How the West Was Won
Let me start by relieving everyone by saying that the last three days of riding have now turned a corner with my body. What I mean is that I was much less sore today from the ride than I had been any of the last three days. I don’t know if that means it now takes three days of pain to get two days of pleasure, but today was, indeed, a pleasant ride through what seemed to me to be true western landscape. These were not well-travelled roads with tourists, quite the contrary. We barely saw any cars on these desolate roads all day except at the towns on either end of the day and where we stopped for lunch.
We started the day in Socorro, New Mexico at the Best Western. While the hotel was just fine, and generally convenient for motorcyclists since we could park right in front of our rooms, it did bring back memories of how we started out discovering the western wonders lo those twenty-eight years ago when we would hop from one Best Western to the next. I think in those days, Best Western hadn’t yet discovered the benefits of the pillow-top mattress or the flat-screen TV, but everything else is pretty much unchanged, including the breakfasts. This morning’s offering included fried eggs that looked like they came out of a fried egg machine, if such a thing exists. The bagels were certainly not up to New York, or even Escondido, standards. So, we launched forth at 8am, which was really 7am a few miles to the west since Arizona likes being on its own time zone, which at this time of year happens to coincide with California time. As we headed towards the Arizona border, the first thing we came across was the VLA (Very Large Array) radio astronomy observatory. It was hard to miss since as far as the eye can see there were huge satellite dishes running diagonally across the road we were driving on. Given the western Big Sky distances, I counted 16 from my motorcycle seat covering several miles. I have learned that there are 28 in the full array with 27 operational at all times in a Y-shaped configuration. This array has been in place for almost 50 years and is a major data gathering site for cosmological evidence all across the universe of everything from black holes to strange movements in the center of the Milky Way. We didn’t stop because there really wasn’t anything like a visitor center or anything…just miles of astronomical hardware.
After shaking off the willies of SETI and ET and wondering if Jody Foster was hanging around somewhere, we kept heading west back into Alpine and eventually to Eager, Arizona. Chris observed that the New Mexico countryside was considerably different than the Arizona countryside. I tried to get underneath that observation because it all looked like lovely western landscape of one type or another to me, but he just said it seemed different. Along the way we did see some real working cowboys moving cattle just like on Rawhide, except this time they wee trying to get them across the road. When Mark waved at the cowboys that seemed to upset them since it must be some sort of signal for the cows to start moving across the road since they started moving in that direction. The day’s riding line-up was Mark, Chris, Steve and then me bringing up the rear. That meant that it was suddenly a race between about 300 head of cattle and me. I didn’t actually find it all that close or scary, but I heard from Mark later that he was genuinely worried that I might be hanging some beef around my handlebars.
We then got a text message from Ann as to where the Princess Van had chosen for us all to gather for lunch. It was in Eager and it was a quaint little place called the Pink House, an 110-year-old western Victorian house now run by a team of young women who offered up a wonderful menu that we enjoyed at tables on the front lawn under the cottonwood trees. I cannot think of any scene more western than that lunch of Texas toast, lemon chicken and rice soup, and grilled cheese and bacon. Meanwhile Kim had a salad with strawberries while Kim and Jeanne had pear and Brie sandwiches. It was perhaps the culinary and ambiance highlight of this particular western trip.
From that spot, we all went off together heading for Holbrook, Arizona where we were bedding down for the night. However New Mexico and Arizona differ, the stretch between Eager and Holbrook is, in a word, flat. In addition to flat, it is featureless until we got to the Rainbow Forrest Petrified Wood Gift Shop. It was quite a shop with more variations on the petrified wood front than I could have imagined. While at the shop Mark made a command decision on a hot afternoon after a long ride already. As he said, he “read the room” and decided that riding another 28 miles to go through the petrified forrest park (which I am told is more or less just a lot of road and dirt) for a total of 50 miles versus driving 17 miles to the next Best Western was our best course of action.
For me, it had been a long enough day, but a good day, a better day than the prior three based on my improved back soreness. I enjoyed the very chilly pool in the 95 degree afternoon, and it was just what the doctor ordered. But wait, my friend Rob, who lives in the Republic of Colorado, one of the first states to liberalize the sale of cannabis for medicinal and recreational use, gave me a small vial of 1000mg CBD salve that is called Deep Tissue that he said works wonders on sore backs. I pocketed the vial and thanked him and he reminded me that it is available by mail order without a prescription.
I’ve found myself wondering how in hell the real men and women who tamed the west one hundred and fifty years ago rode the trails that we now have nicely paved. Did they travel 200-250 miles in a day on horseback? No. Maybe 30-40 if they were tough enough. Did they marvel at the magnificent landscape? Probably if they had the time to look up from the dust on their boots. Did they have a cold hotel pool to jump in at the end of the day? Well, maybe a cool stream here and there (not too many near this exact spot). Might they have had a pleasant lunch outside a Victorian house on the prairie somewhere? Perhaps.
I marvel at the thought of our forefathers making light of all that we take for granted or, worse yet, gripe about. Best I can tell, they didn’t have BMW motorcycles to take them 10X as far every day or 1000mg CBD salves to help them out. But then again, they didn’t have 28-dish radio astronomy observatory arrays searching the heavens for answers and we do. I guess every generation has its way of making sure what needs to happen happens. That is, after all, how the West was won and how we all get through our times on this planet.