Banga-rang...pt.1

So now it's just me and DK on our way to Mancos, Co where we're about to spend the next weekish WWOOFing on this guy Dave Banga's farm. The seven hour drive down there was pretty awesome as we were taking I-295 South down there. If any of you find yourselves in a similar area/situation, try and take this road whenever possible. There were so many great/diverse views of the mountains it was unbelievable; I (Goodman) was afraid at times of crashing because of how distractingly beautiful the scenery was.

That was cool and by this time we were about 60 miles outside of Mancos. Prior to the trip, we had discussed what we would do in the case of seeing a hitchhiker; long story short we both agreed to pick 'em up. Now, the time in between seeing Ben (as he would later introduce himself) and cruising with him in the back seat goes a lot faster than you would think. All the sudden, we had this guy in the backseat of the car and within about 12 seconds we really didn't want him there anymore.

Ben told us about his life 30+ year career as a hitchhiker/ traveler and even some of the stories he had along the way (he even told us about the meth he had smoked the night before!). Despite how horrifyingly uncomfortable Ben made us, he actually turned out to be a pretty good tour guide on our way to Mancos. He told us a lot of un-touristy places to check out and places he thought were overrated. He knew every turn like the back of his hand and his non-stop talking allowed us to think less  about the prospect of being murdered.

His final words to us before we dropped him off came in the form of a question. He asked us how fast the speed of light was and how far the earth was from the sun. We didn't know the answers but neither did Ben, so no big there. That was that, Ben was out of our lives (hopefully) and DK and I learned our lesson about picking up hitchhikers.

We get to Banga's Farm: about ten acre's of land with 7 or 8 fields, Dave's trailer that he slept in, shaded work station, and newly planted orchard in the back. Dave's a really cool guy right off the bat. He tells us that we're going to be doing a lot of harvesting, weeding, watering, and all the other stuff that goes along with organic farming. The toilet is a compost toilet which I (Goodman) thought would suck but actually turned out being pretty cool (you get to put sawdust on the doodie). His friend a neighbor came over for dinner, Mave, who is an absolutely awesome person; definitely marriage material for both of us if she wasn't already married to Miles, who we met later, and not surprisingly, was also marriage material.

The real work started the next morning and between the 8 hour drive and 60 miles with Ben the Hitchhiker, we were ready for the day to be over...