[ Tuesday, July 22, 2003 ]
Day 133 to Day 148
Recent correspondence (via e-mail from San Francisco): "P.S. By the way, you look like a god damned hippie."
Recent correspondence (via voicemail from the East Coast): "You look like a god damn hippie."
Recent correspondence (via e-mail from an undisclosed location): "Ya' know, I don't understand half the stuff on your website. Are you writing to some deranged sect of boy scouts?"
Hanging out in Edwards, CO, the future home of Kobe Bryant. Trying to get on the road again. If I don't leave soon I'll need to retitle the website "Homeland Settler." That just doesn't work. Onward to Crested Butte, Durango, Gunnison, and the high desert heat.
Aspen, CO. Left Edwards, camping outside of Aspen in a National Forest. Nighttime, sitting cross-legged on my thermarest. It's the vipassana variety hour. Let's see what weird misanthropic fantasy surfaces from the reptilian brain stem tonight, grasshopper.
I'm receiving a transmission from a quaking aspen. It says" "dot . . . dash . . . dash . . . kill your TV." Don't have no TV no more. What else you got to say, tree?
I'm still on the thermarest now, but it's turned olive drab and I'm Col. Kurtz now and I've ringed my campsite with a perimeter of claymore mines, one hand on the detonator, the other one giving a peace sign. One hand on the detonator, the other one on the radio tuner. Ommmmm, a vasishiva.
The first blast rips broadside into the RV in the next campsite, completely tearing out the left wall of it, end to end. The smoking satellite dish dangles for a moment, then drops off the roof.
Fuck. It's after quiet hours. Now I'm fucked. The campground hosts fly up the road, golf cart, huge American flag sticking out of it. I douse my campfire quick, jump into the van kill the dome lights and pretend I'm asleep.
"No fireworks! Any more fireworks here and you'll be asked to leave. Quiet hours are from 10 p.m. to 7 a.m."
The second blast cuts a massive swath through 50 meters of aspens and brush, a wake of flaming branches, twigs, and golf cart pieces.
"Keep it down over there! We're trying to sleep. No more god damn fireworks, you'll start a damn forest fire, already!" But I'm already on the horn, using the CD walkman and a classic rock station to signal Neil Young and call in an airstrike on the surviving RVs.
"PBR Street Gang to Almighty, come in Almighty. . ." Damn. No signal. I tune over to KPFA Pacifica, they respond, and I read out the GPS coordinates. The spotter rounds are dead-on, so I call back: "Fire for effect, fire for effect."
30 seconds more. The incendiery shells start screaming in just as I'm squeezing the last bit of air out of my thermarest and begin rolling out of the campground. Leave no trace, motherfuckers. One would think that my meditation practice would be more enlightened and altruistic after four months on the road. Oh, well.
I guess I could give it up and start working on my semi-fictional novel about life as a personal injury lawyer, instead.
Crested Butte, CO. The next day I cross the Kebler Pass and arrive at Lake Irwin, just outside Crested Butte. I ride the Dyke Trail (yes, it's really called the Dyke Trail) as a loop, picnic, and have a brief dip in the lake.
Free camping on BLM land at a place called "Oh-Be-Joyful" a few miles out of town. Toilets, picnic tables, fire pits, creekside sites, bear tracks along the creek, other mountain bikers everywhere. Fan-fucking-tastic.
I am finally acclimating to the elevation. And Monday I ride a 31 mile route of singletrack, dirt roads, and highway up to around 11,000 ft. again.
Crested Butte (CB) is maybe 2,000 people. Most of the good rides are rideable from town, which is important, because my new hang-out, Teocalli Tamale, has awesome steak tacos and stiff $3 margaritas. Perfect.
One day I'm sitting outside Teocalli Tamale and in the sidewalk bike rack there's a $2,000 Gary Fisher Sugar 2, a $2 or 3,000 titanium Willits, and another very high-end Marin full-suspension ride - all of them UNLOCKED. It is then that I realize that I'm at mountain biking ground zero, or one of them.
I meet two more mountain bikers in the BLM campground, Bill from Durango, and Kris from Denver, and the 3 of us ride the 401 trail together one day. About halfway into the 9+ mile sustained climb I start to regret the previous evening's beer drinking and the cigarettes that Bill gave me. The 401, as it turns out, however, is sublime.
In my 7 days in CB, I do most of the rides I came there to do - Dyke, 401, Strand Hill, Deer Creek, Snodgrass, and Upper Upper Loop. This has been one of the best weeks of my trip.
Gunnison, CO. Rode the NORBA course out at Hartman Rocks today, called “Rage in the Sage.” Fun. Trying to organize a shuttle for Monarch Crest soon, maybe later this week, and then more desert riding.
Five months on the road. Perhaps no more enlightened than I was in February. No major revelations. But other than that I am, much . . . more . . . happy . . . Miss seeing all my ilk in SF very much, however. And miss skin contact, and having reliable access to the news, (i.e. getting the NYT every morning).
Soundtrack: Beethovan, Symphony No. 9, Bruno Walter conducting . . . maybe the Berlin Philharmonic
Reading List: A Natural History of Love, by Diane Ackerman
Website: www.alternet.org
[7/22/2003]
PAY ATTENTION BLACK ROCK CITY
