Day 44, More Than This

As often, I am drinking a malt. This time I'm in Dolores and it's chocolate. A terrible cover of Bryan Ferry's More Than This is on the radio. The original is brilliant: "You know there's nothing more than this." Of what comfort is that?

I woke up this morning to a tent that smelled of cold pork. The human body sweats a liter of water in sleep, and mine had a high ratio of Fat Albert's pulled pork. It was kind of the bears to spare me.

After packing, I bumped into John with whom I've been friendly since getting into Telluride. He has dreads, sweatpants, and is in his mid-30s. I saw him smiling at the free concert, smiling his way down main street, and smiling his way to the gondola with a bike. He's just a nice guy.

John has a weird favor to ask me. I tell him anything, which, by the way, is bad policy. John worked at Golden Gate State Park. I will end my trip there. He worked there with a woman who used to guide kids from Oakland on confidence building rafting trips. She drowned on one of those trips. John and some friends buried her -- actually buried her, with their own shovels.

There is a plaque in her honor hidden between Sausalito and a town that begins with an M. He asked me to leave something there for her, from him. He said it could be a pine cone.

I will be looking for the perfect pine cone, or a really round rock, and I will leave it with her because I said I would.

I went back to Maggie's Bakery for breakfast. Today I was joined by Dan Pearlman. Dan is the inventor of the halogen lamp. He made it for the movies. It was supposed to be a miniature sun; a black body that glows with color when heated to 3700 K. He sold the patent, but he won an Academy Award for it.

We have breakfast for 2 hours. Dan is in town before he's due in front of the Supreme Court to argue his latest case that, under the Constitution, the government does not exist.

Dan sought me out actually. He'd wanted to eat breakfast with me yesterday, but I was with the cycling geophysicist and family. Dan is also a cyclist. He rode a bike around for 3 years, living off patents and money he made as a film producer, and then road magic and the kindness of strangers. There were days when he'd find 20, 40, 100 bucks stuck in his bags.

He recommended the desert. Once, when riding practically-abandoned highway 50 in the desert, he came upon a large guy carrying an even larger cross. The cross had a little wheel in back. He asks the guy if he's religious.

"Not particularly," the man says. He just liked the idea of the cross. Isn't it a bit weird to be walking around with a cross in the desert?

"Isn't it a bit weird to be riding around with a bicycle?"

Further up 50, he spots a large, er, spot on the horizon. Clean the glasses, put them back on, the spot grows bigger. Soon the spot is passing over him at 1000 miles an hour. It was a supersonic jet. It knocked him clean on his fanny.

Further further up 50 he sees an antique store. He heads in. Everything in there is smashed into pieces.

A: I'm so glad you're here. This is a good day.
D: Excuse me?
A: I was just about to go bankrupt.

It seems that every year or so, this woman goes out and buys a bunch of glass antiques. She puts them right on the edge of her high shelves. Then she waits for some flyboy to line up on the highway and have the Air Force buy her a new set of china ... and then some.

Dan has run for President. His name was on the ballot. He has also run for governor of New Mexico. You see, there's lot of competition at the lower levels of government, but only a few candidates at the higher level. No harm, no foul is a motto.

His case before the Supreme Court is also a longshot, but it is being heard. He's gonna go on Bill Moyers beforehand and then head out into the desert to think on it. He holds it as self-evident (axiomatic) that 2/3rds of the population need to vote yay or nay to elect an official. Obama got a little more than half of a lot less than half of the population, ergo he's illegitimate. Ditto McCain. Ditto GWB. Ditto everyone. Ergo, the thing is undemocratic.

In its place, he hopes to put a voting machine that allows every American to call in or go online and vote for their preferred candidate (Sanjaya?). Even though this trip has shown me how intelligent and generous many Americans can be, I can't believe that we wouldn't just vote in our best interests and put the future off.

The farmer sees the future. The bro in Telluride does not. Experiential living is liberating until your (occasionally philosophical) unwillingness to live for tomorrow closes off some doors. Again, a good question to ask is, where are the children?

He wished me good luck in my life and we parted.

I left Telluride late but an easy ride got me into Dolores early. I'm in a restaurant that wants me to pay for my water and that has made me really angry. I'm off to the massive reservoir down the road to go swimming.

Day 33

I am in the library. I have been reading up on Nikola Tesla, Mark Twain, minerals, Iceland spar, solenoids, the temperature in Nevada at night, an environmental consultancy I'm interested in working for, and home rule municipalities. I made to leave but turned around when I realized I could listen to an album that I must be the crowning musical achievement of the young 21st century. Ys, by Joanna Newsom. As she weaves her harp arpeggious and baroque, something quite American shines through: the rare (too rare) three-part female harmony, the banjos, the cowboy's harp, her hi-Appalachian twang. And the great orchestral swells in and out again. And it all blends together beautifully. And it sounds so old, like it's a miracle recording equipment existed that could catch this thing and put this it to (magnetic) tape.

It is the perfect soundtrack to Telluride because the place blends together beautifully too. As I listened, I stared out at a mountain that stitched red rock into evergreens and grass without any visible seams. Waterfalls pass through houses here. The sun seems to take some physical shape when it is long and passes down the box canyon onto Bear Pass. Earlier, I hiked up to the Bridal Falls and stared up at the house with the generator in it. This is the house of a mad American King. There is a rusty gondola to carry everyone up to court. There is a small widow's walk (or is it a window?) for the Queen to lie and wait for her millionaire miner to return from getting her gold and other heavy metals. All their power is AC from the waterfall. They are rich with gravity. Birds fly down the valley and bring them news and berries. The king heads down to the village for his weekly meeting at the Masonic lodge and to look up into the bordello windows. He walks the mile up past the power plant and its green ponds and then up to his wife with wildflowers by way of apology.

I woke up at 6:30 so I could be at Maggie's bakery by 7. A tremendously youthful German geophysicist was there with his son and grandson. The boy called him Opa. They lived in Boulder, which is where he taught. They kindly invited me to eat with them. The grandfather biked across country and got his family hooked. They liked to rotate riding in Europe and the States every summer. They were heading south. He talked about traveling Mexico by car and feeling that it seemed empty at speeds, but would reveal itself on the bike. We could all agree that the bike keeps you riding at the speed of older journeys. When you slowly travel Europe, the languages, food, architecture, and geography can change in a steep afternoon's climb.

I should like to be this man when I'm his age, intelligent, smiling, wildly curious at 7 in the morning.

I went to a coffee shop for a latte and was reminded of why I hate these places. Every barista (I prefer cashier) thinks he or she has the greatest, most diverse taste in music which shuffles around -- too early -- why? -- perhaps to win over the pale girl in Telluride -- the one in the corner -- perhaps to suggest that he is more than a barista (I prefer cashier) -- he was once in a band -- he's working on an album on afternoons off from mountainbiking -- ugh. I stayed there for 2 hours. The coffee was great. I have mapped out most of the rest of my trip.

I will be in San Francisco in two weeks and three days at the latest. I'll be riding short days in the desert because a lot of my options are either 68 miles or 148. I think we can all agree I've made the right choice. I hope to camp out on some vineyards in the Sierras and to put 20 on black in Carson City. If I win that, I'll put 20 on my birthday. If I win that, I'll invest the money in a really hi-quality Elvis costume.

I've yet to figure out how to get from the East Bay over to the North Bay and into San Francisco from the Golden Gate Bridge. I can hit Sonoma and Napa, but I can't seem to avoid San Quentin. Is San Quentin nice this time of year, or should I wait for the foliage?

Before all that, I plan on reading my Twain up the valley and by the river.

But that's all the future-flexible. We did a little bit of the past-todayish. Now let's do the present-now. I'm still in the library, but, don't worry, I'll be in Fat Albert's soon enough. A Mexican man seated to the left of me is updating his Match.com profile and furiously clicking on some girls who, from their photographs, have no need for online dating. Ys has run out. The mountains are still here.

I can imagine Tesla living on the top of the mountain, a mad-American King, thinking magnetism and inventing electricity. There is a bit of that here. The rocks on the way to the Bridal Falls were shiny and metallic. The box canyon seems to trap some energy in it -- no, not holistic energy, man -- but perhaps solar. Perhaps this could be rigged up like a large solenoid. Perhaps we could use this large solenoid to pull comets towards earth and bring back Mark Twain for a brief lecture tour and to collect some hard earned royalties from Hal Holbrook. Perhaps, sadly, it is time to leave Telluride. Tomorrow, I will be back on the road. I will be rested and I will be fed.

Day 32, I have arrived

I am in Telluride. Nothing -- not the sun, not the full day climb, not making the awful mistake of taking 5 electrolyte pills and swelling shut -- could keep me from her. I'm sipping a latte. I'm under an aspen tree and a banner of multi-colored Tibetan prayer napkins. They're made in China.

I'm reading the local paper, The Telluride Watch. Some guy named Art Goodtimes is kvetching about which burial service is best. The man hates paragraphs. The rest of the paper is all green building, green shopping, the Dalai Lama, some local bartender/dj getting stabbed in the neck, and real estate listings. Garrison Keillor is syndicated. He's in New York. The balls on this man. First, he claims that the whole place smells of pizza and fresh coffee (it doesn't). Then he compares getting on a train in Penn Station to getting the last one out of Warsaw in 37 (overstating it a bit). Then he goes on about beautiful New York women and terrorism (?). This is travel writing at its worst: unfocused, false, and unfocused.

Telluride is lovely and a little bit frightening. My campsite is infested with flies. Doug Silver behind me is shouting in my ear about an amazing piece of property he's trying to sell ("I'd just hate to see it go to waste"). A gaggle of five teenage girls teleported in from the Upper West Side to talk about calling Doug and seeing if he was interested in Ani (Doug Silver?). A man in his mid-forties with an impressive amount of hair is chatting up our barista and is all "cool" this and "awesome" that. He is going to go mountain biking with his kids. It's 3 on a weekday. When I grow up I want to be so busy I can't see my kids until at least 7 on weekdays and that's if they make an appointment. And I vow that they'll never see me in shorts.

I'm off to the Free Box. Apparently I can just drop off stuff I don't want (the scissors I cut my hair with) for stuff I do (a red union suit for my desert nights). We'll see.

I'm back from the Free Box with a free flannel. A gentleman with sunbleached hair and teeth chipped from mountain biking gifted it to me.

X: Keep the free box free!
G: Keep the free box free!?

He also recommended some mountain biking trails to me and the historical museum.

X: There's stuff in there that you'd never see anywhere. Mining gear. Photos of John Denver.

After he let go of my hand, I walked down Main Street. This is a national landmark. Where hokey art galleries, western wear stores, and lovely cafes are, there were once bordellos and banks. One bank was robbed by a young Butch Cassidy. An older Nikola Tesla built the world's first AC- generating hydroelectric damn here; it is now a house that I'll try to check out.

I can't find my union suit here. I did find a free gondola, which I rode to a free concert. Nobody knew who was playing. Scuttlebutt had it she was the daughter of an old folkie. The turnout was massive. You are allowed open containers here in Telluride and its sister village. Everyone was friendly and jolly on the sunny side of the mountain.

You are keeping me from my pulled pork sandwich. Here's something you should never say to the chef at a restaurant called Fat Albert's.

G: So are you Albert?

Day 31

I just made a horrible mistake. I'm sitting in the corner at a Pizza Hut all-you-can-eat buffet. I am that guy. I am determined to get my 6 dollars worth.

There is a strategy to overeating. I was discussing this with my waitress at the burrito joint I nearly snuffed it in. Do bread last. Avoid carbs. Avoid chewing. Don't taste anything. Don't get distracted. I might add to that list, never confuse Pizza Hut's strawberry and icing pizza with pepperoni. The shock would fell a less conditioned man.

Same old stuff today. Colorado gets prettier, rode with my wheel unscrewed for 36 miles, wobbled into Gunnison and had a man fix my bike in 7 seconds, ate eggs, went down to canyon country, ran along Blue Mesa Lake (which isn't really blue, but the mountains around it are), skirted Black Canyon of the Gunnison (one of the eight wonders of my world), stopped by the Black River to give myself a crap haircut and a rinse, got to Cimarron, waved to a statue I thought was alive, really, really wanted to quit for the day, carried on 5 miles straight up and 15 straight down into Montrose where they have Pizza Hut and a mini-golf course that doubles as a campsite. With luck, I'll get site 18.

So there you have it. I am a day's away from Telluride. I need it. My knees won't go anymore. I have been dreaming about this for a long, long time. I want to see Nikola Tesla's generator house. I want latte. I want mountain girl. I want long underwear. I want ride gondola. I want healthfood store to sell me pills that make my legs feel great, like when I was working in copyediting and they never touched the floor.

I think it's important to believe in something. I believe I'll have some more pizza.

Day 30, part 2

If you are a fan of the posts where I go through extensive suffering -- versus talking about how nice everyone is -- please enjoy my afternoon.

I am in Sargents sitting in an genuine teepee, just like the Indians before me. There are traditional Indian paintings, there is the standard, miniature flap door, and there is the traditional propane-fueled fire ring. I couldn't have celebrated my anniversary any better.

Well. After I washed my clothes I got to talking to a beautiful and charming Salidan girl with dreadlocks (note: Sal-EE-Dan). She started telling me about all the neat things in town, was polite enough to laugh at my jokes (and not my unfortunate outfit) and wondered if I mightn't rest in Salida and hit up the hotsprings. The next lines of dialogue would have been the smart thing to say --

G: I wouldn't know where to find it.
X: I could show you.
G: I haven't got a bathing costume.
X: That won't be necessary.
G: I love you.

What I ended up saying was that I'd always have Monarch pass scaring me subconciously and that it would ruin the bathing experience. I made to pedal off, she wished me luck with my trip, I wished her luck finishing her laundry.

I then went to one of those combination maternity wear/gun shops, went into a darkened alley, and proceeded to strangle myself with a 7-month dress. Cheating death, I went into a coffee shop and had the first latte of the trip. Note this conversation starter:

G: Good morning.
Y: Good morning.

From here the whole places makes like I've returned home from war a hero. Everyone's talking, everybody knows your name. If you have the option to work from home, move to Salida.

I biked up towards Monarch pass (elev. 1,312 feet). With my height at 6 feet flat, that makes the highest I'll climb this trip. Things are going swimmingly until it starts to rain.

I have forgotten rain as I have forgotten hills. The last time I was rained on I spent the night in a men's room. This time, I spent it riding up a winding road into thunder-and-you-know, around landslides, and then high enough for rain to become glorious hail.

I believe the bike helmet is nearly useless. You'd have to be pretty naïve to think a plastic hat would save you from a jackknifing manure spitter. If you've ever seen a smushed armadillo then you know how worthless a hard exoskeleton can be against a harder Mack truck.

That said, my helmet came in handy twice today. A bird made a nest in it yesterday night, and it made for a great hail shield. Hail is hard. Getting caught in it is like being stoned to death by Lilliputians. Death will happen, just be patient.

I climb, I freeze, I near the top, I near the lightning, trucks spray me half to death, I use what little ESP I have to do the same to them. I make it to the top. Bless Colorado, there's a gift shop.

I order a large hot cocoa and 10 dollars worth of fudge. I couldn't stop shivering. I had my arms wrapped around my chest and slowly tried to raise my body temperature. I wrote some texts. I stared blankly and talked to some (motor)bikers from Missouri ("God the water managed to get through my rain pants." Eat shit. I'm dying here. And I'm in shorts). The proprietor says another front's coming. Now is my chance.

I make for the bike, fumble with my gloves, put on my golf-inspired windbreaker, bite down on my teeth to stop them chattering, and point us downhill. Two massive trucks with massive fans are lumbering down the hill. I pass one to get down faster. The storm is on me. I'm blowing downhill at 40 miles an hour, everything is freezing, my eyes can't squint any smaller and still hail hits my precious eyeballs, and I can't move my hands. Sections of the road have become rivers. The whole thing was terrifying, zero fun (well...), and even when the air got warmer I refused to. I could not move my legs. Things began to flatten out and then the truck I passed took his sweet revenge by passing me with a millimeter to spare. I loudly wished him well.

I saw a small cafe. I couldn't move my knees so I rolled up to the wooden front and keeled over. I clicked out from the ground. I swung the saloon doors open and made straight for the hot coffee. I had four cups. I spilled half of the first one on the floor I was shaking so hard. The waitress took pity on me and brought me some chili. Another woman gave me a towel she'd warmed up. Some (motor)bikers told me to go into the gift shop, try on a fleece for an hour, and then return it. I passed on the latter.

I was in the Pacific half of the country. I had crossed the Continental Divide in a month. I was also, unknowingly, in the campground I planned on staying at.

G: I called earlier about pitching a tent.
Z: Oh you're the guy. That'll be blah blah blah.
G: Where is the lot?
Z: Over there by the teepees.
G: Teepees?
Z: Yes.
G: Sign me up for that chief.

I showered. For an hour. I got ready. I went back for more food. I met a nice man from Kansas City (Go Broncos!) who was there dirt bike riding. Last year, he rode his (motor)bike to the see the ocean for the very first time. Riding south on 1 on the California coast, if you look down you see the ocean. He was pleased. He dreamed of a trip to Alaska, but the guy he was planning it with hurt his shoulder skydiving. I do hope he makes it work somehow.

Minor annoyance. Bill O'Reilly was on the TV. Dan, the man from the paragraph above (Go Broncos!), likes him. He says it like it is apparently. I don't want to debate that here or ever. (Sometimes, SF, there isn't enough vomit in the world.) I did have the privilege of meeting Bill O'Reilly at an amazing concert and can say this empirically: he's boring. And sometimes that's worse than being wrong.

This fire is amazing.

Day 29, a small landmark

I watched my first movie since starting this trip. It was the new Batman. It was brilliant. I find movies to be one of the most moving, total entertainments. And this particular time I found it much more satisfying for numerous reasons, chiefly: I haven't seen images fly that quickly past my eyes; I haven't felt speed and kinetics like in the batmobile chases since my descent down Vesuvius; and come on, it's Batman.

I woke up with all my blood in my groin. I was sleeping like a banana on an imitation leather couch. It was donated. About three month's back, Gillian's home and ranch burned down in a fire that devastated much of Southeastern Colorado. The winds pushed the blaze at 60 miles an hour. It took Gillian a week to put out the fires in horse manure and on the railroad ties.

Gillian lost everything. She was stoic about the deal -- in the way you'd fully expect a Kiwi prison warden to be -- but she was upset about losing her photos. She also lost 10 years worth of logs and diaries she kept when sailing the world. So, miles from home, miles from the sea, in a donated house in a drought ridden town, wearing a donated highschool basketball jersey, Gillian helped us to goose eggs. Alicia, the fragile young girl helping around the property, mended a gosling's wing.

We rode out at 730 and made it to Pueblo by noon, despite stopping to chat with a nice bunch of cyclists from Portland with an ambitious travelplan. We had to make the post office before closing. We missed Crowley County Days, but we did see a fifty-odd classic cars drive past us on the way to the parade. Every single one waved.

The road to Pueblo was flat and uneventful. Well, I did run over a rattlesnake. Oh, and far away, blue with distance, the Rockies pricked up in the sky until they surrounded us. I am leaving flatness behind.

Pueblo is nice enough. A lot of cyclists found it a little dicey and unfriendly, but bear this in mind: any city of size is going to look bad next to the small mountain town; any city is going to seem spooky if you have to ride through the whole thing; and come on, they have a movie theater.

They also have good Mexican. We went to a nice restaurant next to a bike shop. I tried to eat a 9 pound burrito in a competition with the chef. It was called El Burrito Loco. Once I was served, I was not allowed to leave my seat until I cleaned my plate or quit. I left a loser. I don't care to see the man who can eat a 9 pound burrito.

A nap was in good order. I've been feeling lousy from the fast cycling, the long days, and the altitude. I'm feeling a bit of burnout, but I should make it to Telluride before I crash. The 5 pounds of burrito I ate did not help one iota.

I slept until 6 and then it was off to the health food store on my way to the cinema. The walls were lined with vitamins, granola bars, gluten-free shoes, head massagers, and kombucha. The women who worked there were beautiful, smiling sextagenarians who darted back and forth to help me get one of everything and anything that would make me feel better. They all had long, flowing hair that was lined with grey. They were healthy colored. It was like being helped by Joan Baez, Emmylou Harris, and Joni Mitchell if they all happened to be your mother and were wildly concerned with your health. Note: Not a bad idea for a tremendously unpopular sitcom.

I'm in my motel room. As I click, I am fighting the burrito with wonderful health food. I am sleeping in. I am navigating without maps until Salida, but I'm not worried. I'll just point my bike towards those big green mountains.

Day 28, Welcome to Colorful Colorado, please enjoy the rodeo

Here is a slight disclaimer: I already love Colorado. I have loved it since I was a boy. I love the Rockies. I love the people and their athletic friendliness. I love the air. I love the Broncos. I love the milk. I love everything you can do here. I love that I have already met someone who has made the long flight to my hometown. I even loved John Denver when he guested on The Muppet Show.

I love it and I've looked forward to it and I got into it at about 8 this morning.

Our last night in Kansas was quite eventful. I had two bean burritos and mushrooms at a restaurant that also sold videos and bric-a-brac. Get Disney's First Kid starring Sinbad and a Hommel figurine for 5 bucks with a free side of curly fries. We ate with efficient joy, set up tent, and brushed teeth so that we could pass out by 8. We did this because we planned on waking up at 3 and making the long trip to Ordway without wind or sun.

Five minutes into sleep and a blinding light shines right into my face. I'm convinced it's either a group of people come to kill me or the sheriff come to write me a ticket for failing to yield fully at the 4-way. It is neither. It is the lights to the tennis court and, while I closed my eyes as tightly as I could, I did manage to make out that it was a very important match between two teenage girls who were both terrified of the ball. I have never heard such screaming.

I woke up again to my tent slowly suffocating me. The wind had picked up so fiercely that the side wall had wrapped itself around my face and blown up my nostrils. This was followed by a loud crash. Connor's bike had been blown into the air and onto the ground. He rushed to right it while I held his tent down.

My alarm went off just as I got to sleep. I had stayed up praying we wouldn't be struck by lightning. The storm worsened. The heat lightning had gone, but the wind picked up and was blowing against us. Connor's tent was completely smushed in on him. If we were to head out, we'd have to bike as hard as we could just to be blown backwards into Missouri. We made a tough executive decision: we went back to sleep.

We were back up at 530 and got ready to go. The wind might be up, but the storm had put hundreds of wonderful clouds in the air. I was even a little bit cold. We pushed on.

Then the best thing happened. We couldn't feel the wind. It was behind us and it stayed behind us as it pushed us across the rest of Kansas and 100 miles into Colorado. As I said in the first paragraph, I just love Colorado.

We ate lunch in Eads and were joined by a couple of Dubliners. These two got together over a couple of beers and drew up a map of places they wanted to see in the states using Google maps. Then they bought a road atlas and set about biking -- up to Yellowstone from San Francisco, back down to Vegas, over to the Rockies via Arizona, the desert at its hottest, and an Indian reservation.

They rode until they were tired and then they slept on the shoulder. They ate with real hunger at lunch. They survived the desert and coming upon town after town that existed on the maps but had either burned down or been abandoned. They had managed to see most of what they'd wanted to and they were only halfways.

I was very impressed. They weren't even sunburnt.

We arrived in Ordway at 6, had a decent meal, I lost a challenge to see if I could eat 3 pieces of bread in a minute (impossible), and we had a strange conversation with a curved-over man in camouflage about rattlesnakes. We went to Gillian's house and then the county rodeo.

Gillian is a woman from New Zealand who is kind enough to let cyclists into her home despite her being at work all day in the penitentiary. She has a hurt baby goose in her bathtub. She also has Alicia, who is working around the place in the mornings so she can live in sleepy, lovely Ordway. I have yet to meet Gillian, but I have spoken to her on the telephone.

The rodeo was tremendous. We walked from the dirt field in back of Gillian's to the floodlights and the music. We got there in time for the pairs cow lasso thingy, which was giving every rider trouble, and we stayed as the sun and lightning disappeared and the bull riding began.

One bull (KO) was not having it. He kicked and kicked in the stocks. Oddly, he was riden the longest. Heat -- what you could describe as a stretch-bull -- seemed friendly enough until he bucked his rider into the ground and stood on the boy's ribs. The boy, who had prayed to Jesus just moments before, was not that phased by being trampled. He was much more upset at going out so early. He had a nice pink shirt, sequined chaps, a new haircut (his neck tan gave him away), and he walked with all the unearned confidence young men often pretend to. He kept himself twice as busy after his loss, which helped keep his eyes down and away from the crowd.