The Awkward Pose

January 25, 2016 – Overcast, 50 degrees

Miles Today: 52

Miles to Date: 10,823

States to Date: 28

 My couchsurfing host Miguel cooked me a remarkable Columbian breakfast and pedaled with me downhill to his lab at Texas Tech Medical Center, which is right next to my turn east on Alameda.

Alameda, also Texas Route 20, is twenty miles of dated motels turned rent by the week apartments, tortilla factories, nail salons, check-cashing outfits, pawn shops, empty storefronts, used car lots, muffler shops, transmission shops, body shops, and auto parts stores interrupted every mile by Dollar General or Dollar Tree or Family Dollar. The strip cleans up by the Wal-Mart near the Loop Road, where $1.51 per gallon gas was the cheapest I’ve seen to date on my trip. But it turns shabby again after the interchange with miles of scrap yards.

I was surprised to pass beautiful high schools in Ysleta, Socorro, and Clink among the assembly of stuff reaching the limits of human consideration. I also stopped to visit the stunning Mission at Ysleta, which is older than its California cousins.

Finally, the detritus of urban life gave out and I cycled through miles of pecan groves.

Still, I came upon more fascinating storefronts in Fabens. They reminded me how wonderfully idiosyncratic Texas can be. I hope to find more as I travel east over the next month.

Unfortunately, there was nothing notable in Fort Hancock, where even the Historical Marker describing the town’s namesake has been worn beyond legibility. I was the first, and perhaps only, guest at the I-10 roadside motel that doesn’t even have a name in front Fortunately, the chicken fired steak at Angie’s across the road lived up to its reputation as the best in West Texas.

January 24, 2016 – Sun, 60 degrees

Miles Today: 18

Miles to Date: 10,771

States to Date: 28

For me, El Paso is ripe in memory. I’ve been here four or five times, all during 1977-1978 when I was a VISTA Volunteer 300 miles northeast of here in Levelland, TX. Since I finished my service year I’ve never returned to any of places that marked that unique period of my life. On this trip I plan to visit them all. El Paso is the first place I’ve reached along my route.

Levelland, Texas is conveniently located five hours from anywhere: Dallas, Albuquerque or El Paso. Since a five-hour drive in Texas is nothing and weekends in Levelland were quiet, the core of our VISTA group struck out somewhere most every month. Leanne was a curvaceous blonde from South Dakota who fell for the dark-eyed local, Jerry. He was already married which made things messy, but eventually Leanne and Jerry got married, until that too got messy. My Texas pal was Adela, a rail thin brunette from Maryland. We never let marrying enter the picture, and are solid friends to this day. For a year, the four of us were constant companions. El Paso was out favorite weekend getaway.

We stayed in cheap motels or with other VISTA’s. By day crossed the footbridge to Juarez, at night we ate Mexican food and discoed. I usually drove Betsy, my1969 Ford Fairlane. Once Jerry convinced me to take Betsy into Mexico so we could eat at a place he knew beyond downtown Juarez. The food was incredibly good. The tear-up job the customs agents and their dogs did on a car driven by a mutton-chop sideburned Yankee with cheeky Mexican shotgun and two leggy girls in tie-dyed skirts in the back trying to reenter the United States was incredibly thorough. They were astonished not to find drugs. I was astonished they just walked away after their inspection and made us put the car back together.

Perhaps my biggest rite of passage in El Paso occurred on a training trip I made there by myself. I stayed with another VISTA, a local Mexican-American who smelled like licorice. He took me to a local performance of Hello Dolly that had maybe three women in the audience. Afterward, we returned to his apartment in one of the moldy brick buildings near downtown. He told me his boyfriend was coming over. I set the sheets on the sofa and was conveniently in the bathroom when boyfriend arrived and they disappeared into my host’s room. I tired to sleep. They were vigorous and noisy. The more I tried to block them out, the more anxious I became. I had never heard two men have sex. I had spent so much energy denying such a possibility. I started to sweat. Eventually, I got up and dressed.

I escaped to El Paso’s night streets. The square grid of blacktop laid over the city’s hills calmed my torment. I’ve always enforced Cartesian order upon irregularity. I walked the streets for hours; until my pulse stopped racing; until the dawn light. I slipped back in the apartment hoping they were finished, wishing they were not, and pretended to sleep.

It took another fifteen years, a marriage and two children to bring some peace to the conflicts that flared in me that night. Now, thirty-eight years later, I’m back in El Paso, riding that same grid of streets, unable to reconstruct the particulars of that time. So much has changed. The downtown core is cleaner, the surrounding streets shabbier, the highways more insistent, the strip development more generic. I stop by the Anson, briefly the tallest concrete building in the world. I visit the digital wall at the El Paso Museum of History. Fortunately, none of the touch options pops with images of the night Paul Fallon freaked out over a pair of gay guys. But that’s what it seems like; a piece of history. That someone could be so uncomfortable in his gay skin.

I slept well in El Paso, as I do every night during this physically taxing journey. But my El Paso dawn dreams were the same as everywhere else. I do not conjure the men, purposefully too many to recount, who’ve crossed my path these past twenty years. Instead, I wake every morning to a dream of my former wife, the girl who put a claim on my heart before I ever set foot in this border town. I dream of what I willed myself to be, however inappropriate, rather than what I am. The shame branded on our youthful souls is permanent.

January 23, 2016 – Sun, 60 degrees

Miles Today: 72

Miles to Date: 10,753

States to Date: 28

Everything was easier today. The distance was shorter, the pavement smoother, the wind lighter, the grades shallower, the shoulder wider. I left early and logged forty-five miles before my noon lunch stop, sitting on the sand with my bike propped against a mile marker. I met two approaching cyclists: one traveling from Austin to Phoenix with a 150 pounds of stuff in a trailer, the other an El Paso local on a weekend joy ride. Everyone pedals his own ride. Beyond that, I saw no one. There are no towns or services, or even houses for over fifty miles. Yet, several people told me the Border Road is a great road to cycle because most of the scant traffic is Border Patrol officers, who are helpful with breakdowns.

New Mexico Route 9 runs parallel to the border. A dirt road that runs parallel to Route 9. Beyond, a continuous barbed wire fence runs about fifty feet from the pavement. I wondered why the dirt road existed. Yesterday, I saw a Border Patrol truck driving very slow along the road, pulling two gigantic tires on their sides. The tires smoothed the surface. This morning I witnessed several other Border Patrol vehicles, driving off to the side and just as slow, scanning for footprints. Our pursuit of illegals is a complex, time-consuming and expensive operation.

Along the road there are many cairns. I wonder what they signify?

The first sign of El Paso was sixty miles out, the streams of jets doing maneuvers in the sky over Fort Bliss. I could smell El Paso and Juarez before I saw them. The air, which has been so sweet for the last few days, turned stale. Twenty miles away, the sky over the valley was brown. Somehow, our clean air laws haven’t taught the pollution to stay south of the border. Pale flecks on the distant mountains, which indicated sand in the Chihuahuan Desert earlier in the day, were now buildings climbing the west side of El Paso’s mountains.

I pedaled over the bone dry Rio Grande and under I-10. The transition from wilderness to the Mesa Road commercial strip was abrupt. It took only a few moments to realize that El Paso is not Tucson or Seattle. Bicyclists beware. Trucks cut me off, cars pulled out of driveways ahead of me. I took my time to arrive at my host’s safely.

January 22, 2016 – Sun, 60 degrees

Miles Today: 98

Miles to Date: 10,681

States to Date: 27

The spirits of New Mexico must be unhappy that I plan to spend only one night in their beautiful state on this leg of my journey. They blew down on me the whole way from Portal to Columbus. Fortunately I planned for delays on this marathon cycling day, and needed every bit of daylight to arrive at my destination.

Despite my desire to leave my host ET’s at 7:00 a.m.; his coffee was too hot, his oatmeal too delicious, and our conversation too rich to sprint out of there. Still, I was on the gravel road pedaling away from his place by 7:30 and reached pavement by 8:00. After ten miles of traveling west, south, east and then north, I could still see ET’s house with his triple flags flying only a mile away as the crow flies before I finally turned east onto NM Route 9.

The next 88 miles was terrific bike riding, although not speedy. The grades were gentle, the landscape elegant, the traffic non-existent. Twenty-five miles in I stopped in Animas for the only services on the route. I devoured a burrito and refilled my water. My sixth trek over the Continental Divide was the easiest yet – it is just a rise in the middle of a valley.

My day was just riding, riding riding. I propped my bike against the gate and ate lunch from my pannier in front of McDonald’s ranch outside of Hachita. No free Wi-Fi here.

My desire to reach Columbus before nightfall was thwarted by the wind pushing against me and long, steady climbs. But adverse New Mexico winds are not nearly so damning as their ruthless cousins in the Dakotas. Even as it slowed my progress, this wind was playful, dancing from different directions, creating cool undercurrents, slacking off occasionally so I could savor the Land of Enchantment. I was always behind my target speed, but never enough to give up and sag a ride.

Past Hermanosa, pumping like crazy, the landscape took a fantastic, almost delirious turn. The distant mountains display very different forms. There are ancient, weathered volcanic cones, the rounded shapes of old mountain clusters, and jagged, new ranges. Geologic eons surrounded me. The dry desert I was passing through is but a phase in a landscape that was once a tropical rain forest, once the domain of dinosaurs, once a simmering volcanic cauldron.

Fortunately, there’s a steady eight-mile descent into Columbus. I kept a steady stroke and arrived at my motel in dusk, though still easily visible to local traffic. When the delightful motel owner handed me my receipt she said, “My goodness, you’re cold.” Only then did I realize my skin was frigid. Racing against the sun descending behind me, I never suited back up in my fleece and gloves.

January 21, 2016 – Sun, 70 degrees

Miles Today: 4

Miles to Date: 10,583

States to Date: 26

Rest day! My warmshowers host Ron is the Director of the Visitor’s Center at Coronado National Forest, the Bryce Canyon of Arizona. He took me on a personal tour of the public areas, which were near empty in January but so beautiful on a perfect clear day.

About five I pedaled the short distance between the dirt road to Ron’s house and the dirt road to ET’s house for an evening with my second Portal, AZ host. ET may be the most literate and well-informed cowboy on earth. Forty years of punching cattle, fighting wildfires and being a medic in a region with a lot of undocumented immigrant emergencies made for a thought-provoking evening of great stories.

January 20, 2016 – Sun, 70 degrees

Miles Today: 77

Miles to Date: 10,579

States to Date: 26

Today was a banner day for cycle touring. The weather was perfect for my long ride from McNeal to Portal, via Douglas, but I enjoyed many long, gentle descents and had the wind was at my back most of the day.

I explored the town of Douglas, whose declining downtown is anchored by the Gadsen Hotel, named for the Ambassador to Mexico who added this area to the United States as part of the Gadsen Purchase of 1854. Douglas enjoyed a heyday as a smelting town for the nearby Bisbee copper mines, and has many vintage early twentieth century houses to mark that period of prosperity.

The climb up Guadalupe Pass is a gentle six to eight miles along Arizona 80, followed by many more miles of gentle descents to the New Mexico border. I met a pari of heavy loaded cyclists heading the other direction and I stopped at the Geronimo Obelisk, commemorating the 1886 end of the Indian Wars. I pedaled over the state line to Rodeo, NM where I took a break at the cafe before veering back into Arizona to stay with my Portal host.

With several more long days on the horizon it’s nice to fantasize that every long distance day could be this easy, but that’s unrealistic. Better to savor this one day gift of easy cycling.

January 19, 2016 – Sun, 70 degrees

Miles Today: 27

Miles to Date: 10,502

States to Date: 26

Today I was a tourist! Spent the entire morning hanging out at the Copper Queen Hotel then emerged to explore Bisbee. I spent a few hours touring the galleries and great Western storefront architecture. I partcularly enjoyed Jason Kihl’s work at Metalmorphosis Gallery and talking with Vincent Wicks who stirred things up a bit at his new Vincente’s Fine Art Gallery with his show, Men… Nude, Naked and Undressed.

I left town around three for the mostly downhill ride to McNeal. I stayed with father/son warmshowers hosts who live in a rural Quaker community in the gorgeous Sulpher Spring Valley.

January 18, 2016 – Cloudy, 60 degrees

Miles Today: 51

Miles to Date: 10,475

States to Date: 26

I woke to frost after ten hours of solid sleep, climbed out of my cozy motorhome and witnessed a glorious dawn. After a delicious breakfast with my hosts, I hit the road under full sun and a rising thermometer.

Fifteen summers ago I traveled Arizona Route 80 in a motor home with my two grammar school age children and their cousin. We watched the staged gunfights in Tombstone’s OK Corral and toured Bisbee’s Copper Mine. Memories of that trip line my passage now. Tombstone without a ten-year-old boy seems more gimmicky than I recalled. But the landscape, at my much slower speed, seems more majestic.

By noon, the sun gave over to clouds. Beyond Tombstone, the broad plains with distant mountains begin to close in. The road undulates through hills and valleys, and up a gorgeous canyon. The north side of the canyon, which faces south, is red, rocky desert. The south side, in constant shade, is littered with deep green pines and an underlay of snow. At the road’s crest, near 6,000 feet, the road shifts to the shady side, Instantly, I was cold.

Most people would say I’m frugal. Some might use less accommodating adjectives to describe my relationship to money. I like to think I’m judicious but know when to splurge on something truly dazzling. One glance at Bisbee’s mountainside Historic District convinced me it was worth staying at the Copper Queen Hotel, a nineteenth century eclectic Spanish painted lady where, at one time, true painted ladies plied their trade. The receptionist’s upturned curls and flower in one ear was the perfect period touch: classy, not touristy. The saloon, velvet sofas, pin-stripe wallpaper and creaky floors felt authentic. Apparently three ghosts inhabit the place. I think they have good taste.

January 17, 2016 – Sunny, 65 degrees

Miles Today: 50

Miles to Date: 10,424

States to Date: 26

In keeping with Tucson’s sociability, my hosts Claire and Bob rode me out of town along The Loop, the city’s elaborate system of cycle paths. Beyond Tucson and Vail, Marsh Station Road proved to be one of the most striking stretches of desert terrain on my journey.

The mountains around Phoenix and Tucson are very different from what I am used to in the East or the Rockies. They pop out of the Sonoran Desert without any directional orientation. Bob explained the area is called ‘Sky Islands’ because each mountain cluster has a discrete ecology and microclimates vary as elevations rise. Certain plant and animal species are unique to one grouping because the plains between are too wide for species to mingle.

When Marsh Station Road joined I-10 for the ten-mile stint into Benson my practice of checking on anyone stopped by the side of the road proved beneficial. I passed an aging pick-up stranded on the shoulder. “Everything good, here/” The woman of the couple explained the truck overheated. “Do you have any water?” Turns out I did, and gave it to them. Nice to know a cyclist can help a motorist in distress.

I got to Benson in time for a few writing hours in the local McDonald’s, which proved to be a friendly place. I chatted with well-tanned winter visitors, an elderly woman helping her much older father sip his fountain drink, and a grandmother struggling between an infant in a high chair and a toddler insistent on sitting at a high-top. A guy with longish hair and maybe three teeth told me that the local St. Vincent de Paul’s Society put up folks who are stranded. I thought about the couple in the pick-up, but then realized he was referring to me. Less than a week back on the road, and I must already be looking scruffy.

I stayed with a quiet man who lives on a spread outside of town and offers his motor home to touring cyclists. The night sky over the San Pedro River was rich in stars.

January 16, 2016 – Sunny, 60 degrees

Miles Today: 23

Miles to Date: 10,374

States to Date: 26

 Tucson is a very social place; at least for this itinerant cyclist. My wonderful host Lucia took me on a sunrise hike up Tumamoc Hill where we took in the desert and worked up an appetite for breakfast burritos with her childhood friend Zaida.

After a cycling tour through downtown, The Presdio, the funky Fourth Street District (where Surly discovered her own bar) and the University of Arizona, I made my way to the Northeast part of town for lunch with Carol and Eulee, two friends of my Boston friend Perry whom I can now count as friends of my own.

In late afternoon I pedaled to Far Horizons where I stayed with Claire and Bob Rogers, a pair of intrepid cyclists who have logged over 40,000 all around the world, including cycling the Himalayas! Between trips, they home base at this 55+ RV Park. Fortunately, it was Saturday dance night. Over a hundred seniors gathered in the club house for line dances, swing, tango, waltzes and even a couple of polkas. Given the ratio of widows to single men, I had a pretty full dance card all night.