Tainted Saint

We left our private rest stop reluctantly this morning.  Everybody has private jets these days, but who among the 1 %-ers are pitching a tent beside the "Not All Cacti are Pricks" display at their own private rest stop along the Interstate, lulled to sleep by the soothing screech of air brakes?  Damn few that's who.

We reached Quartzsite in a timely manner, at least by the standards of slugs and snails, and began the search for the perfect breakfast.  One of the quirks of character that June treasures in her husband is my desire to "check out every single choice" before committing to, for example, a place to eat breakfast.  In a car, this endearing quality takes an irritating, but not psychotic amount of time, and June can do her crossword.  On bikes, in a town approximately 3 miles long by 1 mile deep, with restaurants at each cardinal point, it can take just a little longer.  I think we spent about an hour and a half of prime cycling time diddling around Quartzsite settling, of course, for the first restaurant we checked out.  On the plus side, we upped our daily mileage.  On the down side, we didn't get anywhere.  While the breakfast was ultimately mediocre, we were inspired by an 85 year old man sitting in an adjacent booth who was cycling to Phoenix on his road bike (about 130 miles).  He was holding hands across the table with his wife who, following in their car, acted as the support vehicle - early Valentine's Day "Awwwwwwww..." (don't ask me why I didn't get a story from him - just don't).

Camped last night at the Ramblin' Roads RV resort in Hope, Az.  For 10 bucks we got a spot under a metal A-frame, hot - not warm - showers, and unlimited conversational opportunities with garrulous retirees who had, I'm just guessing, thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands, of amazing stories.  I had enough energy to prepare camp, lie down on my thermorest, assume the position and poof!  Out like a light by 7:00 pm.  Sheesh.

Home is Where the Tent Is

I'm watching Seb string a string between two trees for his clothesline.  I'd say "our clothesline", but no garment of mine ever sees a sud.  Despite my profoundly masculine exterior, I'm really all sugar and spice and everything nice inside, and therefore my perspiration smells like fresh-baked bread on a crisp fall morning.  I can't tell you how many times I've walked by people at the gym and heard "There goes Doughboy".  You get used to it.  Seb, sadly, is about to hang up all his snips, snails, and puppy dog tails, cursed as he is with the y-is-for-yucky chromosome.  But let's table the confused-gender talk for now, and move on to a selective description of our progress.

We left Palo Verde late yesterday morning, lingering over the breakfast Nancy made us: hot cereal with saffron, apricots, cherry, raisins, and diced (peeled first - sheesh!) almonds - we didna wanta goh.  But go we went, toward the town of Blythe.  Now when I write "Blythe", I'm sure in your head you're saying "Bl-eye-the".  The locals, on the other hand, pronounce their town name "Blit."  As in, "Ah live in Blit."  - sort of the sound children make when you ask them if they like brussel sprouts.  It was weird.  Wearing spandex and saying Blyyyyythe, we're lucking we escaped with our lyyyyyves.

For those of you eagerly following along on Google Maps, we next headed east on I-10 across the Colorado river, aiming for Quartzsite, Arizona (that's right, we finally crossed a state) home of the perpetual flea market.  The sun had been setting in California a little after five, so when we left Blit at 3-ish, we figured we could still make the 25 miles to Q-town, headwind and uphill be damned, without it being utterly dark when we got there.  Picture my consternation when, 10 miles east of Blyyyyyythe I look at my Garmin and it says 4:45 pm (Whaaaat?  Not another hallucination!  The stuff seems to take forever to leave your system).  So, not wanting to pedal on the interstate in the dark, again, we immediately bailed at the closed-for-repairs rest stop that just happened to lie conveniently ahead.  As we set up camp feverishly at our own private rest stop - no water but the plugs worked - in a race against time and the demon darkness, a sneaky, dawning thought occurred to me; something about, you know, Pacific Time, Mountain Time, Central Time, and so on.  A quick confirmation, using non-GPS time devices, indicated that we'd magically lost an hour crossing the Colorado river (even with water tables at historic lows, that's one wide river).  Suddenly the sun didn't appear to be in such a hurry to fall.  Suddenly I felt like a boob.  And that brings us back to the question of gender orientation...

Boulevard of Broken Spokes

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The 20 mile stretch from Ocotillo to El Centro on Hwy 78 is a testament to current federal and state funding priorities: topping the charts are the ever-popular platinum-selling winners - Alien Repulsion and The War on Drugs.  Then, several thousand line items, B-sides, and afterthoughts later, we reach health care and road repair.  For 20 miles, Seb and I steered, swerved, and skidded through a sea of potholes.  There was no conversation as each of us had an inner tube stuffed in our mouths to avoid shattered teeth.  Inner tubes taste like ass.  Speaking of donkeys, allow me to share that wild burro are common in this part of the world.

I write from the Palo Verde home of the lovely Nancy, a Warm Showers hostess with the most-ess.  Warm Showers is an organization comprised of homeowners who, lacking the DNA strand responsible for caution and cynicism, welcome touring cyclists into their homes.  Modeled on the couch-surfing template, bikers crash for a night with a real roof over their heads and a sympathetic ear for their troubles.  Two nights ago we stayed with Jim who, despite suffering from a plethora of personal pain, suffered us.  Pretty cool folk.

So we crossed the Sahara yesterday.  The North Algodones Dunes Wilderness Area is a stretch of sand 7 miles wide by several hundred miles long and home to many species of loudness-is-next-to-Godliness dune buggies.  An entire sub-culture of sand machines frolic here.  All you need to fit in is a VHS copy of Mad Max and a hearing disorder – tattoos and obesity are encouraged but not mandatory.

Seb and I left Brawley at 6:30 am for the 100 km crossing to Nancy’s house.  On a road bike ride that might take you 3-4 hours, depending on how powerful you were feeling that day, and always assuming that a highly-elevated heart rate and a tragic sense of only-discomfort-will-bring-me-completeness is what you call fun.  Well, Seb and I took 9 ½ hours.

We were good for the first couple of hours, propelled by tailwinds both elemental and burrito, but as soon as we hit the dunes, evil Stepmother Nature produced a headwind of encephalitis proportions.  Over the next 7 hours, gaiety and cheer were gradually sand-blasted away, replaced by an appalling tendency to look at your Garmin every fifteen seconds and, every time, be shocked and dismayed that you still had forever to go.  Mental toughness, wherefore art thou, mental toughness?

In another twist of fate, we managed to bend the towing arm of Barc’s Bench when the bikes blew over at one of our rest stops, resulting in the bench being towed into Palo Verde at a 45 degree angle, with all Seb’s gear strapped precariously at the fat-boy end of the teeter totter.  

Time to fix stuff.  Barc out.

See Level

Ocotillo, California  

Stardate: February 8, 2015

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As I gaze out of my tent at the reddening horizon, awaiting the glorious desert sunrise, I count my blessings:

-      The massive colony of fire ants, or possibly inferno ants, 12 feet north northwest, has embraced us as friend, not foe.

-      Among the seven items on the shelf of the destitute, gas-pumps-removed, kept-open-by-love-and-stubbornness convenience store behind which we’re camped was the best strawberry jam I’ve ever tasted.

-      For those of you who remember the movie “Who Framed Roger Rabbit”, the female half of the couple fighting an apparently losing battle to keep their business going, in a hamlet of 277 deserting souls, is Jessica Rabbit’s sister – an improbable, extraordinary, pleasing sight amidst the harsher-edged boulders and cacti.

-      With our route hugging the Mexican frontier, the Border Patrol (every second vehicle on the road), ceaselessly vigilant, protecting America from Dangerous Depleting Hispanic Hordes, has apparently determined that we pose no threat to The Way Things Should Be; troubling whiffs of Winston Smith all about.

-      Zooming down from the mountains on Interstate 8 through In-Ko-Pah Gorge, amidst a landscape lacking only a broken, tilted Statue of Liberty, losing two days of climbing in one hour, we encountered no damn stinking apes.

Okay, now I’ll count my curses:

-      The individual responsible for font control on the set of biking maps we’re using needs to rethink his settings.  When you’re cycling through the desert, possibly short of food, water, and tranquil thoughts, and the map, using font so large it spills over the side of the paper, indicates a town - nay metropolis - five miles ahead, a certain degree of raised expectation is fostered with respect to the goods and services awaiting cyclists with poor planning skills.  When, five miles later, you arrive at a tumbleweed-laden crossroads with a sign pointing to an abandoned Slinky factory on one corner and a shuttered Jim Jones “Just Do It!” Kool-Ade stand on the other, disappointment naturally ensues.

-      The part about this trip where we’re supposed to be filming jokes and stories from enchanting, quirky, and enthusiastic characters we meet along the way has, so far, kinda slipped through the cracks.  Part of it I blame on the black miasma of self-loathing I immersed myself in for a couple of days following the implosion of Barc’s Chair into Barc’s Bench.  And part of it I blame on the bracing transition from armchair musing of riding up mountains with over-laden bikes - waving happily to awestruck observers - to real-world riding up mountains with over-laden bikes – a surprising and significant difference, leading to end-of-day malaise, kill-me-now thoughts, and a total disinclination to interact with strangers, unless they’re selling hemlock.

That’s it for blessings and curses.  Dowd out.  

Climbing for Dummies

I write from inside our tent, dizzy from incipient altitude sickness at nearly 4000 feet, in the awfully pretty mountain hamlet of Pine Valley, California.  I could just write Pine Valley, Ca, but I'm still a little intoxicated and star-struck by the Golden State, and milking each letter for all it's worth.  

Seb and I have been worshiping at the blog altar of Timothy Towers, a retired, fantastically OCD engineer who painstakingly recorded his Southern Tier (thankfully non-bowel) daily movements with wonderful, if presumably somewhat trying for his loved ones, precision.  Following Tim's advice, we stopped at Major's Diner in Pine Valley today and asked - feeling like we should be talking out of the sides of our mouths while checking over our shoulders - for a realtor named Charlie who would let touring cyclists pitch a tent in his backyard.  Well in a twist of fate somewhat less impactful for us, Charlie went and died a month ago.  Of all the bad luck...

So I went to the fire house next door and asked if there was anywhere in town where we could pitch a tent.  The fire woman was kind enough to lead us into the fenced compound behind the station where, amidst the illegal immigrant shipping containers, jaws-of-life practice cars, and the poor sad sack of a "Save my baby! Save my baby" house that's been torched and drenched a thousand times, she told us to pick any spot we wanted, but maybe a little away from the chemical foam.  So here I (we) lie, listening to the sounds of Pine Valley on a Saturday night.  Either I'm going deaf, or the social calendar around here reaches Dead Sea levels in early February - or possibly the chemical foam is muffling the sound of unbridled revelry.

Pulling the bench is a VAST improvement over pulling the chair, thank you for asking.  The only issue seems to be that going downhill at any speed over 25 kph, the bench starts to waggle back and forth like Spot's tail at dinnertime (following that unfortunate incident, when Dick and Jane received a 3-day detention for not having fun, and nobody fed the dog).  Fulcrum fine-tuning may be required.

In a sloth-based strategic decision, Seb and I both decided to "ride ourselves into shape" on this journey.  Our first two days have been steady climbing.  Cross-fit and triathlon psychos of my acquaintance may embrace the burn but, personally, I'm looking for a somewhat more gradual reintegration to fitness.  Today we have more downhill than uphill ahead of us.  Yay!  See Spot wag.

An Executive Decision

Where to begin...

Let's start with the first intimation of serious gravity issues with respect to the chair.  On Tuesday night when Seb and I cycled to the hostel in San Diego, there was a short, mildly steep ramp leading up to a gate through which we were to bring our bikes.  Remember the fantasy you had as a kid where the meanest dog on the block was tied to a rope and he'd come tearing at you at a million miles an hour, slavering and snarling, and suddenly reach the end of the rope - WHAM! - and perform a spectacular backwards somersault, making the dog-sound equivalent of "OOOF!!"?  Well, Tuesday night I started to walk my bike up the ramp.  The moment the trailer hit the slope, I went "OOOF!"  Unbelievable.  Gravity is definitely not my friend.

So let's fast forward to yesterday, our launch day.  Launch is a good word for our beginning.  While we didn't actually smash champagne on our bikes, we glided away from the Pacific at the same smooth, stately pace as the Titanic.  Heads turned as the band played us off down the bike path, and within several minutes it became apparent that the band had decided to hitch a ride.  On the trailer.

Still, for the first few hours, enthusiasm and plucky Canadian spirit allowed us to sandbag the rising waters of doubt.  But about 25 miles into the ride, we began a 10-mile climb.  Turns out, we're in for a 30-mile climb, but you can only go "OOOF" for so long before the contents of your stomach want to go "POOF!" 

We were spent.  Done.  Exhausted.  On the bright side, never let it be said that I don't own my own stupidity.  No leveraged stupidity here - it's all mine. Dark thoughts about the idiocy of the project reached their apex in beautiful Alpine, California, where I checked us into a hotel, pulled the covers over my head, assumed the fetal position, and rocked myself to sleep. 

Morning brought enlightenment, in all it's meanings.  With an 8200' pass awaiting us in New Mexico, I considered the following 

Home Truths

- the chair in it's current incarnation (true weight: 85 lbs), is gravitationally problematic.

- The Barc's Chair tagline "Just for Fun" was, yesterday, hideously ironic. 

- we averaged 9 miles an hour on the flats, 2 miles an hour on the hills.

- at this rate, we'd be in Florida by September.

Sooooo.....

May I present to you...

BARC'S BENCH

Yes that's right!  Barc's Bench!  Same great taste and flavour, but 45 lbs fewer calories!!  

The show carries on: leaner, sleeker, and more fun than ever!  With the bench format, now even once-happy couples will be encouraged to sit together and bare their souls to feed a voracious viewing public.  Everyone gains except the chair, which underwent an emergency, epic liposuction.

So tomorrow morning we continue on, starting with the last 20 miles of the climb.  If the misery continues, Barc's Chair may well become a talking stick with a photo of the original chair scotch-taped to the top.  Surely not...

A Slow Start in Paradise

No takers yet for the chair.  So much for the easy camaraderie and sharing of stories that is so much a supposed part of the hostel experience.  Of course, Seb and I don't quite have our sales pitch mojo flowing just yet.  On the one hand, my vibe is that of a unionized parking lot attendent with only one gap remaining, profoundly disinterested with whether or not you fill my slot. Seb, on the other hand, has that whiff of a used car salesman on an unusually-long crystal-meth jag,  jittery, rambling, possibly well-meaning, but ultimately toxic and on the edge of sticking a knife in your eye. I'm sure we'll get better soon.

By the way, the piece of detritus under the chair that looks like a catch basin for incontinent storytellers is the barcschair.com "license plate" that displays as you tip the chair back and tow it down the road.  Gotta work on my production values...

Last Minutes and First Hours

The day before departure...

Apparently I don't handle stress well.  I've been standing paralyzed in the dining room for the last ten minutes, surrounded by Barc's Chair detritus, staring blindly and making little rhythmic mewing noises, like an endless loop featuring the Top Ten Therapist Sounds of Acknowledgement.

The day of departure...

Pierre Elliot Trudeau had a regular fasting regimen that he believed cleansed his inner and outer man.  At 6:00 am on the day of departure, I ate a Tim Hortons breakfast sandwich.  18 hours and no solid food later I was standing in the teeny, deserted San Diego airport, pitch black outside,  surrounded by Barc's Chair detritus, staring blindly and making little....  (Historical aside: many Albertans believe Trudeau was on an extended fast when he brought in the National Energy Program.)

Our flight was diverted to Chicago owing to the selfish decision of an oxygen-tank-bearing individual choosing to live rather than see San Diego from the other side (of the veil, not compass point, for those of you who are fasting).  By the time the customs and paramedic smoke cleared, our 5 and a half hour flight had become a 9 hour flight.  Airline food was available, but I was worried about consuming it and then having to divert the plane to Denver.  So I starved.

The chair and bike assembly went well, if you leave out the frequent extreme despair and the what-the-hell-have-I-done moments.  My vow to avoid cycling past sunset lasted exactly 0 days, thanks to Chicago, starvation, sleep deprivation, and general mechanical ineptitude.  Full night had fallen as Seb, who's never pedalled a fully-laden touring bike, let alone used the clipless pedals that he's practiced getting out of maybe once for about 30 seconds, followed me out into blackness, like the only-surviving duckling of a really bad mother duck, and we wended our way through dark streets, past even darker alleys, the whole 5 miles to the Point Loma Hostel.

The Start.

Preparation B

Just got off the phone with Tiger and Lance.  They're kind of my go-to people for advice on self-induced adversity.  Don't get me wrong, I still fully expect a fairy tale adventure absent of dragons and heavy on happy endings.  But a couple of days ago I found myself standing on top of a workbench clutching my Back-up Bike in a death grip.  It was clamped upside down to a vise by the seized seat post, and I was pulling up like a madman, abdominal one-pack threatening to shred and heave, Ed and Caleb torquing the bike side-to-side, trying to get the tiniest of movements started before the frame snapped, and I thought

I don't have to do this.

No one's making me do this.

I'm doing this trip for fun, right?

These are dark thoughts to entertain on the eve of a bike trip featuring the exquisite pleasure of dragging a 17-ton sledge containing Chernobyl parts from the Pacific to the Atlantic, asking people to tell glowing stories.  Can't wait to see how they react. 

Make Good Choices...

A theme is emerging among the many well wishers expressing support for our ride.  Please circle the answer you think most closely matches that theme:

A)  Barc!  What an adventure!  Does mental illness run in June's family too or does Seb stand half a chance of having escaped your chemical imbalance?

B)  Barc!  What an adventure!  You know that this chair of yours is going to attract the attention of every unstable, marginalized, gun-toting, you-only-live-once-and-you've-lived-long-enough crazy south of the 37th parallel.  Is that what you want?

C)  Barc!  What an adventure!  It's not everyone who risks not only his own life but his son's life too!  Hope you go first!!

D)  Barc!  What an adventure!  It's so random, so possibly pointless, so ultimately weird, it... it... it just seems so YOU!!!

E)  Barc!  What an adventure!  I think I'll pick all of the above!

Yeah, yeah.  I know what you chose.

And you're right.

The Cracks are Beginning to Show...

 

Smooth Sailing = Calm Seas = Doldrums = Stagnation  

My new best friend Ed, the bike whisperer, informed me that the frame of my cherished but untested - and likely to remain that way - Koga Miyata touring two-wheeler is cracked, and susceptible to spectacular failure in the near, far, or possibly never, future.  The fault line lies in the headtube below the handlebars, and it takes little effort, given the horse-with-no-name desert crossing looming before us, to imagine a karmically-seismic collapse involving explosions, shrapnel, and full Bugs Bunny/Road Runner sound effects.  Harder to imagine is Coyote Ugly Barc rising charred from the mushroom cloud, then miraculously restored to cartoon health in the next scene.

Sooooo, with a week to go, we - and of course I use the royal bike-prep "we" - are frantically refitting the under-cherished, over-tested, and geriatrically-geared chariot of my youth.  I'm not worried.  The Folly Cycle shall see me through the toughest terrain - physical, emotional, and Texan - with an economy of motion and the cool certitude of Sophia Loren striding over a sea of Kate Moss limbs, snapping bones with every step.  No problem.  

Happy Birthday June!

As you stand at the altar with your life companion - a term rapidly becoming archaic - there's an unmistakable quality of closing your eyes, crossing your arms, and letting yourself fall back, hoping she'll catch you.  27 years later, June has never let me hit the ground.  She may have hit me in the face with a flyswatter a few times as I fell, but she always, always caught me.

Apparently June puts up with a lot.  It's almost uncanny how, with exasperating regularity, when introducing June to new people I've met for more than 30 seconds, their faces crinkle up in an expression of funeral parlour solicitude, and the first thing out of their mouths is "Ohhh....  I'm sooooo sorry.  Be brave....  Be brave."  As if.

Sooooo  June .....  on your special day, caught up as I am in my:

* father and son bonding experience (disingenuous)

* bringing joy to others odyssey (really disingenuous)

* self-amusement sojourn (better)

* vanity project (dead on)

Thank you for long-suffering fools gladly - especially me.  

Many happy returns of the day.

All my love.

Barc

T-Minus 15 Days...

Y'know how you hear "Seemed like a good idea at the time"?  Well, I'm still at the good idea stage of this project.  Some of the pleasing images coursing through my mind include: happy people slapping their thighs, bent over with mirth, tears streaming, ribs aching; awestruck people with mouths open, eyebrows raised, not daring to believe the depth and richness of what they've just heard; children begging their parents to stay, foregoing the ice cream truck, mesmerized by what they're witnessing.  And that's just the airport.

There are one or two questions marks with respect to how things are going to play out on this trip.

For example...

- Seb has never ridden a bike for more than 30 minutes, and that was when he was nine.

- I am, in my natural state, disinclined to approach people and try and pitch them on doing something.  Not to be confused with approaching people and yabbering inconsequentially - I'm totally inclined toward that.  So when people say "What's the deal with the chair?" and I tell them we're collecting jokes and stories, they may well go "Huh...", and I'll say "Yep...", and the awkward silence will go on and on, only to be saved by gunshots, sirens, or prayer.