Lost and Crazy

(Day 2, part 3)

Tonopah was on a hill and the road descended down, back to the floor of the desert.  As I road along looking left and right, I was marking the mountains which I was passing through.  They were grey and red and some were a strange bluish gray-green.  Not sure how that is possible, but there you have it.  The floor was flat and rocky and sandy with squat shrubby little plants.  If you wanted to stop and camp, there was hardly an area to put a tent.  There was an ancient utility pole line parallel to the road and it looked for all the world like one of those "spaghetti western" telegraph line poles.

The road itself was smooth and straight.  There was moderate traffic.  It seemed to me that in these desert roads, people either drove excessively slow, or ridiculously fast. Traveling 70 mph in a 65 zone, I either was routinely passed or was flying by others.  85 mph or 50 mph seemed to be the only choices.

I was planning on riding the shortest distance across Nevada and stopping in Utah, just north of the Arizona border.  I set my odometer and waited to see the next town come into view … but the town I expected didn’t come… which is strange behavior in a stationary object, like a town, to not be there.  Weird.

The road stretched on some more, 60 miles, 70, 90, at 98 miles out of Tonopah I saw an RV trailer park. As I pulled into the park, I took one look at the driveway and I pulled in real slow.  The parking area was crushed red rock. The rock was sharp and it was thinly spread with hard-packed clay beneath.  The park was sectioned off with cedar split rail and there was a tiny little office all by its own under a tree.

I put Betts, I had named the bike Betts in honor of her previous owner, in front of the door to the office and got off the bike.  I looked around the park.  There were about 10 or so trailers parked here and there.  The little office was sheathed in rough cut cedar and had a tiny window unit air conditioner mounted through the wall.  The only sound was the A/C purring along.  I looked back along the road and noticed a billboard which said “Death Valley Resort”.   Hmmmm.

Since I was riding eastward toward Utah, and Death Valley is actually southward, in California, this didn’t seem possible.  Then I realized that it was about 11:00 when I got into Tonopah, I was there 30 minutes and it was now just shy of 1:00… hard to tell direction by the sun in the desert at high noon.

A trembling realization came over me and I knew: I had taken a wrong turn… in the DESERT!  Visions of a man staggering through the desert, delirious from the heat and thirst, with vultures dogging his steps came to mind.  Funny thing: I didn’t see the first vulture in the desert… where do they come from in the movies?

Anyway, here I am, in some remote corner of the world, only miles from Death (DEATH) Valley, with no firm idea where I was… well, I knew I was lost, but lost is not a specific place on a map.  I like specifics.  As the panic rose inside me, a thin, sun-browned woman stepped around a trailer and headed straight towards me.

“Heya sugar?  You lost?”

Was it that obvious? Lost… at least not boring.  “Um, well, I was intending to be in Caliente on my way to Kanab, Utah… I take it this is Death Valley?”

“Utah, huh?”  she said Utah like "ooootah," “Almost in Death Valley… might as well call it Death Valley.  Where you coming from?” she asked.

“I rode from Santa Cruz, California, through Yosemite.” I said, “My next big stop is the Grand Canyon.  So where am I?”

“You are halfway between Tonopah and Las Vegas. Just east of Death Valley” She said Tonopah like tan-nop’-ah.

“Death Valley?  Man!” I hung my head and tried to sort out what my next step was.

“Easy now honey, fear doesn’t make anything better… it just makes everything worse.”  She smiled at me after saying that.

It is kind of unnerving because, as I am writing this down, I'm remembering the movie "Rango" which I didn't see until I got back home.  Seems like if I had looked out the window I could recall an alabaster golf cart with Oscars or Emmy’s in the back and a man strikingly like Clint Eastwood standing in the blazing sun.  This was a weird vision because she didn’t look anything like Clint Eastwood.

“well, what should I do?”  I asked.

“Here, let me take that map you have.”  She took my map and threw it in the trash.  “Take this.”  It was a map.  “Look, you are here, in Beatty.  Keep going down 95, right through Las Vegas until it hits I-40 at Kingman, Arizona, then on to Williams.  Grand canyon is North.  ‘Course, you are close to death valley… ought to see it, don’t you think?”

There is something about people who live where people shouldn’t be able to survive… they have a calm.  Its like they think “Heck, I oughta be dead already, what’s the big deal?”  She had me in a fixed stare.  “So, you gonna see the Valley?”

“Not sure.  I am trying to stay on somewhat of a schedule, but I would like to.”

So this lady… no name, no title… a pre-apparition of the 'Spirit of the West' from a movie I had yet to see, hands me a map and directions and inspiration.  I wish I could find the number to that little park.  I’m sort of afraid to search too hard… I might find out that that park was burned to the ground years ago along with a thin, sun-browned woman of calm wisdom.  Maybe she was the Spirit of the West.  Maybe that wasn’t a dust devil at all, maybe it was her.  Then again, I think she was a 50 something trailer park manager who just has a good head on her shoulders.

Back on the road heading due south on 95, I looked to my right coming into Beatty and had a mild shock.  There was a purple brothel just off the highway.  I had been stationed with the Air Force in Kunsan South Korea and had seen legal prostitution, but it is still was a jolt to see it so prominent.  It just looked like a motel, nothing really brothel-ish about it.

I stopped at a gas station/convenience store, filled up and enjoyed the A/C.  Here in the Death Valley area, unlike the area of the country dominated by SEC football, the biggest display of any commodity was water.  In the SEC it is beer, but not here.  With conditions here as they always are, water is the drink of choice.

Skirting the edge of Death Valley, the temperature rose into the upper 90’s.  I took off the windbreaker I was wearing and hit the road to Las Vegas.  As I rode, my shirtsleeves blew up on my arms leaving my wrists exposed.  By the time I felt the burn, a 3” band on each wrist was burned into my skin.  My gloves covered my hands and were the gauntlet style but the skirts on the gloves were not enough to make up for the wind brushing back my shirt.

High altitude, sun, and wind are a powerful mix.  That was not all… out west, you are able to see weather from a long, long way off.  As I was riding in the desert, I was cursing my bad luck and preparation when I noticed the rain up ahead.  Really?  Rain in the desert?  What are the odds?

Pretty good, it turns out.

I reasoned that a cool rain would do me good.  True that, unless you have a raging sun burn that you have no lotion for and the sleeves just don’t stay up.  The mix of the strong wind from the storm, the sand that the wind was whipping up off the desert floor and the torrential, pelting rain dropping at 32 feet per-second per-second, combined with the bike driving through said pelting rain at 60 mph head-on was akin to being in a hot air dryer, a sand blaster, and a car wash with pressure washers, all at the same time.  On the fresh sunburn, the sensation was exhilarating.

Soaked, shaken, frustrated and disoriented, I pulled into a gas station.  I learned my lesson from previous gas station stops and didn’t ask the attendant for directions.  The guy at the counter looked like the dude from the movie Gross Pointe Blank who worked at a convenience store.  He took in my pile of wares: Gold Bonds Powder; granola bars; beef jerky, baby wipes; sun screen; aloe vera; water and Gatorade.  I was glad I didn’t have any Vaseline in the pile.

He smiled and shook his head.  I hated him already.

“Where you headed?” he asked.

“Alabama.” I said.

“Hmmm.  Really?” he focused his laser stare on me and asked “Where you starting from?”

“Santa Cruz.” I said.

“California?”

“Yep.”

“Wow.” He said and I started to warm up to him, “that’s a crazy stupid idea.  Why in the world you doin’ that?”

I looked at him and said, “because I’m dying and thought I’d live it up.” And left with before he could get a response out.  Partially true, we are all dying right?  Feeling partly pleased with myself and more than a little guilty, I mused with the idea of going back in and setting the story straight, but the guy was already putting his ear buds back in and was drumming on the counter, unfazed.

I decided that lost and crazy might fit my nature… still, at least I wasn’t boring.  I mounted up and pulled out on 95 South.

It rained pretty much all of the way into Vegas.  I had come to terms with the sunburn and the goofy wrist bands etched into my skin as I rolled into Vegas.  I actually entertained the idea of going into a casino just to say I had.  I pulled off 95 and snaked my way through town and up to the Bellagio.  I imagined myself as 007 pulling up to the casino on my BMW.  The same model bike was in a Bond movie.  I re-assessed the effect of an oddly burned 47 year old man on a 12 year old bike with a haphazard 85 pound duffle strapped hodgepodge on the back of the bike and decided that Vegas is a silly place and would be just that much sillier with me riding up in my present state.

Leaving Sin City behind, I got back on 95 and headed out.