Day 13: Salome, AZ to Tonopah, AZ

March 7, 2013

Someone lets the cold air in through the back door during the night. I wake up around 3:30 shivering in the sleeping bag. I do the spring-out-and-put-on-more-clothes-and-then-squeeze-back-inside-in-under-90-seconds shuffle. It looks sort of like a one-man Chinese fire drill.

But the cold leaves behind a cool and fresh morning that sets up well for another run across the open desert. The road helps out, too. Gone are the rough surfaces and jagged shoulders and heavy traffic of the last two days. In their place Arizona gives me smooth pavement, gentle grades, and a passing car every five minutes. The view spread out in front of me stays much the same: skinny trees with leafless branches arranged at crazy angles, scrubby little bushes, and low-lying red-brown mountains off to my left. I do, however, start to see hundreds of Saguaro cacti. They're the iconic type of cactus with a broad trunk and stubby little arms that branch out and then point straight up to the heavens. Owners of restaurants with a Southwestern theme are required by law to post pictures or paintings or stencils of multiple Saguaro on every wall visible to the public.

The crop in this area is cotton. Every mile, thousands of pieces of off-white fluff collect among the twigs and grass and shrubs that line the edges of the road. Cattle ranching seems to be the only other thing worth doing; I pass modest ranches throughout the day. Besides old tires and tossed couches, that's all there is out here. When I sat at home this winter and imagined riding alone through the emptiness of the Arizona desert, I created a certain image of the experience in my mind. Today lines up with that image almost exactly.

But bicycle touring has this way of making sure that your days never stay all sunshine and cupcakes, not from start to finish. Sometimes you're set back by punishing winds. Others your tire tube punctures or your shifting cable breaks. And every now and then you face something more sinister, something physical. A deep, dark, fierce torrent of evil starts to brew inside of you. It churns and pushes and grabs at your sides. You try to fight back, to stay composed, to push on. But even as you draw deep and pound out one mile after the next, the distance to the next town somehow feels farther. You're fighting a battle, and as much as you want to win, defeat looms larger and larger. It's a formidable enemy and it won't back down. And so at last, against every standard of good taste and refinement you've ever learned or been taught throughout the course of your life, you end up walking down a dirt path off the road's edge, past a scurrying rabbit and several fire ant colonies, perch in a precarious way under the shade of a sick-looking tree, and take a dump in the desert.

Yes you do.

What follows are five minutes of overwhelming shame and embarrassment and self-loathing. Then comes 15 minutes of unbridled relief and lightness in the legs. And then you feel hungry and go back to dreaming of food.

It's glamorous stuff, this bicycle touring.

Although the road into Tonopah looks normal on the map — Google gives it the yellow color that means for a good time, go this way — it turns out that it too is a dump. In short order it goes from good quality pavement to ten miles of rocks and pebbles and dirt and often sand. The sand is the worst. The front tire makes it through without too much trouble, but the back — with the weight of most of the gear and all of me pressing down on it — sinks in and then fishtails like it's gone flat. I stop half a dozen times because I'm sure that's what has happened. I have a few redeeming qualities, but patience isn't often one of them. So on this long and isolated stretch of awful desert riding, with no one around to watch me go insane, I'm free to yell at the road and the bike and make up intricate combinations of curse words that no one short of Dick Cheney should ever have to hear.

In Tonopah I ride to the home of Camilla and Bill, who let traveling bike riders camp on their property. Better still, their land has a well that pumps to the surface hot springs water from deep in the ground below. So after eating enchiladas and drinking beer and swapping stories with Guthrie and Olivia, who I'm happy to learn are also staying here, I jump into the tub and let the 95-degree water and minerals work their magic on body parts turned tired from two weeks of hard riding.

As beads of sweat drip slow in wandering lines from my temples, I float and soak and watch the layers of dirt and bugs and sunscreen and general filth float away and then slosh out the overflow valve. Then, in the highest of luxury, I walk to the back of the property and step into the shower. It's something I haven't done since Pine Valley, California. That was nine days ago. Nine days of climbing and grinding and sweating so much that my shirts turned foul colors I never knew a body could create. It's a ten-minute leap from the third world back into the first.

The evening sends me back to the restaurant for a second round of enchiladas. As I pay for my meal, Eric Clapton's "Wonderful Tonight" blasts from the speakers and out through the full-length swinging doors of the attached bar. For the next few hours, from the darkness of my tent, I go back and forth between writing about the day and trying to imagine what life at home with Desiree and Walter looks like without me. There's a lot less sweating and swearing and meeting strange people and pooping outside in the shadow of a cactus, but also a lot more sleeping in comfortable beds, inside jokes, and wide smiles and wagging tails whenever someone walks in the door. With the traffic of Interstate 10 droning on in the background, I try to wrap my brain around the fact that I'll still 46 days away from Chicago and a halfway flight home to the open arms and twitching ears of my biggest fans.

I work hard to keep my mind out here, on the road, away from home. But sometimes I just can't swing it.

Today's ride: 47 miles (76 km)
Total: 567 miles (912 km)

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