Chapter 2: The Incredible Journey

Mid-February, 1986

We spent the rest of the day frantically packing the things we would need for our trip. We grabbed the two backpacks that Greg and Linda had purchased last summer for their little camping excursion.

One of the things we would need to find on the way was some climbing gear.

Greg reminded us that the place where we shopped in Albuquerque also sold climbing gear and had a fake mountainside so people could practice.

We helped Ed take his Sportster out of the trailer, where he had been storing it for the winter.

He was most curious where we were going.

As much as I wanted to tell him, I decided to hold back.

We did invite both him and Gracie to come over and see our new son.

Over the last month or so we hadn’t been getting together with either them or Emmy, Sally and Bill nearly as often as we had been before Christmas. Gracie wanted to know if she could call Sally and invite them over to see CJ too. I told her that was fine.

I was curious to see if their abilities would come back when they touched or kissed little CJ.

As Gracie went to the house, we hooked up Greg’s truck to the trailer, then parked it behind Bob’s Step Van.

After we finished, Ed followed us over to see little CJ. Emmy was holding him and smiling warmly. I flashed her to see if she heard me.

She was as deaf as a post.

She handed little CJ off to Gracie. Right after Gracie gave him a kiss on the cheek, I tried flashing her.

I got the same result.

The only surprise was Sally.

While she’d lost her ability to ‘see’ little Kelly, she explained that it was like her ‘motherly instincts’ had gotten better. While she was holding little CJ, I flashed her.

She suddenly turned her head and looked at me.

I flashed her, asking if she could hear me, but her response was a scrunched up face and a cocked head. I could feel her trying to flash me. She acted frustrated for a second then went back to paying attention to CJ.

At this point, I felt it wise to just keep quiet about our reacquired ability to communicate.

We all visited for another hour, while Mary nursed CJ. It was slightly disconcerting that CJ hadn’t flashed any of his desires about being hungry.

Bob, Greg and I kept looking at each other, back and forth, wondering when CJ would ‘flash’ something.

Greg even flashed, “Mi amigo?”

CJ’s little eyes got wide and he tilted his head away from Mary’s breast and flashed a curt, “no mio.”

He then went right back to nursing.

I noticed that he had used the ‘lower tone of voice’ in his flash, that he had used earlier while talking to Bob.

The three of us were now sure that we needed to keep quiet and we also needed to get going.

I felt certain we weren’t going to get any answers until I was able to visit the Spirits again.

I was just hoping I could FIND them again.

Our friends were curious, however, about why we needed the trailer in the middle of winter and where we might be going in such a hurry.

I just told them that we’d heard about a great ‘Winter Sale’ on bikes down in Texas and we were going down to see about purchasing a few.

That seemed to placate them, especially when the girls said they wanted to learn to ride and smaller bikes would be perfect for them to learn on.

Shortly after our neighbors left, the three of us felt like we had ‘ants in our pants’.

Since there were three of us going, one of us could ride alone in the backseat of Greg’s F-350 ‘Crew-Cab’ and sleep.

We decided to get going.

We filled a cooler with some water, pop and ice along with a bag containing some snacks.

We threw our bags into the back of the trailer and by 9:00 PM we were headed south. We planned on taking I-55 to St Louis, then I-44 West to I-40 to Flagstaff, Arizona then south to Sedona.

Bob fixed us up with a case of cassette tapes of dance mixes, jazz and easy listening songs he had done for some of his latest jobs. He also had a tape of our two concerts that we played in Albuquerque last summer. We were all set as far as tunes to keep us awake, since many areas didn’t have much, if anything, on the radio.

Greg already had a state-of-the-art CB radio installed so we were able to keep in touch with truckers. They were a wealth of knowledge as far as accidents, traffic jams and road conditions. We had the cruise control locked on 62 mph and the miles began ticking away.

The trip was 1710 miles, which at 60 mph meant 28½ driving hours.

After a quick pit stop/piss stop just east of St Louis, we rolled into Tulsa, Oklahoma just after seven in the morning, Saturday morning.

Because I had slept since the last gas stop, I would be taking over the driving duties after breakfast.

After a good, quick breakfast and refilling our travel cups and thermos with coffee, we once again hit the road. We discussed possibly stopping at a motel somewhere around Amarillo, but decided to see how tired we were at the time. I’d gotten four solid hours of sleep in Greg’s backseat which was enough for me to go for quite a while.

Greg was sleeping in the backseat, so Bob and I engaged in a heart-to-heart talk.

“Do you think CJ is going to be a genius, Charlie?”

“That’s hard to say. I mean, he is only three days old! I don’t think of him being of genius level intelligence, just because we can communicate with him. I have no doubt that he will probably progress faster than your average baby/toddler, however. Even that, will simply be due to the fact that we can clearly communicate with him on his level.”

“It’s weird that sometimes he uses such simple words and other times, like sentences.” Bob said.

“I have a feeling those ‘sentences’ were the ‘Spirits’ talking through him. Like after he grabbed Mary’s pendant.”

“Ahh, you might be right. Are you scared to go see them again?”

I laughed quietly, trying not to disturb Greg. “I’m terrified of climbing up there, yes. As far as seeing them, no. I’m pretty sure they don’t want to hurt me. I just hope we’re not going on a wild goose-chase!”

We talked a little more before he said, “Cool, let’s listen to some tunes,” while inserting a tape into the stereo.

By the time we got to Elk City, Oklahoma, I had driven about 325 miles and the gas gauge was down to a quarter tank. Greg woke up just as I pulled to a stop at the pumps.

We all had to pee pretty bad, between Greg waking up from a long nap and Bob and I slurping coffee like it was going out of style.

We decided to grab a late lunch and restocked the cooler with more pop and ice before Greg took over for the next leg.

We did the ‘musical chairs’ number with Bob getting some sleep in the backseat while I sat in the passenger seat to keep Greg company.

Our next stop was a truck stop in Tucumcari, New Mexico. The gas gauge was between a quarter and a half of a tank.

Since none of us were extremely tired, we decided that we would just push on to Albuquerque and get a room for the night there. The store we wanted to hit for the climbing gear wouldn’t still be open when we got there anyway.

We found a Best Western not far from the Outdoor Store. We figured on getting a good night’s sleep, then finishing the drive on Sunday. We reminisced about our last trip and wondered how our new friends, Carl and Anita were doing with Melody and the boat crew. They hadn’t come back with the gang, after the New Year’s cruise.

We slept soundly, then, after a ‘Denny’s’ breakfast, went to get our gear.

We ended up getting two, 200 foot sections of rappelling rope. It came with all of the accessories and harnesses that would make it possible to climb or rappel, using just the rope if I had to.

We did familiarize ourselves with the climbing and rappelling procedures on their little indoor rappelling tower. We also got a 4 pulley setup so that Bob and Greg could pull me up if everything turned to shit.

I was very relieved that we did that.

I was also glad we practiced there. I discovered we really needed leather gloves to do this. The guy even snickered thinking that we were even considering rappelling without good leather gloves.

Because the store hadn’t opened until 10am, we didn’t get back on the road until nearly noon. Since we still had close to 400 miles to go, we decided to call ahead to the same Holiday Inn that Dad, TJ and Janet had used in Sedona last summer.

We reserved a double room for two nights.

It was already dark when we checked in.

We decided to walk down to Bubba’s Biker Bar to grab a burger and get something to drink.

Bubba was telling us that the four ‘rice burner bike shops’, Yamaha, Kawasaki, Honda and Suzuki were having an ‘early spring sale’ on everything in the store.

He kept raving about Suzuki’s new ‘LT250R QuadRacer’ ATV. This was the 4^th year of production and it had a manual five-speed transmission. He said, “it ran like a ‘scalded dog’ chasing a ‘raped ape’!” The sucker would go almost straight uphill. The only real drawback was it was very ‘twitchy’. You could pull a wheelie and have it land right on top of you if you weren’t extremely careful.

He also said that Honda’s new ‘FourTrax TRX250R’ had just come out and it was nearly as fast and much less ‘twitchy’. The man definitely piqued our curiosity, even though we weren’t even thinking about buying one, initially.

The next morning, we made the rounds and test drove both ATV’s and several of each of the ‘Trail/Road’ combo dirt bikes. They had special knobby tires that were good for off-road, yet also reasonably decent for road use.

The Honda dealer was low-pressure, yet informative and besides just liking the Hondas better, his ‘style’ just made it more fun to deal with him. He also had an area out behind the shop where we test rode the ATVs.

We were instantly hooked.

He was floored, when we bought two of the FourTrax TRX250R’s and three of the 450cc Dirt/ Trail / Street motorcycles! It helped that Honda also had different colors for us to buy. Greg bought a green one for Jamie, Bob got a royal blue for Linda and I got a burgundy one for Mary. It was funny watching the salesman holding his breath, waiting for the credit card authorization to get approved. His smile made us laugh when it did.

We didn’t have the heart to tell him that we could have also just paid cash! The thing that really got us, was knowing we only spent $1000 more, total, than Ed had paid for his tricked out Sportster last summer!

Since the ATVs wouldn’t be ready until after 6 o’clock and because all three of us had our ‘flight’ helmets, we mounted up on the dirt bikes to take a ride to the Monument.

We knew we would have to go there after dark and we needed to do some ‘recon’. The Honda dealer was very nice about letting us leave the truck and the trailer parked in the parking lot. (He laughed and groaned when he noticed it had ‘Harley-Davidson’ painted on the sides.)

These small, nimble ‘dirt’ bikes were fun to ride. While they weren’t as comfortable as our Harleys, they were 10 times more maneuverable.

We first drove to the ‘Montezuma Castle Visitor Center’ where we parked the bikes.

We weren’t allowed to drive them on the path along the base of the mountain but were told we could take them on the trail over the top of the mountain.

I was just hoping I could figure out which one of the ruins Linda and I had gone into before. The first time, we felt a ‘pull’ while we were flying and simply went there. That was late at night and everything looked different now that it was daytime.

You see, there’s about a half dozen ancient ‘Pueblo dwellings’ cut into the face of the mountainside. Greg asked if I remembered to bring the medallion.

I panicked for a second, frantically patting my left pocket where I felt the handkerchief I’d rolled it up into.

As we walked along the path I decided to keep the medallion in my hand. Suddenly, I could feel the handkerchief getting very warm and when I looked up I saw a Pueblo dwelling.

When I looked to the top of the mountain, I saw a tree that was nearly identical to the one I had drawn at home! Since we’d carried our helmets with us so they wouldn’t get stolen, we put them on to get an elevation reading at the base of the mountain. I wrote that down on the laminated card on my wrist to compare it to, once we reached the top of the mountain.

Now, having the tree as a landmark, we walked back to the bikes to see just how adventurous it was going to be to get to the top of the mountain.

We had very little trouble negotiating the trail. Since it was used mostly for walking, it was not very aggressive. We would have no trouble getting an ATV up to the top. The downside of using the ATVs was that to ride two on one of them would be iffy at best. These were purely for off-road riding. Bob and I could probably both fit on the seat, but we would be very ‘friendly’ doing it. (It would be a lot of fun with the girls, or eventually, the kids, even if we didn’t use one, tonight.)

After some discussion of the pros and cons, we decided to just ride our motorcycles tonight. To use the ATVs would have required bringing the truck and trailer, since it was close to 35 miles and the ATVs weren’t street legal. We figured that we could use our backpacks to carry the rope and climbing gear.

When we found the tree, we checked the elevation. We realized that just one, 200-foot section would be more than enough rope to get well past even the lowest doorway.

Rappelling down seemed like a much better idea than climbing up!

Before we headed back to Sedona, we walked back around so I could sit and contemplate which door I might try and go into. Looking at it again and holding the medallion, I figured out which one it was. Every time I stared at one particular doorway, the medallion would get warm. I chuckled when I realized it was the one directly underneath the tree!

Feeling much better about the situation, we rode back to Sedona to grab a late lunch.

After lunch, since it was only about 4 o’clock in the afternoon, we went back to the room to catch a nap.

We talked about how much the girls were going to love these bikes.

One of the nice things about these Hondas was that their suspensions could be lowered almost 3 inches if you were going to ride mostly on the street. Greg also purchased three street sprockets so the engine wouldn’t rev as high at 60 mph, either. These would be the perfect ‘first bikes’ for the girls.

During my nap, I tried flashing Mary.

Nothing. I hated not having her in my head. Sometimes I teased her about always being there, but secretly, I loved it that she was.

I was now desperately hoping something good would come from our ‘mountain-climbing’ adventure.

Right at 6:00pm we rode our dirt bikes back over to the dealers to load up the ATVs. The way the wheel chocks were arranged for the Harleys, we were going to have to load the ATV’s last, at least for the trip home. For now, however, we drove them in first, and were pleased to find they rode high enough to drive completely over the top of the chocks. We tied them down, then loaded two of the bikes for the drive back to the hotel.

Bob followed us on his.

Back at the hotel, we unloaded the other two bikes for our trip back to the Monument.

After dark, I noticed the full moon was fairly low on the horizon. We decided to wait until close to midnight to make the trip, which would give us a little more natural light to work with.

We ate a late supper at Bubba’s before riding down to the Monument.

Since the bikes had ‘permanent’ headlights, as much as we wanted to turn them off, we had to have them on for our ride to the top. I was very glad that the Hondas had the quietest exhaust systems of all the bikes we had checked out.

In the tranquility of the night, it STILL felt like everyone in the world could see and hear us! I was never so glad when we shut down the bikes, finally killing the headlights.

Not wanting to take any chances, we waited another half hour, just to make sure we hadn’t been discovered.

We tied off the ropes to the tree and set the pulleys for my descent. I cinched up my harness and donned my gloves after insuring the medallion was safely in my pocket. As I rappelled closer, I could feel the medallion getting warmer. By the time I swung myself into the doorway, it felt like it was about to burn a hole in my pants!

I had just removed my gloves when I heard, “Welcome, my young friend! We are pleased to see you’ve chosen to answer our call.”

“Um, yeah. It was much harder and scarier this time. I’m sorry it took so long.”

For the first time, I actually heard them laugh! “Why didn’t you come as you did before?”

“No disrespect meant, but YOU TOOK MY POWER OF FLIGHT AWAY.”

They were laughing even louder now. “Yes, you lost that power for a while, but we gave it back to you once we were certain you were coming.”

I tried flying and ... dayum! I was now floating around! “It would have been nice if you had told me somehow!”

The three of them, an old man, a middle aged woman and a younger girl, were looking at each other, puzzled. The woman cleared her throat, loudly, “I tried to tell Zeus that! He insisted that that you would figure it out.”

“Silence, Hera! You insult me in front of our young friend.”

Now I was somewhere between laughing and flabbergasted. “Are you like, the REAL Zeus? From the Greek mythos?”

“Ahhh, I see you’ve read those fables! To answer your question, NO, at least not like you’ve read. We made the mistake of telling some of you, humans, some stories. Do not believe everything that you have read! Only some of it is true and MOST of it is tall tales!”

“The last time I was here, I met ancient Indian Spirits. Are you like them?”

“We are similar, but different. They are limited as far as bestowing abilities on humans. They are also much more cautious and selective. That they have chosen you and your sisters is why I have decided to offer you a ‘Special Gift of the Catalyst’.”