Webster Art

I had a nice permanent 2×4 bed built into my long bed Tundra. But when my daughter needed to move I realized I faced 3 hours of disassembly before my Tundra was back to a normal empty truck.

On to version 2.0 . My priorities were:

1. It had to be removable in minutes, not hours.

2. It had to be light and lean, the 2×4 bed was bulky

3. I needed fold up bed platforms so I could easily walk back to access a rear box, and avoid crawling up the tunnel under the permanent bed.

4. It needed to be compact, in case I had to disassemble and store it while carrying something large, like a fridge, or some 4 x 8′ sheets of plywood.

I was recently at Vantage with a friend. We are old friends going back 14 years, but she prefers to climb with women. We met a really nice climbing couple by Air Guitar. The girl was burly strong and super fit so my friend asked if she ever climbed with other partners. She mentioned that she usually climbs with women.

Then she glanced at me and said: “Well, except for Mark here, but he’s almost a girl anyway, so he doesn’t count.”

“That’s going in the trip report!” I said with a chuckle.

Fletch and I were talking about growing older at the gym and I remembered this old poem.

Again this morning, in a cold wind from the future, I walked all the way to the end of the long bridge of my life, having a look at its cables, its rods and rivets, its perforated metal flooring through which I could see whitecaps slamming the pylons. Then I turned and came back, inspecting it all from the other direction, fretting about every hex nut and bolt though they seem sound enough to hold things together. I ought to give the long bridge of my life a little rest, but every day it seems I’m walking from past to possibility and back to past with my brush and aluminum paint, hiding the rust, the deepening cracks, dabbing a shine here and there.
~ Ted Kooser, November