March 1, 2016
Along the Open Palms of Their Hands
This morning it's my turn to yank a tiny staple out of my back tire and then go through the whole tube-changing dance. In the middle of this Danny appears again, this time with two hot cups of fresh-made Chai tea, an apple, and a couple more sleeves of cookies. We take pictures of each other, accept his well wishes, promise to post some of the motel's business cards on the bulletin board at the hostel in Marathon, and agree that we'll stop by and see him when we come this way in our van next winter. Danny's the perfect mix of entrepreneur and kind soul. There's no way we could pass through Sanderson and not spend a night at the Budget Inn, the most cycle-friendly motel in America.
There's nothing else to call us back to Sanderson. Unlike all of the towns west of here it doesn't have a page dedicated to it in the tourist magazines. There are no art galleries, no bed and breakfasts, no fine dining options, and in fact no dining options at all on this Tuesday morning. Sanderson doesn't even have its own cowboy poetry festival. There used to be four gas stations, but now it's just two. It seems like all but one of the cafes have closed. The storefronts along the highway have been vacant for so long that there are no longer any indications of what kind of businesses once operated there. The propane shop is open, and there's a repair and tire shop that might still be around, but it's hard to tell if the motels are open or closed at first glance. There's one bank and a couple of small law offices, of the kind that come along with being the county seat.
I still feel so, so hungry this morning, just like I have for almost a week now. But there's no great relief coming in Sanderson. The grocery store has been closed for years. The only real option is the gas station and mini-mart at the far end of town. What we see when we pull up is nothing short of amazing. Its paint and windows shine. Its parking lot is wide and clean and full of cars and trucks and semis. The aisles are lined with any kind of non-fresh food you could want. The chain taco fast food counter near the back does a fierce business. And it's looking to hire multiple workers. It's the only thing in town that seems like it's thriving instead of dying or just barely holding on. The contrast to the rest of Sanderson is so profound that at one point I stop in the middle of the store and look around me and can't keep from shaking my head.
The place gets so much of our money. I feel sadness swiping my debit cars and entering my PIN number. But we're hungry, we're here, and there's no other option until Marathon fifty or sixty miles to the west.
After all the time we take working, packing, talking with Danny, and loading up on chid we don't roll out until 10:30. It's a glorious day for riding. But despite the clear blue skies and the empty highway and the sloping canyon walls with horizontal lines of age that look like they we're created by the fingernails of some giant hand scraping across them, there's part of me that wishes I wasn't riding today. Sleeping in would have been extravagant. Waiting for the cafe to open and grabbing a super-late breakfast or an early lunch would have been a wonder. A day away from the road spent lounging around a motel room listening to music would have felt like the height of luxury. But Kristen needs to get to Van Horn to make it back home for work. That's the plan we set in motion a week ago. There's no easy way to change it now.
The feelings get worse during one straight stretch of road when some old bastard with a head of thick white hair and a full-on Santa Claus beard angles his little SUV across the yellow center line, into the opposite lane, and right toward where I ride in the shoulder. He's not passing anyone. He's not avoiding anything in the road. It's not the sudden correction of someone who drifted over the centerline by mistake. It's the work of a jerk with anger issues who doesn't like cyclists. It's aggressive and dangerous and there's no reason for it.
I ride angry, seething, tense, breathing hard, my grip on the handlebars tighter than it has ever been. My mind goes crazy places, imagining what might happen if he shows up in my mirror and tries to do the same thing again. It goes like this for miles, this silent but vivid loop of vengeance swirling through my head. But around me it's Sanderson Canyon, which we dropped down into last night and which we've been climbing out of since the edge of town. That climb is so long and subtle and slow that it begins to feel meditative.
The effect is therapeutic and powerful. The waves of tension ease and the memory of the man who pointed his car straight at me fades ever more faint. I look inward and think about how I don't want to end up like that man. I don't want anger to take over my life to the point I end up doing something crazy like what just happened. If the sight of a bicycle rider gets him that mad, I can't imagine what something deserving of anger would cause. And so instead I decide to let it go and let my mind wander where it will. I focus on the tones of the bird calls, how different cacti of the same type have such different colors, and how the slight saddle adjustment I made yesterday morning has left my ass feeling as good as new. I hum and sing beautiful songs to myself. When I see an air-cooled Volkswagen Vanagon headed toward us I throw up my right arm and give the driver a big thumbs up. We get an excited series of horn honks in return.
Later I see the same white former tour bus with bars on the windows that has passed us in each of the last four days. It's once again empty, having returned the prisoners it once held back across the border. No waves or honks are exchanged.
A roadrunner shoots across the road in front of us from left to right, running faster than we could ever ride on flat ground. One of the trains that passes on our left drags behind it at least a hundred rail cars, of the kind used to transport new vehicles from factories or deliver ships to their final destination. Because the train heads east, away from the West Coast, every last car is empty. The road is also all but empty. But as soon as Kristen goes beyond the edge of the road at a rest stop to take a leak, two RVs and a semi-truck speed past us, one right after the other.
We spent yesterday dropping down into canyons and then climbing right back out of them. Today we crank slow but steady along the open palms of their hands, always looking up at the exposed rock that leads toward the flat plateaus at the top. We see a few ranches with their spinning steel windmills and modest homes, but most of the time it's just us and the road and the grass at the road's edge thrashing in the wind.
Thirty-five miles after we started climbing out of Sanderson the long, gentle uphill loses the last of its power. We crest an almost imperceptible rise and then it's down, down, down – just as gentle, but down and glorious all the same. Looking south through gaps in the hills our eyes lock onto the layers of mountains in the distance. They start dark brown then become light brown, then on to three shades of blue, each lighter than the previous, as they extend away from us toward the vast wildness of Big Bend National Park.
Beyond a few last climbs we shoot down into a broad basin. Where the rippled lines of the hills had been close to us all day, now they're miles away. The road points dead straight out in front of us. With a tailwind and downward slope we fly for the first time all day, alone but for the herd of a dozen antelope watch us approach with their heads raised. When we get too close they charge away to the north, the white of their backsides shining bright in the golden glow of the setting sun for maybe twenty seconds until they all come to a stop and turn around and become spectators again. It's shades of the Great Basin in Wyoming and there's nothing wrong with that. The metallic zaps of the power lines sing their own unique song as we discuss the merits of introducing the term futhermucker into the lexicon. But soon enough we forget about invented words and electricity and switch back into the mode of amazement.
The first thing we see at the edge of town in Marathon is a pizza place. After days of closed restaurants or no restaurants it's a big deal. We ride away stuffed, with the cool air that an instant reminder that we're up at 4,000 feet. Side streets take us through a kind of town we haven't yet seen, one filled out with low-slung self-built structures, a lot of rusted sheet metal and classic cars, barking dogs, and unassuming soul. At the far end of everything our tires crunch gravel and we come to a stop at a place of singular design and character.
It's called La Loma Del Chivo. It's part hostel, part commune, part farm, part living and breathing art project. The grounds are filled with unique structures built with varying degrees of care and structural integrity. Some are made of wood, but just as many others take their shape from stone or hay bales or mud bricks. One's a metal-sided travel trailer from the early sixties. There's no pattern, no master plan, no Home Depot doors, no vinyl siding from Lowe's. It's a chaotic mix of glass bottles stuck in walls of concrete and dozens of used bicycle rims joined together in complex displays of outdoor art. I've never seen anything quite like it. I'm not sure I ever will again. There's no one to show us around, but the sign says cyclists can stay for free, so we sign the waiver near the front door of the empty common room and wander the grounds. We open half a dozen doors before finding a cozy cabin with low ceilings and wood-paneled walls made from used fence posts that also has a bed big enough for the two of us to sleep on.
Two tiny lamps are enough to light the space, which isn't more than two hundred square feet. We don't see the clock but we hear it ticking. Kristen turns on the AM radio, hears an older man's voice talking about all of the reasons why Donald Trump would make a great president. A moment later she clicks it back off. Dogs bark in the distance, there's the occasional crunch of tires on gravel, and together with the sound of the clock this is how we fall asleep.
Today's ride: 56 miles (90 km)
Total: 1,994 miles (3,209 km)
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