January 4,1996

Mother took care of the holiday baking all of her life. Toward the end I cooked the turkeys, but she still furnished the cornbread for the dressing and oatmeal rolls for the feast. She apprenticed on a wood stove on a windmill tank water system. The first yeast bread she made failed to rise. Not wanting to give the hands or her husband a chance to tease her, she buried the dough in the back yard. She went on to become an expert at baking breads and pastries. Her cookies and pies spanned several generations of Mertzon's school kids.

Necessity taught me to cook. The Big Boss hired black cooks for roundups, but the rest of the time, the outfit leaned toward single cowboys and Mexican camps. The choices were the skillet or a horseback ride to Felix or Jose's camp for tortillas and beans. The ranch furnished lots of beef, so the choice came easy. Mother sent down loaves of homemade bread. The days were long enough that it didn't take too fancy a fare to make a meal.

Today's refrigeration makes ranch cooking easier. Artificial biscuits and imitation frozen dinners can support life for weeks on end until acute boredom causes the digestive system to rebel. However, I run a top grade batch outfit. The idea it is harder to cook for one person doesn't float around here. In the days when I served as a back-up to feed eight children, I saw the one plate/one fork theory torn to shreds. The action seven boys and one girl, plus their drop-in company, generate around a table will make a good sized army mess hall seem like a Boston tea room.

I still cook for my family and their guests on visits to the ranch. Several days beforehand, I work out in the kitchen. I juggle three pot lids until I can keep all three in the air at the same time. The improved dexterity pays off once pans start sliding off counter tops and dishes try to jump off the refrigerator shelves. I do 40 deep knee bends a day to limber up to hunt for things in the bottom shelves and lower drawers. I plunge my hands in hot water until the skin builds a tolerance against the heat. I spend at least one Saturday afternoon at the mall in San Angelo growing accustomed to the crowded conditions that always confirm the kitchen is the most popular room in a house.

The scene opens like a Norman Rockwell holiday painting. I wear a starched white apron, tied smartly around my waist. Dust from flour dots my shirt cuffs to accentuate the colors in my white beard. I hold my chin at exactly the same angle General George Washington held his crossing the Delaware.

Laughter fills the room as children drink milk and sodas at the kitchen table and adults lounge against the cabinet counters. Telephones ring unanswered; deer hunters drop by to complain of overturned blinds and misapplied gate locks. No hearths exist to roast chestnuts, so everyone congregates in the area between the stove and the refrigerator, leaving a small channel leading to the pantry. "Granddad" and "Dad" are said in deep reverence.

On the morning of the feast, the crowd thins in the kitchen. The rosy-cheeked chef of yesterday mistakes a piece of French toast under his boot heel for one of the children's fingers and leaps into an open cabinet door full-face. The day also sees the first commode malfunction of the season, the guest bird dog howls for attention in the garage, and Granddad's horses fail to come in for feed the first time of the year, leaving the riders idle to drink Coca-Colas at the house.

In minutes, smoke from the oven vent sets off the fire alarm in the hall. One drumstick kicks out of the truss, sending a thin stream of melted turkey fat down the oven door. "Granddad," if uttered at all, is spoken in a whisper.

Not only does the kitchen empty, but adjacent rooms become stilled. One guest comes to help, (and there always seems to be one). She peels onions and mashes the potatoes, asks yes and no questions, warms oatmeal rolls from Mother's recipe, and bakes a pecan pie from her homeland. Her daughter sets the table. On the way to the trash barrel, the old bird dog follows along, nudging my hind leg, reaffirming our friendship.

Deer hunters break camp to leave and watch the football games; the grandson kills his first deer. And down at the barn, his sister saddles Cindy and rides off in the horse trap, setting off a glow of pride that overrides the hardships of a ranch cook...

January 18,1996

The right to carry concealed weapons in Texas came into effect the first of the year, and 175,000 citizens applied for licenses. All applicants must take a gun safety course to receive a permit. Quite a number of other restrictions exist. For example, concealed weapons are forbidden in some public buildings, and private businesses reserve the right to forbid firearms on their premises.

A bishop in San Antonio made a big to-do about forbidding firearms on church property. The church was already protected by the law but auxiliary buildings were not, so the good people posted signs proclaiming their property, of all things, was a place of peace.

Lots of radicalism has seeped into all the churches. Before Christmas, a man of the cloth in Mertzon ordered the congregation to go a full week without talking about each other. For seven days and seven nights, we were ordered not to gossip about our neighbors. No dispensations were offered for hardship cases. He didn't say what to do if we met a Bosnian or a congressman face to face down at the post office, or over at the bank. He avoided mentioning immediate family or in-laws. As radical as the ban was, the pastor evidently knew to leave a few loopholes.

After church, I told him the same thing I told him when he insisted we pray for peace. Well, basically the same thing. That the Bill of Rights guarantees freedom of speech, true or untrue in substance, unfounded or imagined in content. "Even if the Bill of Rights doesn't outright say so," I said, "the document implies we have the choice of listening - freedom of listening, is the doctrine's name."

And to the matter of praying for peace, as free-born citizens of this great republic, we delegate to our executive branch the power to declare war. Go look, but there's not one word giving the president the power to declare peace. Furthermore, some of the world's fiercest battles were fought under the name of holy wars. Charlemagne, or maybe it was King Charles II, packed a big-bladed sword decorated by a gold cross on the handle. Think those guys would have allowed for prayers for peace, or a ban on sidearms in the chapel? Most certainly not. Perhaps his highness might have prayed for peace in the case of the queen's temperament, however, that's a private matter.

But as I complained to the pastor, the habit of gossip is too entrenched to give up for a whole week. Before the dial system, we shared a party line among seven ranches. Every morning a couple of the women opened a three-hour conversation over the wire. Their names were "Jessie" and "Lou Ann". Mother allowed me to monitor the session on Saturdays to see if listening on the telephone improved my attention span for Monday's classes. This was the only homework for which I showed the slightest aptitude, so the dialogue remains vivid.

The conversations went like this: A few coughs and Jessie would ask Lou how she was feeling.

Lou: "I didn't close my eyes all night. Doctor Deal gave me some medicine, but it's so strong, I am afraid I might spill it and burn my skin. Remember what happened to Ester when Doctor Deal gave her the same medicine I'm taking? Her tongue turned black as coal. Remember Louise told us it was too bad Ester couldn't smear some of that medicine on her scalp and turn her hair black."

Jessie: "Golly Moses, Lou, are you gonna be all right to come to my bridge party Wednesday afternoon? You are right. Ester's hair did turn black after she started having it done in Angelo."

Lou: I reckon so, Jessie. Have you decided yet whether to serve toast or biscuits under your chicken ala king? You make the best toast. I always am so jealous of your toast. Do you buy your bread in San Angelo?

Jessie: "Lands sake, Lou, I'd give anything to be able to fix chicken ala king as good as you can. By the way, did you hear what Lucille Garrett said the other morning at the post office to Glad when she picked up her baby chickens from Sear's Roebuck? I can't tell you over the phone, but I bet you can guess if you'll think what your hubby tracks in from the barn."

Coming from that background, the habit to gossip is too instilled to break. The whole news network reeks of scandals. Big-timers in Washington and Hollywood titillate the imagination of the ones of us stranded in the provinces. I don't know understand why anyone would be so unreasonable as to go so hard against human nature.

January 26,1996

Livestock journals often rerun old photographs of show cattle from the stockshows of yore, proving how much cattle have changed over the years. Out in the pastures, no pictures are needed.

Sterile flies to stop the screwworm menace and bountiful sacked goods to introduce chronic lethargy made a dramatic difference in the species. Where once wild old sisters tore off into the brush, teaching their calves to flee at the sound of horsemen or the swish of a lariat, they now stand at tailgates bawling a pitiful tune, identical to the symptoms for deep internal miseries.

I stare in absolute disbelief at the indifference the modern-day cow shows to a calf cut off across the fence. In other times, only ranches having bull wire fences held mothers away from their babies.

Gentle cattle were a novelty. The notion that cowboys sat up on the top rail of corrals must have originated from horned cattle putting the men on the fence. Around the works of those days, quite a number of horses were gored and lots of hombres wearing heavy boots and big spurs discovered bursts of speed hitherto unknown among mounted men. But the bonding of the cow brutes to the feed sack and end of the trauma of doctoring cattle on the range ended those traits.

The newsletter for the Texas and Southwest Cattle Raiser's Association revealed a new breakthrough in animal husbandry not too long ago, reporting how a Colorado research station discovered that cattle having cow licks above their eyes had calm dispositions. The station concluded cattle and horse breeders might use this guideline to breed gentle animals.

The first thing I did was to check for cow licks in our bulls. All of the old ones had bushy brows and pronounced tufts of hair, interspersed with patches worn off from fighting and rubbing against trees to scratch for lice. The way better papered bull dealers shave the bulls' heads for sales to make them pretty, I am unsure whether regrowth comes back as a "lick," or a big swath of coarse hair. Generous handouts of range cubes also rules out assuring an animal is docile. During the winter season, a strong pickup horn and a full feed box make a roundup crew. Telling whether a cow is wild after she has been on feed a few days is kind of like analyzing the patients' personalities coming out of dentist offices. Full of laughing gases and shot up on opiates, the likes of the Wild Man from Borneo could gentle down to a manageable patient.

The best case was a heifer-breeding ox I bought in the fall whose behavior indicates unhappy childhood experiences. He displays a vigorous distrust of man, either in a seated position behind a steering wheel or placed behind the saddle horn. He has a full-grown cow lick, but analyzing his brow has to be done by shooting off his tailhead as he takes off for the brushy draw north of the windmill.

Were he the first low birthweight bull to come on the ranch, the tendency to escape might be linked to birth size, or traced back to a strain of racing bulls. The notion is not unreasonable. Houdini, the greatest of escape artists, was such a small baby that he slipped through the bars of his crib before he was weaned, without ever hanging a safety pin or dropping his diaper. The maternity ward nurses also kept a close eye on Mrs. Houdini to be sure she didn't pull a fast one, like she had tried once before to leave her first kid at the hospital. The fact no baby pictures of Houdini exist to prove or disapprove he had a cow lick doesn't mean a thing. Until color film began to gloss up the cherub's features and hide the mother's disappointment, lots of shots of mom and babe disappeared, especially those of red-headed boys.

We will have to wait to spring to test the cow lick theory. Once the cows slick off from the fresh greenery and the yearlings find new life, we should be able to determine the validity of the research. The only bull rider I know is retired and cuts hair over in San Angelo, making him a good prospect to discuss cow licks. But he stays so outmatched, trying to keep four year-old boys stuck in his chair, I haven't the heart to ask him for an interview.

The next break will be to watch the prodigy of the snuffy heifer bull. They might be just the guinea pig the research station needs to complete their case ...

February 1,1996

Seven unpapered aliens passed north of the ranch on the coldest day we were to have in December. They walked 10 days before taking a chance of asking for food and shelter. The leader knew the ranch country, but found the people gone who once fed the southern foot soldiers.

Over three years have passed since a Mexican stopped at our outfit. From time to time the Border Patrol at Del Rio report mass crossing of illegal aliens, however, the trails across country changed after employment became against the law. In the 1950s and on to the next decades, at least 50 or 60 men a month passed down the railroad by the ranch looking for work. The big drouths in Mexico brought such heavy influxes in the 1960s, the kitchen at the Old Ranch often used 50 pounds of flour a week supplying the transients meals and tortillas for their lunches.

The blame for my yard fence toppling over and the flower beds dying off has been waiting for the immigration laws to change. The heavy office load of running a bitterweed sheep and a sometime cow and calf operation destroys the muscles necessary to dig or bend over on the ground. Sitting at a desk subtracting feed bills, adding on insurance premiums, and deducting taxes discourages doing manual work and encourages rocking in a recliner in front of the Wheel of Fortune show on the TV channel.

Jerking the unpapered guys away from us so quick didn't give us time to loosen up enough to dig postholes or shoe horses. Indoor gym equipment flexes the body, the TV advertisements claim, but who wants to be a rubber man unable to hold himself erect? Also, the male physique develops differently than females. The first part of my walks in Mertzon lead past the teacherage of the school district. The other day I watched a young mother scoop up a kid on her hip in the street and pick up six pecans before she made it back to her front door. Had her husband bent over that deep carrying a 30 pound child to pick up a pecan, the stars swimming in front of his eyes would look like the screen on a rocket ship headed for the moon.

The objections to working wets are dim in my memory. I do recall a worthy rising in the House to declaim that prohibiting the employment of illegal aliens meant ruination to every mom and pop operation in America. His name is lost in the passage of time. Nevertheless, I suspect the "mom" he referred to was his wife over in Georgetown, working a wet Mexican maid and cook to keep from straining her back pushing a vacuum cleaner, or shoving a pack of mean kids out in the backyard to play. And the ruination part was going to be the lifting of "pop's" scalp if he and his colleagues took away her help.

We were so frantic repairing the outside fences using a wet crew of men before the law passed, half the mom and pop operations in Texas may have closed without us being aware of them. About the only contact with the outside world then was buying camp groceries and mailing money off to Mexico.

I think when the "pop" end of this operation became threatened was the first shearing season the captain failed to have enough extra help to put up the wool, and we were too short-handed to round up the sheep. I don't remember "ruination" being the key word. I think "damnation" was in the forefront.

After the law became effective, all the unpapered action centered on construction sites and minimum wages around the hotels and restaurants. This was to be my last opportunity to speak Spanish in the U.S. Several times, I asked bus boys for tips on cabs, or food places. Sheratons and Marriots must not be such a bane to the country's immigration balance as ranchers and farmers are.

Politicians still blab about closing the borders. New proposals are even more strict than old ones. The raises Congress granted themselves cover other sources for nannies and cooks. All the worthies have to guard against on the domestic scene is some nosy newspaper scribe discovering a missing social security payment on $50 worth of babysitting.

No new laws need to be passed on my account. The best bunkhouse burned down six years ago and the one other shack is too far gone to house anything but mice and termites. Old saddles hanging in the shed are half-rigged, and maybe one extra bridle remains.

I miss sitting out in the yard on a summer evening talking to those little guys from Monclova and Allende. Before Christmas, a friend invited me over to meet his guests from Mexico. How good it felt to share the warmth and humor of a forbidden culture...

February 8,1996

The least known unsolved mystery around Mertzon was one reported once before of my son John being hijacked of his third grade report card on a three-block walk to the house. The robbery became a serial-type crime. Several semesters into college passed before a grade report appeared again bearing his name. Do understand the boys walked home from school across several vacant lots of cedar bushes thick enough to hide a robber gang, but the report card case was never solved.

One other long-standing mystery showed a big break in 1995. The mystery goes back to right at the end of the drouth of the 1950s. Two neighbors over on the east side of the shortgrass country attended an Angora goat sale in Central Texas. Things looked better for all phases of the hair and curved horn business. Spring kid hair sales had risen a tad, and stocker nannies showed slight demand for the first time in six years. Drouth-stricken ranges were yet to recover, but the smallest glimmer of hope sends a herder bounding off, thinking in his mind: "A BOOM IS ON!, A BOOM IS ON!"

These two gentleman operated some of the best goat country around. For sure, they didn't want to come in the game too late for the bargains. Consignors to the sale provided big platters of barbecue and a generous supply of cold keg beer to relieve the July heat of the sale barn. Waiters passed through the crowd keeping the glasses full. Be a hardhearted person indeed to criticize a couple of herders for feeling festive, being so close to the beginning of a big boom.

The auctioneer was a young ambitious fellow who brought the crowd under a spell. Mighty prices of as much as $200 per head opened the offerings. Understand, every hoof sold after the first year or so of the Big Drouth went for packer prices, whatever the species. These goats were selling by the head and as high as 60 bucks for a good sire. Caught in the frenzy of the chant of the ring, our two subjects bought three billies apiece. Sales programs are made of slick paper easy to blur under a ballpoint, and our men sat far enough away from ringside to allow for confusion. The light was also less than adequate in the auction lobby by the time the last keg floated, so in a spirit of grand camaraderie, they split the cost of the six billies and took a joint receipt back to the ranch.

Much later under the moon and a flashlight, they sorted the billies on the trailer and cut out three head. The goats had horn tatoos, but like I said, notations on the sales catalogues were blurred and hard to read under the flashlight. Other than truckers, few people have legged a billy goat off a trailer in darkness, but if you have, I feel sure you agree the slightest indisposition from liquid refreshments makes inspecting horn tatoos and eartags very tedious. The next day the two goat buyers stayed at the ranch and the goats probably stayed penned until late afternoon. No efforts were made to straighten out the nocturnal division.

Over the years, I was to hear the story so many times that I began to fill in missing parts, like: "and next you would get out and open the bumper gates," or " wait, you are forgetting the part about dropping the flashlight in the water trough."

But the more the tale was told, the more the herder I knew best began to suspect he might have been cheated. In 1970, he pastured goats joining the Old Ranch. We had a lot of dealings throwing his nannies and kids back across the fence. I think I must have heard the whole story six times a year for over 10 years. Now and then I'd see the other party, but he was working on bigger deals than sorting six head of billy goats.

The loss or the gain must have been inconsequential as they recovered from the drouth and went through a couple of more dry spells without losing their lands or their minds. Over Christmas, I met my main informer at the grocery store. We talked until folks, lapping the store for a second time, began to scowl at us for blocking off a major passageway.

On the way to the ranch, I realized he didn't retell the billy goat story. Slowly, slowly an item popped up. Last spring, his consignment of kid hair topped the market. The dilemma now is to decide whether to tip the other guy off that he must have taken the bad end of the long-ago midnight goat work...

February 15,1996

Federal regulations now require the same hour and a half check-in for domestic flights as for foreign connections. Agents make the deal more sinister by inquiring whether the passenger is carrying any packages for strangers.

By the time I make an hour's drive from the ranch to the San Angelo terminal to wait 90 minutes more, I am so jumpy that strangers avoid my company. Also, as overloaded as I go packing enough gear to walk and wade in the jungle on a trip, I can't address the subject of extra packages, much less carry one.

Safety rode heavy on my mind, too, when I began planning the trip to Peru in January. State Department advisories classify travel as dangerous into Peru. Noonday newscasters delight in recounting the robberies and hijackings north of Lima, one of the places I was headed. The reason for the State Department's precaution is because so many flights to South America originate in Miami. Our foreign services knows if you happen to step outside for a smoke exposed to Miami traffic, you might take your last drag to the tune of a sniper's bullet.

Four or five years ago after the German tourist was shot, the Miami terminal was as quiet as the fairgrounds in San Angelo a couple of days after the stock show ends. Concourses turned into cavernous passageways; hot dog salesmen had to be awakened to fill the buns. The gate areas were lonelier than being off in the pasture at the ranch.

But passing through Miami gives you a head start to adjusting to the South American republics. Spanish custom and language dominates the scene. All the Cuban exiles must launch their careers there. The only English the skycaps speak is "$5 a bag," and, "My gosh, lady, this bag is heavy!"

I made my way around the indifferent service for gringos by choosing the dominant race as table mates. Nobody is going to ignore you accompanied by a mother with three or four children diving off the stools and crawling under chairs. One episode cost three ice cream cones and a big blob of chocolate on my pant's leg, nevertheless, I was able to have a cup of coffee and a refill by sitting next to a big family.

Faucett, the national airline of Peru, only offers one flight a week to Iquitos to connect to my destination on a river boat to go up the Amazon. So I needed to be confirming the next flight and meeting a friend of mine from up on the north part of the Florida Peninsula, instead of drinking coffee in an out of control coffee bar. I was going to have him paged, but Harry Pearson translates so poorly into Spanish, I was afraid I'd summon the wrong hombre and have to hire a translator to work from English to Spanish to Cuban dialect to Haitian patois.

Harry made our deal direct with the outfitters in Peru and saved us a lot of dough. He crosses the equator over a dozen times a year. He flies so much his head is beginning take on the same shape as an airline pillow. Mosquito bites break the pattern of the no-see-um welts on his neckline. He keeps his hands cut and his toenails smashed from wearing diving equipment. His dark glasses reflect cathedral steeples and the peaks of pyramids wherever he looks. I suppose playing tennis at home and writing me every week are the calmest of his pursuits. I never have seen his backhand on the courts, but the postage on his letters makes the program at a stamp collector's club seem dull.

Far from being the competent traveler Harry is, about the time I overcome my provincial bearings, the trip is over. All those smart city guys turning up the cuffs of their white shirts and smiling at the stewardesses is so alien to ranch life, I look the other way. Static electricity off the upholstery causes my shirttail to come out in the back and blouse in the front. The same charges send my cow lick and forelocks flying amiss; smoke from the other section of the plane makes my sinuses drain so bad, my drawl turns into a croaky hillbilly twang.

The lady at the Faucett desk didn't ask what I was carrying on board. The straps and harness from the packs and cases covering my chest probably made her wonder how I was able to carry what I had. She said, "Un Americano, un Senior Pearson, busca para usted." I'd of understood her better if she had raised her head when she gave the message. I did understand the plane was full. I wanted to tell her about the time Harry and I measured Mt. McKinely up in Alaska from a merit badge test we learned in the Boy Scouts using shadows, but she seemed to be distracted by the big crowds of people ...

February 22,1996

At the ranch the names lack meaning - Peru, Iquitos, Amazon, Cusco and Lima. But leaving a 747 to enter a rusty tin roofed, open air terminal housing customs for a major South American power sets the stage for new ground.

The tropics mean excesses to me. A jump-off into dark rums and black tobacco and sheet iron too hot to touch in the middle of the day. A place of raging jungle fevers and insidious fungus; a way to hide out from the rigid laws of the outside world. Peru doesn't require a visa for U.S. citizens. Important jefes inspected the first waves of baggage; however, as the lines lengthened, we were waved on to the final stamping of passports. Outside, the only taxicabs were motorcycles with a back seat to fit a couple of people. Two decrepit school buses belonging to the principal outfitters picked up the main body of Americans.

Iquitos is an island city some 300 feet above sea level. There are no roads, only boats and airplanes for transportation. We hit town in the midst of the big Saturday night celebrations. Much like the cantina scene in Mexico, the din of the revelers and the milling of their drunken dancing rose above the sound of the creaky old bus.

At breakfast, an American biologist from an amphibian research facility on the Amazon said: "On my first visit 30 years ago, Iquitos claimed 10,000 people. The next decade numbers rose to 40,000, laying the foundation for the present size of 400,000. River people," he told us, "use a plant growing wild in the jungle for birth control; however, like other parts of the world, religion creates a problem."

Demography is a sensitive topic around a father of eight children, so I changed the subject by introducing my traveling companion, Harry Pearson, as a professional engineer and my personal navigator on the river trip, leaving in a few hours. Like a lot of doctors of this and that, who spend hours rating the strength of frog legs against the resiliency of lily pads, he wasn't interested in our plans or Harry's engineering career. Harry was in a rush to go exchange money before the black market traders became too busy selling drugs. The doctor left without saying goodbye.

Sunday was quiet until we reached the main plaza. On the far side, four platoons of military and an honor guard were standing at parade rest in full dress uniform. Dignitaries milled around a microphone, but didn't speak a word. All of sudden, the troops came to attention and marched off swinging their arms in unison in a silent goose step cadence. A civilian tested the sound system, "Uno, dos, tres;" the flags remained folded and pressed tight against the chests of the honor guards. I figure the ceremony was a silent tribute to an unknown soldier and fair warning for a gringo not to go around asking questions in a plaza under guard of an army packing automatic rifles.

We boarded the boat at noon. The craft accommodates 16 passengers and nine crew members. Only six clients showed up, all Americans. Harry talked the captain into giving us an extra cabin. All those shots required for foreign travel cause the nasal passages to restrict in the same way a slide works on a trombone. So Harry was able to throw a lot of feeling into asking for a bunk away from my chemically induced snoring.

Boats sailing the tributaries of the Amazon are of modest standards. Baths are shared; 12-inch fans stir the humid air in the cabins. All secondary water comes direct from the river. Compared to the rusty tubs offered in the Galapagos Islands, the "Discover" was a luxury liner.

Harry knew the cook from a previous trip down river. Her reputation is good. Basic supplies come on board at the local market in Iquitos. Chicken and eggs are bartered from the villagers for cigarettes and T-shirts. Also, fruits from the jungle, like papaya, coconut and bananas, are supplied by the natives.

River sailing is a hard life, especially on the Equator. The hands become strong from rubbing on repellent and sun screen. Climbing up and down off the top bunk builds the shoulder muscles, and wading in the slush of the jungle strengthens the calves and ankles. Every time we crossed improvised log bridges or narrow gang planks, the crew members stopped to watch. Nimble-footed porters, unloading cargo off boats, were particularly interested in seeing me clamber up muddy banks that they descend carrying 12 bricks or two stalks of bananas tied to a sling.

Machismo curses the young man. I'd accept the lifeline thrown by an old granny if it'd take me across a bad place. Lots of times when I was looking through my binoculars, I was actually steadying myself, hoping I didn't slip off at the next crossing ...