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09/08/2007: "Surviving Summer"

Can’t Stop Pedaling to Save My Life.

Red shoes forced the girl in the fairy tale to dance until she died. The lesson of the story was not to want something too much. She longed for those red shoes; and in her mad passion overlooked the evil spell that accompanied them. Something akin happened to us the other day, this time with our bicycles. The madness for turning pedals nearly led to our demise, for we misjudged the gods and the portents, and thought too lightly of the consequences of our errors.

September 3, 2007 was Labor Day Monday this year, a day for rest, repose, reflection from the labors of our lots. Most people head for the beach, the bay, the chaise lounge by the pool, or the barbecue. A certain tribe of Imperial Valleyites think the day best used by riding many miles on their two wheels—without motors. Such a one am I, among others, who decided that such a day was ripe for a 70 mile trek across the noble, empty desert.

It was the usual morning weather, sweltering. Carson Kalin reported that as he drove from Brawley, the 5:30 a.m. temperature steadily dropped from 88 to 84. “With that kind of cool, I’m considering moving to the Southend.” I reported that the forecast called for lows dipping into the 70’s, but my remarks were quickly dismissed as idle fantasy. Despite the catcalls and rebuffs, I was not so easy to abandon that prognosis, as if the aura of tomorrow’s cool might spread somehow backward across time to today.

To thwart the beast of heat, I had soaked myself thoroughly prior to leaving my house. Though the humidity was high for hereabouts—probably in the 60 percent–I was dried out in about fifteen minutes by the breezes of our pedaling.

After a relaxed 17-18 mph stretch to the south, we headed west into a slight headwind along highway 98, the wide, smooth, undulating stretch of pavement that we in the Valley rate the Shangri-la of bike riding country. Keeping a sober, moderate pace, we had to slow a few times when some accelerations broke up a party of six. We arrived at The Oasis, a hillock surrounded by a scroungy arrangement of palm, mesquite, and other anonymous foliage. Not much of an oasis, it’s a place where coyotes convene and aliens cry out for mercy. Yet it’s the only green patch within miles, fed stingily from a drip irrigation system occasionally activated. There we reconnoitered, grabbed a snack and split up into two groups: the sensible and the senseless. The sensible three of us headed back home on the wings of a sympathetic westerly tailwind.

We other three, Fred, Benny, and myself, succumbed to the enchantment in our bicycles and pedaled west toward Ocotillo, another mere 12 miles. Only twelve trifling miles. At 20 miles per hour we would be there in a jiffy. But that wasn’t to be. Our legs were tired: Fred and Benny had ridden to the Oasis the day before. I had done 38 miles with sporadic bursts of speed. Just five minutes of rest had stiffened us all up pretty well.

We were making but 16 miles per hour in the face of a hot breeze. When the road turned to the north and dropped off of the Yuha Mesa, we managed 21 miles per hour briefly. But then as we approached No Mirage and the road tilted up, we could barely reach 14 mile an hour. Benny suffered a classic bonk; Fred went back to retrieve him, and we dragged ourselves the last few miles just above 12 miles per hour. “I think I bit off more than I could chew,” confessed Benny. He didn’t look too well. Not well at all.

At the gas station, the weight of the thick atmosphere crowded with angry molecules banging and smashing into one another fell heavy on our backs. My squinting eyes felt as if a circle of hot stone was being pressed into the orbits. We made light banter and exchanged encouraging words, mentioning at the same time the various parties we could call on to collect our carcasses from the pavement before the vultures arrived to a lengthy repast. In truth, we were well aware that we were in the danger zone.

Fortified with copious draughts of water, Gatorade, maltodextrin, electrolyte capsules, beef jerky, and energy bars, we remounted the devilish machines that had lured us thus far and set off into the inferno for more of the same, looking forward to a west wind at our back and a few hundred feet of total elevation loss to speed us homeward.

Shortly we noticed the nervousness of the wind, as if it were afraid to bring us bad news. It gusted hither and thither, then from the north, prompting us to settle into echelon with Fred and me taking turns and Benny just riding to stay alive. By and by we realized the west wind, that harbinger of dry, cool days ahead, had quietly surrendered to the suffocating, hot humid powers of the eastern sky. In other words, we were fucked.

We had been duped by the gentleness of the signs of dawn. When we had headed west from the fields into the desert, the humidity had dropped—and the dryness drove the cooling evaporation of our sweat on skin. A collection of clouds diffused the early sun’s rays, and the reddish tint of dawn over the mountains tranquilized us into trusting the turning earth to be benevolent today.

Halfway back those 12 miles to the Oasis, we felt the sucker punch, the change-up, the feint and charge from a sun that had spent three hours winding up with calm deliberation, slowly building to a crescendo of full blown, full body heat pack. Passing the Oasis, we gave a weak nod to a place where we should have turned back. But now we had twenty-two more miles against a stiff east wind, into the fierce gaze of the sun, with no shade, our arms, legs, and face exposed. There was no shade. Temperatures are measured in the shade because a normal thermometer placed a few feet above the asphalt, will soon quit its top limits of 140-150 degrees and burst its container. There’s no measuring the intensity of the direct sun. It’s too tough to handle.

We pedaled above the black asphalt, our helmets atop our skull, our sunglasses protecting our eyes, our legs going round and round—nothing but searing, penetrating, merciless hot.

Our water bottles yielded a thick, fiery liquid better used for making tea than refreshment. Splashing ourselves to help cool us, the water landed hot and burning until giving up a few degrees of cooling some minutes later. Without apparently offering much relief, still it seemed to disappear in a few minutes.

We strategically began discussing the best place to hide from our present circumstances. At the palm tree line off Mt. Signal Road, Fred and Benny sought the shelter of shade while I stumbled across the sand to raid the water set out for illegal immigrants. I had already drunk or poured two bottles of water over me. I drank the third one down standing over the cache of gallons, and then filled them all again. I poured one all over me and refilled it, replaced the cover on the half barrel and tramped across the expanse to the road and fired up again.

The single track of footprints that was visible before I made mine reminded me that there were real people without bicycles recently passed through, and I shuddered. Just the week before a lone woman had died within a mile or two of here, died of exposure before reaching this tiny oasis of life and the shade only sixty yards away. I blessed my circumstances and joined Fred and Benny, whom I encouraged to pour one of my water bottles over themselves. They obliged my mild persuasions half-heartedly. “Soak yourself,” I said. But they sprinkled but a little here and there on their jerseys. My jersey, meanwhile, clung to my body, totally wet. Fred said that it was nice to have a breeze. “What breeze?” I wanted to know. “You have to imagine it,” he replied, again exhorting the magical power of desert living. “You’re a creative writer. Now’s the time to be creative.” In a minute or two, there was that breeze, hot and angry from the north, but as we were in the shade, we extracted all the relief that we might, and left it to the beetles and the lizards panting in their deep holes.

Back on the road, Fred pointed out a mesquite tree alongside the south side. “That’s a good one to use in the afternoon,” he commented. Or anytime it’s like this, I thought. We soldiered on, on and on, still pedaling desultorily at about 18-19 miles per hour.

At our usual turning to the north on Brockman, we took stock of our situation. Benny had kept an even pace the whole distance, and seemed in better shape than before. He remarked the same, and admitted to being in a sorry state of mind at the Texaco station in Ocotillo.

Now we spoke a little here and there, a change from the one hour of silence we had observed while meditating on our fragility as we crossed the burning asphalt in the desert proper.

The wind came from the northwest; we soldiered into it. Turning west onto Kubler road, we pedaled three abreast for a time, and then resumed our pattern of Fred and I taking turns with Benny in the rear. Heading north finally on LaBrucherie, we traversed the New River, heard no cry from Red Ruth 77’s tent along the Central Main Canal. “Got any extra water?” asked Benny. He took a long drink of that burning hot stuff.

After a steady gait up to McCabe Road, Fred picked up the pace, simulating an interest in the traditional high speed lead out to a strong sprint finish at the freeway bridge. I went to the front and took my turn. Suddenly I realized something—the headwind was gone; we had actually been up to 19-20 miles an hour again on our journey north from Kubler.

Our delusions of sprinting home soon evaporated, but we compulsively turned those cranks the last mile and over the freeway overpass. Coasting downhill, Benny asked Fred for more water. They turned toward Fred’s house to where Benny could get revitalized enough for the last two miles across El Centro to the relief of an air conditioned home.

Hard core, was the conclusion of the day. An epic seventy miles of riding when we should have sensibly been sipping soda water at some pool’s edge in the shade. But we instead were clipped into our pedals, just like the girl in the red dancing shoes. We might have pedaled until we expired if our homes hadn’t loomed on our horizons just in time.