Untitled - ScholarWorks Home - California State University, Northridge
Untitled - ScholarWorks Home - California State University, Northridge
Untitled - ScholarWorks Home - California State University, Northridge
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}3ryce Canyon<br />
J(en Cran<br />
Aman's backpack transfers most of its weight onto the shoulders, which<br />
are stronger than a woman's. A woman's pack carries most of its<br />
weight on the hips, where women supposedly maintain most of their<br />
strength on account of them being baby squeezer-outers. Merrik slips his<br />
j\rc'teryx backpack - an internal frame model that cost him five hundred dollars<br />
plus shipping and out of state tax - over his shoulders. Snaps together the belt<br />
jatchy-thing and cinches up the straps.<br />
The backpack weighs sixty-five pounds, including the twelve-pack of<br />
pabst, but Merrik can barely feel the weight. For one, he's two hundred eighteen<br />
pounds of old-fashioned manhood, and for another, he's taken so much<br />
Carisoprodol and Vicodin that he can't feel much of anything, including his<br />
boots on the ground. He has also taken, as is customary in the morning, Vioxx<br />
for his arthritic knees, Propecia for his thinning hair, Viagara because the<br />
Propecia is giving him an anti-boner, Tylenol because the Viagara is causing<br />
headaches, and Ranitidine because the Tylenol is upsetting his stomach. But he's<br />
healthy, because he's also taken five thousand milligrams of vitamin supple<br />
ments.<br />
From the rim of the canyon, Merrik looks down at the tall, snow-dust<br />
ed hoodoos that resemble great stony totem poles. Carved from limestone over<br />
the past sixteen million years, the towering hoodoos and their bumpy shadows<br />
might inspire poetry or a spiritual awakening in some people. But Merrik's not<br />
thinking about that kind of new age crap right now. His only thought is the<br />
steep drop to the canyon floor. What is it, four hundred feet? Five hundred?<br />
Five thousand? He doesn't know, because he's never been here before. Utah is a<br />
state he knows diddlysquat about, other than that Texas Backpacker magazine<br />
has declared it "one of the great American places to lose yourself."<br />
Now, Merrik isn't int.o "losing himself," because he's quite happy<br />
where he is. He's strong and healthy because he takes all those pills, he's got a<br />
good job in the painting business (Houses, not Monets, haw haw! is Merrik's<br />
favorite painting joke) and he's not anxious to change anything but his socks<br />
and motor oil on a regular basis. So while Texas Backpacker can say all it wants<br />
about finding inner peace and breathing virgin air and tasting accomplishment,<br />
Merrik feels but one need:<br />
To do something he's never done before.<br />
He should be applauded for that, he thinks, perhaps given a plaque or<br />
a kiss from this year's Miss Universe winner (he loves Brazilian chicks-hubba<br />
hubba). He thinks about his friends, about his neighbor Skinny, about the guys<br />
20