thirty percent, the tradition, the massage

September 27, 2008

Day Six

“Life makes fools of all of us sooner or later. But keep your sense of humor and you'll at least be able to take your humiliations with some measure of grace. In the end, you know, it's our own expectations that crush us.”
- Paul Murray -

"We learn humility by accepting humiliations cheerfully."
- Mother Theresa -

"We are masters of the unsaid words, but slaves to those we let slip out."
- Winston Churchill -

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I woke up at 4:00 and wasn't able to fall back asleep. That's unusual for two reasons: I hardly ever wake up early, and on those rare occasions I do, it's not for more than ten seconds.

I stared at the ceiling until my alarm went off at 4:40, after which I began moving my arms and legs like an old, creaky, poorly-controlled automaton as I gathered my gear to load it on the bike.

Klaus gave me some of his Muesli for breakfast and after getting everything loaded onto the bike we were on the road by 5:15.

It was still dark, but there weren't any cars on the road. And, most importantly, it was cool.

Klaus has a headlight powered by a generator and we both have tail lights.

As we pedaled through the town of Love, like yesterday's town of Hope, we made our corny jokes.... "I'm in Love." "I'm not falling in Love." "I'm no longer in Love."

After about thirty miles we stopped for a break in Aguila (pop. 600) to refill our water bottles and buy some Gatorade. There were some high school girls on the side of the road energetically waving signs about a car wash. I was wondering how they made any money - Aguila is the largest town around, off the beaten path since everyone uses I-10, and it only has a population of 600. I don't think five cars passed during the time we were there. Still, they were very enthusiastic and having fun. Maybe that was the point.

As we were pedaling out of town a guy crossing the road in front of us flagged us down to talk. Dave was in his mid-twenties with dirty hair escaping from beneath an even dirtier baseball cap. We initially thought he wanted to ask us about our trip, but as it turned out he was more interested in telling us his elaborate plans to start up a place for bicyclists to stop and camp. We showed him our maps and suggested that if he wants bikers to know there's a place to camp he should get on the Adventure Cycling Association's list of services so he can be included. He continued detailing his ideas, and a couple of minutes later we mentioned Adventure Cycling Association again and he said, "Huh? Oh. I should write that down." Then he started telling us his plans. Again. After about ten minutes we extricated ourselves and started riding.

"Thirty percent," Klaus said after we had pedaled about half a mile.

"Huh?"

"Thirty percent chance he starts up the bike camp."

"You may be right. He is past Hope, after all."

Once we left Aguila there was no shade until Wickenburg. We looked for small patches of anything to get out of the sun, but there was nothing but scorched earth as far as we could see, and it was heating up fast.

We passed the Vulture Mountains on our right and, a little later, Eagle Eye Peak. I always love seeing the names of places on my trips.

Because we're traveling east, the sun is generally on our right. Interestingly, since Klaus has been going east for the past six months, all of the gear on the right side of the bike has faded.... his right front and rear panniers, and the right side of his handlebar bag. Since noting that, I've been strategically putting more sunscreen on my right side so it's more protected.

About halfway through the morning one of Klaus' spokes broke. The wheel went slightly out of true, but not enough to make a difference in handling or braking. On a touring bike, unlike a racing bike (some of which only have four spokes), a broken spoke isn't an emergency so he just continued on and made a mental note to fix it at the hotel.

Traditions are important. I have a tradition of eating a pizza and watching the movie Breaking Away the night before my bike trips.

Klaus also has a bicycling tradition. On all of his trips, at every 1000th kilometer he drinks a beer. He tries to find an appropriate beer depending on what country he's in, something local and representative of his current location.

After consulting his map he realized that he would hit his 12,000th kilometer before Wickenburg so he started looking for a place to get one.

Unfortunately, in this part of the state not only are there very few towns along the road, there are very few houses. I didn't realize how important this tradition was, or I wouldn't have been surprised when I saw Klaus pulling over to the other side of the road.

He rolled up to a locked gate at the end of a dirt driveway, the large metal kind used to keep cattle from escaping, as a dog started barking. At the same time, a man emerged from a single-wide mobile home set back from the gate by about forty yards. As he was walking across the dirt yard to his truck Klaus called out to him and, upon seeing us, strolled over and said hello.

He was in his early twenties, stockily built like a guy who rides bulls just for the fun of it. Or perhaps wrestles them. His blonde hair was cut short and he had a large serpentine tattoo on the right side of his neck that slithered down under his collar.

After making his way over to the gate, Klaus explained his situation... that he's from Germany, that he's riding his bike around the world, and that every 1000 kilometers he stops and drinks a beer. Would he happen to have a beer in the house?

"Oh, yeah, okay," was all he said, then slowly ambled back to the trailer to talk to his wife. It was the heavy walk of a man who's seen too much of the world. Or maybe I'm mistaking the slow movement for a self-defense mechanism against the heat. Because of the barking dog, I could only hear a part of what he said. "....German guy.... wants a beer.... on a bike."

He returned a few minutes later with three cans of Keystone Light. Since chugging a beer at 10:30 in the morning appeared to be a perfectly normal thing to do, he immediately cracked one open and took a giant swallow, then another. Awkwardly at that point, Klaus had to explain to him that he couldn't drink it yet - he had to wait until the 1000th kilometer. With two of us holding unopened beer cans, and one of us almost finished with his, we stood there as the conversation stalled, then settled into the ground like the dust he had kicked up on the way to the gate. Klaus tried to pay him for the beers, but he wouldn't accept his money. We thanked him and took our leave.

Except for the last fifteen miles, the road to Wickenburg was a slow, gradual climb. We stopped regularly, drank a lot of water, and sweated more than we drank.

The landscape was now looking like scenery from an old western movie, and I kept expecting to see John Wayne ride past us in the distance, tipping his hat. Saguaro cacti dotted the desert, and the landscape was stark and striking.

We rolled into Wickenburg (pop. 5,082) about noon.

Twenty feet beyond the city limits sign, Klaus suddenly yelled from behind, “Stop! Stop!”

I slammed on the brakes and came to a stop, half expecting to see... what?? a rattlesnake? blood pooling on the ground?

It was none of those.... he’d been keeping a close eye on his odometer, and this was the moment.

"Here! It is here! The 12,000 kilometers!" Interestingly, we were within 100 yards of our hotel.

No matter. It was time for a beer.

Having been raised in Texas where in some counties you have to fail a sobriety test to get a driver's license, I'm ashamed to admit that I don't like beer.* Still, this is a momentous event and I didn't want to diminish the importance of it by telling my new German friend that I didn't participate in this ritual because I don’t want a beer. So, in the interest of international harmony I thought it best to take a drink.

Klaus popped open the two cans of HOT beer and we took some pictures celebrating the occasion. After a few swallows he said,

"GOD, this is awful."

Hot cans of Keystone Light. Shocking, but perhaps representative of the region.

It was awful, and if not representative of the region, it was at least representative of the heat.

We poured the rest out and watched it start evaporating immediately.

At the Westerner Motel (which you can see in the picture above) we unpacked, showered, then walked across the street to El Ranchero, a Mexican food restaurant with brightly-painted walls of yellow. Good Mexican food has been notoriously hard to find since I moved to the Midwest so I've been eating it on a regular basis now that I'm farther south.

Even just walking across the street was painful because of the heat. We could feel it radiating through our shoes. The food was standard fare for a place like this, which meant pretty good, and Klaus ate his first sopapilla there.

Back in our room I laid down. In an attempt to make up for waking up so early I thought I might take a nap. I drifted to that stage just before you fall asleep, but that's as far as I got. After that, I knew it would be useless to continue trying.

Once I realized I wouldn't be taking a nap, I thought how great it would be to get a massage. When we lived in Rochester a friend told us about a woman who would come to your house and give you a massage for a reasonable fee. Although we never took advantage of it, it seemed like a great idea, and I wondered if there might be someone here who would offer the same type of service. I looked in the yellow pages and found a massage therapist, then called the number.

I should've tried harder to take a nap.

“I was wondering if you’d come to my motel room to give me a massage.”

As soon as the words came out of my mouth I realized how it sounded. I wanted to reach through the phone and snatch the words back, but they were loose, unfettered and free, never to return. The air seemed to have been sucked from the room and my mouth opened and closed a few times like a carp's floundering on a pier, but no words came out. I couldn't think of anything to say.

Stricken, I glanced over at Klaus, who had a big grin on his face. No help there.

Her response:

“Ummmmmm…. I…. uhhhhhh…. don’t really do that,” she tactfully replied, and had the kindness and professionalism not to hang up on me. Or call the police.

I mumbled something in return before hanging up, then flopped backward onto the mattress and covered my face with a pillow.

About half an hour later a storm blew through, depositing the state’s monthly average of ten or twelve large raindrops before stopping thirty seconds later, and when the temperature dropped to almost tolerable I sat by the pool under a large umbrella and wrote in my journal.

That evening we had pizza and root beer delivered to our room, then Klaus replaced his broken spoke.

I set my alarm for 4:30 and we turned the lights off at 10:15.

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* 2023 edit to the "I don't like beer" comment: Apparently, it's not that I don't like beer, it's that I don't like bad beer. When Heather and I went to the Czech Republic, where beer is subsidized at $2.00 a liter to avoid riots and where there is more beer consumed per capita than anywhere else in the world, I drank more beer in two weeks than I had in my entire life. The legal battles between the original Budvar, which is Czech, and Anheuser-Busch have been ongoing for almost a hundred years. Currently, the Czech beer is sold as "Czechvar in Brazil, Canada, Mexico, Panama, Peru, the Philippines, and the United States. Elsewhere, Anheuser-Busch sells its beer as "Bud."

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distance: 55.3 miles
average speed: 11.5 mph
time on bike: 4:48:43
cumulative: 291 miles

Today's ride: 55 miles (89 km)
Total: 290 miles (467 km)

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