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.
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.
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.
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 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.
You have such a knack for telling a story. I love it!
Hey thank you, Adam! It’s a pleasure to be able to toss my own little brand of good into the world from time to time, and I’m thrilled that folks seem to enjoy it. 🙂
Man, that was fun! Seeing and hearing you for the first time, even behind that lid was a bit of a buzz. Those arid plains look enticing, and yes as Adam says, boy you have a way with words.
This sentence alone is one of the most beautiful:
“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.”
G’day Ry. Keep on Surtching!
Yeah man, I was pretty excited to post that video. And you’re spot on about “those arid plains”: Over the years my family and I have done quite a bit of mountain biking in that area–a great place for it.
Dan, thank you for your encouragement. I doubt I could really express what it means to me.
Ah, the great wide open. Sometimes I am missing the huge dimensions shown in your pics and videos. And finally did we see a glimpse of the man behind the long shadow…
Sonja, I am fortunate and grateful to live so close to some pretty wide open places. Yet even in just the last twenty years I’ve watched many of them get smaller: not so much due to sprawl (though there is that), but because of national–and international–popularity. Some of the “wild” places from my childhood I can only revisit in memory, for they no longer resemble how I knew them thirty-odd years back. (sigh) Time marches on in spite of us. 😉
It’s funny about my shadow man walking favicon / profile pic: I took that photo at the end of this same October, near the Ash Bluff Pond mentioned in this tale (itself a tale for the future).
Thanks for dropping in, Sonja.
Nice story, and nice photos. I sometimes miss the desert then remember the heat…
Thank you. Our rule of thumb (my family’s, that is) for trips to the southern deserts has always been to steer clear between Memorial Day and Labor Day: Late March, April, and May often are perfect, especially after a long, cold winter; and September, October, and early November usually are nice for a last hurrah or two or three or… 😉
Imagine jetting from June snow in Barrow to 100+ Fahrenheit in the southern deserts: Now, that’d be a shock to the system!
BTW, good job on the video!
You should know, Richard, that your video editing inspired me a lot. I also benefited from some mighty helpful insight from friend Fuzzygalore.
And–really–what better inspiration and sources are there? 🙂
Total escape Ry!
Loved the video 🙂
Thanks, David! 🙂
I’m pleased with how the video turned out, especially as it was my intro to such editing and uploading. Actually, I found its meta-ish nature kinda funny: watching YouTube videos about editing and uploading videos to YouTube. That’s pert near Twilight Zone!
Another great post. I enjoyed the video, although I thought it needed a little Benny Hill music. 🙂
Holy freak, Trobairitz, that totally crossed my mind while I was contemplating the video!… I dismissed it only because I assumed there’d be rights issues.
Of course, if I’d said, “Screw it! l’m gonna use it,” I’d have had to bump up the video speed. 😀
Ry, that really was fun! Good to see you, even if just for a few seconds.
And my riding life has been greatly enhanced by playing “Where d’ya think that road goes?” to this very day, and beyond.
🙂
Kids are so imaginative about such things: I remember wishing for unmapped ghost towns, abandoned cowboy camps, forgotten Native American cliff dwellings, and remote canyons flowing with spring water and chock-full of plants and wildlife.
Though I’m more realistic now, I’m no less curious. My adult struggle, however, is the common one—responsibilities: Like it or not, one must go home eventually.
Lynne, I hope that retirement is giving you and Jerry more freedom to discover just where those roads go.
Ry, we are so fortunate to indeed be able to see where so many roads go, and take the slow and curvy roads almost everywhere…and one day I may write about it again. 😀
Almost a magic carpet ride. A great read, thanks.
Ooo, and that gives the video yet another audio track option: Steppenwolf’s Magic Carpet Ride. What a great song!
In the early ‘90s I was a high school kid with a ’69 VW Bus and big dreams of driving it cross-country or into Canada with that song as my soundtrack. Sadly, it wasn’t the ‘60s, and—try as I did—I just couldn’t keep that blasted Vee-Dub running.
Thank you for dropping in, Mr. Bones! 🙂 I’m glad you enjoyed the tale.
Hey Ry, I’m in SLC! Wasn’t sure how to get in touch other than to comment here, thought it would be cool to meet up if you’re interested! Let me know
Well howdy, Shadow Rider! I hope you had pleasant travels. Welcome to summer along the Wasatch Front, where it can be 100-ish in the valley, but in the canyons… Ahhh, in the canyons count on 15 or 20 degrees cooler. And–boy–do we have great canyons for riding. If you’d like to send me a message through the contact form at the bottom of my blog’s Profiles page, we can chat by email and maybe put together some rides. 🙂
Coming in a bit late to this post, but, well done! Great story and love the pics of the desert. Been a while since I’ve been out West. Last time was 2010 in the Moab area. Love it and a return is long overdue. Video was cool and music was great. We actually have a ultramarathon race here in South Carolina called the Swamp Stomp, and it is! Thanks for sharing, Ry!
Bob, there’s no such thing as “late” on a blog as irregularly updated as this one. 😀 I am glad you dropped in, and I’m happy that you enjoyed what you found here.
Moab sure is a wonderful west place to visit. It was a regular pit stop between here and there during off-road camping trips when I was a kid, and when my dad was about ten years old (63-ish years ago), he lived there for a while. I think that was the highlight of his childhood: following the banks of the whispering Colorado, wandering those endless, empty sandstone hills, and collecting pop bottles on the dirt main street bordered by hitching rails and boardwalks–a far cry from the vacation destination it has become.
I keep pushing my two-wheelin’ horizon eastward–would love to visit the South for some real southern cooking, and New England for its history–but I have trouble getting beyond Colorado’s Front Range. It’s those blasted in-between states (no offense to the folks in the middle) and their arrow-straight roads all gridded out. I’d love to see ’em, but I ain’t sure I wanna ride ’em.
Hope you are still enjoying many wonderful rides….looking forward to more posts when you get time!
Right back at ya, Moto-V! I hope that you, too, are still enjoying many wonderful rides, though I suspect that you’re in a similar boat weather-wise as I am: Winter finally arrived this week, with our first serious snowstorm and much colder temperatures.
Thank you for dropping in, and thank you for your words of encouragement. Life got a bit real after my last blog post in June–real in good ways… I rode as much as I could, including two longer rides into your state: a dual-sport camping trip in late July and a miles-packing asphalt trip over Labor Day weekend.
Between those two adventures I lost my employment of sixteen years when the small business I’d worked for suddenly went bankrupt and then I was quickly offered employment in a different position by a different company in the same industry.
In fits and starts (between long rides, weekend rides, and trying to be effective in my new employment) I’ve worked on my next blog post, and now that winter has finally arrived, and now that I’ve settled in somewhat with my new employer, maybe I’ll actually finish and post it–soon.
Life is indeed a wild, wild ride… Be well, my moto-friend. 🙂