, walking across the parking lot in my cowboy hat, and a young man gave me the most hateful look that I've ever gotten in my life. I hadn't dinged his car or stolen his parking place. Why the glare?
He had California plates and was dressed and coiffured like a hippie, thirty years late. He was college-aged. Perhaps, although he had been brainwashed with the "Diversity and Tolerance" mantras of Berkeley, he was having a little trouble extending those lovely sentiments to a cowboy-hat-wearing redneck in the interior West.
And then I discovered my old buddy that I had recently discarded. It was love at first sight. It was waiting for me in the Casa Blanca casino in Mesquite, NV. It was called the "Safari", appropriately enough, and was made by Minnetonka. It amused me the way that women admired it.
Actually I didn't discard all of it. I sliced off some of the leather to make strips for the belt-restraining loops of leather belts, since they only last six months or so. How nice it is to see my first real southwestern sombrero live on!
If I don't hear back from the repair shop on Monday or Tuesday, I will reclaim my old laptop and move on, while ordering a laptop online. Sorry that I can't upload any photos to the college's computer.
