Columnist Susan Snyder: Bidding adieu to a trusted, old friend

Friday, Feb. 8, 2002 | 5:02 a.m.

I wept they day they took away the body.

We'd been together eight years. So it was hard to let go.

We met a year after my divorce was final. My house had been sold. My belongings were shoved in a storage unit, and I was awaiting final word on whether I would land the job that would allow me to leave the Florida town I'd called home for 16 years.

I got the job. So three weeks after we met we traveled to small town in Northern Utah. The journey took us four days. We took blue highways and stopped often, taking in Civil War battlefields and teeny towns.

We kept each other company on that dreadfully long turnpike across Kansas and rejoiced as we got our first glimpse of the Rocky Mountains sitting prim and purple on the horizon.

We saw snow just outside Denver. I gripped the steering wheel with white knuckles. It had been 15 years since I'd driven in such a storm.

It was exciting. A real adventure. Most people get the chance to start fresh in a new town only once, and it usually happens right after high school or college.

But here I was at 33, with enough personal belongings to fill an apartment, a couple of bicycles, a cat, the open road and us. I considered myself lucky.

We went through a lot together, such as our first harrowing drives on winding mountain roads that were narrow in shoulder, long in drop-offs and short on guard rails.

I recall that day we headed up to Powder Mountain, a ski resort that shares Ogden Valley with Snowbasin -- site of the 2002 Winter Games Super-G downhill ski race.

Powder Mountain then, as now, was the secret spot preferred by locals. But that road. Kids who worked the ski area took the bus up, to save themselves the headache. If your car would pull itself up the grade, you'd about burn out the brakes coming back down.

The day we went up, the road was covered with snow and ice. We crept up going about 20 mph and prayed we could keep it under 40 on the way down.

I recall that summer we went to Oregon with two friends for a bicycle trip down the whole coast. It was a self-contained tour, which means we carried our gear on the bikes and followed our noses.

It was a miracle, really. Barely 12 weeks earlier, I'd undergone surgery in which doctors removed half a dozen tumors. They were sure I was facing the Big C. After doing the tests twice, they decided it was a false alarm.

I decided it was a chance to start anew -- again. We plunged forward with renewed vigor.

We rambled to Utah's farthest reaches, bumping along skinny dirt roads and cruising ghost towns. We met polygamists and Mennonites. We met Navajo basket weavers and cowboy poets. We saw five national parks.

We moved to Las Vegas together, with a cat howling in the back seat and a new road ahead. And through it all, my companion hardly gave me a lick of trouble.

Death came suddenly. There was nothing anyone could do.

They loaded the body onto the tow truck and Mash Village carted it away.

I wept and felt a little silly. It was, after all, only a car.

But I never could have come this far alone.