Day 5 of cross country - going home

DAY FIVE TUESDAY JULY 12, 2011

Day five found me awake without my alarm at 4am.  I walked over to the truck stop and got a cup of coffee, pretty good coffee, and carried it back to the room.  I packed my gear and got it on the bike. The motel had a concrete walkway which ran its entire length.  My unit set high above the parking lot, about 3 feet, so there were a few steps poured down to the parking spot where Betts was.  I felt like Aragorn at Helms Deep as I sat on the walk, looking east and waited for the sun to rise.

I was so intent on making mileage yesterday, that I didn’t note the landscape.  Somewhere east of Oklahoma City, the foliage had changed from the plains to the forest.  Before OK City, there were shrubs and a few trees with dense tree cover in gulches and creek banks, but here in Checotah, the trees pushed themselves up in full stature and stretched limbs out to tickle each others extended fingers.  I could see where the understory area had the look of a forest floor that the tree canopy had blocked enough sunlight that there weren’t as many smaller plants.

As the sky brightened I could see some cleared fields.  The swallows, or martins, were swooping and diving over the field.  There was a  haze over the field where the air neat the soil, still warm from the ground which never really released the heat of the day mixed with the cooler air above.  It was a soupy mix of moisture, bugs, truck fumes and feeding birds.

Gradually, the sun beat back the night, lights started coming on in the motel rooms, and the sounds of a human day grew louder than the sound of nature.  I turned in my room key, got on the bike and added my engine to the noise.

700 miles to Notasulga, Alabama.  I charted by course through Little Rock, Arkansas; Memphis, Tennessee; Tupelo, Mississippi; Birmingham, Alabama, then down US Hwy 280 into Dadeville, then off side roads through Reel town and Liberty City and into sleepy Notasulga.

Leaving Checotah, I was struck by the flavor of John Cougar Mellancamp.  The kids at the Sonic, the hot, humid nights, that solid stalwart attitude of the American farmlands all gave me a sense of peace.  There is a need, in a nation, for a common thread.  The language binds us still, but the attitude of the American still is a ‘let’s make this work” kind of pathos.  The desert southwest had a calm in the face of an environment which was not designed for humans.  California is hard to nail down because it is so diverse within itself… childish, sincere, hard working, fun loving, hurt, but trusting… California is an enigma.

Texans seemed the most independent.  They kept to themselves and expected you to as well.  They were friendly enough, but they left no bones about it, they had their stuff together, so pay mind and stay outta the way.  Oklahoma and Arkansas are the solid country folk who will help a stranger, but they carry that same thread of strength of character as the Texans.  All the people I met knew that it was right to help a stranger.  They all knew that level heads and clear thinking was the best course.  They all agreed that hard work is better than luck, but not luck could sink you even if you worked hard.  We have that core American belief that our futures are ours to break… other people may destroy the environment where you can succeed, but there is no need to lend a hand in that destruction.

I thought about these people as I rode and watched the land come into the day.  As I got closer to the Mississippi river, the land use became denser.  More cows, more fields, more towns that John Cougar would be at home in.

I crossed the big muddy river at about noon.  I wanted to pull over, but there was no room.  I kept one eye on the river as I rode, and then conjured the image in my mind as I left the Mississippi behind.  The great divide between the east and the west.  No I am truly in the East again.  Memphis, Tennessee is under my tires and the Southland is in the air.

I found myself humming Indigo Girls “Something About the Southland in the Spring Time” as I tooled past the city of Memphis.  I stopped at a McDonalds before I got too far and looked at the google maps.  I saw where my road peeled off the bypass around Memphis.  One of the men who east breakfast at McDonalds warned me about the exit to get on US Highway 78 to Birmingham… it looked more like a driveway than an exit.  I pulled off onto 78 and found myself on a city street wondering if I was on the wrong road.  Scanning the road, I found the marker sign for US 78 and pressed on.  At one point it was bumper to bumper with the majority of the vehicles being tractor trailers.

I didn’t like being in stopped traffic in 95+ degree weather while sitting on top of an air cooled motor.  It turns out that a traffic light had malfunctioned and there was a snarl in the road.  No police, no traffic directing, just the will of the drivers as they got their turn at the intersection.  It took a long time, but soon, I was through the intersection.

I stopped at a gas station and a woman on a Harley pulled up.  We talked bikes for awhile and she sat down at a bar stool where I ate some jerky and bought a fountain drink.  She was intrigued at the story of the trip.  I gave her a link to the route through Yosemite, Death Valley, the Grand Canyon and the Indian Reservations.  She said she would like to try that sometime.  I really doubt she will, but you never know.

I crossed into Mississippi and I could feel the urge to press on and be home.  The rolling hills of the Appalachians began to rise up in front of me.  As the hills rose, the rain clouds increased as well.  I stopped and looked at the weather radar… thunderstorms dotted the southeast.  The possibility if rain didn’t really worry me anymore.

I crossed into Alabama. I was taking in the sight: large rolling hills completely covered in trees.  There were no gaps in the tree canopy except where an outcrop of rock might peek through.  I could tell it had been raining here recently because the air had that fresh-rain smell that comes after a storm.  There is a musty ‘its just started to rain’ smell, then there is that after rain that smells of pine and sweet gum resin and leaf mulch.

The sky darkened and the temperature dropped.  The tree-covered valleys had those wispy bits of cloud hanging onto the tops of the trees and there were some very low level cloud banks just above the hill tops.  I looked forward, down the highway, and saw the unmistakable signs of approaching rain.  I stopped at an exit and got my rain gear on, ate something and hit the road again.

The temperature dropped from the mid 90’s to lower 70’s in the span of a few minutes and then the rain came.  It was an easy rain to ride in, not the blowing torrential downpours that make me regret being on a bike.  It lasted about 20 minutes and as the rain stopped, the temperature again climbed into the heat of summer.  I got the rain gear back off and rode through a just-washed landscape.

78 is also called Future Interstate 22.  You have to exit the highway because it is unfinished.  I took the last exit and followed the signs to Birmingham downtown.  78 runs into the Forestdale area of Birmingham.  I stopped at, yes, a McDonalds to check the weather.  A couple of older African American ladies sat at a table right next to me and struck up a conversation.

“That bike you got?  What kind is it?” asked one of the women.

“It’s a BMW.  Sort of a cross between a race bike and a Harley.” I shut the lid on my laptop.  “I bought it Monday in California and rode it back here.”

Black woman have the most expressive faces… they are great to talk with.  The lady’s eyes opened wide, then a smile went all across her face, “You serious?”

“Yep” I said.

They looked at each other and crossed their hands on the table in front of them in a truly elegant fashion that I believe only real Southern women can and one of them said “Well, then, you need to tells us about it, now don’t you?”  These words were given in a cadence that says “No need to hurry through this, just let us hear a good story open up like a rose."

“Yes Ma’am.”  They sat and asked questions and laughed and gave little stories of their own about the places they had seen.  I noticed that my stories involved people and places whereas their stories were only about people.  The only reference to a place was its name, not the color of the sky or the contours of the Earth.  Each land and each group within that land has a different set of rules in story telling and conversation and I love them all, but the South has become, for me, my favorite place to spin a yarn.  The white folk tell it one way, the African, another, but both are uniquely Southern in the flavor.  Its kinda like the tea… sweet, but strong and made, not for the gulping, but for the long slow sipping that works best on a porch after, or during the rain..

They looked at my laptop screen and then they pulled out their iPhones and we all looked at the weather.  It struck me that here was something which has changed… 50 year-old something black women with iPhones blinged out checking the weather.

“Ooooo honey, that old man weather is chasin you!  You’d better g, o, go!” pointing wildly at the screen.

I looked at the green yellow and red and decided she was right, “For sure… it was nice visiting with you.”

“You be careful, now.” The shorter of the two gave me a stern look and I nodded.  I believe she gave that stern 'mother' look even though our relationship was born 40 minutes ago and was drawing to a close right now.

“Yes Ma’am… you too.”

I got back on the bike as the rain crept in, but I moved so quickly through the streets, that it slacked off and stopped.  I picked up I 65 to bypass I 459 and took the Mountain Brook exit onto US 280.  It was a familiar road from there and I hardly noticed the passage of the miles.  I got to Dadeville Alabama and took Al 49 south and wound along and through the hills surrounding Lake Martin.  The sun was completely below the horizon and the sky was an auburn color.  Unlike the desert, Alabama has no long vistas unless you are on top of a hill.  The tree canopy is so tall and thick that the only view of the sky is nearly straight up.  The outline of the boughs and leaves were impossibly black against the auburn sky.

There is a section of this last leg that runs from Reeltown to Liberty City… it runs through some prime wiregrass hay fields.   The tree canopy gave way and, for a rare moment, a vista opens.  I rode through land like a rolling sea with no white caps, covered in Bermuda hay.  Some of the fields offer a full mile view of the choicest hay fields I have ever seen.  Round bales of hay dot the field and a thick smell of silage was wafted off the field by lazy summer evening breezes.

Further along, past Liberty Ciy, Alabama 14 winds through pecan groves and finally into Notasulga.

I pulled up onto the concrete pad leading to my front door and sat back on the seat of the BMW.  I looked over the bike and my hands and thought it was strange to actually be here at the end of an epic journey.  It was almost like I wasn’t really sure I was going to make it, this trip… now I was here.

My home is an old Southern country home with 12 foot ceilings and a 12-12 roof pitch.  It has a cozy front porch and 2 large Chinese Elms out front and 4 very old Pecan trees on the side and in the back.  I sat under the whispering leaves of the elms and listened to the familiar voices of the elms.  A breeze came out of the East and carried the spicy smell of the pecans my way. 

By now it was darker outside than in and I could see Trina at the dining room table with my son, Aiden playing with toy cars beside her.  I could smell dinner mixing with the smell of the Southland on the breeze as well.  All of the familiar items of my life were with me again.  It’s that way sometimes, you have to leave all the things around you to really appreciate what they mean to you when you are back in the middle of them.  This is what home really is: home is the place that, when you have everything removed from you, you are willing to risk everything to get back to it.

day 4 - On the Windy Plains

DAY FOUR MONDAY JULY 11, 2011

On the Windy Plains

Crossing New Mexico, Texas Panhandle, and Oklahoma

3 am a huge thunder clap sounded.  I heard a torrential downpour going on.  I sat up and turned on the light.  I gave the roaches a few seconds to hide and was about to get up to see if the rain was getting to my bike.  It was then that I saw the water running into the room from under the door.   I jumped up to get all my stuff off the floor.

I have many pet peeves… one of them is wall-to-wall carpet.  I refer to it as socks you never change.  Truth is, you don’t change wall-t-wall carpet, you simply wipe off the top layer… somewhat.  When my feet hit the soaked carpet, the grime of God-knows-what combined with the water streaming under the door made a pool of what looked like beef bullion come up between my toes.

Gritting my teeth, I grabbed all my gear and threw it up on the bed I was not sleeping in.  I slogged into the bath room, turned on the lights and allowed all the roach neighbors in the bathroom subdivision to complain about the sudden light and head back into their hiding places.  I rinsed my feet of in the shower, grabbed some towels from the bathroom and jumped from bed to bed so I could lob towels at the door.  I tossed a chair beside the door, jumped to it and stuffed the towels into a make shift levee.

I sat cross-legged on the bed and waited for the rain to slow.  I woke up an hour later to a train whistle that sounded like they had mounted the hideous thing in the room with me.  I think two of the roaches died due to the volume and surprise, but I couldn’t prove that, they may have actually drowned hours previous.

Trina complains about the train whistles in Notasulga.  She doesn’t complain about the decibel level…  her complaint is that they aren’t in tune.  Note: don’t even bother about arguing with a musician about tuning a train whistle unless you just want to mess with them and get them all riled up.  It just isn’t worth it, mostly.

Bleary eyed, I open the curtains to look out.  It was still dark but the rain had stopped and I decided to mount up and ride. The ride out of Gallup was actually pretty cold.  It had rained most of the evening and the air was brisk.  Sitting still, the temperature was nice, but at 70mph on a bike was nippy.  About 10 miles out on Gallup at 4am I caught up to the rain.  I stopped and got my rain gear on and decided to find a bridge and take cover until daylight.  This was because I didn’t like the pelting rain and I saw numerous deer crossing warnings.  I think there was a bear crossing warning as well.  Running at 70 in the dark and colliding with a deer, or worse, a bear, seemed like too much excitement.  I took the next exit and made a left at the bottom of the ramp and headed under the ‘bridge’.

The bridge was made out of two very large box culverts.  Not the best place for a bike to hole up in in the wee hours of Monday morning.  I had a vision of a late night bar hopper driving with blurred vision through the bridge and wondering why there was a man stuck under his windshield wipers and what was causing that awful metallic grinding noise under his car.  I stomped in the little river that had formed in the culvert, managed to  splashed water up my pants leg, and got back on the road.

I stopped in a Loves truck stop to wait out the rain and wait for the sun to come up.

For the record, I do not love Loves.  They have wifi, but it is for sale.  I went up to the counter and asked if there was a free wifi. The woman at the counter had that dull attendant look… will I never learn?  I said “Look, there is a McDonalds.  THEY have free wifi.”

THAT got her attention “Well, why don’t you go over there for your free wifey (wifey?)… ohhh, ‘cause they ain’t open, are they?” 

She did that side to side head bob thing that some women can do while she said “‘cause they ain’t open, are they?”  (How do they do that?) She spun around with a flourish and went to the other side of the counter and scowled at me over the 5 hour energy drinks.  I wanted to slap her.

Out of spite, I sat there anyway, sans internet, and wrote on the computer.

The sun came up and McDonalds opened.  I walked across the parking lot and into the McDonalds.  I checked the weather, bought an egg muffin and a coffee and went outside and hoisted the coffee in the direction of Love’s truck stop.  Maybe they saw it, maybe they didn’t.

The rain cleared up and I hit the road in western New Mexico.

As I rode along Interstate 40, I noticed something I hadn’t taken note of before: fences.  Up until now, since I had gotten out of the San Joquine Valley, I had seen no fences, but here, near Grants New Mexico, were fences.  There was also a smell of hot grass in the air.

On the plains, once again, I could see for miles and miles.  Albuquerque was coming into view.  There is a mountain in Albuquerque that the interstate runs along, then crosses its skirts.  It was near this mountain that there were rain clouds dropping water on the city.  I stayed on the bike and rode through the city on the interstate.  As I was climbing a hill out of Albuquerque, I went through the rain.  It was light and cool and pleasant.  I looked to my right just as I was clearing the rain and I saw the brightest rainbow I think I have ever seen.

It is very dangerous riding a motorcycle and being enamored with the sight of a rainbow in the rear view mirrors, but it was spectacular.  The morning sun was bright, the clouds to the west were thick and dark and the air was clean and crisp and clear.

Coming down the hill, just a little way from Albuquerque, it stopped at a gas station and said hello and good morning to the gas station attendant just to make him growl.  There was bullet proof glass, so I was safe.  After paying for my gas I pulled around to a McDonalds.

Coming across America and stopping at McDonalds, I have noticed something… there are a lot of 50+ year old men who meet at McDonalds in the morning.  A whole bunch, as a matter of fact.  There has to be a place where men can meet and just sit.  They don’t always talk, some of them just come in, get a drink and sit down beside another man and the other 3 of 4 just nod to each other.  No talking required other than the old man groan them make as the sit down or stand up.  If you ask most women, this whole concept of interaction is like behavior from another planet.

That said, my wife could walk around nearly all day with a phone attached to her ear and either say nothing, or just shoot the breeze with no objective in mind at all.  The fact that sitting without uttering a word in person is abnormal, but listening to a person breath over the phone is perfectly normal makes no sense at all to me.

These men, all across America, who can either sit and talk, or sit and breathe are a great comfort to me… it means that there IS something in our land which unites us.  It’s McDonalds.

Well, actually, it is the fact that we share the same dreams and the same loves as each other.  Black, white, Hispanic, Indian… we all want the comfort of friendship and the safety of being accepted no matter what.

A pastor friend of mine named Craig used to say that we all come to the checkout counter the same way… we tally our stuff, which are our desires, and we have a moment of expectation until we see that word “APPROVED”.  We all cringe at the word “DENIED”.  Even Bill Gates would feel smaller if he was denied.  We want acceptance in our home, work, church, and in McDonalds over a cup of coffee.  These men don’t need words, or group hugs.  They need to see that they are seen and welcomed without fanfare or swiping some silly magnetic strip.

I talked with these men in Albuquerque for about a half hour.  No names, just men.  One of them warned me that the exit in Memphis which gets you to Birmingham is hard to see and doesn’t seem like it was a major route to a significant city.  I’m glad he warned me because on day five, he was right.  They warned me that the heat would really set in at Santa Rosa NM and I would be in that heat from there out.

From here out I was in a mood to make some major miles.  I had a goal of getting home and as I looked at the temps on the US map, it looked pretty grim in Texas and Oklahoma.  I was thinking about that heat as I rode through New Mexico.  The land is pretty flat in NM. The surface of the land is rolling with occasional spires of rock towering out to cast long, thin shadows in the grass.

As I passed Santa Rosa, it wasn’t that I felt hotter, but I felt wetter.  In the desert, the moisture evaporated quickly, but here in East New Mexico there was just enough humidity keep some sweat on me.

About 30 miles east of Santa Rosa I stopped at a station.  I needed to eat some and rest.  As I sat on the curb in the station and drank some water and ate granola, a beat up Mercedes pulled up.  There were three young people in the cabin of the car along with a good portion of Fred Sanford’s inventory.  Two girls piled out of the front seats.  One was wearing a tank top with camo cutoffs and army boots.  The tank top didn’t really do too much for modesty, but then again one look was enough for me.  Her hair was in dreads and was previously colored something, but was now washed out.  She had odd sun-dial looking tats and some tribal ink plus those small of the back tats.  She did not look happy.  The other girl was wearing khaki shorts over fishnet leggings with a tank and a plaid shirt over top and suede looking boots.  She was pierced and inked in mainly druidic looking symbols that reminded me of the hex signs in Pennsylvania.

What struck me about them most was the look in their eyes: they looked angry and ready to make a scene.  They rounded the car and headed for me.  I wasn’t really in the mood to deal with these two. They were unshaven and, it turns out, unwashed, or at least sans deodorant.  There was an additional prevailing odor I couldn’t place at first.

The slouched against the build a few feet from me and the army boot girl pulled a few markers out of her boots while the fishnet girl dropped some cardboard on the ground between them.  They started to stare. I ate my granola and sipped water.  There had been a stand where I bought so veggies and I pulled out some carrots and an apple.  They glared louder.

I knew they saw my inventory of them: arm pit hair, obvious life style brandings all over them and they were traveling in a car… they were likely in a relationship together, or they were daring people to say something so they could pounce… I think they were pouncers.

I looked back to their car and the third person in the triad was spread out over the junk in the back seats.  I thought it might be a guy, but I turned and looked at the girl and decided that opinion was premature.  Whoever it was had been asleep all this time with their head tilted back and mouth wide open.   It was a very large mouth.  Judging by the amount of arm pit hair and the shadow on the chin and neck, I was getting closer to pronouncing the third a male, but not to be hasty.

I reached in my pack and pulled out the third course: beef jerky, teriyaki flavor.  Fishnet girl made a noise and army boot girl was placing her finger in her mouth.  I ripped of a really big piece and made a point of smacking as I chewed.

It turns out that Number Three was male… tall, lanky, smelly, hair all in knots wearing Birkenstocks and tatty khakis.  He scratched in places you shouldn’t in public and went to the trunk of the car and pulled out plastic jugs.  The smell was fryer oil.  They were burning cooking oil in the Mercedes.  The cardboard was a sign asking for oil or work.  I wondered some at their story, but not enough to risk the encounter.

The boy didn’t look angry… why is it that when girls go bad they can scare the water out of you?  Mean girls are tougher than the tough boys for sure.

Back on the road I felt a renewed determination to get some miles done.  I tucked in behind a truck and twisted the throttle.  The miles churned by as the lands changed to more and more grass and some scrub oak style trees.  The air smelled more and more like agriculture has been here.  Just shy of the Texas border I stopped at a gas station and called home.  Rae was home and I let her know where I was.

I crossed the border into Texas and my resolve to be home grew.  The roads are concrete there and the sun glared up off the road painfully.  I felt the beginnings of a terrible headache coming on.  I stopped and put on sunglasses in addition to my shaded inside visor on the helmet.

I was about an hour into Texas when I saw a strange thing: there was a truck with what looked like an airplane wing which was slightly twisted.  I thought it might have been a propeller of some sort, but of what sort, I had no idea.  I was musing about the propeller when I saw a bunch of people walking out into a field.  They were in a line walking out into the field and raising dust as they went. I craned my neck over and saw a bunch of cars planted out in the field.

When you see pictures of the Cadillac ranch, it looks better as a picture.  I doubled back and stopped to gawk.  To be honest, I wasn’t impressed.  I got back on the road and passed through Amarillo.  Just on the east side of town near what looks like a defunct store are eight or so Volkswagon beetles planted nose down.  Now, after seeing the caddies, the bug ranch was funnier to me.

The lands in Texas were almost completely fenced and had the look of well-established agriculture.  Cattle farming seemed to be the biggest aggie industry in this part of Texas.  This wasn’t the case with Nevada, Arizona, and less so in New Mexico.  The land was flat and gently rolling.  It was dotted with dark green scrub oak and stunted piney looking trees.  It wasn’t a land that seemed hospitable to life, but it didn’t seem to hate it either.  Over-all, it was a reasonably pleasant place, if it were not for the heat.

The temperatures had climbed into the upper 90’s by noon and seemed to be planning on triple digits by late afternoon.  It was, as Trina puts it “Africa Hot’.  I had planned on staying on the US highways as much as possible.  There were signs advertising Route 66 all along this highway.  As the air heated and grew more humid I decided the trip had become a quest to return and not to discover.

I noticed more of the odd propellers as a traveled East.  I saw one pulled off the interstate on a side road and I got off the interstate and back tracked to it.  The base had to have been 4 feet in diameter and about 65 feet long.  I didn’t stay long enough beside the propeller to ask what it was for.  But my interest was peeked.

I stopped at Shamrock to rest.  The winds coming off the plain were beginning to become punishing.  They had to have been 15mph to 30 mph coming at a 45 degree angle to the bike.  The wind whipped my head back and forth and beat against by chest like King Kong beating his chest.  As I came up on a semi, it would shield the wind, but as I rounded the front of the big rigs, the wind combined with the wall of wind bouncing off the front of the truck was really exciting.

As I made my way into Oklahoma, the wind grew in intensity.  As I clung to the bike behind a big truck with a nearly reflective back door, I could see my reflection.  The bike was tilted at about a 10 degree list.  The effect of the wind was like being in a constant turn to the right.  The wind was beating on my helmet, tiring my neck and back, it was buffeting my torso causing my arms and abdomen to work hard to keep my seat, and my legs and arms and back were getting a workout in an effort to hold the bike at the right angle to keep moving in a straight line.

About the time I was wondering how long this wind would last, I saw the first of the wind farms in Oklahoma.  Tall, stately poles rose out of the prairie grass. Each pole had a three fingered turbine turning lazily at its top.  The poles stretched out as far as the eye could see.  I realized that the propellers I was seeing on the trucks were for these turbines… the height of the pole had to be at least 150 feet.  The total diameter of the turbine with propeller was about 130 feet.

My heart sunk because I realized that the wind I was riding into was no fluke or a random wind storm.  For this many turbines to be operating, this HAD to be a regular weather pattern… it was windy.

By the time I realized what I was in for, it was too late to change.  I was on I 40, and that was that.  The winds increased to a level I found hard to believe.  I stopped at a gas station and a man in a minivan looked at me and said, “Nasty wind, isn’t it?”

He had Missouri plates on the back.  “Sure is.  I feel like Rocky Balboa at the end of the movie.  I’ve been sluggin it out the last 4 hours.”  I looked at the van, “I imagine the wind pushes that around as well.”

“It does, but the worst is the wind around the tractor trailers.” He looked back at the highway, “wish I had picked another way to go.”

“Me too.” I finished gassing up, “I’d warn any biker about riding through this part of the country… is it any better north or south of here.”

He shrugged “Can it be any worse?”  Point.

I still think that, had I to do it over, I either would have set more time aside so I could ride on US highways at 55mph, or go far enough north or south to be out of the cross winds.  The interstate speed being 65, the wind was vicious mean, but slowing down below 65 was dangerous due to the barreling traffic intent on speeds in excess of 70.  Slowing to 55 had another draw back: my seat, the one permanently attached to my bones, was feeling the miles and another 3 days may have left me with a lifelong limp.  So interstate it is.

On the Interstate it didn’t seem to matter if I went 70mph or 80mph, the wind was going to beat me sore no matter my speed.  I grit my teeth and pushed her up to 80 and hung on.  The wind eased up about 30 minutes west of Oklahoma City so I decided to stop.  There was a man on a Suzuki Intruder.  We talked bikes and he tried to get me to ride on Route 66 instead of the interstate.  It might have been more comfortable, but I was ready to be home.  Oklahoma was a vast and solid country, but I was less interested in learning the land than making time and miles.

One of the striking things about Oklahoma are the cattle farms.  Some of them have pens close up against the interstate.  I think some of the pens I saw were holding pens for the slaughter house.  The smell was truly… memorable… nervous cows all packed into an area too small to break down the manure.  Here is the cost of our diet and survival… animal life packed in tight, set in line for death and butchering.

I looked at the maps and watched him the guy I was talking to ride off on his Suzuki and I decided that the quicker I was home, the better. I saw how close Oklahoma City was and decided that Fort Smith was within my reach.  It was about 200 miles away.  I looked at my cell phone and it was 5:30… I could make Fort Smith by 8:00.  If I did that, I would have made 825 miles in a day.  That left me 700+ miles the nest day and I was off the bike and in my house.

There is a ‘club’ called the iron butt club.  If you register the ride before you leave and can document your trip and map 1000 miles in a day, you get a patch.  Not a very good deal, in my opinion… having come within 175 miles of the 1000, I really don’t think it is worth it.

I pushed on through Oklahoma City and watched my shadow grow long in front of me as the sun went down.  I approached Lake Eufaula at sunset.  There is a zone that surrounds a lake.  It is hot and incredibly humid within about a quarter mile of the water, but you break the shoreline and get on a bridge over the water and the temperature drops quickly.  I crossed the bridge over lake dreading the other side, rode through the sticky heat and saw the signs for Checotah Oklahoma… this is the end of the road for me tonight.  Google Maps said I traveled 794 miles in one day… my odometer said 825.  What a day.

I pulled into a truck stop with a motel.  I got a room in the back right hand corner of the L shaped motel.  The room was amazingly hot. I got all my gear inside and turned on the AC.  I decided to try my luck at dinner in town.  I found a Sonic not too far away and had a chicken wrap and watched the martins catch bugs out over a field lite by a purple sky.  There were some high school kids hanging out at the Sonic.  I listened to the drama of adolescence for awhile, then cleaned up my table and headed back to the Motel.

The room had cooled down.  I showered and hardly remember getting into bed.  The sound of trucks revving up woke me in the morning.

Day Three - crossing rolling hills

DAY THREE SUNDAY JULY 10, 2011

Crossing rolling hills to the Grand Canyon

I got my gear out and was strapping it to the bike at 5:00 am.  The early morning time is special to me.  There is a hush all over like creation is expecting the day.  We treat it like the day just happens, but, I believe, the world around us waits to see the morning unfold.  By the time I was riding, the desert was just beginning to glow.

There is something about being about your business before most other people are up.  It seems like you’re really serious about whatever you are doing if you are up early.  The other travelers who are on the road with you seem like brothers or sisters. 

As I was strapping my stuff on the bike, a man came out of his room with bags.  We both stopped, looked at each other.  He smiled, I did too, and with a mutual nod, we packed up without a word.  His car was parked right beside my bike and we had an impromptu dance, as we shared the area between bike and car.  We knew what we both were about.  As I pulled out and headed east, he signaled west.  We waved and that was that, a life going in an opposite compass bearing, but really on the same road.

The highway out of Las Vegas and Boulder City used to wind down to the Hoover dam, but now it crosses the Mike O’Callaghan - Pat Tillman bridge… it is concrete and large and has high walls on both sides so all you can see is the bridge.  At first I was disappointed with the walls, but a vicious cross wind changed my mind… if it was not for the walls, the wind might have been worse with a very real possibility of being swept off of the bridge.

Once on the Arizona side of the bridge,I decided that I wanted to see the Hoover dam, so I doubled back. Getting off the road was a good idea… the dam was impressive in the setting sun.  I didn’t attempt to tour the dam, I just got close enough to see it.  Its big.  Really big.

The area just east of the Hoover Dam from Hoover to Kingman Arizona is barren.  I mean it is absolutely foreboding.  If I was a pioneer and got to that point, I would have said “OK. I’ve changed my mind, let’s go back.”  I imagine this landscape is what J. R.R. Tolkien had in mind and wanted Mordor to look like.  I was amazed at it.  The Nevada Desert didn’t seem as alien to me at this did.

As I rode through the mountains, they gave way to rolling hills.  For some reason, the sandy, smooth hills didn’t seem as angry at my being here as the rocky and sharp mountains did.

I stopped for gas at a station in Kingman just north of interstate 40.  I guess deep underneath my pessimistic psyche is a part that wants to think the best of gas station attendants.  Don’t get me wrong here… I am not profiling, but the vast majority of these folks are surly.  Maybe it because of the grumpy travelers who, sun-burned and wet, say stupid things to them.  Regardless, I asked the attendant what the weather was looking like for the day.

“Ugh! Hot and sticky and miserable, what else.”  The woman behind the counter gave me that whats-up without even laying an eye on me.

Ok then, “Well, you have a nice day.” And I retreated as fast as possible. She never did look up.

Kingman Arizona is at the junction between US 93 and Interstate 40.  For the past 2 days I had been riding through deserts and state parks on US highways.  I 40 was the first interstate I was getting on.  I didn’t care much at all for the interstate.  The traffic was fast; the road was boring; the ability to stop, limited.  I toughed it out.  The next stop was Williams, Arizona.  Williams is the town at the exit for the Grand Canyon.  I hung on to the bike and pushed the speed up in an effort to ‘man-up’ and make the next exit.

I expected the ride to be ‘hot and sticky’, but the air felt cool as long as I was moving.  A few miles out of Kingman, the roads were wet from an early morning rain.  With just a tee shirt and a button-down on top of that and a windbreaker over that, I started to actually get uncomfortably cool.  I didn’t mind too much since I was convinced that I would be very, very hot later.

As I rode, the horizon was growing heavier with with rain clouds.  My heart sunk as I considered looking out over the Canyon with rain obscuring the view.  I wondered at the odds, again of rain in the desert.  I certainly looked ‘desert-like’.  There were cactus and scrub oak and Joshua trees.  It looked like a hard place to live, but I thought it looked like you could live there.  It wasn’t like the Nevada desert which was either indifferent to my being there, or was offended at my presence.  Either way, Nevada seemed like it would never cooperate with living things… we had to fight to live in those places.

Coming into Williams, I stopped at a gas station, which was not a chain, and the man there seemed to be unlike most of the attendants I had encountered on the trip.  He was a Hispanic man with a very busy attitude.  My guess is he was the owner of the station.  I bought gas and a powerade from him and attempted a conversation.

“What does the weather look like from here east?” I asked.

“Pretty much rain all the way.  Seems like it rains about 1:00am for about an hour, then again around 2:00pm.  Keeps it cool.”  He looked out to the bike.  “That your beemer?”

“It is now.”  I broke out some jerky and granola for breakfast while he was working on a sandwich, “I bought it a couple days ago in Santa Cruz.”

“California?”  he stopped eating.

“Yep, riding it back to Alabama.”

“Dude, you gonna be wet.”  He laughed, “long trip.”  He looked out the window… it had bars on it.  “Sounds good though, you know, just ride and ride.  Be fun to just head out without any idea of where, just go.”  He sighed.

Just then an over-weight man in Birkenstock’s hobbled in, “Do you have a mechanic?”

“Sure, be right there.”  He got up and kept his eyes out the window.  He looked down at my feet and held out a hand.  He never made eye contact again after the man asked for a mechanic.  I shook his hand and he said “Good luck, friend.” And he, head and eyes down, walked into the shop and started directing the tow truck with a mini van on it into the bay.

I wonder if I had invited him to close shop and get on a bike if he would have come.  I think he would have.

There is only one road into the Grand Canyon from I 40 near Williams.  The road is straight and crosses gentle hills.  Heavily traveled with RV’s and busses, the traffic moved smooth.  I kept looking ahead anticipating the canyon.  You would think that something as big as the Grand Canyon would have some evidence of it from miles away, but there isn’t.  The surrounding country gives no hint that the Canyon is there.  For that matter, If it rained regularly here, it would look like Michigan’s farm country, or Indiana’s… gentle, rolling hills stretching out for miles and miles.    

I stopped at a station to rest some more and buy some maps, then stopped again just outside the park.  I asked an attendant who looked young and foolish enough to offer an opinion whether, once I was done at the canyon, it was it was a good idea to ride back down 64, the way I came, back to the interstate, or take back roads.

“Mister, I wouldn’t go the US Highway route, I’d turn around and take 64 the same way I came and get on the Interstate as fast as possible.” He was young with adolescent acne.

“Why not go the US Highways?” I looked behind me to make sure I was not holding up a line, “I’d like to see the country.”

“Well, the highways all go through Indian Reservations… you know, deserts and mesas and the police on the Res hand out speeding tickets for any speeding at all.”  He handed me a map, “Here is how you would go, but there isn’t anything by desert and Indians out there.”

“Got it, but then again, I have never really been in a desert until 2 days ago,” I looked at the map with the road he had pointed out, “I’m not sure the romance between me and the desert has died out yet.”

“Yeah, whatever.  Mister, if you like deserts,” he laughed, “go this way.”  He pointed out the road along the South Rim, through Cameron, Az, Tuba City and ending in Gallup New Mexico.

I went back out to the bike.  A couple on a Harley pulled up with a trailer.  “You heading into or out of the canyon.” The man on the bike asked.

“Heading in.”

“Wanna keep pace.” He asked. “By the way, we was wondering… does your bike wanna be a cruiser or a rocket.”  They both grinned.

“She’s only 12 years old” I said, “give me your address and I’d send you a letter when she grows up and makes up her mind.”

“Oh honey,” said the lady on the back, “bikes and their riders don’t ever grow up, they go to sleep one night and forget who they really are in the morning.”

“That’s kinda sad, isn’t?” I asked.

“Only to the ones behind that remember them.” Said the man.  I wondered if people in the desert southwest are either philosophers, poets or surely gas station attendants.

I saddled up and paced with the Harley couple.  We took our time and stopped often.  We split ways at a scenic turnout.  It was the last of the turn-outs.  They said they were doubling back and would be going to the village next. 

I never asked their names.  I realized it was funny that, on the road, names just don’t seem important.  Maybe its because the travelers are united by the road, or they just don’t want to invest in someone they will never see again.  Then again, it might be something wrong with me… I don’t ask for names.  What a person is doing, what they hold in esteem, that I remember, but names?  Not so much.

Its not just names I get hung up on… sometimes its saying goodbye as well.  I remember there was an Air Force Airman named Steve that I served with in NORAD.  We were from vastly different backgrounds and dispositions… actually, except for the uniform we had to wear, we had very little in common.  I applied for an ‘early out’ from the Air Force and got it.  I remember the last day in Colorado Springs.  Steve’s wife, Amy, asked “Don’t you want to say good bye?” I thought to myself “Why?”  I had no common ties with them, except proximity.  I knew I would, likely, never see them again, so why say goodbye? 

I believe my wife thinks me defective in this, but unless there is at least a hope of reunion, or a pain from the separation, then I just as soon leave the good byes alone.

As the Harley couple turned around and chugged off, I mused, again, about the lives that are lived without even an inkling on my part of their hopes and dreams and sorrows.  I looked back into the canyon and saw the metaphor: here is this amazing and enormous thing that dwarfs every person who sees it.  The Canyon itself was compelling… I wanted to be IN it, not AT it.  We are in the middle of a vast sea of dreams, but the size and scope of this sea isn’t apparent to us until we are right on top of it.  There is really no chance that you can guess how a person feels unless you put yourself in their life.

I wondered, as I sat on the stone wall at the end of one of the scenic over looks, how many people traveled right past this enormous canyon, and never even had an inkling it was there.  I wondered how many times I was in the company of greatness in another person, but I never knew it because I never asked that person a question.  It’s like being 100 yards from the Grand Canyon, and turning around.

For me, the romance of the Grand Canyon is this: You HAVE to purposefully desire to see it: you come to it on it’s terms, not yours and; it is so large and complex, you can spend a life traveling it and KNOW that not everything has been seen.  I looked out from the south rim and the sky was a pale blue with cotton ball clouds above.  There was a slight haze in the air.  Instead of obscuring the view, it lent an air of mystery and wonder.  Life is like this as well… if we really thought we could learn it all, where is the adventure in that.  The allure of the adventure is, partly, not knowing what comes next.

Seriously, if you knew how the book ended, would it captivate your heart?  Even if you know the ending, you still need to know how the people in the story got there, don’t you?  I am driven by the unknown.  Is it scary?  Sometimes, but fear isn’t bad… respect the consequences of irreversible actions, but live life fully, not safely.  Take a risk, step out into the unknown, fight, struggle, win, lose, fight again… that is life.

If you aren’t a little afraid, are you really alive?

Road Warrior Finds Rest in Boulder City

(Day 2, the end)

Just East of Vegas, I got some gas and set up my laptop to see where I was: nearly to Boulder City.  It was too far to Williams to make it before it was completely dark, so Boulder City would be my stop for the night.  I ate some road food: beef jerky and granola bars, then started to look for a room.

I came into Boulder City at sunset and pulled up to a motel.

I have to admit, renting a room near Vegas seemed weird.  I know that stereotypes are rarely accurate, but the idea of being in a city where rooms are regularly rented by the hour made me wonder about staying here.

As I parked the bike at the motel, there was a recumbent bicycle with a trailer parked out front.  I recognized that bike.  When I stopped for gas, I watched as a person rode that bike past the gas station.  It was being pedaled by a wiry and sun-hardened woman who might have been 50, but looked 70.  The hair was the give-away… it was still dark brown with wisps of gray beginning.  The proprietor and another man were discussing her.

“Oh yeah, she’s in trouble… no idea where she is or where she is going, or how to get there,” Said the man behind the counter.  His assessment of her was eerily close to describing me.  The man behind the counter was probably the manager.  He had the hair that was short, but sculpted up with gel.  He had a wide mouth prone to smile quirkily.

“Right, but are we just going to make her sleep outside?” said the other man who was leaning forward on the counter like a figure from an old Western, you know, the man leaning into the bar.  I think he was the grounds man, “I can watch her, she can clean for a room.”

“Alright, but just a few nights, at most.”

“Good by me.”  The groundsman smiled.

The manager turned to me and smiled, “Do you want a room?.”

“I do, as a matter of fact, how much?  I only need a bed and a shower, so your cheapest room will do.”

“My cheapest is $45.” He said.

I considered trying to argue the rate lower since it was 8:30 already and the place had plenty of open rooms, but I decided this was my best place to stop and the rate wasn’t out of line.  “Done.” I said and started filling out the form.

“Are you here to play or on a trip?” asked the groundsman.

“Actually, I am traveling.  I am on a motorcycle trip from Santa Cruz to Auburn, Alabama.”

“Geez!’ the manager looked up from his forms, “What convinced you to do that?”

I looked out at by bike parked in front of the office.  Across the parking lot was the recumbent bike with the trailer.  “I realized I was becoming predictable.”  I looked back at the manager and the groundsman.

They didn’t say anything but their faces told me that they knew exactly what I meant.  I wonder if this is a normal desire in men to not be the same as everyone else.  I wondered, then, and still do, “What is it within us that makes us want to be just outside the norm?”  We don’t want to be really weird or bazaar, but just different.

I know this is not a firm generalization.  I have known many men who want to be predictable and respectable.  I think I want to be dependable, although I fall short, and I want to be honorable, short again, but I am not attracted to the idea of the white paladin who is the knightly version of Dudley Do Right.  The ideal me, in my mind, is a good man who is a little bit of a rascal.  I would like to be a man that can do something wild and unexpected.  I kind of want people to wonder about me.

The bike I bought is outside the norm.  The way I bought the bike is unusual as well.  The trip is certainly not the way many have traveled the country.  This whole adventure is about shaking it up, but why do we need to shake it up?  Why do I need to?

I think the spirit of a man is romantic and adventurous.  We go to the same job, drive the same car, pay our bills, make sure the garbage can was not left at the curb over night and all the while we know in the depths of our mind that we have just wasted minutes of our lives by being what everyone else wants.  We need to risk and fight and possibly loose.  Too often we play it safe and predictable and have not taken any risk… by playing it safe we are killing the romantic warrior inside us.

The woman with the bike came in at that moment as we are all just standing there, deep in thought.  I had the feeling that the same spirit was on her… that sense that there was a person desperate to save the adventurer within.  I felt that there could be a kinship here in this thin and wrinkled woman.  I wanted to ask her why she was here, but then I thought I’d rather believe the best; that she was on her own quest for adventure.

I took the room and rode the bike back to the rear of the parking lot.  There was a large gardenia bush on the way back to the room.  It smelled wonderful.  It was the first smell on this trip that reminded me of the Southland.  The sun was completely behind the mountains by now and the sky was a rich red.  The rocky landscape reflected the color of the sky.  I sat there, on the back of the motel site, and watched the desert glow until the suns light faded.

The room was a 1 bed affair with a Jacuzzi completely flanked with mirrors.  Vegas.

The room was clean and quite, though and I spent a night of deep sleep.

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.

Into the Desert

(Cross Country Journey, Day 2, part 2)

Making my way along the north drive, I peeled off on 120 and climbed up the mountain slope.  The road was a blast to run, curvy and steep with tunnels and fantastic vistas looking south and west.  The attitude in the valley was hushed… the mood on the hillside was festive.  Lots of bikers were on the road and they were very talkative.  I met one biker named Carl who runs the road about once a week.  We sat on a rock wall at a bend in the road a few hundred yards from the first tunnel in the hillside.  He said he used to run the road fast, leaning his bike into each turn, but now he takes it slow and, in his words, “I used to take the road and make it my own… now I sorta join the road, and let it take me instead.”

You see, the rush of riding can be the danger and the need to conquer the road and to excel past the other riders.  As the art of riding sinks deeper, the connection from rider to the earth matures.  Speed enjoys the immediate connection of the road and the fear of leaving the road, but if you can open yourself up to more than pavement and gravity; if a person can do that, then light, temperature, smells, color, terrain, and other riders comes into play.  There is a great ballet which, when young and in-experienced, is dominated by the quick and powerful, but as we learn the patterns of the dance, we begin to notice those dancers who travel in the wake of the powerful… and craft the power of the dominant into something greater.

It takes talent and ambition to conquer, but to conquer, all you have to do is master your own self, and surpass all others.  To complement talent other than your own, you must master yourself, and the talent of the others with whom you share the stage, or the road.  Speed is fun, but to drink in the surroundings and become a part of the ballet of nature, you have to look at more than the road.  You have to see where the road is, where it has been, where it is going, who is on it with you, and why you are on the road.

Riding is more than transportation.


I left Carl and continued up 120.  There is an intersection at the top of the incline where you can head back West, or turn East towards Mono Lake.  There is a gas station there as well.  I gassed up, since it was an hour, at least, to the next station.  My headache was nowhere near leaving, so I went into the shop to look for some pain killer.  There was an ATM in the store whose alarm was stuck on.  A very nice attendant, whose eyes were blurring from the incessant and shrill screech, was kind enough to fill my water bottle with water so I could take my aspirin.

I met a guy from New York who used to ride, and we talked about bikes.  Another man, from Pennsylvania walked up who also rode.  I noticed that the French and Chinese and Japanese accents were gone.  This is officially off the beaten path.  We talked for about 10 minutes until their wives were sending ‘looks’ our way.  We shook hands and headed out.

120 East is a beautiful road.  It was the early part of July, but there was still snow pack under the canopy of the trees.  I put the leather work gloves away, and pulled out my winter gloves.  The air was cool and clean… it was heavily scented with pine.  As I road along, I noticed the road was not rough, but it seemed as though it was not very even.  It reminded me of the roads built in Michigan in the swamps in the 1800’s.  Those road were built by laying tree trunks down in the mud and mire across the road and sandy clay was laid over the logs.  Eventually asphalt was added and voila’ a road.  Over the years, the logs settled and the road has a wavy surface.  120 felt ‘wavy’.

The backside of Yosemite has a turn out which gives you a view of half dome and el capiton.  To get there, you have to wind through high sierra mountains.  There is a section which is bald rock all around.  Winding along the road, there are peaceful meadows, impatient mountain streams full of snow melt, vistas of grand mountain peaks, hairpin turns and graceful windings of a road seemingly in no hurry to get you anywhere, but content to unfold nature in front of you.

There is a lake called Tenaya which rests at the bottom of a descent.  It was calm and clear when I got to the lake, right about noon.  The lake was an impossible color of blue with dark green coniferous trees all about and a dark blue, high altitude sky reflected in the cold water.  I was actually disappointed that the lake is artificial, but I reasoned that we are a part of nature so it was ok.  Beautiful, none-the-less.

From 7:00am to 12:00 I had been riding in Yosemite and the green and water was all around me.  As I descended through Tioga Pass, in the span of less than a mile, it seemed, the water disappeared.  The pines gave way to scrub oak and the ground dried.  I rounded a bend and a hot, dry blast of air hit me.  I rounded the turn and the mountains gave way to the plain and a turquoise lake greeted me.  Mono Lake.  There is a gas station right there where 120 hits US 395.  I stopped for gas and some Gatorade.  There must have been 60 bikes there.

I spoke with a man who was riding a Suzuki, about a 1980’s GSX.  All of the bikes were pre-1990.  They were a part of a riding club from Fresno.  One of them came up to me and said “Man, I’ve never actually seen one of these in person… do you like it?”

“I hope I do.  I will be in this saddle all the way to Alabama.”

“Dude!” was all he said.

I pulled the BMW up into their group and we drank water and Gatorade and ate granola bars and beef jerky for about 30 minutes.  I told them they would need cool weather gear and they told me about the weather out East some and South.  Hot was the word.

I was apprehensive as I left the gas station.  A sign told me that it was 127 miles to Tonopah.  The bikers assured me that there was gas and water in Tonopah, but having never been to Tonopah, I only had faith in their word, no tangible evidence.  The movie quote “Never go against a Sicilian when death is on the line”… only I needed to change it from a Sicilian, to the desert.

395 headed south out of Lee Vining, near Mono Lake, and 120 peeled off east at a right angle to 395.  As I road east, the road snaked through dry land, then a piney area.  The road twisted left and right through the trees.  I was traveling at about 60 miles an hour, but had to drop the speed since the road also has drastic vertical curves.  I rounded a bend, and, suddenly, the desert plain opened up in front of me.

I always imagined the desert to be still and quite and blinding bright with no life and no color.  It was really windy.  It was bright, but as I was riding along, I was struck by the stark lines drawn on the floor by clouds.  When a cloud passed over, it made the ground look black as coal compared to the sun-lit sands.  I looked left and right and wondered at the strange things I saw in the distance.  I stopped the bike on the side of the road to pay attention to the weird clouds or something I was seeing.

About 300 yards away, with a rocky hill as a backdrop, there was what looked like a giant striding along the desert.  It moved like a woman rolling her hips so that her legs swung out in a straight line.  Left, right, left, right.  The torso of the giant was draped in a poncho looking affair which blended in with the lands so that she appeared to come in and out of focus.  I can see where the Indians believed in spirits and other mysterious beings in the wild lands.  I stared at the ‘giant’.

As this strange thing came nearer to the road I realized that it was a dust devil.  It had formed two funnels and they were twisting around each other in a hypnotic dance.  I took my eye off of her, and scanned the desert.  As the sun heated up the floor, there were about a dozen funnels that I could see.  The desert, I decided, was realy alive, but it was life unlike what we are used to.

I drunk in the sight and was acutely aware of how out of my element I was.  No cell phone signal, limited water, no shelter.  I knew, without a reservation, that if my bike were to break down, I was in real life and death peril.  Suddenly, the romance of being like Clint Eastwood, or Frank Perkins, the lone Traveler, crossing the desert with just his grit and wit, just vanished like a dust devil.

The Yosemite captivated through its grandeur.  The desert captivates you in its stark beauty and the sheer brutal reality that it can kill you by just being who it is.

With my new respect and fear of the desert, I got back on the bike.

The roads in the desert floor have no reason to wander.  They are straight.  Roads so straight and flat that approaching vehicles appear as a shimmering dot in the heat waves coming off the pavement.  Some of the cars had head lights on.  The first sight of a traveler driving west-bound is tentative, “is that a car, a bike, a truck, or nothing?”  As they come closer, I could make out light, possibly, from driving lights. At first I thought it was another bike, but then the lights separated, and I saw it was a car.

A sign on the side of the road said “DIP”.  I wondered at what kind of dip when a pickup truck suddenly disappeared.  I counted 3 seconds and suddenly the truck popped back up.  I had just enough time to think “Wow, that was a DIP!” end then the ground dropped away beneath me and the panorama of the desert rose above my view as I sunk into the dip.

Understand, I had 85 pounds of gear strapped to the back of a 500 pound bike doing 65 miles per hour.  The telelever suspension on the BMW completely extended and the tires, while still kissing the pavement, were not really holding the pavement.  The ‘dip’ bottomed out and I thought, on my way down, of hitting the breaks, but the bottom of the dip was covered in sand and light gravel… no breaking here.  As I zoomed up out of the ‘dip’ I thought about breaking, but I was unsure of what was over the crest, so, clutch pulled in tight, I topped the crest and the bike momentarily left the ground.

There is a moment in a near death experience, that excitement and adrenaline overcomes reason. As the world came back into view and I felt the vibration of the road stop due to the fact that I was no longer touching the road.  I was thrilled at the moment.  No thought other than “YEAH!” going through my mind.

Then, a split second later, the bike touched ground and settled back into the rumble and thrum of road and engine.

“DIP”, I realized, means slow down.

The next time I saw one of those dips coming, I slowed and stopped the bike.  There was a dry wash heading to the dip and then the bottom of the dip had a light coating of sand in it.  The dip is really a place in the road where the infrequent rains would create a very temporary river.  There is no cost effective way to bridge all of these drainways, so the engineers simply follow the nape of the earth with the road and allow nature to go where it will.  Sometimes it is better to follow nature than fight it.

There is a deeper rule here: sometimes our decisions have us at a rate of speed unsafe for the road.  By the time we realize that we are in over our head, its really too late to make a change… we just have to hold on and run the consequences.  Once you are in the middle of the results of a poor decision, it is not always time to stop in your tracks, sometimes you have to follow a poor decision through.

Collecting my wits, I continued along the bleak desert.  Pretty soon a range of hills came into view.  Winding through the hills, I began a descent into a town.  Actually, there was not much in the town.  It was called Benton Hot Springs.  It had some neat old western buildings.  As I moved down through the elevations, the temperature rose quickly.  As the hot air hit my shirt and pants, pin pricks of heat, like the ones you get when your arm falls asleep, started.  I was worried that I was going into heat stroke, so I stopped and drank some water.

I really don’t think I was even slightly de-hydrated, but the stop was nice.

There were trees bunched up here and there in Benton.  I’m not sure where they got water to survive, but they seemed pretty happy to be where they were.  There was a home site with tall trees shading a dirt yard.  It looked like a homey old-timely western home… lots of out doors stuff to do and little threat from outsiders like me.  We just pass on through and, likely, never return.

120 runs right into US 6 in Benton.  Old Benton looks homier than Benton itself.  It was flatter than the old part and had a new looking highway with a post office and some sad looking buildings.  I headed North on 6 away from Benton’s irrigated fields.  Maybe it had more to see, but I was wanting to get to my planned stop in Kanab, Utah, and the day was wasting.

6 ran along the base of some impressive mountains to my right.  As I followed the mountains, I was lead into a rocky pass.  It felt good to be in the hills.  Somehow, mountains feel cooler than the flat open plain, but that was not to last.  Rounding a tight bend, the flat, brutal desert opened up again.  The road straightened out and ran level.  You could see for miles, and you can tell that all there was in front of you is desert and road… nothing else.

It seemed like the builders of the road knew there was nothing to see or avoid.  The trick was to get over this barren land as quickly as possible.  Waste no time… just get there.  I was keeping a close eye on the odometer and the 130 mile point was approaching fast.  My bike has about 200 miles in a tank, so at 150, I start to worry.  Just as the tinges of worry were rising up, I saw the signs of a town.

If ever there was a town that makes me wonder why it is there, Tonopah Nevada is one of those towns.  Silver mining got it there in the early 1900’s and it was a boom town with lots of money, but there doesn’t appear to be much silver mining going on now.  So here is this town 100 miles from anywhere.  I stopped at a shell station at the intersection of US 6 and US 95.  The people at the station who worked there were pretty business-like, but the people pumping gas were all very out-going.  There were three people on bikes heading back to Colorado.  I talked with them for about 15 minutes.  They had been in Yosemite as well and were heading back.  One of them had a GPS and checked it for me.  335 miles to Kanab Utah.  A long ride, but doable from here.  I headed back on the road, but wanted to stop at the McDonalds to check the wifi… no deal.  Either they didn’t have wifi, or it was down.  I checked a gas station beside the McDonalds for a map, but the attendant was dour looking.

Maybe it was the weather, but nobody who lived in Tonopah seemed happy.  I got out of the parking lot and turned left, following the road that had lead me into Tonopah.

Natural Beauty, and Our Problem Seeing it

Day two started at about 5:00am. I read some of the gospel of John, packed my duffle and hit the road. (Still in California)

140 runs east out of Merced. For a good ways, the road is straight with small mesas dotting the country. As the morning light rose over the mountains of the Sierra Nevada, the foothills began to glow. The grasses of the fields I was riding past turned golden, and, warmed by the sun, gave off an earthy smell.

I stopped along the road to take some pictures and the car behind me crept close as I slowed. As the driver pulled around, he blew his horn and laid heavy on the gas. I wondered how you could possibly be so impatient in a place so tranquil. I suppose that in an environment like that, a man will become used to, or immune to, the peace around him. I was taking pictures and watching the cars race by at speeds well in excess of the speed limit and wondered at them.

Then I remembered: my father grew up in northern New Jersey and never went to the stature of liberty. I live in Auburn and the only times I go see the Auburn Tigers play football is when I am working in the concession stand during the game. How many things of wonder do we miss just because we have become so accustomed to them?

Stowing the camera, I got on the bike and headed east towards the looming mountains. I rolled into Mariposa at 7:00 am. Mariposa is a homey little mountain village. It reminded me a great deal of the mountain towns nestled in the Colorado Rockies. There were little shops with balconies hanging over the sidewalks along a main street. People were beginning to open their shops and put items for sale out on the walks.

I had stowed my gloves in the bottom of my duffle which was cinched down so tightly that I opted to buy gloves instead of spend 30 minutes rooting through all my stuff. I stopped at a little hardware shop in downtown. The man in the store was still opening up and the people who ran the registers were not in yet, but I had cash, so he sold me some leather work gloves.

I had not taken any caffeine in more than 24 hours because of the fear of dehydration in the desert. As a result, I had a splendid headache. I went to a CVS, but they didn’t open for another 30 minutes… thinking I could get some aspirin later; I got on the bike and rode on.

140 was an awesome road. It was hilly and snaked its way along the edges of the mountains. At one point you could see cars winding down to the valley floor maybe 5 miles away. As I rode along, the cars became bunched up. At one point there was a rock slide which covered the road to Yosemite. There is an old railroad grade on the other side of the stream, which flows out of Yosemite Park. Engineers had built a single lane bridge to cross the stream. A temporary one way road utilized the railroad grade, then another temporary bridge which crossed back after the slide. We had to wait about 10 to 15 minutes for a traffic light to change to allow us to cross. I turned off the ignition on the bike while people got out of their cars and a small community developed. The man behind me was going into the park to climb and the couple in front was French and were touring the park for 2 weeks.

There were some young men who stayed pretty close to their car and were playing hip hop pretty loud. The sound of the heavy bass and the angry tone of the rapper seemed out of touch with the surroundings. They stayed to themselves and didn’t mix very well.

The light cleared and we got back to our rides and headed on.

As I rode along the railroad grade, I looked over at the rock slide. I am very familiar with earth moving work and I was impressed with the slide. It was probably 300 yards of buried road with the top of the slide being at least 300 feet above the road surface. The slide was all loose rock, so shoveling out from the bottom would bring a new slide down on the operator. The finality of nature is undeniable… the road was closed.

Finally, I was waiting in the line at the gate for Yosemite National Park. It felt surreal to actually be there, but anti-climatic to just buy a ticket and go in. The road slanted slightly down to the ranger hut, so I turned off the bike and let her roll to the gate and fired her up after I had a ticket in hand.

There is a parking area right inside the gates for Yosemite. They have restrooms and potable water. I pulled into the parking lot and parked in a little non-spot at the point furthest from the rest rooms right in front of a water spigot. I stretched my legs and walked out to the stream to feel the cool air coming off of the water and smell the freshness of clean mountain melt-off. I was paying attention to the people around me and was struck by the number of people who did not use English as their primary language. French seemed to be the prevalent language.

I stood there, beside the bike, and just breathed in deep. Since I left Alabama, I was struck by the pervasive smell of each area. I remember the first time I landed in Japan. My first thought was, “Woah! What is that smell?!” I got on a bus with 40 other GI’s and rode to the base I was going to be stationed at in Korea We got to the base itself and I crashed on my new bunk. A cleaning lady woke me up to warn me that I was going to be late to my first briefing. My thought, as she was leaned over me and talking to me, was that I had just met the perfect “scratch-n-sniff” candidate for the poster child of halitosis.

I know that sounds awful, but you have to have that woman’s mouth as close to your nose as I did before you judge. I actually got to know here pretty well. After we were better acquainted, I asked her about the smells. Koreans had an odor. It is the result of their diet which is heavy with fish and kimchi. Kimchi is, basically, spicey sour kraut. She told me that to her, Americans smell like sour milk.

Hmmmm

All this to say, I have become aware of the colloquial smells. At the main gate there was the smells from pine and cypress and eucalyptus trees and the stream. Yes, water has a smell. Fast moving water gives off this clean smell mixed with the odor of the wet rock and the fringe of leaf mulch along its edges. Overall, the entrance hinted of the pure nature just out of reach. It was a wonderful place to be, right on the edge of Yosemite.

I headed into the park. I stopped at the meadow, at El Capitan, Yosemite falls, the Village, and circled around to the north drive. I noticed that people were all content to listen, and smell and look. The hip hop was gone, along with all music. It was like we all knew that Nature trumps all in this place. There were the sounds of laughing, and talking, and the sound of the vehicles moving through the valley, but the honking and road rage and the bustle of the commute were gone.

Yosemite struck me as the ideal of nature. I told someone there that it’s like we have a genetic memory of Eden, and this is one of the places on Earth that still has a tenuous hold on the pure beauty of creation unspoiled. Even children seemed to know they were in a different kind of place.

Even the light is different in Yosemite. It seems cleaner, if light can be cleaner or dirtier, but there you have it, clean light. Maybe it’s because of the greens and grays all around you mixed with the yellows of wild flowers and the startlingly blue sky. Maybe it’s because the land is higher and has pushed itself up over the dust and grime of fossil fuels and what creatures have stirred up so that the light from the sun isn’t tinged with dirt. Whatever the reason, the blues of water were painfully blue. The greens of the grass and trees were so green you could feel the color touching you. I walked along the path around the meadow near Yosemite Falls and lay down just off the trail and looked straight up to a sky framed by dark green trees, the cold gray of granite and the white falls of Yosemite.

I wanted to stay and just drink it all in, but I had 2700 miles to go. I got back on “Betts” (the blue bike) and moved her across the bridge and onto the north drive.

As I was tooling through the turns on the north drive, I was following close to a car ahead. I felt bad because the driver slowed down and waved me through. I realized I was rushing him and he wanted to drink it all in. As I passed, I glanced over and we shared a moment when I recognized him as the man who blared his horn and made a dramatic turn and acceleration around me just a few hours before. We both smiled embarrassed grins, each reprimanded for our failure to drink in the greatness around us.

This little encounter brought a realization to me: how many times am I judging a person for what they have just done when either I have already done the same thing, or I am just about to do the same deed myself.

I knew a man who was a licensed professional. I had worked with him for a year or so and had known him for many years. I knew he had a drinking problem… actually he would have disagreed about the problem part, he just drank, a lot. I picked up the paper one morning and was shocked to see his picture in the news. He had been arrested for molesting a child. Turns out it was one of his daughters he had been molesting.

He lost his professional license and we bought out his company. As I was picking up equipment at his old office, his business associate was vehemently accusing this man, and I was pretty much going along, then I asked him about a printer.

“sure,” he said, “it’s a great printer. Look at this.”

He proceeded to show me the life-size centerfold print-out on the back of a door. I was about to remark that the moral distance between this man and the one in prison was not that great, but I knew it would only produce an argument with no profitable outcome.

Here is the deal, though, we are adept at setting up a moral ladder to assuage our guilt. Even in prison, the man convicted of rape is the worst offender. The one guilty of child molestation is the worst offender of the rapists. The parental molester is the worst of the molesters. A whole segment of society, known for lawlessness, enforces their own morality with, often, fatal brutality. We cannot escape morality, even in prison.

As a Christian I tend to think that I can sit proud on top of the morality heap, but deep down I know I don’t deserve to be proud at all. Read the Sermon on the Mount and see if you think you can congratulate yourself on being better than everyone else.