Guest Blogger - Bob J.

I met Jim Myers during my sophomore year in college at Tennessee Tech. We were on the same floor in Austin Hall, a dormitory that no longer exists.

We became friends quickly and spent many hours drinking beers and doing foolish things. Sometime during that year he introduced me to David Lane. I liked Lane because he and Jimi fit so well together.

Sometime later, Myers and Lane showed up at my dorm room door saying they were ‘going out west’ in Lane’s Duster to check things out. They wanted me to come with them. I’d just spent all my money on tuition and books and couldn’t get it back so I had to say no.

They headed west and returned to Cookeville months later so broke that they sold me their K-Mart tent for five bucks for gas money to get them back to Knoxville.

I used that leaky-assed tent on my early backpacking trips to the Smoky Mountains.

Many years later, around 1981, I was living in Denver and wanted to backpack into the Colorado mountains for a week. I called Jimi and David and they agreed to fly to Denver and bring their gear. The three of us and an equally foolish friend of mine named Buchan loaded all our stuff into my trashed out VW beetle and made it up to the Zirkel Wilderness north of Steamboat Springs. A nice place with lots of stupid trout to catch and room for us to roam around. The drive back to Denver involved Hell’s Angels bikers flagging us down because a wheel was falling off the VW. This sort of set the tone for our subsequent gatherings…

After that, the three of us got together whenever we could for week-long backpacking trips. We’ve packed into mountain areas in Colorado, Idaho, Montana, and Wyoming. Our loose criteria for places to go has always been: go way up high and find snow banks to belly flop down, avoid contact with other humans, and slay trouties.

Packing with Jim and David was easy and adventurous. We were just there to enjoy the weeks on the trail and whatever came up during them. An undercurrent of foolishness was always there.

About 15 years ago I began to refer to Jim and David as the NitWits, for good reason and I have that that episode in mind as I write.

The NitWits invited me to come with them on their paddle down the Mississippi and I refused their offer. Sorta like when I didn’t jump in Lane’s Duster with them so long ago. Both of those decisions were easily made and, so far, I’ve only regretted one of them.

I know they’ll have a great trip down the Mississippi. I’m looking forward to meeting up with them south of St. Louis and hearing what all they’ve been up to since they put their canoe in the water.

Bob J.