The Life's Too Short Tour

Starting May 20, 2009, I rode a bicycle from New York to Los Angeles, as a memorial to my late cousin, pedaling 3,600 miles in 105 days. I kept this journal along the way:
  • Days 101 to 103: In the Mojave Sun











    Victorville, Ca.
    I've been pedaling through the Mojave Desert for a week. The Mojave is a near-barren expanse sparsely dotted with desert flora, flanked on the horizons by mountains that are treeless and rocky, and baked in sunrays so intense as to make the air seem molten, heavy, thick. I start off early each morning before the sun is too intense, pedaling down the road by 7:30 a.m., and by 2 p.m. the heat feels dangerous, all encompassing, searing down from the sky and glowing off the ground, as if the entire desert floor itself is an ember. Since crossing the border into California I made distances of 40, 50, 60 and 45 miles successively, riding on Interstate 15 through Baker and Barstow, and on Route 66 through Helendale, Oro Grande, and into Victorville. The interstate rides were astonishingly fast and smooth, on a wide shoulder, over gradual climbs, and down long and swift descents. Route 66, the once-celebrated Mother Road of American lore and song, was in disrepair; rough, shoulderless and slow.

    In Baker, after an incredibly long downhill zoom, about 20 miles of top-gear sprinting, I scoped out the three motels in town, and took a room at Wills Fargo Motel, which was old and run down, but clean and had a decent swimming pool which I lounged in for a while. Baker can't be called a town, but a strip of fast food joints, gas stations and motels, at the intersection of Interstate 15 and Route 127, which leads into Death Valley. A sign at Baker bills the place as the "gateway to Death Valley." I took photos of the town's main attraction, although it didn't appear to be attracting anyone, which is hailed as the world's tallest thermometer. The roadside curiousity is 134 feet tall, symbolic of the highest temperature recorded in North America, 134 degrees at nearby Death Valley in 1913. The thermometer is not really a thermometer at all, but a concrete tower with digital displays on that of a bank. The afternoon I was there it read 104 degrees.

    I made it to Barstow the next day, still riding on a broken rear spoke, and hoping to have it fixed there. But the cycle shop in town was too busy to make the repair that day, and so I had to decide to ride ahead one more day on the wobbly rear wheel.

    Barstow is a strange little town. There is a mix of military folks from a nearby Army post, traveling motorists as evidenced by the plethora of motels, and a few vagrants brought in by the crossroads of railroads which converge there. The town celebrates Route 66, which is the main street through Barstow. In the morning I rode along Route 66 through the desert enroute to Victorville, on the edge of the Mojave Desert. It was rough and broken up, and so I had to procede slowly along the old road. The road passed by a number of roadside ruins, ancient motels and gas stations long closed and forgotten in decrepitude. There is no decrepitude like that in the desert, where crumbling structures bake in the heat, seemingly in lament for the passage of time and bygone eras. There is roadside litter all along the road.

    I came upon a curious site in Oro Grande, a fenced in yard of eccentric art work, bottles hung on metals poles in a menagerie of abstraction that was at once odd, interesting, and beautiful. I entered the gate and looked around, feeling esconced in some kind of a handmade wonderland. A white-bearded man appeared from a small house beside the artwork and explained that he was the artist, and that the place was called the Bottle Tree Ranch. It was a passion that gripped him ten years ago, a creative obsession, in which he would weld together poles and pegs to hold glass bottles to glitter in the sun. I spent an hour perusing the gallery of strange objects and conversing with the man named Elmer. When I left Elmer, I found my way to Victorville where I visited the Route 66 museum, and afterward happened to ride past a bicycle shop. I stopped at the shop and had the broken spoke repaired, then continued along to a motel.

    Today I must figure out how to proceed into Los Angeles. There are several options and I may have to ride the highway again to make it through mountains east of the city. I am merely two days from the ocean. There is much more to describe, but I am focused on making it to Los Angeles and not taking time to contemplate. I hope to find a place in the next few days to stop and take the time to write. The end of the trek is in sight, and the end of summer is at hand. Just a few more miles and America will have been traversed.

    until later...

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