Over The Hump To Pahrump – Route
June 20, 2020 Filed under Uncategorized
June 20, 2020 Filed under Uncategorized
June 20, 2020 Filed under Amused, Curious, Introspection
In the morning I picked my bike up and wheeled it down the hallway to the casino floor. It was one giant room with banks of slot machines filling two thirds of it, and restaurant tables filling the rest. I kick-standed the bike and took a table far away from the other patrons – there were only ten or so – and ordered a giant salad, plus corned beef hash and eggs.
There was a massive television on the wall in front of me, in the traditional casino style. As I ate I saw an ad for an antidepressant.
The little daughter wanted to show her mom something, but her mom was staring down the hall leaning against something and looking pained, so the daughter turned away. Then the daughter talked with the Dad, who looked worried, and the daughter shrugged, looking away distantly. Bad mommy; you made daughter sad! You could have had a nice parenting moment with her, but your sad feelings ruined it! What a failure. Your sad feelings need to be amputated, pronto.
Next was a scene of the parents sitting down with a doctor. A scene of the mommy outside, throwing a ball for the dog. The dog was running in slo-mo, tongue everywhere, obliviously happy. Do that, mommy! That’s your role model: Sloppy, slobbery dog.
In three more scenes the mommy looked progressively happier. Finally she had that parenting moment with her daughter, who is smiling. Hooray, everything is fixed!
I wondered if people of color are ever featured in these ads, or if it’s always Northern European women. I wonder if it has something to do with that guilty protestant religious background trucked over from Europe, where a woman is a vessel for child-rearing foremost, and if she’s underperforming in that role it’s because of some internal defect she must root out and neutralize. “You don’t like being a mom, and nothing else? WHAT’S WRONG WITH YOU?”
If it’s not an ethnic thing, I bet it’s at least a middle-class thing. I wonder if working-class people see these ads and think, “Oh sure, all I need to do is start taking some pills, and then everything that’s upsetting in my life will magically not matter. Hah! Do they even know what kind of crap the world is throwing at me? A pill isn’t gonna make my heating bill go away, or pay off this credit card, or magically fix this damn car.”
Antidepressant ads drive me up the wall.
The meal was good though, and I set out on the day’s riding with a full stomach and lots of water.
Outside I gazed at a giant cow while I pondered my route. Today I would finish the ride to Death Valley Junction on the California side of the line, then go over a low mountain pass and enter Nevada, then coast downhill into the town of Pahrump. That would put me within reach of Las Vegas.
As I pondered the giant metal bull across the street, I thought about radiation. That “Area 51 Alien Center” I passed by yesterday was only 50 miles south of a massive nuclear testing range. They say the fallout from atomic testing in the 50’s spread radioactive debris all over the Earth and into every living thing. I wonder if I am getting proportionally more of that radiation by being in Nevada? Parts of it look like a blasted hellscape, and parts of it literally are a blasted hellscape. Perhaps it’s good that I’m just passing through … and that California is generally upwind.
Anyway, it was time to ride. The wind was against me but the road went slightly downhill, which canceled it out. I entered California early in the day.
Pretty soon I was at Death Valley Junction.
Here is where I would have emerged from Death Valley, if I’d gone down into it from Beatty. Several thousand feet of steep road in blistering 120 degree heat, with no services anywhere along it, and no services here in Death Valley Junction to greet me when I arrived.
It was the only road out I could have taken. The south edge of the valley runs into Interstate 15, which cannot be used for cycling, and on the other side is Mojave National Preserve, with several thousand more feet of blistering climb, and again no services. Even if I brought along four gallons of water and a huge pile of snacks I would still need to sleep rough, perhaps for multiple nights. It just wouldn’t work.
“Perhaps I’ll try that some other time, when I have a companion with a car to be my safety net,” I thought. “For now, it’s time to do something easier.” Then I turned left, onto State Line Road towards Pahrump and Vegas … and immediately got a flat tire.
As I was working, a guy in a stetson stopped his truck to ask if I was okay. I thanked him for stopping. Then 15 minutes later, a woman turned her truck around on the road just to come back and say she was going into town and could fetch things for me. I politely declined and thanked her for stopping.
A man in his 50’s, dressed all in leather and riding a motorbike, turned around and then stood near me making conversation for a while. He mentioned that he belonged to the Warmshowers website. We exchanged historical details and he told me he was from Oakland, and had spent 30 years there working on refrigeration equipment for trucks and buildings. I thought that was pretty cool.
“You will find people out here to be more friendly than California,” he said.
“Well I can say for sure they’re more likely to stop and help out a cyclist. You’re the third person who’s done that for me since I got this flat tire.”
He laughed. “They’ll keep stopping. You sit here long enough, they’ll form a line.”
I began packing up, and he waved goodbye and zipped away on his motorbike. I continued my slow progress up into the hills, feeling glad that people were looking out for me.
Like it usually goes on long isolated roads, people coming in the other direction started raising their hands in greeting as they went by. I waved back as often as I could.
I also found some mysterious things, as usual.
It got hotter and hotter as the day progressed. I found myself looking forward to one of the basic perks of civilization: Refrigerators. Part of the joy of passing through these hot regions is you know you will get into a town eventually, and then be able to drink all of the ice water you can handle. “Aaaaaahhh,” you’ll think, and get that nice visceral rush of satisfaction, from something that you usually find so ubiquitous that you just ignore it.
We have bodies designed to get pleasure from the slaking of thirst and the feeding of real hunger, and we live a lifestyle that is never dry or lacking in calories. No wonder so many modern people struggle with depression.
I patted the frame of my bike. “Just one of the small ways Valoria here saves my life,” I thought.
In the afternoon I caught a swirly dust devil to the north, and watched it a while:
I managed to get a bit of video of it too:
By my reckoning I was about 3/4 of the way to the top of the pass, when I stopped for a drink of water and stood around in the narrow shade of a hill, and then suddenly felt the pressure of a deuce knocking at the door. My body decided that it was time to poop, and jammed on all the “go” buttons at once. I shuddered and nearly fell over.
I tried to reason with my bowels. “Now look!” I shouted, waving my arms and waddling towards the embankment. “I told you yesterday, and this morning! I said, hey, this is a nice hotel room, why don’t you drop something here? And you said, ‘Nah, we’re good. Just keep cramming the food in.’ Now you ambush me on this hill! There’s no toilet paper, no water, not even a place to hide! Have you no decency?“
“DROP THE SWEATS,” said my ass, “OR WITNESS THEIR DESTRUCTION.”
The road was on a little causeway, built up across a dip between two hills. The embankment went down about four feet, which wasn’t enough to hide me, but it was better than dropping trau right on the shoulder. There were no bushes. I had no idea how I was going to clean up. Curse you, colon!
Then, a miracle happened: Just as I reached the bottom of the embankment, I glanced up and saw a drainage tunnel running under the highway. If I squatted down and ducked my head I could just about waddle inside. PRAISE BE! A SHELTER FROM HUMILIATION! I got inside and got my clothes out of the way with half a second to spare. As I pooped, I heard no fewer than three cars go rocketing down the highway. That’s mortal embarrassment avoided, three times over.
With nothing else in reach, I did a mental inventory of my laundry back on the bike, and decided that it was time to remove one of my socks, and clean up with that. I’m not proud.
As I emerged, I thanked the Kickstarter campaign of future time lords, for reaching back into the past and editing reality and placing this tunnel here, so I didn’t have to lose my dignity pooping in full view of those motorists. Feeling refreshed, I got back on the bike.
Almost near the top, I saw a guy muttering to himself and staring at me as he drove past in the opposite lane. “If only you knew the embarrassment I just narrowly avoided for both of us,” I thought. “But really — why is he muttering at me? Because I’m taking up too much precious road?”
I imagined him coming back the other way and stopping next to me to give me some kind of lecture about how I shouldn’t be on the highway. How would I respond to that? I figured it would be something equally chastising.
“How did you imagine this was going to go? You’ve said your piece. Now what; you drive away? And I’m still out here on the road between two towns, like before. You’ve just wasted our time.”
Honestly, I can’t think of anything – anything at all – that a person could angrily yell at me from their window that would change my mind about bike touring. I’ve been honked at, passed aggressively, yelled at, had things thrown at me, more times than I can remember … Everything short of actually being hit by drivers in their cars. Sorry, all you jerks out there, I’ll do everything I can to make room and stay out of your way, but I am not going to stay off the road.
As afternoon became evening, I began the pleasant downhill ride into Pahrump.
I passed a cluster of pickup trucks, with some folks shooting skeet nearby. Some small bits of ranch land, a few warehouses. Then the suburbs appeared. Everything looked a little ragged and burned out, including the people.
I was almost out of water, so I stopped at a convenience store. A car rolled up as I was leaving. A skinny man in his mid-20’s got out, wearing shorts and a button-down shirt, with tattoos all up his arms, a thin mustache, and a cigarette in his mouth. His face had a pinched, hunted expression. An early-20’s woman holding a baby stayed put in the passenger seat. Two kids sat behind her. As the man passed through the open door of the shop, he picked the cigarette out of his mouth and hurled it to the ground outside. A minute later he emerged with a paper sack, bent down and picked his cigarette up, and stuck it back in place. Away they all went.
I rolled on, and the sun dropped below the hills. On a few silent stretches I saw bats fly out across the road. I passed little squares of land, covered in un-mowed grass, surrounded by varieties of fencing, each with a small house in the center – or just as often, a trailer – and a large “NO TRESPASSING” sign stuck just next to the gap in the fence made by the driveway. Block after block of this, until I lost count. Some chunks of land had dogs inside, chained to various things, and barking. I guess Pahrump is where all the people who can’t live in Vegas go instead.
I kept pedaling and made it to the one sushi restaurant in Pahrump, with enough time to sit down and have a meal at an actual table. It was after 9:00pm, and all the other patrons had cleared out. I ordered a huge pile of sushi and drank four glasses of ice water, one after the other. With a big tip, all it cost me was $45, which is half of what it would cost in Oakland. Not as fresh, but so what?
From there I swung out onto the main drag, and rolled past a bunch of casinos. I saw a “China Wok” restaurant and instantly imagined a Chinese man crossing the street in the bronx, getting accosted by a car, and screaming “Hey! I’m China Wok here!”
That made me laugh all the way up to the hotel. I exploded my luggage all over one of the two beds, then called up Beth and had a nice chat about Nevada, and culture shock, and work. Another weird bike touring day successfully concluded!
June 19, 2020 Filed under Amused, Curious, Introspection
I dream I’m driving a car up Scott’s Valley Drive, the main street of my home town. It’s difficult because I’m using touch controls on my smartphone to steer the car, rather than a steering wheel. I make a lot of illegal lane changes, hoping that the lanes are clear even though I can’t see them.
The car stops and three old women get in, bustling into the three vacant seats. They’re wearing pillbox hats and clutching purses. They sit there a moment, then mutter to each other in surprise when they realize it’s not their car. I explain to the women that it’s my car and I’m driving it home. They get back out onto the sidewalk and close the doors.
The car becomes a truck. It turns transparent — a ghostly wire-frame of a car, like Wonder Woman’s jet in the cartoons. I’m outside the truck. The door is open and I go to throw my backpack into the front seat, and it just falls to the ground. How embarrassing. I need to be in a certain frame of mind to interact with the car but the old ladies have disrupted me.
I concentrate, and manage to step into the invisible truck. I drive it up my road towards the loop that my house it on. Green vegetation has exploded all along the curbs, including giant miners’ lettuce — a small plant that grows in clumps, with one round leaf encircling the stem near the top like a thin mushroom cap, and a tiny cluster of flowers in the center. It’s a plant I saw everywhere as a child and found completely unremarkable, though now I realize it’s bizarrely shaped, and I haven’t seen any other plant quite like it.
I woke up, pondering the uniqueness of my childhood environment. The massive, tall redwoods, and the tiny clover and mushrooms and lettuce that surrounded them. The setting of fantasy novels and sci-fi films known worldwide, and to me it was just a back yard to run around in. I remembered being 12 years old and falling asleep in a patch of clover, about ten feet square, in the center of a long yellow sunbeam, walled in by silent monoliths of redwood bark. As an adult, how would my preferences and personality be different, if my inner world was built on desert scrubland, thunderstorms, stone-walled canyons, and heat?
I shook my head clear, and packed up the bike. I had no idea how to answer that question, and there was riding to do.
I set out from Beatty with the intention of getting to Death Valley Junction, and sleeping in the camping area across from the closed hotel. No sense hauling this tent and sleeping bag around if I wasn’t going to use them, right? All I needed was to make sure I had plenty of water for the next day of riding, since there probably wasn’t a place to top off at the hotel.
I moved on from Beatty and began rolling down another long, hot stretch of highway.
Miles and miles of heat, light, and occasional trucks.
As usual, I took lots of breaks to drink and pee and look around.
I also found the usual scattering of trucker’s pee bottles.
And an insect companion that hitched a ride on my glove for a few miles:
I have a nephew who sometimes goes by the name “Big Dane” so here’s something for him:
The landscape was fascinating, especially for my amateur geologist eyes. All around I could see evidence of massive forces at work.
And even out here, these was plenty of industry ticking along:
The afternoon wore on, and my marker slowly drifted across the arrow-straight lines on the map.
Finally I came to a junction, and encountered the “Area 51 Alien Center”, which was every bit as kitschy as you’d expect.
I obtained a gross and unsatisfactory lunch there, plus a candy bar and some more water, then turned south. I still had about 25 miles to go before Death Valley Junction, and I was hoping to have some daylight left for setting up when I arrived.
After an hour or so I discovered a restaurant that wasn’t on the map, so I put on my face mask and dodged inside. I was the only customer. Worried that they were about to shut down the kitchen, I speed-read the menu and ordered a sandwich with pork and avocado, plus a carne asada burrito for tomorrow’s breakfast. When the sandwich arrived I devoured the contents and left the bread. Drank two glasses of ice water and poured two more into my thermos, refilling it. The restaurant was ragged and a bit dingy but very helpful, so I left a giant tip.
I pedaled on, and the sky grew colorful.
While gazing around at it, I noticed that the handlebars were slightly harder to turn than usual. That was a sign that more tread was touching the road than usual, which meant that the tire was suddenly a lot lower, which meant I would soon have a flat tire. I pulled into a rough parking lot, near a building with a closed restaurant. A group of about eight hispanic men, plus one lady, were sitting around a picnic table under the eaves, next to a couple of trucks. A couple six-packs of beer were stacked on the table. Two of the men were speaking loud Spanish and waving their arms, apparently in the middle of telling some hilarious story.
I rolled up on my nearly-flat tire, to an empty bench. Their conversation drifted to a stop as I approached. “Hello,” I said, not even trying to use my horrible Spanish from high school. “Mind if I sit here to change my tire?”
One of the men at the table, a tanned fellow with a trimmed beard and a baseball cap, about 30 years old, smiled at me and nodded at the bench.
I pulled the bags off the bike and piled them neaby, then flipped the bike over and began my tire-changing routine. It’s about a dozen steps and I know it stone-cold, so I had plenty of time and attention to think about where I was. Next to me, the group resumed their conversation, though I could tell that most of them were intrigued by the strange machine and the strange man who was working on it. Several of them watched everything I did, and the rest kept glancing over.
I guessed that the group next to me was probably surprised that I was getting so close. “This little patch of Nevada is probably the equivalent of fly-over country in the midwest,” I thought. “There are probably more people here speaking fluent Spanish than there are speaking English. When interstate travelers stop by, I bet they’re suspicious, perhaps even hostile to these people. Seeing a group of this size, all speaking Spanish, strangers would think of the drug trade, and kidnapping, and human trafficking. Young women traveling alone would keep well away, I bet.”
So why did I feel free to act so casually? I realized it went directly back to my experiences with my father, and the stories he told about traveling through Baja, and how that folded in with my experience in Florida, interviewing teachers and poor immigrant families living in trailer parks for my old job. Of all the assumptions I made about new immigrants in America, one was always on top: They were used to being isolated, and treated with suspicion, and when someone reached out it was a pleasant surprise — a relief, even.
So, here I was, getting unexpectedly close and relying on my assumption. I obviously didn’t fit in, but I was determined to be friendly and walk that line where it’s clear that I’m not trying to pretend I’m part of their group – that would be dishonorable – but it’s also clear that I have respect and anticipate the same in return.
After a few minutes of scattered Spanish, the guy in charge nodded to me and said, “Where you from?”
“Oakland,” I said. “In California.”
The group chatted a bit more. The guy said, “Want a beer?”
I thought about it for a second. I dislike beer and never drink it, but today I would make a social exception and see where it went. “Sure,” I said.
One of the men peeled a can off the stack and stepped over to hand it to me. Some brand I’d never heard of. I opened it. “Cheers,” I said.
“Salud!” they all said, and we took a swig together. Barely cold, with a taste like deep-fried roadkill. “I’ll pretend it’s a soda,” I thought. I set it down on the bench, and continued to lever the flat tire off my rim.
“Man, you seem really relaxed!” said the guy, grinning.
In response I just smiled and kept working, but in my head I thought, “I bet that surprises you. I know I’m a little bit of a target – a man traveling alone with a pile of gear – but I’m overlooking that for now. If I were a young woman traveling alone, all the altruistic thought in the world wouldn’t get me to walk into the midst of a group of strange men just to change a bike tire in the shade. I’d keep riding on this flat tire until I was out of sight, then hide behind a rock to fix it.”
The men chatted in Spanish for about five minutes. From what I could pick up, it was mostly about work, but pretty soon I could hear “bicicleta” mixed in.
“Where you ride from?” said the first man.
“I started in Reno, a few weeks ago. Trying to get to Las Vegas.”
Some excited Spanish. Then to me: “What do you do for work?”
“I work with scientists in a lab. Microbiologists. We’re trying to brew new things. But COVID-19 happened and they shut the lab. So I’m out here riding.”
Gesturing at the weird bike and the pile of gear and tools, the man said, “You must be really intelligent, eh?”
Measuring the delivery, I decided he was cutting some line between admiration and mocking, that could go either way. Perhaps for the benefit of his friends. “Man, I don’t know. I do my best,” I said.
I swapped in the old tube. Time to get it back on the wheel. To liven things up I decided to play music on my phone, and cued up Paco De Lucia.
“What music is that?”
“It’s flamenco music. From Spain. Paco de Lucia.”
They seemed to like it. After a few minutes, one of them got out his phone and stood up.
“This is good music too,” he said, and started up a tune that sounded to me like mariachi, but beyond that I didn’t have a clue. “This is Mexican music!” he held the phone out to me, grinning.
I read the name of the musician. “Juan Gabriel.” Apparently I pronounced it right. One of the guys said, “You know some Spanish?”
“Very very little,” I said, holding up my fingers in a pinch.
The men were amused. I paused Paco de Lucia, and we all listened to Juan Gabriel for a while.
The man with the phone waved it around, dancing a bit. “This man is very rich,” he said, tapping the phone. “Lots of land. This is music with… Corazon! Heart!” he taps his chest, but on the wrong side. He looks down. “A la izquierda!” he says, and taps the other side. I nod approvingly.
“Aaaaaaaaayy yaaaa!” he whoops. Another of the men returns with “Aaaaayy!”
I have no idea if they’re prompting me to join in, or if that would insult them and make me look like an idiot … or if they’re hamming up their Mexican-ness to play a joke on me. So I just smile.
I finished inflating the tire and flipped the bike over. “Wow, that was quick!” said the main guy.
“I’ve done this about a hundred times,” I said, smiling.
As I put the bags on the bike, all the men – and the one woman – finished their beers and crammed them into the overflowing trash bin, and got ready to take off in the trucks. On the way to his truck, the guy who knew the most English came up to me to say goodbye. I got him and his friend to pose for a photo.
“Good luck!” they said.
“That went well,” I thought, as I rode away. “I’ve got to try stuff like that more often.”
For the next half hour I distracted myself by trying to come up with a general rule, so I could remember it encourage myself to apply it. This is what I got:
“Every single detail of how a person appears can be foreign, even disorienting – from clothes to grooming to living space to smell – but there’s a human at the center, with the same human instincts and concerns driving them from within. If you reach over the details, without being a threat or a target, you can connect.”
“That last part is the key for me,” I decided. “I’m not much of a target, relatively.”
My reasoning was this: Generally, people give the benefit of the doubt to people who look like them, but beyond that there’s a hierarchy as well, and in America that hierarchy has the Northern-European appearance at the top. Then, in order of increasing suspicion, it goes roughly: Japanese, Korean, Chinese, Indian, Latino, Middle Eastern, and then African at the bottom.
If I was a Black man, riding around on the same multi-thousand dollar bike, wearing the same thousand dollars in specialized clothing, carrying a computer and a camera more expensive than half the cars in the neighborhood … Suburban Americans would look at me and wonder, in the back of their minds, if they had locked all their doors and set their alarm.
(Not a uniquely American problem, definitely. But as an American I can see the details of it more clearly than elsewhere.)
Doing what I do does require some bravery, sure, but way way less bravery than it would for other people. That’s all the more reason for me to do it, since connection goes both ways.
Anyway, the road was longer than I expected and the sun set while I was still pedaling south. Then a funny thing happened: Ahead of me I saw a giant casino, just on the Nevada side of the state line. There was a hotel attached to the casino. I hadn’t seen that on Google Maps earlier. Looks like I wouldn’t need to spend the night in a tent after all.
The rooms were cheap and spacious. Also there were laundry machines, and a mini-mart inside the casino. I bought a cup of ice water, some milk and cookies, some peanuts, and on an impulse I decided to try a “V-8”.
The “V-8” was revolting and I poured almost all of it down the sink even though I was hungry and thirsty. It takes a lot for me to throw away food on a bike trip, but that drink … Ugh.
I cranked the heat in the room. It had been a long and interesting day, and I was asleep the moment I hit the bed.
June 17, 2020 Filed under Uncategorized
The “breakfast” part of “bed and breakfast” was quite pleasant. There was one other guest but I never saw her, since she departed early in the morning. It was just me at the dining room table, looking out into the back yard, while the owner rustled up a plate of eggs and toast.
We didn’t talk much, but I did ask what inspired her to get so many peacocks. “Did you just start with two and they multiplied or something?”
“No, they were already wandering around when this place was a brothel.”
I laughed. I guess it made sense. Exotic rooms, exotic birds…
When I stepped outside I discovered why they had been so loud at night. There was a railing next to the building right outside my bedroom window, and the birds were roosting along it in a line, facing the wall. They had been just a few feet from my ears the entire night. I pointed this out to the owner and she apologized, but gave no indication that she’d change anything to stop it from happening again.
“Oh well,” I thought. “It’s not my problem now. This is probably the one time in my entire life that I’ll be on this highway, in fact.”
I cued up an audiobook and got to pedaling. The day wasn’t as hot as yesterday, so I drank less water, which meant fewer pee stops, which meant more continuous time in the saddle. Hours sailed by as I gazed at the dusty landscape.
For a while I amused myself by yelling random things out loud, knowing that nobody could hear me. “Sassen fracken backen!!” I yelled. “Blithering blarney-stones! Blatherskite! Balderdash! Brig’ a Doooon!” I shouted the lyrics to “Au Contraire” by They Might Be Giants, then practiced my fake Scottish accent. Eventually I settled on screaming the word “UNDERPANTS!!” over and over at top volume.
I imagined a historian, following alongside me on their own bicycle, documenting my important words for future civilizations to ponder. Then I imagined getting flattened by a truck.
The historian would survey the wreckage, sigh, and then write with a flourish: “Let the record show that the last thing he said before he died was the word ‘underpants.'”
“Perfect,” I thought. … “UNDERPAAANTS!!!”
The hills ran out, and the road became one long downhill glide, with a roomy shoulder, unspooling beneath my wheels for over an hour. “Fantastic!” I thought, and even made a little video to remember it.
After enjoying that for a while I encountered the remnants of another brothel, with an amusing sign.
Angel’s ladies are closed! You’ll just have to wait for the afterlife to enjoy them, my friends.
I peed on the sign, since it offered concealment from the road. Then I noticed this amusing piece of junk nearby:
It was covered with an incredible sticker collection. Too bad it’s all the way out here where no one can admire it.
Probably a prop from Burning Man, dropped here by someone who either wanted to store it, it just abandon it without trying to recycle the materials.
A few miles after that lovely exhibit I finally coasted into the town of Beatty. First thing I did was walk into the casino, hoping for a cheap room. They were nearly 200 dollars. Ugh! Next thing I did was walk over to the Motel 6. Less than 100 dollars! Better.
I never did get consensus from the locals on how this town’s name is pronounced. One person claimed it was Beatty like the name “Betty”, another said it was like the word “bait” with an “e” tacked on. It was just a pit stop for me, so I didn’t keep asking.
A good, breezy day of riding! Making good progress across the state. As it got dark outside I caught up on work and ate snacks. Soon I would have to decide whether to head south into Death Valley, or try and detour around it for safety purposes.