The Solitary Ride

November 17, 2001
Miami, FL

It is September 2000. The solitary ride. I ride at my own pace in Utah’s arid Great Basin.

It is mid-afternoon. Forty-mile an hour head winds blow from the south. In a creative frenzy, dust begets dust as the powder particles, like a trillion cue balls at break, stir new specks. I ride the big BMW R1100GS dual sport motorcycle into the dirt fog. I slow. If I go down on a motorcycle in this sinister miasma no one will see my predicament. Twenty meters ahead, a fox likeness sprints across the road, Utah SR 36, west of Eureka, just before junction with US 6.

I ride US 6 (now also US 50) west, beyond the storm. Why is UHP cruising in this loneliness, 20 miles east of the Nevada/Utah state line? The cop is ahead of me, going my direction at 65 mph. My Valentine One records his futile attempts to trap unwitting drivers, like a worn-out lizard whose tongue misses on each attempt at a juicy fly. I overtake the cruiser at a desultory 66 mph and am hamstrung at this speed until the Nevada state line when the officer turns back, having reached the edge of his jurisdiction. I gloat for avoiding capture.

From Eureka to Ely I savor sights previously overlooked. Little Sahara appears on the right, before Delta. Dune buggies and motorcycles compete with the wind to rearrange the sand. Off to the left (south) is the dry salt bed of Sevier Lake, parched because its feeding rivers are diverted to irrigation. The irrigation water picks up salt, which slowly taints the fertile, thirsty fields, like a young, greedy trophy wife gradually poisoning her loaded geezer husband. On the Utah and Nevada frontier is Great Basin National Park. Except for the deer on the road, the twilight run up the short park road to the base of Wheeler Peak, highest in Nevada, is lonely. I click the snapshot of the island mountain just as ominous shadows begin to obscure its granite grandeur. On the descent, the dusk competes with the day’s final rays to throw colors into a surreal relief against the darkening desert backdrop. For brief moments, the pines seem greener, the sky bluer and the sage grayer. I can see Utah’s House range, maroon in the pre-dusk light, beyond the greasewood-covered plain, eighty miles to the east. The town of Garrison, which owes its four cultivated green grass circles to Wheeler runoff, lies twenty-five miles to the southeast.

Now, heading further west towards Ely, the land is therapeutic. Like Emerson said, “the land is the appointed remedy for whatever is false and fantastic in our culture.” OK, Emerson might not understand the motorcycle as part of this experience. No matter. I’m a hybrid; a contradiction… an eccentric, politically incorrect melange; a mountain man who likes motors and speed. Doomed to love both nature and gasoline.

It’s dusk with ten miles to cover before reaching Ely. To my right, beneath the sand colored range, on the brush covered alluvial fan, at least twenty elk stand, casting long shadows in the waning light.

With the wind at my back, perhaps riding a little too fast, the motorcycle’s boxer-twin motor hums the purist tone. The purr has a siren effect. I sing in harmony with it. Saint-Saëns. Delilah. Mon coeur s’ouvre à tes bras comme s’ouvrent les fleurs…

I arrive at a favorite stopping place: the Nevada Hotel in Ely, a delightfully authentic 40’s throwback. A sign in the lobby says they prefer dogs as guests: dogs never stole towels. Four Nevada state prison guards are ahead of me at check-in. “Which prison,” I ask? “Cave Lake,” is the reply.

After registration, I go to the casino. Adding to the large room’s tawdriness is a life-sized wax figure of a gray bearded, wizened miner standing at the entrance. Two overweight, big-haired women of a certain age work the slot machines in the dingy casino. A claxon of disembodied voices and electronic tones strains my hearing: “Wheel…. Of…. Fortune! Beep, beep… chirp… chirp.” I try to win the Harley Knucklehead, the jackpot prize for a nearby slot. I lose $30.00 instead.

I go to my room, named after Ray Milland. Jimmy Stewart wasn’t available and I didn’t want Ingrid Bergman because it faced the parking lot. In the 40’s and 50’s the Nevada Hotel was an oasis for visiting Hollywood types on their way to Sun Valley. Poignantly, the hotel tries to cling to its past glory by naming its rooms after the stars of its heyday. But, the tackiness is endearing in its own way - an anti-Ritz Carleton; a protest against modernity; a welcome anachronism of simplicity in a complex age.

The hotel room is just large enough for a double bed, a chair and a dresser. I see a brochure touting Cave Lake State Park on the dresser and wonder if the prison is close to the park. The ancient bathroom fixtures, with dated, separate hot and cold-water controls, and a chain-pull toilet flush, must be “grandfathered” by OSHA.

Like the casino and my room, the Nevada Hotel’s restaurant recalls a time warp: juke box, movie star photographs, booths with leatherette seats, Formica tabletops and a lunch counter. The perky, thirty-something waitress greets me as I sit on a revolving stool at the counter, “Hi darlin’.” I order my “double-wide” meal: chicken fried steak, green beans, mashed potatoes and gravy, Jello salad, and banana cream pie. A 12 year-old boy sits next to me at the counter and stares at me as I glom. I want to slug the kid and, holding back, wonder if it’s the “atavistic” food that is making me feel this way. I learn that he is the waitress’ son and he stops staring at me as he turns his attention to the bowl of chicken noodle soup his mother gives to him.

Before returning to my room, I go back to the casino and make another attempt to win the Knucklehead. I win $40.00.

Next day, heading west, I detour from US 50: Nevada SR 722 from Austin to Middlegate. I follow, then cross, the Reese River. I ride the passes over the Shoshone Mountains and the Desatoya Mountains.

“You talkin’ to me? Huh? You talkin’ to me?” I yell at the Reese River valley cow, who just stares at me. She can’t see my mouth move through the tinted visor of my yellow, full-faced, Arai helmet… she does see me pointing aggressively at her as I ride slowly past screaming at her. My wife, Margaret, believes I have gone crazy with this motorcycle thing. Perhaps she is right.

Back on US 50, I stop at the shoe-tree in the desert, a mile outside of Middlegate (one saloon, no fuel) and talk to the black-leather clad BMW R1100RT rider and his similarly attired female passenger. As frequent desert riders, they knew about the tree. Thousands of shoes hang, like Spanish moss, from its branches. We speculate as to the origin of this phenomenon. But, there are no answers… only a mutual promise to bring some old shoes along on our next trip. One of those funny things that you find “only in America.”

I ride from Fallon to Eagle Lake, California without stopping - about 200 miles. I take some “roads not taken” before: US 50 from Fallon to Carson; Carson to Incline Village on the Lake Tahoe shore; North -west via California, SR 89 through Truckee and on up to Eagle Lake. Summary report: beaucoup fir trees.

Biff greets me at his house on Eagle Lake and asks to show me around. The trees, Douglas Fir and Redwood, were one hundred and forty feet tall – and double that in age. A dock; a lake; a house hidden away in the tall trees; deck with the sun to our back as we faced the water. Biff, Jim Beam in hand, grins: “Do you like my spot on the pond?”

I like it. It’s mountain man contemporary: steak not granola; wool, not fleece; Filson, not Patagonia. The redwood, heavy timber garage, decorated with SnapOn Tool bins, covered a late model Chevy pick-up, a restored 1968 Toyota Land Cruiser, and a BMW, R1100GS, dual sport motorcycle. B.B. King aired through the rafters on a surround-sound, Bose Accoustamass system. Back on the redwood deck, savoring our friendship along with the sips, we contemplated the shimmering lake and the forested mountain beyond. The cry of a loon flying over the lake announced the sunset and called us to dinner.

The menu item at the nearby grill is kofta. Kofta? Here in mountain man country? The new chef is from Turkey. The food is authentically spicy and very good; globalization in the Sierra. Conversation is Risner’s Cadillac Desert. Risner says civilization in the US west is unsustainable. Biff agrees. I remind of my ride past the dry Sevier salt bed.

Next day I ride with Biff. He takes the beemer, but his true love is “Pharos,” my name for his Harley Davidson Electra Glide, which he keeps at his warehouse in Chico. The candlepower of Pharos’ headlamp surely exceeded that of its namesake of antiquity in Alexandria. In a previous article on the Utah 1088 endurance rally, I wrote of my first meeting of Biff and Pharos at 3:00 AM near Natural Bridges National Monument in 1998.

We ride the Lassen Volcanic Park loop. This is an obscure national park. Still, the feds charge $10.00 to get in. I fret that entry fees are exacted from citizens who pay taxes. Lasson’s message, that forces within the earth still threaten, is readily apparent as we stop to view the broken mountain. Irregular contours of the treeless, beige, rock landscape attest to unfathomable explosive force. We ride an imaginary tunnel, where once was a mountain, and wonder when this land, on the eastern arc of the Pacific rim of fire, will again rend itself – as we are told is inevitable.

It’s just a little Boston Whaler, but it’s fully loaded. Radio. Fish radar. Fishing seat. Single 100 hp Mercury. It’s about four miles to the beach-front restaurant on the other side of the lake. The restaurant, with outdoor or indoor service, is nearly empty. A waitress recognizes Biff and they banter. Despite the beginnings of a chill in the air we stay outside. Over a hamburger, we talk of Biff’s farmland on the Sacramento River. Biff believes Green and socialist encroachments in California will drive farmers of the land. He talks of moving to New Mexico.

We return in the dark. I pilot the Whaler, nervously eyeing the depth meter, but Biff knows the lake and seems calm. We put our jackets on as the night air cools. The three-quarter moon illuminates the lake causing ghostly, glittering reflections on the black water. Only the most vivid of the constellations are visible: Orion, the Big Dipper. The moon is too bright to see the Milky Way. Biff, silent, points to the lights of his dock. The Whaler Mercury’s drone crowds out the night quiet.

Next morning, I’m off, once again a solitary rider. I had to do over 600 miles to get back to Park City that evening. I had promised to baby-sit my daughter’s “newfie”, Bu. Susanville to Reno on US 395, and then to I-80 was the sensible way to go. Still, always a sucker for new roads, I am drawn to the obscure route: Susanville to Pyramid Lake on forty miles of dirt, then south, skirting the western side of the lake, to I-80 at Fernly. I sense the augmented risk of being alone on a motorcycle in the empty, desiccated, desert wilderness and slow to a pace below my riding capability. I see the strange pyramid rock formations, oddly situated at the water’s edge and not, as I would have expected, on the ranges surrounding the lake. Back on macadam, west of the lake, I set my sights for Winnemucca and lunch at the Mexican restaurant recommended by Biff.

On I-80, ten miles west of Winnemucca, NV, a state trooper’s cruiser enters the freeway from an on-ramp at the end of a sweeping right hand bend. The lights of the cruiser are flashing and the trooper is waving me to a stop as he rides down the ramp on my right. “Sir, you were timed three different times by the airplane going at [CENSORED] in a 75 mph zone. Your fine will be [CENSORED] if you chose not to contest this ticket in Humboldt County court on October 10. Have a good day, and drive safely. Evil Bird. I don’t gloat this time. My guts ache but Bu waits. I ride on – the solitary ride.