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.
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Two-Up with the Past – 2011.10.02

Published on June 12, 2016 by admin 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 admin 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

The Ouroboros Never Rests – 2011.07.23(b)

Published on February 13, 2015 by admin 3 Comments

Kronos slowly swallows Thysia… As it has for over a century, so it will–indefinitely? Thysia, the town the Kronos Mine bore, peopled by the miners who sustain Kronos, the miners that Kronos sustains. If not for history, the telling of truth might be lost to the tailings of time: Thysia doesn’t stand in its first footprints. Indeed, over the over-a-century, it has been displaced at least once, is where it hadn’t been. And where it was–as it was–is no more, has been either excavated or entombed. Given another hundred, Thysia mightn’t be where it is, and where it is mightn’t be.

1.2011.07-23(b)

They are an ouroboros of treasure booms and busts; an amalgam ouroboros–Kronos heads the Thysia tail, and the miners course as blood; an ouroboros not of hopeful infinitude, but of insatiety, which is want, presumed need, and a grain of greed at least; an ouroboros likely to swallow itself to its tightest possible constriction… Then what?

2.2011.07-23(b)

Surtch Pherther straddled Escape Artist parked on a rise outside of town and safely opposite the Kronos tali while through Thysia sped a jacked pickup, its stereo blaring, “But it was not your fault, but mine. And it was your heart on the line. I really fucked it up this time. Didn’t I, my dear? Didn’t I, my dear?”

3.2011.07-23(b)

Surtch wanted to control time: not to usher its passing, for that would be unfair to others aboard this absurd conveyance, but to slow his own so that he could witness ad infinitum Kronos’s consumption. For witnesses, however broadly “witness” can be defined; witnesses not as judges; witnesses impartial and incorruptible… Dammit, there MUST be witnesses! Otherwise, there is no possible testimony.

There must be witnesses to the indications of the existence: of man, of florae and faunae, of the natural world and the unnatural, of the universe, of possible infinity, of possible God. There must be witnesses to the indications of the existence of existence. Otherwise, it’s as though nothing exists, as though nothing occurs. So, NO! HELL no! If a tree falls in a forest and no one’s around to hear it, it does NOT make a sound! In fact, without witnesses, the tree and its forest don’t exist!

5.2011.07-23(b)

The sun lowered on the drama, and Surtch turned over Escape Artist and rode off, returned to high desert Saxton for Chinese food and then to the Saxton Hotel for an amber ale, reclined on a warm and quiet twilit bench on the sidewalk for a slow cigar, retired to the tub in his room for a late, hot bath with a cold Guinness and then, finally, to bed for rest. Outside, Saxton was still; up the canyon, Thysia surely was still; but Kronos… Kronos was hungry, and slowly, ever so slowly, it continued to eat.

6.2011.07-23(b)

Filed Under: Escape Artist, Saxton Tagged With: art, lodging, mines, solitude