I Must Get to Wickenberg!

It's fair to say that I'm going a little stir crazy after a week of small desert towns and their little hole in the wall motels. The televisions get three stations (sometimes; in Bouse the motel cable was directly connected to the owner's television. Whenever he switched stations, so did I. Seven Brides for Seven Brothers to CSI; I turned the set off and paced back and forth some more.) I've finished my book, and bookstores (or books, really, other than the Holy Bible and the local phonebook) are about as rare as standing water in the desert plains. There do not seem to be any vegetables in the restaurants or stores out here, other than the potato (chips, fries), the iceberg lettuce salad and the cucumber (dilled, in jars on every store counter, next to the fresh! jerky.) The food is invariably fried or covered in gravy. Coffee most often resembles the desert after a rain storm; sludgy gritty blech. And my body was getting used to the 50 miles of biking a day; I've got a lot of pent of energy after riding only 20 to 30 miles a day and then sitting around in these isolation chambers. I'm slowly being driven nuts.

For instance, after breakfast at the only restaurant in Salome (which was very good, big platter of Texas sized French toast and a giant glass of milk) I spent three hours sitting in the backyard of the other motel in town, Scheffler's. It was a pleasant enough three hours; the Scheffler's were very into gardening and grass!? It was the first grass I'd seen since just before 29 Palms, amazingly vibrant green, green like peas fresh out of the pod, and coolish due to the shade from the three or four palms and the pine tree standing vigilantly over their oasis. I watched the birds that flocked to the lawn, chasing worms and bugs and each other through the branches of the pines and the giant palm leaves. I watched a spider eating the fly that got caught in it's web, just in front of my eyes (at first; I moved when I realized I could be a potential victim of web in the face.) I braved the heat and walked back and forth to the local store, about 100 feet down the road, for water. I played hide and seek with the housekeeper's pet Chihuahua puppy, with her pink painted nails and her rhinestone dog collar. I listened to some Mexicans playing their Sunday morning mariachi music while they drank beer and laughed and spoke to each other in the language I have not used since I ordered tacos in California. I took a nap. And then I still had to wait an hour before the owners came back from church to open the motel for the day. On the one hand, being away from the stress of the city is nice, on the other hand it would be nice not to feel like I'm one of the last survivors of some catastrophe that's wiped out almost all of civilization.

So I determined I would chance it the next day and ride to Wickenberg, 56.5 miles away, after spending quality time with my room's three station television watching an all day marathon of "Law and Order." I got dinner from the store (the restaurant closed at 4:00 p.m., Sunday isn't a big day for them, I guess); veggie pizza straight from the freezer to the pizza oven, eat it up yum. I turned in at ten to the pitch and roll of my angry stomach and woke up at 4:30 in the morning, then I took a shower, got my things together and was on the road at 5:15 a.m. It was already 70 degrees, but there was a nice morning breeze and 111 degrees seemed far away. I rode along at a good pace, and pedaling was easy, 1234 1234 1234 (that's me cranking along keeping some sort of cadence to roll along as smoothly as I can.) I passed the town of Wenden in half an hour, and was in the town of Aguilar by 8:00 a.m. I stopped at THE store (most of these towns only have one of anything, if they have it at all) to pick a half gallon of Gatorade and some extra water, no more dehydration for me, no siree. I've been measuring how well hydrated I am by how much more forearms sweat; if there isn't any water running down my arms, or at least beads of moisture while I grip the handlebars, I need more water - I have to stop quite a bit.

Newly supplied I was ready for the push to Wickenberg. I had been making good time all morning and thought I could make the last 25 miles in about 2 hours or so, 10:00 - 11:00 a.m. is hot but bearable. Too much later and my head starts to ache and my blood feels like its boiling. About 5 miles outside of town, I ran into a crew retarring the opposite side of the road. There isn't much I've encountered that's worse than the smell and feel of molten tar wafting up from the road and completely enveloping me while trying to get away from the men spreading out the black mess onto the cracked road with shovels, while other men crush the mess over what used to be a mess. Unless it's trying to steer my bike around the residue flying through the air, landing all over the trailer and me and the bike, getting into my tires, sticking to the spokes. I could feel the crunch of individual pieces of rock under my tires, and one ping in particular felt like a tube popper.

Five miles outside of Wickenberg I realized my front tire looked a little flattish, so I stopped to check and sure enough it was. I picked up my bike and threw it into the canyon on the side of the road (just kidding, dream sequence - I just sort of sat there and thought oh well, three weeks, three flats - not what I'd hoped.) Thankfully the road into town was downhill, so I coasted/wobbled into town, glad I didn't have a flat in the middle of the desert.