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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Jun 9

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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.

Two-Up with the Past – 2011.10.02

Published on June 12, 2016 by Ry Austin 25 Comments

Shaky Surtch Pherther squeezed the clutch, halting Escape Artist a hundred feet above the Crosscapes River and Magic Canyon’s mouth where a clifftop younger self once spied a Native guy mid-chant just as a cloud burst.

He switched off the bike and eased its stand into the pebbly sand, dismounted softly, backed away to watch, and–spotting not a budge–bolted, dashing around all geared up and nose to the ground, kicking at rocks for a good one.

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

That morning, from a chair in the doorway of his room at Blakesville’s old Parker Motel, Surtch with coffee in hand had gazed at scattered cloudlets and virga while small hours rainwater wisped from Escape Artist and dryness overcame the last puddle in the lot. Looney Tunes goofed low on the TV behind him.

He recalled an eight-year-old self and his siblings parking their pajamaed butts before bowls of cereal and Trivia Adventure on the floor and those irreverent Saturday-morning cartoons on the tube in grandma-n-grandpa’s basement where they lived while dad built their house next door. It was only eighteen months, but those toon morns could have been his whole blessed childhood.

Surtch Pherther at Two Wheels To There: A motorcycle blog by Ry Austin
Where a Clifftop Younger Self Spied a Native Guy Mid-Chant – 2009.05.02

From checkout, Surtch blipped the old highway main drag east and hung the first right, passing boarded-up bars, expired eateries, and the tumbledown shacks and crumbledown ramps in Blakesville’s rusty railyard. Across the tracks he flew onto the cracked blacktop of Anticline Road, through the Salaera Wash dip that silts up at every flash flood, and past the obligatory dirt bike hills on the outskirts of town where he throttled down for the shift to gravel.

He passed surprisingly full Ash Bluff Pond at elevenish miles out and then swayed his way up to a sand-drifted washboard slog atop Salt View Mesa before slipping down a steep draw to the Anticline Creek bridge. Beyond, the road went all dirt and stone and bent to hell, and Surtch, rounding a tighty at too swift a clip, whacked the front wheel somethin’ fierce on a gouged washout, giving that rim its first of many dents.

At twenty-something out he scrambled onto a faint two-track and into a li’l badlands of red and gray shale and clay, traced a sandstone monolith’s sinuous fingers, tossed side to side down ledgy ruts and through cobble ‘n’ sand salad in a dry wash, carved off-camber up a slidey slope, and bumbled across weird warts of a rock bench to where he now lingered on the edge–alone in a breeze, with the odd crow and quiet.

Once re-serene from a spell with that scene, Surtch mounted back up, backtracked a bit, and worried his ride down the warped fringe of one bench to the next where he often camped with his kin and there fooled around for a while before, finally giving in to return to the City of Contradictions’ dubious civilization, he began to dawdle back toward Blakesville.

He dodged distant downpours and faraway wanna-rain, played that childhood game of “Where d’ya think that road goes?” with routes that vanished at worn corrals and shot-up water tanks or just into the sand as they should, and from an afternoon fuel-up at the town’s far west end, he pulled aside to consult his map of lies while the nearby slab spat and slurped cars at random.

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

How many beginnings can there be in a life or for one pleasure, he wondered. They say that each day can be a fresh start, another shot, and any gain therein chalked up as progress–that it all boils down to perspective.

For Surtch, this small fall adventure had been just that: a weekend of reducing pavement to mere stepping stones between the real stuff; of nudging the dirt closer to home, and his riding horizons farther out; of forging links from the sensational to the divine; and of further exploring and finally beginning to embrace dual-sporting.

Yet October was already afoot: Frigid Mr. Winter would soon be stomping his snowy boots on the stoop.

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

Surtch wouldn’t aim to be home by dark–he hadn’t been raised that way. Instead, he’d go west: up Lobo-Mancha Canyon in the Anticline; on the right road–eventually–for Antler Gulch, a way his brother had found through the clayscape waste’s surprisingly scenic guts; to dinner at dusk in a humdrum hash house in little Grames town; and over Friar Canyon’s sixty-odd miles that night, tailgating gas-guzzlers and big rigs as blockers against large game jaywalkers.

And all the way he’d carry on two-up, his passenger his past: a younger self mid-backseat in dad’s ’72 Ford “Blue Ox” Bronco; his brother on the wheel well at his right, staring at starlight, star bright, and moonlight in the desert night; their sister at his left, waiting with a Cat’s Cradle game in hand; mom-n-dad up front amid that magical glow of orange, cream, and green from the dash and the cryptically whispering CB radio; and that big, old V-8 just droning on and on and on.

Yeah, it was only twice or thrice a year, but those desert trips could have been his whole blessed childhood.

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

Filed Under: Anticline, Escape Artist Tagged With: anticline creek, anticline road, antler gulch, ash bluff pond, clayscape waste, crosscapes river, friar canyon, grames, lodging, magic canyon, motorcycling skills, parker motel, recollections, salt view mesa, solitude, storms, wandering

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

Worknight Runaway – 2011.08.30

Published on July 27, 2015 by Ry Austin 6 Comments

Frigid river water washed the countless casualties from Surtch Pherther’s glasses and visor, and the workday’s salt and the evening’s dust from his face. Ten feet out, given the chance, the Shamton Waterfall could have washed away so much more, but Surtch hadn’t taken this path on his O’Mahoney’s Grill trip the year before, back when food had no flavor, the jukebox no tunes, sunlight no warmth, and he no desire.

Here it was a midweek worknight a mere three days after he’d got the ’09 XR1200 “Riot Machine” with just 300 miles for a steal from a DeLusiville dealership because this bike was never given a fighting chance stateside because it seldom saw the showroom floor because Harley’s typical customer didn’t give a realtime damn because it just can’t seat a big spare tire… And though Surtch was fine with all that, he thought it a shame just the same.

He’d bombed the eastbound I at 80 to 100 mph after work because he’d craved it, because Riot Machine had roared for it, and because broad Big Canyon, with few lurk-spots for cops, had beckoned. On the back side he’d throttled down and let the naked bike’s 1200 ccs rumble-vibe through Silvervale’s ranch-lands turned rec-lands and cash cows for the one percent and then down Middlefield Draw to the midweek-empty diner for a pastrami on rye with chips and a dill spear and coffee as the sun nestled west in the virga-streaked and cloud-strewn sky. Afterward, with nowhere to be and anywhere to go, he’d set off southeast for West Cairn Road and into the mouth of the Shamton drainage at a speed to match the meandering route and its swift shifts from sunlight to shade.

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

Riverside, Surtch rinsed and wrung the microfiber, wiped his glasses and visor of lingering streaks, and folded the cloth and tucked it damp into his jacket’s right pocket. Pebbles on the path back crackled under his boots, and the cooling air raised aromas of evergreens and damp soil and cradled the spray from the waterfall that continued to shush as though to hush others with whom it had been babbling before the rider’s arrival. It was shift change in the woods–day was turning in, night was stirring to stalk a bite to eat, and Surtch, fresh from the riverbank, was aware.

With a turn of the key and a press of the starter, road-hot Riot Machine barked right back to life, and soon thereafter Surtch was clearing Bardom Pass. Taking the tight switchbacks slow, he sank into the other side, into the Mackenzie drainage that for 15-ish miles runs along the Cairn Mountains Wilderness, and into a night that seemed to fall as suddenly as its dangers arose. He’d seen no deer before the waterfall and the pass, but now there were only signs of their abundance: fuzzy forms in the brush, just within the headlight’s reach, and here and there large eyes glinting like early ornaments among the boughs.

A few miles beyond where the mouth of the drainage yawns wide, where lush graze-land lies out flat and far, he crossed the state line and then thundered into the first fuel stop he came upon in weeknight-quiet Booth Union. After filling up and then sipping a Gatorade and munching a granola bar at the station’s front walk, he joined the westbound I, busy with cagers and big rigs to serve as possible blockers against wildlife would-be tacklers.

Combined with the increasing mugginess and the drone of steady revs, the pastureland links between Bromley’s Draw, Silvergate Gulch, and Big Canyon might have rendered Surtch body-bored and mind-numb had it not been for a coming storm: The sky, which had been building tension and making threats all late-day long, was finally throwing a fit with light but steady rain–refreshing, really–and random, remote flashes that silhouetted the tall and toothlike Westwitness Peaks on the otherwise blackdrop backdrop.

Finally, at about ten o’clock that night, after over 200 satisfying miles, Surtch raced Riot Machine to a fork-squeezing stop at the back of his drive and shut it off. Behind him–speeding, crashing, enfolding, and companioned by the tink-plunk tune of cooling cylinders and pipes–rushed that intoxicating odor of hot V-twin exhaust, something that proper Escape Artist never could and never would produce. Of course, Surtch loved Escape Artist: It could take him remote, to where his soul was closest to the surface. But Riot Machine roared to his flesh and his blood, was a wild thing. Indeed, where Escape Artist was spirit, Riot Machine was body alone–tautly muscled, hot and lusty.


Are you occasionally able to fit in a longer ride during your work week, or is the risk too high–that you’ll just keep heading away, from home, from work, from responsibility?…

Now, don’t rub it in too much, you… you retired people. You know who you are. 🙂

Filed Under: Riot Machine, West Cairn Road Tagged With: big canyon, booth union, cairn mountains, flow, o'mahoney's grill, recollections, shamton falls, solitude, storms

Simpler Then, Easier When – 2011.07.03

Published on February 13, 2015 by Ry Austin Leave a Comment

C0NR.2011.07.03The gaps from bolts to claps were closing ominously as Surtch Pherther hurtled along the highway, hoping the embracing forest would continue to provide cover, or taller targets at least. Though wilderness had schooled him not to defy such weather, the Cairn Mountains, famous as storm-makers and summertime snow-collectors, could get socked in: He wanted to beat it to Lake Lynnwood’s east side, a high desert where “taller” were few and far between.

He had departed the City of Contradictions predawn, risen up Big Canyon with the sun, veered east at the Interchange interchange, and eaten breakfast, likely in Booth Union. Yet the day had begun to stick only after he left the slab at Blacks Fort, and to engage only after his Birch Spring grocery stop: From there the pavement, hugging high the deep lake’s curves, elevated fitfully to about eight K into the Cairns’ east foothills and into that randomly sear-streaked, churning gray smother.

C3.2011.07.03

Upon finally crossing to the other side, of Lynnwood Dam, that is, Surtch glanced back to glimpse a smoke thread rising from the woods. Though a bolt had struck, the attending downpour would halt the smolder’s spread, and “Thank goodness!” the thunderstorm was dissolving over the broad water between. He would nevertheless get drenched the next day through the San Cosme on the Cairns’ south edge.

C4.2011.07.03

After greeting his family at camp, he stowed Escape Artist’s luggage, and everyone headed for the old Spear Ranch site far below the dam on the Crosscapes River (Surtch rode the dirt dugway’s steep grades a-peg and “no hands” to thrill his sister’s youngsters in the truck behind). They leisure-lunched from coolers and then the grownups lounged while the kids goofed on the lawn. At last, the day was warming, but slowly. Surtch lay as low as possible on the chilly grass, trying to elude the braille-eager fingers of the blind breeze.

C5.2011.07.03

He could sense the Crosscapes, knew it was near of course, had strolled its bank before lunch. There is something about a wide river on a flat: It might flow silently, but it nonetheless manifests a presence, possesses a spirit, is a being. The attuned wanderer usually can sense such a river long before he can see it, and always before he can hear it.

Surtch rolled onto his side and gazed at the cluster of century-and-a-half old structures, humble yet hardy. He’d always presumed simple those bygone days when folks doubtless presumed easy the days to come. Indeed, often romanticized are “then” and “when”. But “now”? Rarely.

C6.2011.07.03

Filed Under: Escape Artist, Lake Lynnwood Tagged With: big canyon, booth union, cairn mountains, camping, crosscapes river, family, san cosme, spear ranch, storms

Almost Ice in August – 2009.08.08

Published on February 13, 2015 by Ry Austin 1 Comment

Surtch Pherther had merely to squeeze the Vespa’s brake levers for a safe approach to the Tillage station… Somehow he managed, slowing in a wide arc through the lot to a spot near the doors of the welcome refuge.

“Damn,” hollered his brother, rolling in on the right, punctuating with exaggerated flexing of his left hand, “I almost couldn’t slow it down–clutch, shift, brakes, you name it.”

“Yeah, tell me about it, and I just have brakes to control.”

3.2009.08.08

Eager to get inside and get hot coffee inside of them, they removed their thin gloves and their glasses and helmets while shivering toward the doors. For the wet and cold in which they’d been immersed for nearly two hours, every movement was a challenge, even thought and speech were slow. Needless to say, they left on their coats and other layers, foolishly few as they’d worn.

4.2009.08.08

They had set off that morning in the face of a rainstorm threat–a threat that by north DeLusiville had become a promise, and just before Call’s Mill, a bully. Surtch had wanted to stop at Lutrec Marsh to gather any leftover magic from the year before, but such weather is only for curses.

In Agton Canyon the downpour really set in, and with each slight gain in elevation, the degrees dropped, until–at the pass, just a mile or so from the Tillage station–they hit a ride low of thirty-four Fahrenheit. Wet is wet; cold can mean discomfort; windy cold can be dangerous; but from all the time they’d spent in the harsh outdoors, the brothers knew that cold and wet in riding wind can be deadly, especially for the underprepared. Hypothermia is, after all, a skilled and silent seducer.

5.2009.08.08

For about an hour at the corner booth they cupped large coffees in their convulsively shivering hands and tried not to shake too many crumbs from the donuts they’d bought. Fortunately, by the time they suppressed the storm’s effects, the dense overcast was breaking. It wasn’t exactly warm out, but afternoon sunlight was shining through. Surtch picked up the last of his groceries and packed his cooler, reluctantly scooping ice with his bare hands.

6.2009.08.08

“Shit, man, that’s hardcore,” said a guy walking by, pointing at the laden scooter, “Did y’all come over the top?”

“Yeah, ‘bout an hour ago, all the way from the City of Contradictions. It was thirty-four up there.”

“Shit…,” shaking his head as he entered the station.

Across the lot, Surtch’s brother idled in wait at road’s edge. Surtch rolled up on the right, nodded, and after a moment, seconds before throttling onto the highway, casually said, “You know, I’m considering getting a motorcycle”.

10.2009.08.08

Filed Under: Lake Mackenzie, Vespa Tagged With: agton canyon, brother, camping, family, lutrec marsh, storms

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