Tag Archives: travel blog

78 – When I Should be Camping, but…

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I stayed in Brawley the night that I left L.A., at a charming place run by an Indian gentleman: The Desert Inn. Only $40, immaculately clean, and with a mattress and pillows fit for a king. But besides all that, the guy stood with me a bit in the lobby —a tiny, fluorescent-lit, square room with a counter and desk; some maps and brochures—and listened to me speak about my trip, and then he told me about the road trips he’s taken his family on, and about his employer—the owner of the establishment. This man has been trying to sell the joint for years, decades even. I haven’t the slightest idea where he lives (I don’t think Mr. P knows either), though I don’t suppose it’s in town, or anywhere near it for that matter. Presumably he only works when his employee is away on vacation. Mr. P gets one month of vacation per year worked. He works around the clock, seven days a week. If he works two years without a break he gets two months off, and so on. At first glance the deal sounds alright, until one considers that with a regular two days off a week over the course of a year he would have acquired more time off that way than through his current deal. On the other hand, the job is obviously not terribly demanding, he gets to spend plenty of time with his family, and has the opportunity to leave for an entire month to do with that time as he will (in his case take the family on road trips around the country—they traveled over 11,000 miles last year on one excursion!—thus earning his children an excellent education beyond that of their general schooling). Clearly he feels any positives outweigh the negatives, and so it is an opportunity not to be passed up.

During the course of our conversation he made some recommendations, unnecessarily, of things to do in the area, places to visit, etc. He seemed to have no sense of direction though, pointing me towards a town north, from where I came, when I said I was going east, and then telling me the dunes I planned to visit were out of my way despite that they flanked both sides of the highway I would take out of town. Besides all that nonsense, it was a joy chatting and getting a feel for the town and this man’s life. The whole room smelled of Indian cooking, and at one point his son, of perhaps eight or nine years, came out from the door beyond and hung sheepishly on his father’s arm, alternating looking at the ground and up at his father.

When I left Los Angeles I had every intention in the world to visit Joshua Tree, though mainly just to run, but the gloomy, overcast weather put a damper on any enthusiasm I might have had the night before (always when I am most enthusiastic about running). It also didn’t help at all that I spent almost two hours at Go Get ‘Em Tiger when I had only planned to grab an espresso and maybe a snack to go. And yet, despite regularly disappointing myself by lingering over small joys in potential neglect of other planned events, and also in regards to my constantly fluctuating enthusiasm for running, much good always seems to come my way. No decision ever seems to matter.

So, having bypassed Joshua tree, I stopped near the Salton Sea at a medjool date farm instead (this is a region that produces a huge number of these sweets), adjacent to a fascinating, mountainous pile of boulders a city block long, a number of which were covered in graffiti, resulting in some pleasing photographs. Tucked in amongst these boulders, at one end of this ant hill, was a memorial to someone, complete with rows of candles and a statue of the Virgin Mary draped in rosaries, her head split in half and the piece of rebar poking up through her neck like the figure of a spinal column. I was only about an hour or so north of Brawley at this point, and the sun was dropping below the mountains to the west lighting up the sky in that direction like a fire cracker; and eastward the still, mirror-like surface of the Salton Sea—a sliver of silvery-blue glass lodged in a landscape of golden sand—clouds slowly scudding across the sky. One disappointment always seems to beget a joy. Why even bother to be disappointed at all? Knowing this you would think I would feel accordingly, and yet….

76 – Some Santa Cruz Island

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Returned from my first hike traipsing back across the island through the crisp, dry grass and reedy plants, sans knit hat, sweating and all, like a blithering idiot to the new water reservoir I bought only the day before yesterday, clawed up, off the picnic table, in the dirt and with a small hole in a corner, most of the contents leaked out (too curious foxes!), after dark of course, as I had enjoyed a magnificent sunset on the opposite side of the island.

It all leaves a bitter taste in one’s mouth, after experiencing something of the first order of perfection. These were images of an Italian or Grecian coastline, such as one might find in a magazine or an Instagram (and no cliff-side homes, nor a human for hundreds of meters all around), I was observing, but in actuality, with the crashing of the waves below and the barking of sea lions beyond, the wind on my face and the sky glowing like a picture postcard. Unfortunately, the resultant discovery of my favorite (read: only) knit hat (an expensive one at that) to be gone from my person, and the ensuing tumble across the island after sunset in hopes of finding it—an impossible attempt, mind you, since I wandered rather through the back country instead of following the main trail, and thus had no distinct path to follow—has me feeling somewhat morose. And the not-quite-comfortably-long-enough stick I resorted to using to prop up the entrance to my tent because I don’t have trekking poles or a front support pole and there was nothing for me to tie the guyline to like I normally would. Well, that’s the life of the ever not quite properly prepared! Tomorrow I may search again before departing, but more importantly must go for a run!

Went for a marvelous run this morning before needing to break camp. Followed the trail I took last night and found my cap which I had thought lost. Just goes to show ya. Course it has a couple large holes in it now, and much of the edge is chewed up. Souvenirs, I suppose! Anyway, the run topped off at one of several peaks in the area. Could see over quite a vast area—the island goes on and on, ridges and valleys like a set of ribs, caves and bays, tiny islands (rocks, really) smothered with birds and bird shit, the vague horizon a smudged line. Speaking of horizons, amazing how far one can see on a clear day; Cali mainland in the distance. Santa Ynez mountains mysterious and cloud hidden and blue. Cormorants fishing in the jewel-like water. Girl sunbathing on a distant bench. Two more sitting in the shade of a seaside cliff subsumed with the rocks and boulders into its shadow. And a man walking along the stony beach with his camera.

About to take a snooze on a picnic bench before the boat picks us up. Slept poorly last night. Kayakers returning from an excursion exploring the arched caves and passages the ocean has carved over the eternity of its existence. Something to do if ever I get back here.

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Wednesday 06/08

Saw a cafe in the town of San Luis, CO (the oldest town in the state, according to a sign) so mistakenly decided it was a good time to stop on my way north to Frisco. The espresso machine is a beautiful, lever actuated, single-group, copper and brass piece, with an eagle perched on top. The espresso itself, however, is very bad—much too long for a single basket, thin, watery and bitter. Who knows how old the coffee is.

Driving is proving to be strange, and slightly unsettling. Obviously it feels like less of an adventure, but I’m a bit worried that the engine is going to blow up or something. I shouldn’t, of course, but the car is nearly twenty years old, even though it does seem to be really well cared for and the man I bought it from was enormously cool and, I felt, trustworthy. Anyway, I’m really eager to get to Frisco, which I think, along with my concern for the $1500 car, is part of the foundation for my general feelings of unease. That a mutual friend of ours is going to be in town this evening is also encouraging me to slow down and stop for little (not that one notices much to slow down for when zooming passed everything at such speed).

San Luis seems a rather dismal town. Nothing happening. Couple cars parked. Barber shop and a market across the street. Gas station on the opposite corner. The owner/employee here at the cafe seems utterly bored, and was absolutely disinterested in helping me. The abundance of grey sky overhead is not encouraging of any sort of joyfulness either.

The oldest town in Colorado. It evokes the sentiments of an old, a very old man or woman, decrepit, miserable, misanthropic, who’s lived too long and is really quite ready and willing to pass on. “Let me die already!” it seems to be saying. That’s how it feels sitting in this potentially cozy cafe. Potentially cozy. Maybe with a barista who cared, who wanted to be here, and with smiling people to serve instead of just the vacant air and the dull throb of a heart tired and worn out wanting to give up for the pointlessness of it all. The couch looks comfortable, the tables and chairs are okay, there’s art on the walls and shelves full of books. There’s just no LIFE. No music. Dead quiet. It doesn’t matter how many books you have on a shelf, or how comfortable the couch looks, or how good (or bad) the art hanging on your walls is, if there’s no heartbeat there’s no life. It’s like trying to dress up a cadaver. No matter how fine the clothes the cadaver’s still a cadaver. There’s no reanimating that. And that’s exactly what this experience is like: it’s like having a cup of coffee in a morgue, only less sterile. Deadman’s Reach Coffee. Fitting.

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Lying on the couch yawning madly. Matt is coding in the other room, his bedroom, which is hardly another room because the doorway has no door and I can see him sitting there in his chair working away in front of his monitor. Meanwhile, I’m here, lying on this couch yawning madly. The front door several feet away is open, and I am listening to the crickets chirping madly. It is cool out. I wonder if there is a degree of cold at which crickets stop chirping but don’t die and just grow silent. Like the energy required for that activity is too much to be continued below a certain temperature, or the act of maintaining homeostasis becomes more difficult as the temperature decreases, and so only the most necessary, vital activities are continued. It seems too cool tonight to me to be hearing crickets chirping so.

Santa Fe seems to me a bit of a tourist trap of a city, and an expensive one at that, though that is nothing out of the ordinary. I wonder how the crickets find it to live here. I suppose I could find work , but I haven’t found any decent coffee yet*. Too bad I don’t have the money to open a business.

Tomorrow I plan on spending much of the afternoon at Ten Thousand Waves: a spa where one might get all sorts of skin treatments,  face masks, massages and the like. I’m just going for their outdoor, communal bath. Matt has a free voucher he’s offered to me, so I won’t have to spend a dime (thanks again!). The establishment I’m told is inspired by Japanese mountain hot spring resorts, so I’m quite excited as I have had for a long time a fascination of all things Japanese. There is also a restaurant attached, in the style of a more upscale izakaya, which obtains most of its meat and produce from local purveyors. I will probably eat there too.

I have lots of coordinating, thinking, and planning to do as well during the rest of my stay here since I have a bum knee and won’t be cycling for a good long while.

*I found some excellent coffee a week later at Collected Works books—Iconik Coffee Roasters. It’s on par with the best stuff I’ve had on this trip, which has been little and far between, unsurprisingly.

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05/20

Tomorrow will be two months on the road. That’s something.

No, it isn’t anything.

It’s something.
But it’s not everything.
Glory, glory, glory! Fucking New Mexico! Glory, glory, glory!

The light. The clarity. Brilliant. Unimaginable. Unfathomable, until one arrives. The whole world in crystalline sharpness. Like being dropped into a single pearl of dew that may or may not be clinging to a blade of grass or a spider’s web—it could be freely drifting through the air for all I can imagine—and peering out through your suddenly liquid, spherical window-wall and everything exterior of it glimmering and percolating brilliantly, like all the constituent parts of the world have been stored inside a champagne bottle and then shaken up, and the cork popped and existence exploded everywhere eventually forming the state of New Mexico, or at least this particular part of it. Spaces long and wide and vast, undulating, slanting. Low-growing sagey plants, prickly, and loofah-like; pine trees stuck in the ground like toothpicks. Dandelions are so much smaller than these, like me, but tower over the ants that crawl among their green stems and fronds and yellow caps, like I crawl across this landscape, over these mountains and plateaus, through the forests of tall trees, and down through valleys narrow and wide, alone.

What is it like to be an ant, I wonder. To be nothing on its own, but only defined by the colony which it is a part. I wonder what it is like to be a colony of ants, defined by its individual members all together, working harmoniously as one single organism in the same way as a human body is a single organism made of its individual blood cells, bone cells, muscle cells, nerves, hormones, gut bacteria and on and on….
Sometimes one stumbles across the right person at the right time.
But back to New Mexico whose mountains run along in unbroken chains like clasped hands. And there are creeks and rivers too, that race towards whatever it is they race towards, the sound of their waters splashing among the rocks like laughter, like the arc of a cliff swallow, like kids playing marbles on a city sidewalk in front of some row homes in, say, Baltimore, Milwaukee, Pittsburgh, or Detroit. They wind down slope and across field, a ribbon of shimmering sunlight wrapped around a gift that one can not seem to break into, whose wrapping paper can not be torn, nor seams untaped. The signs, as invisible as they may be, read plainly, “LOOK BUT DO NOT TOUCH.”

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Left the San Jon Motel minutes ago. Stopped at a traveler’s rest stop by the interstate for a coffee because I didn’t feel like going through the hassle, however slight, of making a cup in my room. Managed to spill it all over the counter. Cleaned the mess up with a nearby rag, but the whole incident is symbolic of my mental state.

That damnable, oppressive sky…

I’m obviously not as strong as I thought I was, or rather, I never gave it much thought. The point of the trip isn’t to prove—to who?, or myself—how strong I am mentally, emotionally, whatever. However, if trips such as this test one’s boundaries, well, consider mine tested. I’m ready to be home (but where exactly is that?). Or to make a home somewhere, at least for a little while, until I’m ready to test boundaries again.

Ha!…
Well, fuck.

The motel was decent enough. Clean, at least. And economical. No wi-fi, but that’s not a bad thing, and is more than likely a good thing. Small, white(ish), square room, barely large enough to squeeze the cheap furniture into and still leave room to walk around it all. Firm, queen-size bed, and an orange, tan, and brown shag carpet (the peak of luxury). A CRT television on a stand against the wall opposite the bed. Up and to the right of that, and hanging from a shelf of metal tubes, plastic coat hangers in the colors of America!. The shower mostly dribbled out water, like an infirm, elderly man in hospice drooling from the mouth, but at least it was hot.

The proprietor was a pleasant enough old man—originally from England, has been living in the States, California specifically, since 1978, but moved to San Jon, God only knows why, in 2008. He’s been running the motel since, alone but for his mouthy chihuahua. Maybe his wife, if he had one, died, and he felt like he could no longer stay there? Or it just became too expensive? Or both? Anyway, the lobby, if one should call it that, with its dirty, white walls and worn carpet, frayed along the edges, smelled of sour tuna fish. In the back room, which is hidden only slightly by a length of curtain, and from where the man materialized when I rang, a television is perpetually on. He lives, not a spartan existence, but a simple, spare, messy existence. A seemingly lonely, despondent existence. He is wallowing in a pig sty back there, and I’m left wondering how reflective that is of his state of mind. The motel clearly gets little business; another fifteen or twenty minutes west (by car) is Tucumcari, a town with a greater wealth of more up-to-date places to stay. Much easier to continue driving, unless of course you’re heading east, and maybe that’s how he gets all his customers (though, in that case, why not stop twenty minutes sooner?). Too, he most certainly gets only the most budget-conscious types passing through who are happy to get by for a night with very little. It is peculiar.

San Jon itself appears to have nothing to offer to anyone aside from this rest stop, an Indian restaurant, and the motel. One has to live and work here to get anything of significance or value from the town, and even that I question. But there is no denying the landscape is surely magnificent, or would be on a less dreary day. I’m not getting the best of New Mexico right now, and that’s reflected in how I feel.

Texas

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An example of wind. Mind you it wasn’t gusting so hard that it bent was bending this adult tree, but just that it blows hard enough and regularly enough in this region to shape trees in such a manner.
This was pretty awful. The experience of being here, however, was not. The Coney Island Cafe, Pampa, TX.
Amarillo. The “S.E. Asian district.”
Amarillo.
Amarillo.
Amarillo.
Amarillo.
Amarillo.
Time moves on. Adrian, TX.
Near the NM border.

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A final coffee at Jacob’s. Something from Evocation. Melancholy a bit, as usual. Bon Iver’s self-titled on the record player.

Quiet.

Little conversation.

He hasn’t had his coffee yet.
Looking outside. The sky is a dull grey-white, like the ash left dangling from the end of a cigarette. Everything not of an ethereal nature is dripping. That includes my bike that was locked up beneath the overhang of his patio. It might be fifty degrees out there. The weather fits my mood, though I prefer it rather not. But what difference does that make, really?

The coffee is delicious. It’s finally cooled, and I can taste it in depth now: apricot, subtly floral, soft but lively acidity. I love African coffees. Preferably Kenyans, but wet-process Ethiopians have a nuanced, delicate majesty all their own.

Amarillo, like most (all?) Texas cities, is sprawling, and designed for vehicular traffic. Thank God for the bike path, though…

I’ve been interrupted by Jacob. Perhaps I’ll finish my thought later.

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“I’m bursting, Jerry! I’m bursting!” Mr. Costanza would say.

Crept into Amarillo not long ago. By “crept into” I mean I’m in the seedy-looking outskirts—not yet downtown—which actually don’t seem to be seedy at all, but instead, the buildings backing up into quiet neighborhoods beyond, there is a peaceful happiness, and a sense of contentment, that all is well. They, or at least this area, could very easily be defined as the S.E. Asia district. I’ve never seen so many Thai, Lao, and Vietnamese restaurants and grocers in one place. My curiosity and fascination are peaked (and my hunger has been so).

I’m at a Pho restaurant in which men are gambling away at machines in one corner while a family, or two? (I can’t tell), or, perhaps, various friends sit in a group and converse amongst themselves. Toddlers are roaming around, climbing over chairs, over people, dancing on the pool tables. There is a man at one of the tables occupied by the group smoking a cigarette. A television is on in a corner, tuned to CNN. An old woman sidles over to me to inquire as to how my meal is, and offers me an ice tea. I surmise that she cooked my meal. Also, this seems, based on other cycle travelers’ blogs, standard treatment in S.E. Asia for guests, and, especially those traveling in lesser style and comfort, depending on how you define that, such as yours truly.

The restaurant (/gambling and games hall) is a huge space, plainly and sparsely decorated in the fashion of so many excellent Asian restaurants. Large, clay tiles make up the floor. Spartan, white walls. Cheap masonite tables and office chairs. Poorly taken photographs of food, stuck to the walls. Poster-size, laminated beer list (extremely short) with prices—Miller Lite $2.50, Heineken $3.00, Dos Equis $3.00, Smirnoff $3.00—tacked to a wall. Table cloths on some tables, or not. Four pool tables, one of which with the aforementioned children playing atop it. A little girl two chairs next to me playing with a phone. A general air of merriment, happiness, family, joy, love, fun. The meal was fantastic, and even more so for the generous discount I was given.

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The most brutally difficult day on my bike yet.

I hope this is the last time I write feel the need to write that.

Things started well enough with my front tire nearly bereft of air. I discovered this after breakfast, and after breaking camp, and after having packed everything onto my bike, naturally. Irritated, and rather perplexed I removed everything and proceeded to look for a hole of some kind in the tube. Nothing doing. Now even more perplexed I added air to the tire and finally rolled away from Black Kettle a half hour later.

It was a short three or four miles north that I was to cycle before turning west, and I managed that with aplomb. Having accomplished that task I was immediately walloped by a strong cross-headwind from the south-west, and I wished that my destination lie more immediately north rather than west and south as it did. I was to continue directly west for approximately 45 miles, cycling into Texas, before turning south-west for another 15 in order to reach the next town on the route. That’s 60 miles of basically nothing. That’s actually not entirely true. There was the headwind, of course, and there were many, many, many hills. And there was plenty of grass, and some scattered trees. So, this portion of the day which lasted far, far too long mainly consisted of a series of outbursts of cursing from me from time to time while pedaling along at about eight or nine miles per hour, often about half that for having to go up a hill while being battered by a headwind. It was hot, but I had to conserve water because I was moving so slowly (yet with tremendous effort) so I knew it would take at the very least an hour more than I had anticipated the previous evening to make it to Miami. I also carried little in the way of snacks with me, and I consumed all of those within the first thirty miles.

The few prominent memories I have of this portion of the day’s ride, besides what I’ve already related, are as follows: being passed by a foursome of motorcyclists just before the Texas state line, and then passing them as they pulled off the road to snap pictures of the sign, then being passed again by them ten minutes later and thinking that I chose the wrong mode of travel; stopping beneath one of the few trees not on the other side of the fence, which ran along beside me on both sides of the road for as long as there was a road, to eat all my snacks in one go; a decrepit and caved in old ranch house that I tried and failed to get a good photo of; and, lastly, several miles after turning south-west onto a new highway, dropping down in elevation a few hundred feet, loosing the dry grasslands and rolling hills and finding myself cycling amongst small, stunning plateaus erupted like mushrooms from the sandy ground, and the lushness of trees, and bushes, and the color green to the left and to the right of me, everywhere but on or near the plateaus in the middle-distance.

I arrived in Miami and demolished a surprisingly delicious burger and fries at what appeared to be the only restaurant in town, and consumed more than a liter of water. There being no decent place to stay in town I decided to cycle the next 24 miles to Pampa where I would stay in a much over-priced (as they always are) Best Western. I had one more lengthy climb before the terrain flattened out, the wind lessened and changed direction slightly, and the asphalt improved considerably (I had crossed a county line). Coincidentally enough, all this happened in about a span of ten minutes. After this I scooted along at nearly 20 mph and arrived in Pampa in close to half the time I had expected. It was a glorious end to an absolutely horrid and long day.

Now I am currently eating at the Texas Rose Steakhouse next door to the inn. The name certainly sounds charming enough, though the staff exude none of that. Everyone is just scurrying around like mice or ants, or standing in a corner chewing the cud like a couple of old cows in a field.

The place itself is a squat, wooden building erected over a concrete floor; square, hardwood tables all around, sort of old-timey-like if you might imagine. I can see them all being pushed out of the way from time to time, and great, joyous dances taking place, the community all gathered together, people holding hands, laughing, and the occasional boy and girl, twinkles in their eyes, sneaking off unbeknownst to their parents. There is a band playing on a small stage set up in front of the big stone fireplace over which is mounted a stag’s head. Kegs will be tapped, the beer will flow and many a person may be found stumbling through a dance as the night moves along, and perhaps even found on the floor or passed out in one of the booths that line the walls by night’s end. But here I am munching on a roll, waiting for my food, my imagination brandished like a shield in front of me, and the waitress comes over with my chicken-fried steak (the first and likely only one I will ever have), and all this melts away as I’m seized back into reality and look around me and think about where I am and realize I must have been dreaming because these people want nothing to do with me. They want my money only, and they want to go home.