The Dude
Mention The Dude and everyone immediately thinks of The Big Lebowski and the character played by Jeff Bridges. We know lots of things about The Dude, but mostly we know that The Dude abides. He accepts his lot in life and goes with the flow. That slacker mentality accounts for the popularity of the 1998 classic Coen Brothers film. By that date, much of the “Yutes” of America were in that frame of mind. See what I did there? I made another movie reference from My Cousin Vinnie inside a Big Lebowski reference. Is this because I’m a movie buff? Perhaps somewhat, but it’s mostly because I’m on a motorcycle trip.
Allow me to explain. To me The Dude will always be Ms. Deb “Mimi” Wells of Salt Lake City, Utah. I will explain who she is in the rest of this story. But as she and most members of my motorcycle club will remember, we were joined on one ride by Dale Launer, the famed writer/producer/director of the cult classic comedies of Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, Ruthless People and My Cousin Vinnie. Those have to be some of the funniest movies ever made and almost everyone remembers them and their many lines. Who can forget “yeah, you blend”.
Dale Launer is to comedy what the Coen Brothers are to crime noir. He also enjoys the Hollywood reputation of being the Rabelais-rouser who insisted on being writer, producer AND director of all of his films. He knew that writers weren’t getting their due (in Monet or fame) and that producers and directors were stealing both and leaving writers with the whales shit. So, he rebelled and would only let his scripts be produced and directed by him. The result was that Dale decidedly did NOT abide like The Dude.
Back to The Dude for a moment. Deb “The Dude” Wells is a massage therapist by trade and a righteous abiding dude by disposition. She has been the crew chief and wrangler for our motorcycle club for twenty-five years and is still alive to talk about it. More importantly, like The Big Lebowski dude, she has maintained a casual attitude about life, the events that befall her and the crazies she encounters in a manner that would make any Dude proud. She is the embodiment of abiding. In a biblical sense, abiding means to be fixed in a state of love. There are few people on earth I can hug and feel more natural love from than The Dude.
So imagine my pleasure in introducing The Dude to Dale Launer. I met Dale in my private banking days and invited him on one of our early rides. It was memorable to say the least. He had never ridden on the street, being a kid that had grown up with dirt bikes. He was the antithesis of cool, so he wouldn’t rent a Harley or a Honda, he had to rent a Buell. A Buell is the product of Erik Buell, a rogue Harley engineer who made a sport bike out of a Harley V-twin engine. It was radical and cool all at once and did not fit neatly into any category. That made it the perfect bike for Dale Launer. However, Dale did not own any motorcycle gear and figured that like his bike, he would go the non-traditional route. He just combined some winter and foul weather gear and figured it would do. That year Utah was not giving us a friendly May and Dale was the recipient of the most unprepared rider award during a flash flood rainstorm followed by a Soldier Summit snowstorm.
Luckily for Dale, the Dude was prepared for anything. She was dragging her usual Wells Cargo trailer, so Dale got his Buell loaded up and carted over the summit to the dry and warm high-desert plains of Moab and sat in the chase vehicle regaling the crew with Hollywood stories. They even got to “writing” the My Cousin Vinnie sequel, which Dale planned to call A Gumbah in King Arthur’s Court, a story of Vinnie going to London. Someday it may yet make it to the big screen if Dale ever gets out of Hollywood purgatory for his sins against the system.
The Dude takes everything in stride. Remember, The Dude abides. On most motorcycle rides someone has something go wrong. Arthur loses his bike key. Bob rides back and forth missing the motel repeatedly. The trailer blows an axle. The Dude abides.
The time the trailer blew the axle, it happened at the Glen Canyon lookout. If you wanted to pick the most remote and inconvenient spot to have this happen and you took out your protractor to figure out where, you would wind up choosing the Glen Canyon overlook. When we got to Torrey (the needs of the army must be served and they needed their bags at the hotel regardless of trailer problems), The Dude was two hours away from the trailer. The trailer repair guy was two hours away in a different direction.
I decided to join The Dude for the ride back to the overlook, where we met the trailer guy. He needed two hours for the axle fix and we said we would return after finding some dinner. The Dude and I drove out to the main road and sat there asking each other where the nearest bistro might be. When we realized it was at least two hours in any direction, we looked at each other, shrugged (the dudes abided) and went back to help the trailer guy. It had been five minutes since we left and he could only look up and say, “Geez, I just started, I’m not done yet!” The Dude and I just laughed the laugh of people who have learned to abide and stay chilled.
It is now twenty-five years since The Dude and I set out on our first journey together. There are many stories, even one about a flying boat (that one for another time). The Dude has remained righteous and is just as Dude-like as ever. Nothing phases her. No member hissy bothers her. No snooty desk clerk can get the better of her. No road or trip problem cannot be resolved by her. This is the benefit of The Dude’s abiding strategy. The Dude and I can always get a good laugh out of stories of trips and people gone by. All I have to do is mention Dale Launer and a smile crosses The Dude’s lips.
The gospel according to The Dude is that no problem is so great that it can’t be solved by a piece of beef jerky. Ride on, Dude.