There is a famous mental puzzle in which the testee  (ha!) is challenged to come up with the precise height of a building using only a barometer.

Common answers range from stuff like: measuring atmospheric pressure at street level and from the roof to make the necessary calculations, to: dropping the device from the roof and timing it’s fall, to even: finding the building superintendent and saying, “Hey, I’ll give you this perfectly good barometer if you’ll tell me how tall your building is.”

I was reminded of this lateral thinking puzzle this morning because I was able to determine that the overnight, internal temperature of the EM-50 Phantom Rambler was exactly 33°F all because I  hadn’t showered for two straight days.

Allow me to walk you through it.

I slept, comfortably cocooned in my cocoon-like comforter, in the parking lot of a truck stop.

I decided to cheer myself up a notch (I was still bummed about not finding the buried treasure. I THINK I know where it is hidden, but am not willing to do what it would take to get there because I am not entirely SURE it is hidden there) by having a sit-down breakfast at the down-home-countrily-named Iron Skillet Diner that was part of the truck stop.

Being a considerate member of society I gave myself the sniff test before mixing with the public at an eatery. I raised one armpit to my nostrils, then the other. As expected, I smelled exactly the same as I do at every other moment of my life whether I am emerging from a swimming pool or a two week camping trip in a swamp. Not bad.

To play it safe, I reached into the storage area underneath my sleeping quarters and withdrew some Glide-On deodorant gel. (pic related)

Since I smell the same to me no matter what, this was just another of the many selfless things I do for people who I probably wouldn’t like if I ever took the time to get to know them.

I raised one arm, slid the stuff on, then did the other. As I began searching for an undershirt so to provide yet another layer of resistance,  my nerve endings woke up and registered the temperature of the viscous,  and vicious substance.

A single degree F colder and it would have frozen solid. Instead, it was reverse napalm.

Trying to wipe it off only served to smear it around and anger it. It got even colder.

You kids out there are too young to remember a dance called, “The Funky Chicken” so you probably can’t draw an image of what I looked like when I burst from the Rambler, wearing only my boxer/jockeys and tried desperately to accelerate evaporation by getting air to move across the surface of the stricken area as rapidly as I could.

Eventually, my body heat and deodorant were able to strike a compromise and I was allowed to slow the flapping of my wings.

I finished dressing and checked the label of the deodorant. Contains alcohol. So, it was probably even colder than I had calculated.

I ate breakfast then thought long and hard about a reason I would need cheering up now so that I would have an excuse to hit the Dunkin Donuts that was part of the travel complex. I settled on Existential Angst. You know, that feeling of dread that often accompanies total freedom and lack of responsibility in human beings.

Up til now I had just figured that that was a made-up ploy that the PTB had devised to keep us showing up at our miserable jobs for 40 or 50 years. But, if it would give me an excuse to score some donuts, I could take the hit.

Showing that I can make grand gestures when it comes to impulse control, I bought only HALF a dozen… (pic related)

The Xmas box makes them seem stale

It cost $6.13, making the old challenge of “dollars to donuts” a good deal for the other side now.

So, I am headed back west. As stated, I didn’t find the gold but, I did get the Rambler stuck in the mud on a dirt (when it’s dry) road in a remote part of an Indian reservation.

My first set of rescuers, tourists who were there to see the ruins (read that as “white folks”)  one of whom claimed to be from Greenbelt, Md oddly enough, really seemed to mean it when they told me that my predicament was “a damned shame” before speeding off as only a true homegirl would.

“Yep. They’re from the east coast.” I said out loud as I watched the back of their car recede into the distance.

The next set, Antonio, Gilbert and Ella (she never got out of the vehicle, but was inconvenienced by me nonetheless), locals, slogged into knee-deep mud and worked up a sweat in their exertion to get me on my way.  Either they are just good people who help out travelers in perilous distress or they were afraid I would make camp and ruin the neighborhood.  I sure as hell wasn’t getting off of the reservation by myself.

Where to now? I don’t know.  I’m missing my girl, but for now, miss her is all I can do.