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Quest for Mud, Chapter 1: Breaking Out

My Quest for Mud story is inspired by stories written by Muddybootsnlevis on UMD, and especially by his three part story "The Mud Business". If you love mud and the outdoors, be sure to read his work. His stories are intelligent, well written, and huge fun. I highly recommend them.

The characters and everything else in my Quest for Mud story are fictional. The Drilling Mud Company doesn't exist, but fantasies do, and so I've written Quest for Mud about a guy who is devastated when he learns that the Drilling Mud Company is just a figment of Muddybootsnlevis' imagination, but finally realizes he needs to go out and find his own damned mud adventure. My story doesn't do justice to Muddybootsnlevis amazing tales, but I hope you enjoy it.

Chapter 1 Breaking Out
I'm a lurker, I admit it. I joined UMD a few years ago, but have never posted a thing on it. There's nothing about my life to post. I just love seeing that other people are doing things I wish I could do. My lurking entered a new stage when I discovered Muddybootsnlevis. His tales were amazing. I've never been an outdoors guy, except for a couple years when I dated Melinda and we went hiking to some wild places here in California, but we broke up five years ago. I've never gotten muddy and I've only gotten really wet fully clothed in my shower, but Muddybootsnlevis showed me a different kind of life.

Now there's nothing wrong with my life, not really. I've got a good job, stocking shelves at Safeway. Not the fanciest job in the world, but it's good pay, I've got a great retirement plan, and now that I've been there 12 years, I've got a ton of money saved. It all seemed like a good life until I started reading Muddybootsnlevis. Suddenly, I saw that there could be more to my life.

Inspired by Muddybootsnlevis, I started dressing differently. I'd always bought my clothes at Costco. Good inexpensive clothes that made sense, but Muddybootsnlevis inspired me to dream a little bigger. I bought some Levi's 501s, a Carhartt shirt, and some Carhartt Wellington boots. They felt so much better wet than the Costco jeans I had been wearing. When I was soaked in the shower, I fantasized quitting my job, just chucking it all, and going to Colorado. The dream kept building. I'd plead with Muddybootsnlevis for a job at the Drilling Mud Company. I'd work for free. I didn't need the money. I had a ton of it saved from my Safeway job. For a while, this is how I lived, stocking shelves while dreaming of getting muddy with Andy at the at the Drilling Mud Company, being free to be muddy all day, and sometimes going with Muddybootsnlevis in his jeep, getting muddy out there in the wilderness.

But I didn't even know what the wilderness looked like. I didn't even know what being muddy felt like. I lived in Redwood City and the most wilderness I had ever seen was camping in the Sierra with Melinda, before we broke up. It was beautiful and wild, but I knew it was not like the wilderness where Muddybootsnlevis was cruising around in his Jeep.

However I did realize that my yearning to be free and muddy at the Drilling Mud Company was a fantasy. I'd always known it. I was realistic enough to know that even if I went to Muddybootsnlevis' house and camped out there for a month, begging for a job and offering to work for free, he probably would just laugh. And that would be the worst thing. I still remember high school and Angela laughing when I asked her to the prom. She couldn't stop laughing and then told everyone in the school how hilarious it was that I thought a girl like her would ever even think about dating a guy like me. Fifteen years later it still stung. I dreaded it happening again, of Muddybootsnlevis writing on UMD about this jerk from California thinking he could just drop in and become part of Muddybootsnlevis life. Even if he didn't mention my name, it would be more humiliation than I could bear, so it remained a fantasy, a dream that became overpowering when I was wearing those soaking wet 501s and Carhartts, and my feet were in water-filled Wellingtons.

But then my fantasy came crashing down to reality. I read a Muddybootsnlevis update. The Drilling Mud company was a lie. Andy was a lie. He'd made the whole damned thing up. I was crushed. I knew I'd never have actually gone there, but losing the dream stung deeply. But a strange thing happened. After weeks of misery, I had an idea. A crazy idea, an idea I was sure I'd never have the courage to carry out. But it wouldn't let me go.

I'll tell you about it in Chapter 2, where a chance encounter turns my life upside down.