Two Wheels To There

Two Wheels To There

Two Wheels To There

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Pherther-Grams

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The mid-May weekend was looking decent, so Surtch Pherther, jonesing for a desert rip, would hit dirt again. He’d aimed to dark-wander with good tunes and smoke, but ride-tired and for the week’s work and a nightfall chill, was fine turning in early to breeze on the fly and nothin’ otherwise. The next morn, he tracked dawn up a near, near-familiar ridge for fossil-hunting and a sudden snake-watch after a biggun rattled itself know, and then throttled off for fuel, food, and a Bud at a state-line oasis, where he met two dudes who’d cycle-slogged two-hundred-fifty-ish miles through downpours and desert heat just to carve a glacier.

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The mid-May weekend was looking decent, so Surtch Pherther, jonesing for a desert rip, would hit dirt again.  He’d aimed to dark-wander with good tunes and smoke, but ride-tired and for the week’s work and a nightfall chill, was fine turning in early to breeze on the fly and nothin’ otherwise.  The next morn, he tracked dawn up a near, near-familiar ridge for fossil-hunting and a sudden snake-watch after a biggun rattled itself know, and then throttled off for fuel, food, and a Bud at a state-line oasis, where he met two dudes who’d cycle-slogged two-hundred-fifty-ish miles through downpours and desert heat just to carve a glacier.

The Desert River Will Steal Your Heart – 2011.10.01(b)

Published on March 13, 2016 by Ry Austin 9 Comments

With a thumbtip flip, Surtch Pherther flicked the first ash cap from his maduro corona cigar. Half across that old highway bridge in the muggy fall night, he listened for its hit against the Crosscapes River, invisible in the dense dark, thirty feet down: Nothing. He listened for water shoosh-shoosh-shooshing through salt grass, snake grass, tamarisk, and willows. For ripples, he listened–but no: A flow without stones has no reason for that.

Wide water in a waste goes slow, bends big, is nigh on level with its ‘scape and would have you believe that it’s on the level too–but no: On sand alone, a river moves like a serpent, by stealth. It can pick your pocket, take your land, pluck your dreams like fruit, and it has the means to do the job and a place to hide the body. Give it a chance, and the desert river will steal your heart.

Surtch Pherther at Two Wheels To There: A motorcycle blog by Ry Austin

Surtch had checked in late that afternoon at Blakesville’s old Parker Motel, where a younger self and his kin had once snagged shuteye after a small hours, sixty mile, lonesome highway bicycle ride through the clayscape waste full of heat, skeeters, drizzle, and the push and pull of barreling rigs. They’d gotten spaced out, outta sight, and off in their own worlds, but regrouped late in a turnout for a thunderstorm’s blitz and boom of the scene–a worn timber corral nearby, the gnarled terrain beyond, and looming behind, the craggy Bucksaw Cliffs.

And all the while, from the first crank out of little Seeley’s town park at midnight to the last at the motel many hours down the road, that younger self had been tuned in to Enigma’s debut album loud on auto reverse continuous on the Walkman clipped at his hip. Man, what a trip that had been.

Surtch Pherther at Two Wheels To There: A motorcycle blog by Ry Austin

From a hot shower linger, Surtch–combed, brushed, free of the dirt-riding dust of the day–had walked out early that evening to stalk dinner. Not a block down he came upon a newly painted, old cafe with a roadside sign still wearing the name of some past venture, something only relative fortune or irrational confidence could change. “Well,” he said, “what the hell,” and his entry was announced with a screech from the dull chrome door.

Almost acrobatically, a wiry, little guy sprang from the kitchen. “Welcome! Villa Rica Restaurante! Pleece. Seat. Drink?” Eager to convey what his broken English might not, he held a grin on his face and a menu out from his side, presenting–like a spectacle–his place of specters: the burgundy, bombproof carpet with Atomic Age starbursts in gold; rain-stained popcorn ceiling like surf from the ocean blue walls; wagon wheel chandeliers, right for the town, but wrong for the times; mottled blue counter spottily worn down to kraft paper brown by decades of diners gone by; and every place set, and Surtch the only customer.

“Um, coffee please,” and he slid into a front booth with taped-up seats and with views of the old highway main drag, the overcast lowering like a stage curtain before the setting sun, and the west end of Blakesville.

Surtch Pherther at Two Wheels To There: A motorcycle blog by Ry Austin

Born a way station way back when at a wide river ferrying site for folks and things on the move, and come of age with the railroad boom, but left on the platform when the hub was switched, little Blakesville now bore, in boarded-up motels and expired eateries, the scars of a brief, postwar uranium boom, sixty-odd years back. Adding insult to injury, it was soon thereafter bypassed like a blown fuse by the interstate and all that came–or went–with it.

Now only where ramps tied it to traffic at both far ends was there any semblance of prosperity, in branded gas stations and fast-food joints, just more spots on the system to get the same old shit between untold heres and theres. It was like Blakesville was being forced to hold its breath, to wait—for rebirth, or its last gasp.

Surtch Pherther at Two Wheels To There: A motorcycle blog by Ry Austin

With the final shred of tortilla, Surtch wiped his plate clean of beans and rice and the fajitas’ spicy sauce, popped in that pinch and tossed back the lukewarm last of his second cup, paid up and swapped thank yous with wiry, little guy, and with a screech from the dull chrome door fairly bidding him well, returned to the sidewalk and into the evening that had meanwhile gone dim.

Surtch Pherther at Two Wheels To There: A motorcycle blog by Ry Austin

He’d unburdened Escape Artist upon arriving that afternoon, leaving its top case in his room with the full fuel cans like a bomb wanting a spark, so it took him but a second to soften the spring, gear up, start up, butt-bounce the rear just for fun, and twist from the lot and onto the old highway main drag, hardly checking for traffic, but minding his speed ’cause if Blakesville was especially hungry for one thing, it was revenue from throttle-happy travelers.

Surtch Pherther at Two Wheels To There: A motorcycle blog by Ry Austin

On the far side of an east-of-town mound that left him in the dark on the decaying old highway frontage road, Surtch cranked it up, keeping his peepers peeled for pronghorn out to broadside him from the blue and fling him roadside, broken and bruised–until about three miles out, where he rolled off the gas, swung under a crumbling overpass, and struck off on a desert dirt road that fled further into the black.

Aside from precious nothing, the only things for a while within reach of Escape Artist’s slight light were road grader leavings, scattered rabbit- and sage-brush, and here and there huddles of scheming tumbleweeds. Soon pale bluffs emerged left and right, looking like ruins and appearing dead at first glance–too dry for life, too barren for hope–but no: Vigorous they were, fragile but hardy, vulnerable but resilient, quietly vital. And that’s the desert in a nutshell–a paradox.

Surtch Pherther at Two Wheels To There: A motorcycle blog by Ry Austin

Down a snaky draw the road dove, teasing the wash with parallel runs, shoulder bumps, and pointless crossings, while from heaps and boulders Escape Artist’s light conjured shadows, raising them to monsters tall and twitchy across the terrain and driving them off all the same, until–abruptly–the bluffs receded and the draw dwindled, the shadow play ceased for want of a source, and the road just stopped. There was a small, tracked-out flat, a wet mound of travertine, and the open wellhead pipe from a prewar oil bore. It was Codd-Bottle Geyser, and all they’d struck was club soda: carbon dioxide-propelled groundwater.

To Surtch, it seemed like odd geology for a petroleum prospect, but what did he know? In the sandstone labyrinth down the Crosscapes from Blakesville–far by flow or sand, but a wink as the crow flies–were many such geysers. Of course, those had been sunk with water in mind, by ranchers and by sand settlers supposedly taking root with riverside cultivation of gardens and melons and–believe it or not–peaches. Really, though, it was the Roaring Twenties, Prohibition era in the US, and most of those so-called homesteaders were just lawless desert rats–off their rockers, out in the wastes, lost in the maze, down in the sheer-walled canyon shade, brewin’ hooch.

Surtch imagined himself kickin’ back with a cactus quill toothpick twiddlin’ ‘tween his lips in a scrub oak-shrouded alcove with its seam seep quenching critters and small ferns and traveling songbirds–moonshining with the rest of ’em, bootlegging maybe with the best of ’em.

Surtch Pherther at Two Wheels To There: A motorcycle blog by Ry Austin

Patient Escape Artist idled in neutral while its slight light dissolved in the dark, like damp in the dry, above where the Crosscapes moved by stealth, twenty feet out, ten feet down, and for what it’s worth, over seven hundred miles long.

Surtch might have shut it down and let the night wash over him, might have waited for his sight to catch up, might have alighted to drift in the dark, might have listened to Codd-Bottle blow, might have lain still on the sand to be more aware, might have pushed through the brush and the riverside reeds, and might have crouched on the crumbly bank, straining to hear the wide water’s whispers, begging to know its wisdom, and pleading to keep its secrets. He might have tried to endear himself to it as he’d tried with every desert river since the Johnsie stole his heart when he was just a little boy.

Yeah–were it not for campers in a Vee-Dub pop-top overnighting near the geyser, he might have. But they’d stirred at his arrival and stayed anxious about his presence, so around he turned to return to town. And that likely was for the best anyway: Love of a desert river can be a smothering thing.

Surtch Pherther at Two Wheels To There: A motorcycle blog by Ry Austin

The full fuel cans he’d left like a bomb wanting a spark had not meanwhile rubbled his room and inflamed the Parker Motel, so Surtch–adding foolishness to recklessness as though two such negatives might mathemagically make a positive–planned to leave them there overnight. Onto the bed he tossed his gear, into his rear pocket he stuffed his wallet, and out the door he set off on foot to the Zephyr Truck Stop, mid town, to gather the next day’s breakfast and lunch.

Along the old highway main drag stood many streetlamps, too few lit, and the town was home to far more crickets than it deserved. Where lots remained wild, the temperature dropped, and through Russian olive hedges a few campfires flickered afar in the Crosscapes River State Park. In a night that would have been young for a city, Blakesville was all but dormant.

Three kids with bicycles goofed and gabbed in the town park pavilion across the road–Surtch could hear them, but not what they said–and when they noticed him, they hushed, watched, and then vanished into the shadows. Seconds later, a deputy drove slowly through town, the only car in the scene right then, and Surtch was left feeling criminal for no reason.

Surtch Pherther at Two Wheels To There: A motorcycle blog by Ry Austin

At the Zephyr he grabbed granola bars and some jerky, a Gatorade, a banana, a small milk, two cereal cups, and he plucked a plastic spoon from a bin near the chili and cheese dispensers and the wiener rollers. He also snagged a cold beer–one of those cheap, pale lagers in a twenty-four ounce can ’cause that was precisely the kind that a Blakesville station would sell: The town simply wouldn’t have tolerated anything remotely highfalutin.

Surtch Pherther at Two Wheels To There: A motorcycle blog by Ry Austin

Back half across that old highway bridge in the muggy fall night, Surtch Pherther–groceries warming at his feet, maduro corona cigar smoldering not an inch from his pinch, and brain abuzzin’–dragged once more for the last time and then flipped the hot butt far out and listened for its hit against the Crosscapes River, invisible in the dense dark, thirty feet down: Nothing.

Feeling a bit less criminal-for-no-reason with a grocery bag in hand, he would stroll back to his room at Blakesville’s old Parker Motel and, later, nod off fully dressed, sprawled across the bed–an empty on the nightstand, Cartoon Network on the TV, and during the small hours, drizzles outside.

 

Filed Under: Blakesville, Escape Artist Tagged With: crosscapes river, johnsie river, lodging, mines, moonshiners, parker motel, railroads, recollections, storms, villa rica restaurante, zephyr truck stop

Relations & Reflections, Motorbiking & Mudbugs – 2011.08.20

Published on June 1, 2015 by Ry Austin 4 Comments

Because motorcycling makes me feel like a kid again. It’s a predictable answer to an inevitable type of question, a type that riders rarely ask: They know that the experience, as skittish as a wild creature, eludes definition and that words often fail. To ride might be the only road to an answer: If the experience doesn’t take, an answer won’t be given. If it does take, a new rider will be born to pursue a passion that enlivens living–one possessed striving to possess the possessor.

It had been over five years since Surtch Pherther was–himself–born again, baptized by throttle into the Vespa sect of that divinely inspired Two Wheelers tradition, and much remained to be revealed to him—technically, socially, geographically, soulfully. Indeed, because motorcycling makes me feel like a kid again would have to do—for now…

Surtch Pherther at Two Wheels To There: A motorcycle blog by Ry Austin

“We’re going crawdaddin’,” hollered Surtch’s brother. “Who wants in?” The lunch-lazy camp stirred then squirmed then surged to life with kids of all ages wriggling into swimsuits and slipping into flip-flops, grabbing buckets and nets, and shouting “Shotgun!” and crying foul as they dashed toward the cars.

“I’ll meet ya there,” yelled Surtch, and he geared up, saddle up, and throttled off.

3-re_Kids in San Cosme Reservoir

He hugged the few curves on the paved road from camp (they squeezed him back, right in the adrenaline) and then caved to the lure of an unlocked DOT gravel pit, low-banking its scattered mounds and slow-going its small slopes of shifty cobble in a continuing bid for practice makes better.

Perfect riding skills, especially off road, seemed an impossibility to Surtch, and frankly, immeasurable—like judging artistic merit.

Surtch Pherther at Two Wheels To There: A motorcycle blog by Ry Austin

From the gravel pit, he followed a faded two-track down to the pebbly beach and rode through the shallows half up to the hubs toward where his people were waist deep—splashing, laughing, crayfish net-catching—and closing in on buckets full. The scene flashed him back to a younger self’s first memory of wild water and a snippet of something he once-upon-a-time scribbled about it:

…I was four or so when my parents first took me and my siblings to wade in a desert river. We were headed home from camping when we stopped to try to squeeze out any lingering essence. The sun was setting, and damp river-bottom coldness was beginning to rise, which is typical for the desert—it can be blistering at noon, but frigid at midnight. I tiptoed through thin willows, purple-flowered tamarisk sprouts, and beds of coarse snake grass. The alkali sand, crusty and white, broke and sloughed beneath my little footsteps, exposing organic under-soil to which even the sparse salt grass clung fiercely. And all the while the Johnsie River just rippled, whispering its endless tale:

“I am a desert river and was dreamy in my youth. I only wanted to enliven difficult land, but of that I was deprived, doomed by the ages to dredge deeper and deeper until I flowed too far below any surface I could serve. I’m just a desert river—old and lonely—a thoroughfare for the evening breeze which to every spider delivers a fly. Look high, on the cottonwoods that dot my bank, higher than your reach. It’s where I wear my dry drift scarves and my deepest desire keep–to flood. Oh, just to flash once more. It’s when I’m at my peak.”…

Surtch Pherther at Two Wheels To There: A motorcycle blog by Ry Austin

Back at camp—nets tossed aside, buckets of creepy craw-dudes placed in the shade, flip-flops swapped for shoes, and swimsuits for dry duds—everyone had begun to slip into sun-stupor when…

“We’re off to hit a geocache,” hollered Surtch’s brother. “Who’s coming along?” And once again, as though on cue, the camp stirred then squirmed then surged to life with kids shouting “Shotgun!” and crying foul as they dashed toward the cars.

“Okay, man. You lead,” yelled Surtch, and a few minutes later, a few miles down from camp, they rolled to a stop on the hillside shoulder of a wide curve in the reservoir road. The kids goofed in the nearby brush while Surtch’s brother briefly consulted the GPS before pointing to a rocky outcrop on a low spur.

Surtch Pherther at Two Wheels To There: A motorcycle blog by Ry Austin

Up the gentle slope, through winding paths defined by giant, pungent sagebrush and impenetrable wild rose, along vague trails left by critters small and large, and safely past a stunning wasps’ nest sculpture, Surtch and his brother led the children. At last they scrambled the final bit onto the spur and then strolled out to its small point overlooking San Cosme Reservoir.

Surtch Pherther at Two Wheels To There: A motorcycle blog by Ry Austin
Secret North American Vespa Factory

The kids spied the cache, traded trinkets, marked the booklet, and for a while everyone gazed upon the glimmering water below. Surtch repressed an urge to ask them for their thoughts, a query that seldom delivers anyway, and never in the moment: Most folks reserve the real stuff; impressions require digestion; and words—those imperfect tools for imperfect beings—often fail.

Oh, to be able to channel my child self, thought Surtch, to know his untainted impressions. Then maybe I’d know if I’ve grown, know if this bizarre, existential experience has been worthwhile so far.

Surtch Pherther at Two Wheels To There: A motorcycle blog by Ry Austin

Evening—calm, cooling, barely cloudy—was upon them upon their return to camp, so they lit a fire and soon they had a blaze. Amid the banter typical for fireside dining, Surtch politely declined his brother’s offer of boiled, um, freshwater lobster (a flattering name indeed) in favor of applesauce, beef jerky left over from lunch, and instant red pesto pasta. As night took hold, the children one by one yawned their ways to their sleeping bags and the adults followed suit until just the two brothers remained at the campfire.

“I was surprised when you showed up on Escape Artist,” said Surtch’s brother, with a knowing smile. “I had expected you to ride in on a new machine—something orange and sporty maybe?…” Surtch just chuckled.

In silence thereafter they watched the final flames die, the mound of orange coals cool and shift, the last few sparks rise and twist, and–curling smoothly around sky-pillar pines–the smoke waft like sacred incense in a grand, roofless cathedral.

To Surtch, this was the only religion that had ever made sense.

Filed Under: Escape Artist, San Cosme Reservoir Tagged With: brother, camping, family, flow, johnsie river, quotes, religion, wandering