Introduction: Bodies, caskets, and fireballs

When I was a young fellow, I paid more attention to music and musicians, including the man who put the hyphen between country and rock, Mr. Gram Parsons. He was best known for his work with The Byrds and the Flying Burrito Brothers and his albums with Emmylou Harris, including "Grievous Angel."

Gram Parsons, the Grievous Angel, the man who put the hyphen between country and rock.

Parsons was a classic "live fast, die young" kind of star of the late 1960s and early 1970s, expiring of an overdose in 1973 at the age of 26 in a motel room in the town of Joshua Tree, right outside the southern California park of the same name.

Before Parsons could be flown to Louisiana for burial, his manager and a friend stole the body from Los Angeles International airport, drove it back to Joshua Tree in a cherry-red 1960 Cadillac hearse, poured gasoline into the casket, and -- supposedly heeding the last wishes of the decedent -- performed in the park at Cap Rock a surreptitious, middle-of-the-night cremation ceremony. Well, as surreptitious as a gigantic, middle-of-the-night, gasoline-fueled fireball can be. And not so surreptitious as to escape notice of the local gendarmes.

Ever since that untimely demise and unorthodox conflagration, room 8 at the Joshua Tree Inn has been preserved as a memorial to the Grievous Angel (available at a somewhat inflated rate for anyone who wants to spend the night where Parsons died), and fans occasionally assemble makeshift shrines in the park at Cap Rock near the scene of the flambé.

I last visited J Tree in 1986. Over the last year or two it's been on my list of potential destinations for riding through the desert, enjoying some solitude, and communing with rocks, yuccas, and lizards. I didn't decide to pedal through Joshua Tree because of Gram Parsons, but his music and death kept creeping into my head while I made my plans. So, at some level, it seems like the ghost of the Grievous Angel is coming along for the ride.

Here's hoping the Surly and I encounter no dead bodies, caskets filled with gasoline, or gigantic fireballs.

Most of the gear (other than food, water, GP albums, and gramophone) ready to go

By the way, a surprising number of Gram Parsons biographies exist. The best account of this troubled musician who squandered his talent, grieved his friends and family, and killed himself with alcohol, drugs, and hard living is probably Twenty Thousand Roads by David Meyer. GP probably needed to put down his guitar for awhile and get on a bicycle.

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