It was 2am. The thermometer said it was 64 degrees. I shivered my way under another blanket on the couch.

We didn’t prepare for cold.

Mom, we’re going to die of hypothermia, I said in the morning.

She smiled and handed me a stack of her polar fleece clothes – enough for the two of us.

With the gear in the car we left the house, by golly, at 8.

We stopped at Starbucks and picked up Mom’s friend Val who wanted to see us off. Starbucks didn’t even have yogurt-granola-fruit cups, so I ordered my coffee and gave Jennie the car keys and went to the grocery store. Except they discontinued their yogurt-granola-fruit cups too.

Why doesn’t anybody have any yogurt-granola-fruit-cups – what’s the matter with you.

Jennie and Mom and Val were all camped out on the hood of the car with their coffees because Jennie forgot she had the keys in her pocket. And then we were finally on the road – driving to the beginning.

Three days of cycling in the desert. And three days to feel all the feelings.

Empty and Overflowing and Full-of-Longing and Inspiration and Heartache and Happiness all braided together.

The starting point was a broken down old two story house with a few sad old windows intact. Dusty and faded green and a few skateboarding stickers on the front window. The sign announcing ‘Wabuska’, set up by the railroad tracks. We dragged our bikes over there and posed, full of freshness and idealism while Mom took photos.

Wait, now we have to take one with Jennie’s phone, she says.

Wait, now with Val’s.

Wait…

Mom and Val took off in the car, waving and smiling, and we poked around the falling-down-outbuildings and the ancient baby blue swimming pool. Steps leading down to a black, murky puddle. An old mop – its dry stringy hair disintegrating all over the place. A threadbare, once-loved stuffed teddy bear. The old crooked speed boat nearby filled with sand and the tumbleweeds Mom threw in there because it was funny.

There used to be life here.

I don’t know how these will attach, Jennie said, they’re for a motorcycle. We fixed and adjusted the panniers until they sort of fit on her bicycle – their sides bulging out.

We tottered around for a while, stopping often to adjust this and that to balance our loads.

Rumble strips covered most of the side of the road. Big Rigs blasting by at a hundred and fifty thousand miles an hour, the wind in their wake blowing us nearly off the tiny strip of asphalt next to the dirt we claimed as our own.

We veered left and took a back road peppered with the kinds of trucks you really only see on ranches and farms. The small two-wheel-drive ones that are twenty years old and only come in white or green or orange. Stick shifts with cracked dashboards and raggedy striped cloth seats that smell like relaxed summer sand. They’ve never gone over thirty-five miles an hour or had the inside cleaned.

We rode past a wildlife refuge – black birds with bright yellow heads, leggy herons, and huge crows filled the fields and the skies. We rode side by side until we came to a little house with no one home.

There were trees out front. Shade.

We sat right down in the dirt and made some sandwiches. Hummus and sweet pepper and avocado on gluten-free bread. California-Style.

Then it was up, up, up to the top of the hill.

This is just how I pictured the desert, Jennie says, hot and barren and sweaty and lots of beer cans. She kicked one and then pointed at a Sutter Homes single serving plastic Zinfandel. That seems a little high class for around here, she says.

Time to go up some more, said the road. But our loads were still tottering and we still had a tiny slip of asphalt so the downhill wasn’t as zippy as we wanted it to be.

A sketchy desert gas station, sunburned and desolate. Its windows plastered with cigarette and beer signs so faded you could barely read them. Jennie’s blue slushy – sugary and cold enough to give her a headache. Customers setting off fireworks in the parking lot. Boom. Boom. Boom. The girls squealed and the guys ho-ho-ho’d and we thought people should set them off only at night, or what was the point anyway.

Rock shops after rock shops. Resourceful desert folks.

Hawks swooping through abandoned canyons. Old roads on our right, their concrete destroyed by decades of mother nature kicking them apart. Only the yellow paint still clinging to the ground.

Salt caked itself on my face. By the crease of my eyes. On my temples. Under my chin.

Jennie’s tire had a hole. I pulled up to her back tire and pumped it up. Every two miles. Every mile. Until the tube gave up. We stopped for a long time, breaking through the rust on her bike to get the wheel off. Prying the raggedy tire off the rim. Putting it all back together again. Realizing our destination was only ¼ mile away.

We pushed our bikes through the deep gravel to Walker Lake. Laid out our bivy sacks and set up a kitchen on the rocks. We wondered if all the little people in their RV’s were watching us, but we changed into our jammies anyway. Right there under the purple evening sky.

We giggled away and our voices carried over the lake. Jennie turned her phone into a hot spot and we watched part of a movie on my kindle in the middle of nothing.

And then it was the vast desert sky. With the tiniest of tiny stars staring down at us.

And they wrapped around me and kissed my salty cheeks and told me they were proud of me.

48.15 miles

Categories: Life

2 Comments

Karen · June 10, 2018 at 9:00 am

You are always such an amazing storyteller

    jodie · June 10, 2018 at 10:45 am

    Thank you Karen! What a nice compliment!

Comments are closed.

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