It was an odd memorial service.

Eight of us stood in a solemn semi-circle, our heads bowed, hats in hand. We wore not black, but various shades of drab, from deep olive to pale gray. Instead of mourning a dear friend just laid to rest in a pastoral cemetery, we mourned a dusty cylinder of rubber perishing well before its time in front of our very eyes.

There, still attached to left rear wheel of the rented, metallic blue Suburban, a ragged hiss escaped from a puncture hidden between the deep threads of the almost-new tire-a steel-belted death rattle, if you will.

"Who puts two-ply tires on a four-wheel drive?" Tom Reed asked rhetorically. "That's just dumb."

"The rental company," Mike Knuth answered, a hint of irritation in his voice.

This particular irritation would be minor by the end of the three-day fly fishing tour of the Wyoming Range, a north-to-south stretch of wild, mountainous country between Hoback Junction and Kemmerer. Tom, Mike and I were showing a group of reporters the merits of the mountains on behalf of Sportsmen for the Wyoming Range in hopes of sparing this fantastic country from the devastating impacts that accompany natural gas drilling.

Standing there, trying to figure out what to do about a slowly expiring tire, it dawned on me how counterintuitive this press tour might look to the unknowing eye: Let's take half a dozen reporters into the Wyoming wilds to talk about the negative impact of natural gas drilling on public lands, and to get them there, let's load them and all their gear into two gigantic SUVs that burn fossil fuels with extreme gusto.

Yeah, it didn't make a lot of sense at that moment, and it still doesn't. But the reporters got it. You can't get to the top of Tri-Basin Divide in a Geo Metro, at least not with a boatload of fly fishing gear. Our tour was the conservation equivalent of the popular business mantra, "You have to spend money to make money."

So there we stood, eight men anxious to get to the Greys River before the afternoon heat put the stream's spirited cutthroats down for a few hours, only to be placed on pause by a punctured tire. The spare, of course, was under the vehicle. The equipment needed to change the tire was nearly as inaccessible, tucked into a hidden compartment in the back. To change the tire here meant unloading about $10,000 worth of fly fishing gear on the side of the steep mountain road, jacking up the big beast on an incline, installing the spare and then tucking everything back in the truck.

"I think we have a few minutes before it's totally flat," Tom said. "Let's get to the river."
After a brief moment where seemingly everybody pondered the wisdom of Tom's suggestion, we scrambled back into the vehicles-Mike got behind the wheel of the increasingly lame Suburban while Tom and I and a couple of reporters hopped back into a massive Ford Expedition-a big, red beast we'd taken to calling "The Climate Changer." We led the way down the hill to river, probably a little too quickly. But we were in a hurry- we were fishing.

A few minutes later, we found the perfect pullout. The rear tire of the Suburban-dubbed "The Polar Destroyer," or simply, PD-was nearly flat when we came to a dusty halt. The fly fishing equivalent of a Chinese dire drill ensued, with three of us handing gear out from the back of the PD to five anxious anglers who quickly began to string up fly rods and don fishing vests bristling with nippers and hemostats. Lamb's wool fly patches sported the late-summer fly selections of Madam Xes, big hopper imitations and the usual Humpies and Adams patterns that seem to work just about everywhere, but especially where naive wild cutthroats swim.

In minutes, we had the PD all jacked up, and the spent tire tucked into the back-we'd stop in Big Piney on the way back to the lodge and drop the tire off for repairs at a local tire shop.

We congratulated ourselves at our pit crew acumen-the whole process took maybe 10 minutes, and then we, too, strung up our rods, slipped on our vests and wandered down to the Greys to catch cutties.

Fast forward a couple of hours. Tom and half of the press corps were well ahead of us, hoping to send the dead tire on its way toward resurrection at the tire store in Big Piney. The rest of us took our time, did some fishing and were in the Climate Changer, enjoying a leisurely hour-long drive back to Jackson Fork Lodge for cocktails and a dinner that promised to be out of this world. Before we left, we saw the kitchen staff prepping crab legs as thick as my wrist-it was the topic of discussion as I navigated the rock-strewn mountain road, a day of fishing for native trout behind us and a four-star meal awaiting us.

That's when I saw Adam Chambers, a reporter for the Idaho State Journal, standing in the road in front of us. The PD was nowhere to be found.

"We blew another tire," he said, breathing heavily from a run down the road to intercept us. The guys in the back seat moved over, and Adam hopped in. Moments later, I pulled up to an eerily familiar scene-a handful of guys standing mournfully around a flat tire.

"Looks like I hit another rock," Tom said. "Damn two-ply tires."

"Damn rental company," Mike chimed in.

We got back to the lodge later than we would have liked-all our gear was now packed tightly into the PD, which rested in its wounded state along a remote, rock-strewn mountain road an hour from the pavement. One of its tires was in the tiny town of Big Piney awaiting repairs-we'd later learn it was completely dead and had to be replaced-but that's skipping ahead too far.

All eight of us squeezed into the Climate Changer for the long drive back to the lodge. I'm sure, upon arrival, we looked like a troupe of circus clowns continually exiting a VW Beetle.

Dinner was great, but as one of the organizers of this rubber-destroying adventure in remote western Wyoming, the transportation issue was weighing heavily on my mind.
We'd spent the first day of the tour putting the reporters on native Colorado River cutthroats and Snake River fine-spotted cutthroats, two of the Wyoming Range's three native cutthroat subspecies. The next day, we were going to drive the gang over the mountains into the Smith's Fork drainage to catch native Bonnevilles and put the reporters only one fish shy of Wyoming's famed Cuttslam-all they would lack after our tour of the area would be the Yellowstone cutthroat, which would be readily available to them should they ever visit the world's first national park, a couple of hours to the north.

But, with one nearly dead vehicle spending the night alone, and with limited options, we had to make a decision. We opted to have Tom to lead the reporters over the hill in the Climate Changer, which had yet to blow a tire, followed by the reporters, some of whom brought their own vehicles. Mike and I would drive Tom's rented mini-van, which we wisely left behind the day before, and handle pit crew duties. We'd retrieve the new tire from Big Piney, drive up to the PD and install it on the vehicle. We'd then drive the van and the SUV back to Big Piney where we'd patch the other flat. Then we'd drive over the hill and hopefully get into some Bonnevilles with the rest of the gang.

Good plan, huh?

Yeah, right.

We arrived at the PD moments after Tom and the other gang had cleaned out the back end of all the needed fishing gear. Mike and I worked with practiced precision, pulling the flat off the truck and replacing it with the spare we'd picked up on the way. I hopped back into the mini-van, and Mike followed me down the mountain road, one leg in our quest to repair spent tires officially behind us.

Not 10 seconds after we hit the pavement, I heard a loud "Bang!" The minivan's right rear tire blew. Half an hour later, we limped into Big Piney in a Suburban without a spare and minivan riding on a cheap "donut" replacement tire.

Both flat tires were declared dead by the tire shop technician, whom we were now very well acquainted with.

"You boys are snake bit," he said. "We're sure glad you came to town this week."
Two more new tires. A drive over the tire-eating Wyoming Range loomed ahead of us. Mike and I considered buying a whole new wheel and arming it with a second spare for the PD, but they didn't have a wheel in stock.

I looked at Mike. This was ridiculous.

And there's a remedy for the ridiculous.

"Let's go fishing," I said.

An hour later, both vehicles were parked at a trailhead leading into the Wyoming Range backcountry, and the rainbows, brookies and cutthroats of North Piney Creek were slamming bushy dry flies as they floated happily over likely runs. For the first time since assuming pit crew duties the day before, Mike and I were able to appreciate the Wyoming Range for what it was, not for what it meant to others.

Veined by dozens of glorious little trout streams from one end to the other, the range is signature Wyoming territory. Snow-flecked mountaintops loom over lush alpine meadows teeming deer, elk, grouse and the West's most robust population of moose. There, away from those killer gravel roads, Mike and I spent an afternoon in paradise.
It was, sadly, short-lived.

Later that evening, en route to a dinner rendezvous with Tom and the press corps, the Wyoming sky opened up and an honest-to-God downpour erupted from the dark clouds. As we motored toward Hoback Junction, I was forced to bring the mini-van to an abrupt stop in the middle of the highway, and beat a hasty retreat back to another signature Wyoming locale-a roadhouse. The torrential rain let loose a slide of mud and rock that blocked passage to our meeting place, and Mike and I spent the better part of the evening bellied up to a cowboy bar sipping beer and mingling with the locals.

We ordered a couple of burgers-the bartender flipped open a George Forman grill, inserted a couple of frozen patties and 10 minutes later we were eating and lamenting our string of ill fortune. Our only hope was that Tom had gotten the reporting crew into some big Bonnevilles on the Smith's Fork and that the tour had completed with some success.

I later learned the other group had, indeed, gotten into some fish, but not before two other vehicles-a big Suburban driven by an outdoor TV show camera crew and host and a regional editor for a fly fishing magazine-experienced flat tires.

A while later, Mike left the bar and busily worked the pay phone outside in hopes of confirming his plane reservations out of Jackson the next day. The rain continued off and on all evening, and during one of Mike's frantic conversations with United Airlines, the bartender handed me a backgammon box loaded with a couple of dice.
"Roll a six, win a six pack," he said. "Roll double sixes, win a 12-pack."

It looked like I had some driving ahead of me-likely about 40 miles back to Pinedale and a cheap motel room.

"If I win," I said to a group of locals with whom we'd been sharing our tale, "you'll have help me drink all this beer."

I blindly picked up the box of dice and tipped it upside down. I knew before the dice stopped tumbling. A cheer erupted from the good-timing crowd all around me.
Double sixes.

"Hey Mike!" I yelled out the door to where my buddy was busy explaining how an act of God might keep him from the airport in the morning. "I won a 12-pack! Can you believe our good luck?"