CANYONLANDS NATIONAL PARK, Utah — “And here we thought you were just some redneck on a dirt bike . . .”
That’s beside the point, I explained to the new acquaintance made some 48 miles from nowhere on a Sunday afternoon in the Island in the Sky. Soon after shutting down the four-stroke, we shared stories of canyons and kayaking over a cold beverage as if the rendezvous had been planned all along.
Difference was, he would spend the next two days camping out of a pickup and pedaling a mountain bike back to the outskirts of society. With a favorable wind — or for that matter, without — I’d be there in a little over two hours, complete with the photos to show for it.
Much as I love a good mountain bike tour, my window for this one had already closed. The clock was ticking toward another deadline, and the only way I was going to gather the goods I needed and get back to my desk was with 650cc support. I bid my new friends adieu and rallied back across the badlands before sundown.
Back home, there’s a joke going around my neighborhood that rears up right along with the garage door in the back alley.
“You have more toys than anybody I know,” comes the setup line.
“Not toys,” I explain. “Tools. There’s a difference.”
To most of those neighbors, it’s merely a matter of semantics. In a neighborhood of carpenters, retailers, teachers and medics, a motorcycle, mountain bike, raft, kayak and surfboard all seem like surplus accoutrements of a weekend well spent. Skis, on the other hand, are a necessity the entire town can get behind.
But any avid outdoorsman can understand that the need for certain outdoor products is no different from that of a carpenter’s hammer or a doctor’s stethoscope. Hunters need bullets (or bows), a fisherman needs a reliable rod and mountaineers need boots and backpacks, not to mention all the gear that goes in them. Heck, there might even be an argument in there somewhere about the worthiness of a decent dog.
It’s all about the right tool for the job.
Admittedly, there’s a little gray area that crops up when your interests are as seasonally varied as my own. But whether it’s equipment used to make a camp or clothing necessary to endure the elements, the fact remains that nearly every item in there is job-related in some capacity.
I’m betting nobody bats an eye when the “Survivorman” adds another Leatherman multitool and some fire-starting flint to his expense report. Yet, in my little corner of the mountains, the questions persist.
“You mean you get to go rafting anytime you want?” one of the neighbor kids asked while nosing around the garage the other day.
Yes, but I have to do all the rowing, rigging and loading too, I clarified. It’s a lot of work.
“Yeah, but at least you don’t have to pay like $100 every time you go.”
Which is my point exactly, or at least the one I’d point out to the IRS. Clearly, rafting is a job. And rafts are a pertinent tool of the trade.
While it’s true that I no longer draw a paycheck from guiding people down rivers in a raft, it comes in pretty darn handy when I write a rafting story these days. The same holds true for that dirt bike, when I need to bust out 100 miles of off-pavement riding for a photo in the middle of the desert on a deadline. Mountain bike? That’s mostly there to keep me in some kind of shape for ski season, when the risk of failure in the backcountry comes with considerably more risk.
As I tell my neighbors, all those things — and the trailer used to haul them around — are as necessary to my line of work as a camera and computer.
The surfboards? Well, a guy’s entitled to a little fun now and again, isn’t he? After all, I’m not just some redneck on a dirt bike.
