Riding in the desert is doing math. I get 'X' miles to a tank at 'Y' speed, so there will be 'Z' hours between stops. During 'Z', I need to replenish 'Q' liters of water, and 'R' will evaporate from my soaked gear, so I need to carry a spare 4*(Q+R), in case I break down. If my tires are wearing too fast, I need to slow down, so all of that gets re-figured. Once the math is done, riding is just pointing the bike and pulling the trigger. Nothing more.
The usual concentration, the focus on every little thing requisite of riding elsewhere, is easily replaced by a nervous calm. If something goes wrong... if anything goes wrong, it's probably a very long wait in a very hot place. The raised stakes make every noise, every vibration I've never noticed previously come alive, resonating through my spine and skull, a sure portent of eventual doom, but I loathe the idea of stopping. Stopping throws off the math, and when- in a very real sense- you live and die by the math, introducing error is a very bad thing.
Or that's an option, anyway.
Said concentration can also be replaced by an immediacy, a connectedness to everything but the bike. I trust that it will do its job, so I will do mine, which in this case is to keep it pointed in an appropriate direction, keep the throttle cocked, and not think so damn much as to go crazy. If either of us fails, we'll deal with that when the time comes, but barring that, the net result is basically a lot of looking at the horizon and a lot of abstract conjecture.
Gas layovers are always interesting. Cagers don't understand that the suit is zipped up tight against the heat, holding "cold" in, not hot. When ambient temperature is greater than body temperature, insulation keeps you cool, and all that the suit holds in is water, and even that only temporarily. I'm a walking swamp cooler with a foam ice chest as a hat. It's hot, but manageable, and nothing like the killer hot that exists outside it.
They also don't understand that if we each break down, in my space suit, I stand a chance of being able to walk far enough to do something about it, or something more than stand and wait and hope.
Riding solo across the desert is, unsurprisingly, a solitary experience, and once I get over the bullshit and worry, surprisingly also a comfortable one. A hundred five degrees doesn't feel so bad when I'm soaking wet and eating a seventy mile per hour headwind. Sipping electrolyte juice (like Gatorade, but without the sugar and twice as expensive) every few minutes, water bottle at the ready to re-soak when my gear dries out, I can just sit and hammer across the pavement. The ZRX looks like a seam has split somewhere and a string of water bottles has emerged from it, all from the left, out-of-the-sun side. LA traffic is fortunately miles away (in so many senses of that term); the bike was nervous enough with just the tires strapped up top, much less twenty pounds of water contributing to a substantial imbalance. Me in my space suit, it with its water bottle bandoleer, we make our way.
It's pleasant in the desert. And beautiful. The sun is such a massively powerful entity, and that's somehow lost in most other places. Here it beats down on everything equally. The road looks like water at times, oily snakes of heat distortion rising from every surface, and other vehicles disappear, bend, then double in its reflection. At other times, it just looks like road. Long, straight, flat road.
Cages are few and far between, windows rolled tight and A/C cranked against the overwhelming heat, oblivious to the lunacy of riding through the Mojave in a mobile greenhouse, and entirely missing the point. They're locked up tight against the desert, trying to get through and on to wherever else they're going. They miss it because they aren't actually in it. They don't understand what they're doing, or the real value of shade, or water, or any of it.
This sort of riding is low impact. Once the math is set and my mind is right, I can go on indefinitely, even (long) after I run out of desert. Evening sees me in Flagstaff, and the sun sets over Navajo territory in my mirrors. Red rocks, red dust, red sky... symmetry in a way I didn't expect. Passing cars by the score, gas stops stretch from fifty miles to a hundred to a hundred and fifty. Despite the heat and the altitude shifts, the bike is just purring, and I'm feeling good. Two days with no caffeine, no alcohol, good food, lots of water, and enough sleep has paid off, and I'm starting to wonder whether pushing through to Denver might not be worthwhile.
No. At a gas station in the flooded town of Kayenta, I call it. I could probably make Denver, but it would be foolish, and would guarantee I'd lose time on the balance. That's a desperate measure in a non-desperate situation, and one that would need to be followed by multiple short days to recover. Better to stop short, regroup, and take an easy pull into Denver the next day, leaving open the possibility of harder pushes in the future. I settle on Cortez, a hundred twenty miles (most of a tank of gas) away, find a hotel, and rack up for the night. At eight hundred thirty some-odd miles, it's still far and away the longest day of the trip.
Sitting here at the desk in my far-too-nice hotel room a thousand and a half miles from there, I'm still riding that wave. I refuse to play into that stereotype of going on a long trip and coming back somehow changed (in air quotes), but I can't help feeling that my already broad (I think) mindset has somehow been expanded. If southern California is a land of lotus eaters, the desert sings the Sirens' song, and while for that I know I can't stay, I don't doubt that I've brought some part of it back with me.
I'm probably still humming it in my head when I'm not paying attention.
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