Just a quick note before i descend into the Canyon. Rode all the way from Flagstaff in one day, 80 miles, kind of crazy considering i'm heading straight into a 3 day hike in the blazing inner canyon. But biking and hiking muscles are slightly different, and at any rate I'm well acclimated to both heat and altitude.
The ride here had several miles of over 8,000 foot elev. the highest stretch of the trip.
Interesting to watch a Grand Canyon sunset at a populated spot like Bright Angel Lodge, or for that matter to just observe the touristic masses here anytime. Responses to the scenery range from silent awe, people who seem to be genuinely moved by the place and who perhaps comrehend the sheer INcomrehensible immensity and complexity of it, to a majority (I think) who are here because its one of those places you go, and they may be more or less impressed but they could just as well be looking at Hoover Dam or the Epcot Dome.
Then i think of the Havasupai guy the other day, when he showed me the picture of Havasupai Falls (one of the most beautiful anywhere, I'm told) I asked him if he swam in the pool, he just smiled and said "nah, leave it for the visitors. You live there you're just used to it."
And to think i thought i could bike all the way to Arizona and spend only one day at the Grand Canyon!
My plan was simple. Take the shuttle from Flagstaff to the Canyon (bike locked up back at the hostel), do a nice little hike along the rim, shuttle back to Flagstaff. Well, so far so good, i hiked around and marveled all day and now i'm on the bus back to Flag. But the Grand Canyon, oh my. I was thoroughly seduced (I've been here twice before thus know the danger for an impressionable young man,) by the time the day was over I had paid a visit to the backcountry information office and secured campsite permits for a 3 day, 2 night excursion below the rim, starting Saturday. This means tomorrow i will be biking from Flagstaff to the Canyon (80 miles), camping at or near the Park,(and yes, i discovered they do have hiker-biker sites) then embarking on my hike the next morning. Just need to lock my bike up somewhere safe. I'll be hiking down the Hermit Trail (which i walked a little ways down today, cementing my seduction) to Monument Camp, next day along the Tonto trail (way down in there) to Indian Gardens campsite, then Monday back out. If time, will descend to the river at Granite Rapids.Luckily my digital camera is finally back from Warranty service, i had it mailed to Flagstaff general delivery (thanks Kathy.)
Once i leave Grand Canyon, my route has changed from original conception. Rather than bike to Durango and store bike there, will head north into Utah and then across Nevada (Highway 50) to Reno, and store bike and trailer in the garage of my friend Cindy (Hi Cindy.) I realized a few days ago that it would be madness to attempt the entire stretch across Utah and Nevada in August (after completing some manner of long bacpacking trip) in time to get to Burning Man. It will be hard enough as it is, but this way i'll have an extra week or so to do it. With luck I'll get thru Portland in time for at least some of mini-Bike Summer before heading to Seattle for Matt and Jeni's wedding (at which I am a groomsman.)
Very interesting ride on the shuttle bus from Flagstaff this morning. This Havasupai Indian guy sits down next to me, he seemed slightly drunk, but what ensued was the most interesting 90 minutes of conversation I've had in awhile. After a couple minutes of talking, he said "i decided to sit next to you 'cause I could tell you're heart is good. I knew you would listen. No one listens to an Indian," which immeditely made me think of Chief Bromden in "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest," which i just finished reading for the first time. "They think we're just mumbling drunks."
Then, without my having yet told him anything about myself, he said "I can tell you're a wanderer and a wonderer. You think. You know what you need to do instead? Know. Just know instead of think. Know is with your heart. And patience. Have patience. Took me since i was 16 till 40 to figure that out." (He is 43.)
Mind you he sounded half drunk as he said all this, and periodically he would yell in Havasupai across several rows to his buddy. They grew up in Supai village, which is inside the Canyon and not accessible by vehicle. He repeatedly showed me a picture of Havasupai Falls, pounding it with his finger and saying "this is where i grew up" then pointing out the window "this is my home," every now and then would break into singing, alternating between Country lyrics and Indian "Pow-Wow" type songs. By the time the ride was over he had taught me several words in the Havasupai language (which i have already forgotten) and gave me a peice of red pigment stone which if i use it carefully he said will last for years.
A bit more on New Mexico while I'm here.
Lowest per-capita income of the 50 states, even below Misissippi.
Interesting regional cuisine. Although the population is 75% or more Hispanic in much of the state, you almost never see cuisine referred to as "Mexican." What we would call Mexican food is called instead New Mexican, and it is somewhat different than you might be used to. For example you will rarely ever get a side of Spanish rice, rather they serve pocitas, which is little diced and pan-fried potatoes. and instead of a plate of corn tortillas with the entree you will more likely get a plate or basket of small fry-breads, which you would tear open and put honey on. And a common main dish here is Carne Adovada, pork with a red chile sauce, commonly heaped on top of a cheese enchilada.
Thanks to Perry and Linda for this info, and dinner.
On the other hand, due to the extremely low Asian population (something like one percent of the total) there is hardly any of the Asian food (whether Thai, Chinese, East Indian, or any other) that is so ubiquitous on the west coast. And of course no seafood to speak of. Not much vegetarian either, and vegan is nonexistent. But I'm told the steaks here are unusually good because most of the cattle are free-range.
Albuquerque has the biggest and most unusual "fast-food" restaurant i've ever seen, the Frontier Restaurant near the University on Central Avenue. It has numerous rooms taking up most of a block (sort of a Powell's of fast food), artwork bedecking all the walls, and in addition to the usual burgers, fries, and shakes, has a full menu of seemingly good quality New Mexican food. I just sort of stumbled into the place but it appeared to be a genuine local institution, crowded even on Memorial Day.
Oh, i finally saw the Matrix Reloaded yesterday. For what its worth, here's my brief synopsis: As mechanical octopi drill their way to Zion, the last human city deep underground, Morpheus and the crew return and Morpheus, speaking as ever in humorless koans, kicks off a bacchanalian rave in which all 250,000 residents dance like mad pagans, (while Neo and Trinity retire to a private alcove to steam things up.)
It appears, in fact, that the entire free human population of this future earth are some variation of hippie/raver/goth/burning-man attendee. And everyone, whether human or machine-agent, wears dark sunglasses despite the fact that the sun never shines.
thereafter the action shifts to a continuous switching back and forth between over-over the top (double, maybe even triple over) Kung-fu battles with a vast population of Agent Smiths (and don't ask me for a coherent explanation of how he survived or what exactly his current metaphysical status is), and weighty philosphical pronouncements that will leave you either awed or bewildered in their invention, culminating in an
encounter betwwen Neo and the white-bearded Godhead of the machine world.
Don't take this to mean i didn't enjoy it. I'll probably even see it again.
Now, why don't they spell it like that?
Not a bad town really. One of those places i've never been before but have had a mild curiosity about for a long time, in my idle theoretical search for the ideal place to live (Not that i'm really doing that on this trip.)
Old route 66, most of it is Interstate now but on the old Main drags through Flagstaff and Gallup and Albuquerque it is like a time machine into a previous epoch, not only architecturally but economicaly with ancient motels (most totally unrefurbished) with rates like 17.95 per night.)
Albuquerque, like the rest of New Mexico, used to be part of old Mexico and colonial Spain. The old town, west of the 20th century Anglo downtown is a genuine old Spanish colonial adobe town square dating back over 200 years. Now of course they sell "southwest art" to tourists but the region as a whole is strongly Mexican/Latino and Indian/Native American.(As for which of the two terms is more appropriate, well, i don't know. Usually they call themselves Indians.) The Native Americn presence and population in the southwest is greater than probably any other area of the country. The Navajo Nation really is a nation unto itself, and the Hopi and other mesa-dewlling tribes seem to be an important part of the cultural self image of the region. By that i mean you can't turn around without seeing some kind of motif or iconography (like the New Mexico flag itself) derived from Zuni graphics, Hopi pottery, or the pictographs carved by the ancestors of the current tribes. These things, along with dream-catchers and Navajo silver jewelry, appear to me to play a very important role in the ongoing historical relationship between "white" Euro civilization and the people and cultures of Native America. For whites there is still a huge unresolved issue with the way the continent was settled and the way its original inhabitants were treated, an understanding that there was and still is something there very different and valuable, but an ongoing misperception of just who Indians are and what their reality is, and an unwillingness to do anything really substantive to address the fantastically unjust relationship between the cultures. But there is nevertheless an appreciation of what little we do know, and a yearning for a deeper understanding and connection, and this manifests in a love for the visual motifs and works of craft. I know i was glad last summer to buy a little turtle carved from red Minnesota Pipestone. So far havn't bought anything from Indian craftspeople this trip, but you come across them and their wares in almost every town and roadside. This is obviously an important part of the Indian-Country economy, and serves as an instrument of cultural memory and cohesion too. Yes, the crafts are made for and sold to tourists, but they are genuine too. To deny that would be an insult to the people who make them.
Anyway, back to Albuquerque. I was amused that the elevated freeway ramps and bridges are painted to look like beige-pink adobe. And probably a majority of the houses in the older part of town where my friend William lives are "southwest" styled, block after block of little adobe-styled 1920's bungalows and apartments.
William lives around the corner from his sister Linda and her husband Perry, Linda is an interior decorator and their house is an ongoing project of art, design, and decoration, quite something to see. I asked if she had been to Hearst Castle since it reminded me of a bungalow-sized version of that, and she showed me the bathroom and shower she did in a beautiful mosaic based on Hearst's indoor Roman-styled pool.
I love camping but its been nice to sit inside and watch some movies on DVD. "Donnie Darko" was very good and unusual, and i watched "Oh Brother, Where Art Thou" for about the fith time. It is one of those movies that i don't get tired of and in fact i enjoy more each time i see it.
The climb up from Oak Creek Canyon to the top of the Mogollon Rim and then Flagstaff (elev. 6905 ft.) was hard but not overwhelming. The hardest part was looking up at all those switchbacks at the head of the canyon way above me, but on stretches like that you just take it yard by yard and next thing you know you're there. Plus it was early morning and overcast too.
Being here brings back for me what I love so much about the southwest, the geology. All those elegantly named layers of sandstone, limestone, shale: Toroweap, Kaibab, Shivwits, etc. The geologic story here is somewhat comprehensible for a layperson, compared to say the North Cascades. The expanses of time involved are still incomprehensible, which makes it all the more awesome.
I feel sorry for Biblical literalists who have to believe that it was all put together 6,000 years ago, with a final rearranging by Noah's Flood. As if the creator and sustainer of all existence was incapable of working on a timescale of billions of years, or created the world as it is just so it could be easily understood by the limited intellects of a particular race of hairless monkeys. (Not that I don't believe there is an intent to existence, including us and our lives, I just find it more satisfying to be confronted by an awesome mystery at the core of it.)
Flagstaff I am enjoying a lot so far. Physically it may be no nicer than Sedona, but it doesn't have the same pretensions. It is a college town, and the old downtown area is a refreshing cultural oasis after "too long in the wasteland." And there are pine trees all around and the San Francisco Peaks rising to 12,000 feet just north of town.
I bought two new tires at Absolute Bikes, they were very helpful so I'll give them a plug. I had no flats the entire trip until just a few days ago I got 3 in a row. Both tires were pretty much worn out so things were starting to get thru to the tubes that would not have before. I had one spare so put that on and crossed my fingers till I got here.
Flagstaff seems to have a very active bike culture, last night at the old theater downtown they were showing a film about Critical Mass, I was planning to go but ended up socializing with people at the Hostel. Since it is the last Friday I asked around if they have Critical Mass here and was told sometimes, if someone puts up a flyer for it, but last time it was completely overwhelmed by police who ticketed everyone simply for being on the street.
There are two hostels right downtown within a block of each other, they are both old converted motels from the days of route 66. Lots and lots of interesting international visitors (since this is the gateway to the Grand Canyon) and no pesky curfews or anything. Not good if you like peace and quiet, but that's what earplugs are for. You need them anyway because of the freight trains that go by every 10 minutes all night and day.
I'm about to embark on Greyhound for Albuquerque for a couple days. My bike and trailer will be locked up here at the hostel. It will probably feel strange to travel in several hours what would take me a week on bike.
...on a sweltering day in the red rock country. Ah yes, the heat is way above average but I've entered the glory realm of Arizona's Mogollon Rim red rock canyons. I always think of the red sandstone cliffs and canyons being primarily a Utah thing but north central Arizona is also replete with them. Sedona, you know? Its the first time I've been to Sedona and I'll say this: the landscape is truly magnificent but the town... reminds me of a new-age version of Gatlinburg or another of those hideous towns at the edge of a national park. Only here its as if the town is right smack in the MIDDLE of the park. That's because unfortunately there is no national park, perhaps it was overlooked back in the day because of the nearness to the Grand Canyon.
Actually I have no problem with a town surrounded by magnificent cliffs and mountains, its just that Sedona has become so comically overdone. They think they are aesthetically sensitive, thus the McDonalds has the world's only teal, rather than Golden, arches. I'm not kidding. And you never saw so many versions of that Kokopelli flute-pictograph guy. I tell you, he sells everything from t-shirts to helicopter rides. Oh yes, you can get your sightseeing rides over the cliffs and spires, right over the major vortices in fact, though you have to be on the ground to get their real benefit.
Vortices (vortexes?) you say? Ah, yes. Sometime back in the early 1980's a woman (can't remember the name, overheard a tour guide at Cathedral Rock mention it) discovered through channeled information that the Sedona area has several earth-energy vortices, similar to those supposedly found at Machu Pichu and Stonehenge and elsewhere, and connected to them along ley-lines in the earth. Well, who knows? I'm about as open-minded as you can get, so I'm not going to dismiss the notion without further evidence and argumentation one way or the other.
But boy did the vortex thing sure kick start the local economy! I talked to this older gentleman, a local out for a daytrip near my campsite this afternoon, and in his opinion Sedona used to be an ordinary little town with working people and some retirees, and then in his words "the yuppies came in and ruined it." Well, I can see what he means when a place with beauty to rival Yosemite gets blanketed with condos, trophy homes, and trolley-tours to the Vortex sites. But what do you expect? The beauty alone would have caused a land rush these last 20 years. The new-age angle just sort of puts it over the top. I mean it really is a genuine industry here, fully capitalized upon at every turn. Roads clogged, tourists swarming through boutiques, everywhere you turn vortex-this, psychic-that. The Chevron food-mart had new-age chatchkes and a book about vortexes by the register so I asked the cashier if he believed in them. Emphatically yes, and the woman behind me in line concurred almost vehemently before she drove away in her Mercedes. People, I'm not making this stuff up.
But for all that, the scenery is still king and most of the best of it is National Forest with dozens of hiking trails. I managed to do 3 hikes totaling 12 miles today, along with 24 bike miles. First was Bell Rock, a vortex, and around Couthouse Butte. Then up Cathedral Rock (another major vortex, not sure if I felt anything other than exhilaration at the views), a steep scramble to an awe inspiring perch where, wouldn't you know it, one guy was playing new-agey notes on a wooden flute and another was shaking a rattle. I love music making, its one of my passions, but this to me was an annoying cliché. I wanted the silence of the cliffs and the wind.
After rolling thru the sun-baking town I set up camp early (1:00 PM) at a campsite in Oak Creek Canyon and was almost overjoyed to find a cool deep swimming hole in the stream. Oh what I would give to have that every day! And Pines overhead, rich vanilla scent of the Ponderosa bark in the warm afternoon air. Ah, glory.
Best for last was the hike 3.5 miles up the West Fork Oak Creek, a narrow canyon of towering colored walls. At trails end I waded a ways further up the narrows, red cliffs rising beside me and minnows darting at my feet.
Next up is the 2,000 foot switch backing climb up highway 89 to the top of the rim and Flagstaff. At Flagstaff I'm taking a side-trip on the bus to Albuquerque for a couple days to visit my friend William York, (the best songwriter the world has pretty much never heard of.) Original plan was to bike thru Albuquerque but plans change.
Okay, so they're only Junipers, but they are the first regular tree cover of any kind since... a long long time ago. I'm camped tonight in the shade of one on a forest service road near I-17 south of Sedona, and believe me, it beats a saltbush.
As I left Arcosanti this morning I stopped into a food mart at Cordes Junction for a bottle of Gatorade and glanced at the front page of the Arizona Republic (Arizona's paper of record.) It was a sad dose of the fallen reality we live in, and coincidentally a perfect example of what the Arcosantians (and so many others) are striving to transcend. Banner headline: "Massive Development", the now-tiny hamlet of Buckeye voted to allow a master use development that would eventually have 240,000 residents, the first phase alone is several thousand single family dwellings to house 40,000. Good God! Do that many people really want to live in a new sprawling desert subdivision, driving hither and yon for everything right down to a quart of milk or a new game cartridge to distract themselves from the hell they live in?
Then across the top of the front page, two bold-face teasers for features inside: "Beat the Traffic," (a how-to feature,) and "Fast Food for a Trim Waistline." Something tells me they didn't suggest living in town and riding your bike. It really struck as an all too typical example of how the media not only report our culture, but celebrate its most dysfunctional aspects and offer "solutions" that are just further iterations of the problems.
Just north of the town of Camp Verde I visited a site which might be considered a long precursor to Arcosanti, "Montezuma's Castle", a multi leveled cliff dwelling (no connection at all to Montezuma or the Aztecs) inhabited for several hundred years ending in the 13th century. Obviously it was a very successful community for a long time, then like the rest of the so-called "Anasazi" towns (no one knows what they really called themselves) it was abandoned. No one knows exactly why, but their descendents are probably the Hopi in their mesa-top villages.
The weather is 10 to 15 degrees hotter than normal for this time of year here, wouldn't you know. I specifically remember riding in the numbing blinding rain back in Oregon and No. Cal, saying to myself "remember this fondly when you're in the desert." I do, I do. The thing that really amazes me is how many flying, buzzing insects (including mosquitoes) there are in the desert.
Well, I'm not sure where even to begin in talking about Arcosanti. Take the dirt road 2 miles from I-17 exit 262, Cordes Junction. It is the brainchild of visionary Italian architect Paolo Soleri. It is a perpetual work in progress, an experiment and lab for exploring his idea of Arcology (coined from the words architecture and ecology,) in which an entire city would be condensed into one organic multi-layered structure. Although I am by nature skeptical of projects centered around the singular notions of ego-star supposed geniuses, after 2 days of poking around, talking, and reading here, I am quite prepared to acknowledge that Soleri is a true genius and that his ideas and philosophy (and he really is a bona fide philosopher) are very important contributions to the vital problem of living sustainably in the world.
He was born in 1919, worked for a time under Frank Lloyd Wright, settled permanently in Arizona in the 1950's. His early work was similar to other modernist monumentalists of the time, designs for enormous futuristic cities with the uses segregated, everything crisp and rational. Then an insight came to him, and around the same time (1955) he discovered and was influenced by the writings of evolutionary philosopher Pierre Tielhard de Chardin, (who among other things invented the concept of the noosphere.) Soleri's insight was that rather than spreading like a blight across the wide landscape, a city could be miniaturized into one integral, complex but vital 3 dimensional unit, in which for example, several thousand people could live on several acres, completely free of automobiles, with large semi-interior spaces, numerous openings to nature, and a fraction of the total resource usage and waste of a typical American city. Soleri thus departed radically from the usual ways of thinking in terms of individual buildings. He saw far earlier than most people that the logical conclusion of pursuing the American dream of a house in a neighborhood and a car to get everywhere would be a virtual doomsday of sprawl and blight. Whether or not his designs are to your taste, they function as the philosophical antithesis of sprawl and car-addiction. They are more than buildings, rather the entire city compacted and 3-dimensionalized into an arcology. So since 1970 he's been trying, despite almost total indifference (until the last couple of years) from the mainstream of architecture and planning, to build an agrology on several acres of 860 he purchased here. The only funding he has ever gotten is from sales of his Soleri bronze cast wind-bells and tuition for the 5 week workshops in which students essentially pay to help build the place.
The people here freely acknowledge that Arcosanti will never be finished, any more than any city is ever finished, but it is if nothing else a very interesting laboratory for trying a compelling idea that, if adopted and invested in elsewhere, could go a long way toward saving us from ourselves. It might all seem airy and idealistic, and Arcosanti itself like something from science fiction (all curving lines of cast concrete, stairs and walkways snaking up and down, hidden niches and dwelling spaces, a performance bowl with an airy canopy roof and shallow water pool around the stage) but it has the power of an idea. You can't underestimate that. The way we currently live (car addicted 1-story sprawl) was not inevitable and is obviously reaching the end of its usefulness. New ideas based on ancient tried and true principles (compactness, proximity to services, closeness to nature) will resonate with people sick to death of being stuck in traffic.
I've also spent the last day reading a really excellent book on this general topic, and I have to rigorously recommend it: "Ecocities: Building Cities in Balance With Nature" by Richard Register. He invented the term "ecocity" and this book is an exciting collection of ideas and solutions. I don't usually like to recommend particular books to a wide audience, but I have to display my geekdom for this topic and do so here. The author's basic premise is that the fundamental environmental issue is land use and urban/architectural design, and that all the other issues (resource use/abuse, pollution, loss of countryside and species, etc.) flow from that. He believes that "when built and functioning well, the city can be a tool for bringing culture into harmony with nature," not just a collection of buildings but "a living system in which we reside,": constructed by us but, like any organism, integral with the world. And with not just a neutral impact but a new and higher harmony and diversity. Sounds idealistic I know, but it is refreshing to think in optimistic solution-oriented terms. I know for sure I'd much rather live in a fully realized ecocity than any suburb in existence. People will more and more realize the prevalence of that hunger, and the city as we know it will be radically rebuilt.
Next stop after here is Sedona, where I expect lots of idealism, but of a much more individualistic, trophy-home-esque variety, however much couched in New Age platitudes. But I guess I shouldn't pre-judge.
Because why in the world would I want to slog thru the biggest mess of sprawl this side of LA? From Wickenburg I rode route 74 just north of Phoenix (with just one brief glimpse of downtown towers in the far distance) to I-17, then north with a hot southerly tailwind past Black Canyon City to an informal campsite at the edge of Agua Fria National Monument. I wish I knew where to find the Agua Fria.
I must mention Joyce, the chamber of commerce lady in Black Canyon City. She was the friendliest and most helpful one I've encountered. (I've found the best way to find out where things like grocery stores and cheap motels are is to stop in at the chambers of commerce. They are usually happy to answer any questions.) Anyway, Joyce not only did that but gave me food, let me fill my bottles from the water cooler, and told me about how she fled Utah 30 years ago with her 7 kids.
After that the route climbed up a long steep grade to over 3,000 feet, only another 4,000 feet up to Flagstaff. The good news is that I have left behind the low Sonoran desert. I love the Sagauros and everything but it is unfit for human habitation in the warm months.
Next stop is Arcosanti, about which I will probably write more. I'd never heard of it until my friend Sung told me I should check it out, it is some kind of visionary experiment in architecture and planning conceived by Italian architect Paolo Saleri. I will be touring it and spending the night there.
As in Snoopy's brother. That's where I am now. Saguaro cactus, blast furnace heat, barren mesas and ridges framed by cholla, the desert as we all imagine it. Southern Arizona is where you find it. I reached the southernmost point of this trek yesterday, a hamlet called Hope at the junction of highways 72 and 60. Snowbird country, the towns (if you could call them that) were loose collections of buildings and usually one or two RV parks, each claiming to be the ideal winter retreat but looking rather forlorn as the season is rapidly changing and the behemoths are rumbling back north again to clog the roads and campgrounds of Yellowstone, Glacier, and the Oregon coast.
Several times today a particular kind of truck would pass me that smelled so bad I can't even describe it, like rotting meat and shit all together. I don't know what exactly they were carrying but it literally smelled like death. Reminded me of when I lived on the 11th floor of a building overlooking I-5 in Seattle and every now and then as I looked down there would be an open-topped truck-trailer filled with bones, not just bones but eviscerated livestock skeletons. The first time I saw this it blew my mind, how many times would you see one of these trucks going by at street level and have no idea of its grisly cargo, or of the strange trade in slaughtered remains headed for some final production into pet food or garden fertilizer or something. The trucks today reminded me of those death lorries. Sort of the flip side of pedaling past all those placid doe eyed cattle the whole trip.
Interesting thing, of about a half dozen tiny towns I've been thru in the last couple days (Bouse, Salome ("Where She Danced" said the town sign,) Wenden, Aguila, etc) it seemed as though each one was either all anglo or all Mexican, as if there is a (deliberate?) civic segregation in rural Arizona. I remember the sun-leathered anglo woman in Parker who told me "Now I know this sounds bad to say but... I don't recommend you stay in Wenden, its all poor Mexicans you know," which sort of piqued my curiosity about the place, turns out it was just a little cantaloupe growing town with a lot of migrant workers sitting around waiting for work, and granted the people at the little grocery didn't even speak English, but you know what? I know how to say "queiro un snickers bar, por favour." There's obviously a lot of fear out there of the growing Hispanization of American culture, but guess what, we are now a fully bilingual nation. The border has grown to encompass the whole of el Norte, and there's no going back. Quite soon I predict that many public schools will teach in Spanish as a first language and will have to deal with the problem of children who speak only English. Now granted, there are cultural differences, but for me it comes across more like the difference between me and anglo rednecks: most of the Mexicans I encounter on a daily basis drive pickups, wear seed caps or cowboy hats, and look at me like I'm a lunatic. A lot of them also ride bicycles along rural roads and in small towns, not as a lifestyle choice but simply as cheep wheels, and they too look at me like I'm nuts, because why would anyone *choose* to bike with a loaded trailer simply for the fun of it? Not to ramble too long, but brings to mind these two homeless guys camped next to me back at Ventura, they reminded me for all the world of the pair in "Of Mice and Men" except on bicycles and buzzed on "Natural Light" beers. They had purchased 50 dollar used rental bikes with money from food stamps they sold to a guy outside the Santa Monica welfare office, and they were quite sincerely planning to bike all the way up the coast then head to Alaska to homestead in the bush. They were totally serious and I didn't have the heart to tell them that that Alaska homesteading thing is pretty much of a legend. They said their ride was for Freedom, in a time in which there is less and less of it. I'll drink to that.
Or, "Bicycling on Mars." I took a picture of the sign at the east edge of Twenty Nine Palms. It says "No Services Next 100 Miles." It wasn't lying. I've been on some empty stretches of road before, the Alaska Highway, several ways across Nevada, eastern Montana, etc. But this stretch of the Mohave/Colorado takes the prize. And it's not just that I'm on a bike, I challenge you to find 100 road miles anywhere where there isn't even so much as a 1 pump gas station. And I chose to bike this route?? Never fear, I started with 10 quarts of water and made 70 miles across it before stopping for the night in the shade of a spiny Tamarisk in a sandy wash (hoping for no rain.) And let me tell you, there is something indescribable about this landscape. The bony granite ridges would look right at home in the high mountains somewhere, they just happen to be out here in the dryness, and the sheer and total emptiness is amazing. You get used to at least a house here and there, pastures, whatever. but once you get past the last 1 room shack-house east of 29 Palms (there's a bunch of them, most very dilapidated, I think perhaps people build them that size because they are just under the square-footage for which you would need a building permit) you enter a literal wilderness of pure landscape. Landscape as landscape, no additions or embellishments, just geology and terrestrial geometry as far as the eye can see.
I'm now in Arizona (yay!) in the little town of Parker next to the Colorado River. Hottest part of the entire country. Tomorrow is supposed to be 101 degrees, which is nothing compared to July and August here. Nevertheless afternoons are almost unrideable, my plan is to start early and do about 50 miles by midday then lie low in the shade (if I can find some) the rest of the day. Do that till I get to the high country of central Arizona.
The way these towns are built is interesting. The ultimate in decentralized unplanned development, from a loose core of stores and motels out to a long ragged edge of strange little shack houses surrounded by dirt and rabid dogs. Nothing against modest houses, in fact I much prefer them, but the impression here is of people aspiring to much more but finding their version of the American Dream on a 2 acre tract of rocks and dust with a sun-bleached American flag and no-trespassing signs on the fence in case you wanted to bother them as they sit in front of their satellite dish tv after a day at the vermiculite mine or weapons depot.
Really really huge. I mean I've driven across the west many times, and I lived and worked for 2 years in the high desert of Nevada, but only now do I appreciate the vastness of it. Whole states from back east would fit in one county, and every bit of it bony and spiky and dusty and dry. Okay, there's plenty of wooded islands that rise up out of it into mountainous heights, and hidden springs, and desert streams with songbirds aflutter. But I didn't see any of that today. Just 90 long miles of stony ground and spindly shrubs.
But I realized something about halfway thru the day: the reason this area looks otherworldly is that it sort of literally is: it is the standard "dry-planet" landscape for every Star Trek series since the original. There are basically two Star Trek planetary landscapes, one is a jungly fake forest that seems to be filmed in a studio and the other is a desert of tan, fortress-like rounded granite. Those they film out here in the Mohave.
90 miles is probably the most I ever want to do in a day. The problem is that for 35 miles I was bucking a stiff desert headwind. Brutal stuff. Then as if in answer to a prayer, the direction of the route and the wind both changed and blew me into Twenty-Nine Palms at 20 miles an hour.
Twenty-Nine Palms is the gateway to Joshua Tree National Park and bills itself as "An Oasis of Murals." The murals are mainly of the historical realist style, miners and Indians and wildlife and so forth, but it is decent work. The palms are California Fan Palms that grow at the oasis at the edge of town where now is the National Park Visitor center. Currently there is no water on the surface but this may change with the next earthquake. That's typically how it is with the natural oases of the Mohave and Sonoran deserts. These oases are really the only natural basis of sustaining human life and culture in the desert. Everything since the 19th century has been based on large scale diversions of water from distant mountain snow packs, paid from the tax coffers of a growing industrial nation whose main centers of population and productivity were far away and much more humid. One thing that interests me a lot on this trip is seeing how all the communities fit in and maintain themselves in their physical locales. Most places in the west tend to rely on elaborate transfers of water and energy and materials from elsewhere. Obviously that sort of thing can't go on very long, simple physics and economics. It's fascinating to see the ways people are figuring to do things more wisely. Not to go off on a tangent but I think new-old building techniques like adobe and cob are a big part of the answer. Start right there at ground level, literally, and all kinds of would-be problems (like energy wastage and structure durability) are solved before they even arise. (With everybody riding their bikes to the big house building work-party and a potluck afterwards with garden produce hot-dishes and homebrewed beer.)
Two sides of how people perceive a lone cyclist crossing the desert: one, a friendly 60-something man named Ed who waved me down in the hamlet of Lucerne Valley to ask me about and congratulate me on my trek. Then a couple hours later at a sun-bleached mini-mart at Flamingo Heights, a little girl stares at me and says incredulously to her father "Daddy, that man's on a bicycle!" as they climb into their car.
Taking a bit of a break here in 29 Palms, resting my legs and butt before the next wide emptiness, the really big one, 90 miles of no services of any kind, 110 to the next actual town, Parker, Arizona down in the hot Sonoran Colorado River desert. So you may not hear from me for a couple days. I'm trying to strike a balance between getting across the desert quickly and not wiping myself out.
Today featured both in abundance. From Soledad Canyon road where I stealth camped on a hill above a ranch, 84 total miles thru LA's far exurbia and wide open Mohave. I was actually in LA county this morning, pedaled right past a metrolink park and ride rail station that could have taken me right into the belly of the beast. But greater Palmdale/Lancaster is beast enough, I don't know what the local industry is but a lot of people sure live in the endless sprawl of the western high Mohave. Finally did escape it though to the real desert landscape, which here means Joshua trees, which are basically yucca as designed by Dr. Suess. Fearsome but fascinating looking things. Two nice surprises to mitigate the relentless sun, the San Gabriel Mountains rose in full view to the south to snow plastered heights, which I did not expect, and the desert is abloom in a sea of yellow and purple flowers. Plus at one point there were whole mountainsides of California Poppy blooming.
This desert riding takes some getting used to. Just a very different experience from the coast, I know that sounds trite but it is like having landed on another planet. Like Dune for example.
In Victorville on my way down to Mohave Narrows campground I met a very nice fellow named Tom Wilder, he was out walking his dog and invited me in for tea and to show me the amazing collection of ten recumbent bicycles that he and his wife own. They have toured extensively on them and own several makes, and he let me test ride them. I was sold immediately on each of them. Overall I was most impressed with the "Saturday" recumbent made by Bike Friday of Eugene. Like all their models it folds up into a tote bag the size of a suitcase. Tom has a hard-shell case for it that converts to a cargo trailer. The versatility of such a setup boggles my mind. Pop it onto any bus, train, plane, do a multi-modal tour. Can you see the wheels spinning in my head?
Anyway, for now its back to the old fashioned upright with the Brooks saddle.
Well, the time has come to turn east away from the coast into the vast interior. I will really miss the shore, that's for sure.
Most of yesterday I got a guided tour around Ventura from Mike Villa, the Bigfoot-footprint photo guy. Among other things, he took me to the secret Teva sandal factory-seconds store where I scored a nice pair for only 20 bucks. I was dumb enough not to bring along a pair of sandals and was needing just such a find.
Now I'm well east into the upper end of the Santa Clara Valley. Lots of citrus groves, then the bloated car-culture development of Santa Clarita. It was kind of funny when I went in and got water at this huge Chevron auto-detailing center, where people with lots of money pay to watch people with little money polish their car for them. I was conspicuously counter to the whole culture there. In fact I've never felt more counter to the culture than at this moment in this place. There's other bikers even here though, mainly road racers.
From here on for hundreds of miles I will be off of any sort of published bike route map or book. No suggested stopping places, no elevation profiles, just a AAA highway map. It looks pretty straightforward though. Lots of blank space between here and Arizona. Honestly I sort of can't believe I'm about to cross the Mohave Desert on a bicycle. Yes yes, I know to carry gallons worth of water with me every day. If worst comes to worst I'll put out my thumb and get saved by someone in a gas guzzling pickup.
So I'm sitting here on State Street in Santa Barbara, not only is it the most quintessentially Californian scene I've ever witnessed, all waving palms and Spanish revival architecture and amazingly stylish people everywhere left and right, but a convertible Mustang drives by with "Let's Go Surfin' Now" blaring out like the chamber of commerce paid them to do it.
Santa Barbara is one of the most unique looking places I've visited in this country. The history of it is briefly this: the mission and presidio were established under Spanish rule (as administered by idealistic Franciscan friars and underpaid soldiers) in the 1780's. Their architecture was of course "Spanish Colonial" which traces its roots ultimately to the Moors, Islamic North Africans who invaded and ruled Spain for quite some time before being expelled (along with the Jews who had found Moorish Spain a haven from the rest of anti-Jewish medieval Europe, but I digress.)What it boils down to is this: today's neo-Spanish Colonial shopping centers and tract homes have their ultimate architectural origin in the towns of medieval North Africa. And before that to the Romans and who knows where. As Santa Barbara "Americanized" in the later 19th and early 20th centuries it took on a somewhat typical "American main street" look. When the town was mostly wrecked by a major earthquake in 1925, the city leaders decided to rebuild entirely in a style modeled after the Spanish Colonial. Thus today central Santa Barbara looks like it was plucked out of the Mediterranean somewhere. Go up to the top of the courthouse tower and you'll see what I mean. And the influence has spread to become the characteristic Southern California "look", but shows up all over the country now.
And the original town plan, (mostly obliterated by the later anglo-american grid): like that of almost every single town, village, and city in Spanish America (north and south) it came from the "Plan of the Indies" issued by King Phillip II of Spain in 1573. This was a plan which specified in great detail the structure of town sites in Spanish colonial America, right down to the orientation of streets and the requirement of a main plaza in each town center. I'd never heard of it before today at an exhibit at the old Commandant's house downtown, but it may have been the single most influential urban planning document in history.
I'm camped next to a guy named Mike, he told me how the last couple times he was up in Prairie Creek Redwoods (north of Eureka) he found Bigfoot footprints, and he showed me the pictures to prove it. They were interesting, I'll tell you that. Who knows what lurks in those big dark woods?
Today I biked for almost half the day with or near this group of old guys (50's to early 70's) out on a supported tour, meaning no heavy gear to haul, but still. They practically smoked me climbing the toughest hill of the day, 1,000 feet in 3.5 miles. One of them related to me his tour from Prudhoe Bay to Anchorage, their cargo trailers had 100 pounds of gear and food starting out because there are no stores for 240 miles. (Gerry from Rufugio, believe me some of these guys were no younger than you, if they can do it you can. Its just a matter of gradually increasing the miles.)
Today was sort of a physical test for the upcoming eastward portion of the trip where I will have to regularly do 70-plus mile days across the high Mohave. (No water in between, you see.) So today I did 70 miles from Pismo state beach to Refugio state beach, including two big climbs and numerous smaller ones. I came thru fine, I feel like I could go another 10 or 20 miles.
The Santa Ynez Mountains here are interesting, they run east-west rather than north south (the shore itself is east-west here.) I had always read that the Uinta Mountains of Utah were the only east-west running range in the lower 48. Not so.
Off to Santa Barbara to see the sights.
The campground here is idyllic, facing the surf with big palms framing the view, but the view includes offshore oil rigs. A very strange sight indeed, they are really quite disconcerting after getting used to an unblemished oceanic horizon. I mean isn't the ocean the one horizon you expect to be unblemished? Some one place at least where we can look and see and feel the world as it always was before (and before and before, for hundreds of millions of years) and ever shall be. You can't underestimate the real human psychological value of such a thing. Without some place where we can perceive the creation that makes us who we are, we go collectively and individually nuts. The oil Co. folks will tell you all the little fishies love the barnacles and seaweed that grow on the rigs.
I don't know which, but William Randolf Hearst was in a category all his own, that's for sure. If you don't know who I'm talking about, well, see Citizen Kane but also remember that it is a work of fiction. The man's real life was way beyond anything you could put into a 2 hour story. Heir to the biggest fortune of the Comstock Lode, invented modern tabloid journalism, fomented the Spanish American War, also instrumental in electing Woodrow Wilson, bankrolled the creation of the California state park system, fierce anti-monopolist (because monopolies got in the way of his making money) the list goes on. And his house, good lord, they don't call it Hearst Castle for nothing. Worth a tour if only to be boggled at the sheer number of priceless relics, furnishings, ceilings, tapestries, whole ancient roman mosaic floors reassembled, you name it he bought it and put it there. It was a 28 year continuous project till he died. Luckily he meant all along for it to be open to the public after his death, so it is a California state park historic site. Doesn't make the admission cheap though, but go anyway if you ever get the chance.
But the *truly* amazing sight of the day was the beach at Piedras Blancas where literally hundreds (thousands?) of Elephant Seals were sunning, snoozing, playing, and comically flopping about and vocalizing. Never seen anything like it.
That was all Monday.
Today was less dramatic but I had a great tailwind and the countryside was nice. Took a break at a grove of 700 year old oaks, huge gnarled old things. Live Oaks, they stay green year round and do most of their growing in the rainy season (winter), this being a Mediterranean climate (meaning two seasons, wet and cool and warm and bone dry.) The central Cal coast actually gets almost as much rain as Seattle or Portland (or more in parts of Big Sur) but the dry season is longer and more extreme.
Didn't spend long there but San Luis Obispo struck me as the nicest town of its size (around 50,000) on the whole west coast. Scenic yet somehow has managed to be unspoiled, cows grazing up to the city limits, bike lanes everywhere, college town, nice old red-tile roof downtown. Maybe the downside is the Diablo Canyon nuke plant hidden away down by the coast on a fault line. But you should see Morro Bay, great little seaside town with this monolithic coal-fired power plant right there on the waterfront.
I passed this house for sale by the highway, a modest little 3 bed 1.5 bath affair, typical bungalow sort of size, that just happened to be perched on a clifftop 200 feet above the surf (no actual beach access, i mean it really was a cliff), Coastal mountainsides rising high all around, just one other neighbor, gnarled pines completing the wall-calendar ambience. 1.5 million dollar asking price. And here i am staying in hiker/biker campsites, most of which cost 2 bucks per night, some like Kirk Creek tonight are situated on spots worth at least an even mill, if not 1.5. I'll let you do the math how long i could stay in these sites before i used up that much money. Many many years, that's all I know. Meanwhile the zillionaire is smug with his private no-tresspassing sunset (hey, my sunset ended up being private too, a whole beach to myself) and whatever it is he does with his time perched on his rock there. I mean it must be a 2 hour drive to the nearest golf course back at Carmel. But this is surely a second or third home because if you can afford 1.5 mill for anything, you wouldn't have your primary residence be a little hut like that. A mere trifle.
I had enough of riding in hurricanes all thru No. Cal, so this time i waited out the storm (and a big one it was, thankyou El Nino) for 2 days at Pfeiffer-Big Sur State Park. Walked around in Redwood and oak groves, read alot. I should have had some Henry Miller with me, this being his old stomping ground. Today i took this awesome loop hike called Ewoldsen Trail, by McCay Falls. I recommend it. It may be my last redwoods hike this trip. And Big Sur is fascinating because it is the mixing point of north coast and south coast environments, plus a few things like Pondrosas never otherwise found on the coast at all, so that you can be in a cool mossy fern carpeted redwood grove and literally yards away is a slope with yucca and sage, and magnificent oaks.
The singe coolest thing all day was seeing a California Condor soaring from the top of the loop trail. There were also 2 turkey vultures but you can distinguish the condor by its much larger size and that its head is not red like a buzzard's. There are only about 50 California Condors (maybe not even that many) in existence, and this is where they live.
There seem to be a lot more expensive cars down here, everyone seems to be in at least a shiny Jetta or Passat, if not Audi or Porsche. Especially on a Sunday when the car clubs are out in force, whole convoys of Porches. These are the people who believe the car commercials. (Okay, there's Nissans too, but nevr old ones.) The exception is the great number of wheezing clanking old VW busses driven by latter day (or original model) hippies. A nice such fellow named Drew was sitting at an overlook tying bundles of sage, one of which he gave me to smudge away the negative vibes of any rednecks who might harass me down the road. He was quite sincere and i thanked him.
Shortly after, i pedaled past Esalen Institute, naked new-agers waving at me from their seminar. Actually the only thing i saw was a Lexus driving out.
What do you do when you have a pocketful of pretty agate-like beach pebbles, but you're going by bike so you can't exactly bring along a bunch of rocks. You have to choose, savor each unique one but put back all but a couple of the choicest, which may not even be the most objectively pretty but have some unique quality like this one here with alternating bands of red and white.
Yesterday morning had a really cool experience, got to observe at close hand members of the Big Sur Ornithology Lab at Molera State Park doing bird surveys. They catch migratory songbirds in nets and carefully take them to the lab shack where they note various characteristics (for example observing how much body fat a bird has can tell them approx. how far it has migrated,) then band the leg with a little marker and let them go. If it was nesting they take it back to the nest. The birds are such beautiful little things, to see them that closely was a rare privilege. This project is one local piece of a vast nationwide ongoing bird survey, the information all goes into a huge database made use of by many organizations, institutions, and agencies. These folks are the foot-soldiers in a vital cataloging of ecological data, so we can know where we are and what we need to do to restore damaged systems. So we can actually understand the places we live. The biggest need is invasive plant removal and native plant and fauna restoration. It is incredibly important work that I hope to take part in again, as when a few years ago I volunteered somewhat regularly to remove Scotch Broom from a nature park in Seattle. Its fun work to do if you're part of a team and you know you're helping restore some balance to what we've messed up.
Camped next to a guy whose name is also Dan, and whereas I started in Portland and am biking down the coast to Ventura then turning eastward across to Colorado (says the plan), then back up to Portland, he started in Ventura and is biking north to Portland then turning eastward and across to... Portland, Maine. I kid you not.
Thought I might hike overnight into the Ventana wilderness but there's no good place to lock a bike and trailer at the trailhead. Did a couple of ridge top and beachside day excursions instead. Only 4 miles forward progress. Schedule? Schmedule!
Today staying put in Pfeiffer-Big Sur State Park, its lousy biking weather (strong south wind, clouds and off/on rain) but fine for hiking. Hiked 3,000 feet up Mount Molera (on a rest day!?), views as clouds blew apart into the heart of the Santa Lucia Mountains and out to the ocean. This Big Sur country is the last southern hurrah of the redwood trees, along with lush northwestian ferns and moss, also a rich variety of other life, oak and Laurel hillsides, chaparral ridges, flowers I've never seen before, plus Madronas, Monterey Pines and further inland Doug Fir, Ponderosa, Sugar Pine, Incense Cedar, and the San Lucia fir, which grows only here on a few mountaintops and nowhere else.
A very unusual place in my experience. Part of the vast something we call America. This and Kansas and Florida and New Jersey. What can the word mean if it encompasses all these places? (And why would we have to ask or tell God to bless it?) We think this land is "America." We have no idea what it is. Hopefully, if we study closely enough we'll start to get a glimmer of an idea and then start to live based on that information.