March 10, 2016
Desert View Homes
It's the dull thud of bombs or missiles exploding somewhere far in the distance. It's roosters calling out from the property next door. It's coyotes yelping in the fields to the south. It's the sun striking the rain fly and warming me as soon as it does. It's one of the young guys in the van parked near my tent announcing to the other, "Dude, I've got a raging morning woody!" to which he gets no response. It's seven a.m. in the foothills to the east of El Paso.
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It's a fine morning: quiet, still, not a cloud in the sky in any direction. The clean, fresh smell of a desert dominated by creosote fills my head as I ride all alone on the smooth road back to the highway. I look out at rippled hills cast with intricate shadows and listen to the calls of birds going about their business with what sounds to human ears like great excitement and energy.
It doesn't last. The highway that for so long ran as two lanes expands to four. Soon junkyards and scrap metal yards and shops selling what they describe as rustic furniture appear along its edges. Off to both the left and the right it's mountainsides being slowly stripped away through mining. I pass an adult drive-in movie theater and decide I don't even want to think about what that place must be like late on a Saturday night. And then, sprawl. The city limits of El Paso bring with them tract homes, a giant movie theater, chain gas stations, a bunch of fast food joints, and a massive Walmart. It's a world of just-built strip malls and chain restaurants that share space with a cemetery that's been here for decades and a criminal justice center out of which the rapid pop-pop-pop-pop-pop-pop-pop of semi-automatic fire from a gun range echoes across the flat scrubland that someday soon will be a Buffalo Wild Wings and a huge parking lot that's never more than half full.
And then, sadness. Not for El Paso – cities get what they want and what they deserve – but sadness in my mind and my heart. It's not like I've ever loved this kind of suburban riding, but after having traveled through so much beautiful country to get here, knowing that this ride will end tomorrow, and knowing that no more of that beautiful country lies ahead, it feels like I'm mourning some kind of death.
But I'm also in luck. Within a mile I hang a right and merge onto a highway that's more like a freeway and all of a sudden the sprawl disappears. It's replaced with traffic speeding past at seventy, but the road has a wide shoulder with signs that say it's only for bicycles. It circles the north end of the city where it's a military base and open desert and not much else. It's impossible to avoid El Paso altogether if you're riding through this area because all roads in the region dump you out here at some point. But skirting its edges while staring out at the tan-red faces of the Franklin Mountains looming larger and larger in front of me feels like a major cycle-touring victory.
I make it past the entry gates and barracks and armored Humvees and low-flying medic helicopters of the Fort Bliss Army base with ease. I make it past the vomit pile of Whataburgers and Wienerschnitzels and Starbucks beyond them with a reasonable amount of swearing. But then I run out of the easy stuff. The mountains loom over me like The Wall. It's 2,000 feet up and then halfway down the other side of that wall to reach the state park where I plan to camp tonight. For the first time and only time on this trip a serious mountain pass sits between where I am and where I want to be.
Big signs warn people not to leave the road because for the first four miles of the climb the land on both sides of it is used by the military as a bombing range. Nice. With the hills blocking most of the wind sweat streams off me in waves, leaving my arms and forehead and the neck and the front of my shirt soaked within a couple of miles. It's a steep and unrelenting climb not just for me, but for all of the semi-trucks and underpowered cars whose engines crank hard but still have trouble pulling them up the mountain at anything better than about thirty miles per hour. The stink of sulfur chugged out by motors that haven't worked this hard in months hangs in the air.
It'd all be easier if I'd just drop down into the small chain ring, but I can't do it. The dream is still alive, and even though I'm not making it from coast to coast on this trip I don't have the will to let it die. My legs burn and I'm short of breath a few times, but the farther I go the more the wind picks up behind me and gives me a little push toward the top. I feel like I'm making slow, steady progress but it's one of those climbs where the road forever bends left and right so I have no idea how near or far the top might be.
In the end it's not far at all. It's not really all that hard either. Having spent so much time working a little harder in the middle chain ring, I'm now a much stronger rider than I've ever been before, to the point that I just cranked over a 2,000-foot-tall hill on a fully loaded bicycle in less time than it takes to watch a full episode of Downton Abbey or Big Shrimpin'. I can hardly believe it. The reward is a green sign that reads Elevation: 5,280 ft – exactly a mile above sea level.
I look out and down at what must be at least a hundred miles of New Mexico, lands Kristen and I were supposed to ride together but now neither one of us will. Part of me feels regret that we didn't make it that far. But the other part, the bigger part, knows there's more to come, in so many different locations and in so many different forms. There have been a handful times on this trip, including the climb I just finished, that I imagined riding not just with Kristen but also with a kid. That's something that even a year ago never would have happened. Just the thought of a kid was this abstract, far-off, irrelevant concept – something for a much later version of myself to deal with. And it was further complicated by the concern that I'd get so wrapped in a life of travel that the time and desire for having a kid would both fade until they no longer existed.
But with Kristen that view has changed. Most every day we talk of places we want to go and new experiences we want to throw ourselves into, and any of them that extend out longer than about two years into the future involve a footprint of three instead of just two. We've done enough together and talked to enough families who have gone on bold adventures with their kids that the prospect no longer seems daunting. We're no longer of the mind that having kids takes away those opportunities. It changes their ground rules but it doesn't preclude them in the way that so many people assume to be true. Nothing's guaranteed of course. Who knows if we'll be able to have a kid. If we do, who knows if they'll be healthy enough to live an active life. But the groundwork has been laid. The will is there. And so the promise of a wonderful future hangs over our heads.
I fly down the pass among signs that point out runaway truck ramps. Then I hang a right and head back up at least 500 more feet into a state park on steep-ass roads that seem pulled from the hills of Laos. The park is home to stunning country in the shadow of grand mountains, but the only shade at the campsites come from sheet metal roofs over the picnic tables. Were it a few hours later it would be a great spot to stay.
But it isn't. With the angles the sun will be at for the rest of the day, staying here would mean another four hours of sitting around and staring into the sun with the wind howling as it shoots through the gap in the hills where the camping loop stands. I don't have anything to read; my electronics are all but dead. I don't have the desire to hike into the desert hills without Kristen or good shoes or a hat or enough water. With as much as I've slept the past couple of nights I'll be awake for the next eight hours. There's only so long one can sit in the direct glare of the sun and stare into the hills without want of someone to talk of how impressive and majestic they are – at least if that someone is me, which in this case it definitely is.
And so the plan for one last night in the tent among the powerful beauty of West Texas falls apart. I head back down toward the highway and then continue west. On a steep, smooth, wonderful bicycle path I have all to myself I bomb down the back side of the mountain. Strong north winds grab hold of tumbleweeds and fling them into my front tire and fender. Below I see the future suburbs of El Paso, where homes start from $170,000. They're advertised as desert view homes, as if there'd be a view of anything else out here. Then it's past office buildings with names like ADP and Charles Schwab and HP on the fronts where the homeowners in those future suburbs will live. Beyond, a small city's worth of warehouses and distribution centers and huge tracts of vacant land where newer versions of them will some day be built.
All this new growth means a maze of eight-lane intersections and sidewalk riding as the fury of the evening commute starts to build. I can't help but think that pedaling through this kind of place on a bicycle is what dystopia feels like. It seems like such a strange and sad way to head toward my last night on the road. But then I wonder if it's somehow better this way. As a percentage of its population America isn't primitive camping in beautiful places for eight bucks a night or throwing up the tent on wide open federal lands, but this – massive gas stations, Subways, cheap apartment buildings, and chain motels with rooms for $44 per night, all constructed next to the roar of the freeway, all of which didn't exist five years ago. It's like this and becoming more and more like this with every passing year.
Around seven I walk to pick up chain chicken wings for dinner because it's the least awful of my awful options. I walk on a sidewalk with no lights to show the path, because I'm the only one who will go this way on foot tonight. When the sidewalk disappears my sandals leave prints in the dirt at the edge of an empty lot filled with windblown garbage. Passing by some big, new, chain pawn shop beyond it I watch a polo-shirted employee wheel a pair of children's bicycles into the storage area in the back through an open side door. I try to imagine how desperate a person would have to be to pawn anything of their children's, but especially something of so little value.
The wings are as disappointing as you'd expect.
Today's ride: 48 miles (77 km)
Total: 2,305 miles (3,710 km)
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