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Monday, January 17
958 Miles, The final day...
My eyes awoke as the sun, a golden yellow, dawned across
the desert floor. There was a forest of cactus surrounding me that clawed for
moisture upon the barren sides of Picacho Peak. In a moment of silence, an awe-striking vista
enraptured
me up from my sleepy state.
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Placed upon a desert valley was a
barren mountain pushing up from its place on the earth. Newman peak, 4508 feet, was a golden color as the soft morning glowed across its
eastern side. Sun shadows held a mountain side captive, as each moment became brighter revealing the mountain to me in all its desolate grandeur.
It was a chilly but wonderful morning and I felt refreshed after the night's rest.
A quick survey of my surroundings revealed I was alone. The campground
felt empty, untouched and waiting for something to happen. The temperature
gauge read 31 degrees, and my breath formed wisps of mist in front of me
I had slept under a picnic table upon the ground fully clothed. I
needed every available article of clothing I had to stay warm. Curled up
in a tiny cocoon in an attempt to stay warm. It worked and despite the
sub-freezing temperatures, I slept soundly although one might suppose it was a
direct result of my sheer exhaustion from riding for 37 hours. I lay there
for a few more moments looking out from beneath the picnic table and smiled to
myself in a satisfied way. There was a sense of marvel at what I had just
done. At that moment, little did I know I was about to set off on another
nearly 1000 mile day.
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Newman Peak, Arizona |
| I needed to make tracks. I headed due
north into Phoenix and made my way towards Los Angeles. Another uneventful
ride except an
occasional peculiar looking vehicle or a smart looking semi that faded into the mirrors. At one point I passed one of those huge news trucks with a
great big 6-foot satellite dish on the top. The markings said it was a TV station from Phoenix. I wondered to myself what in the world is a huge
truck like that headed towards Los Angeles for. I passed on by and quickly forgot about it.
The motorcycle smoothed across the desert pulling me onward
into the horizon. I started hitting civilization, signs for towns, one after the other. A name on a sign, the population, and
concrete, lots of concrete, just another town. Tens of thousands of lives huddled in alcoves of humanity, yet each an individual life. The temperature went
soaring up and it was the warmest it had been the entire trip. It felt nice but I sweated underneath all my layered clothing. The freeways were busy
but not congested and I hit Los Angeles about noon. Popped over the hill and there it was, shrouded in a smelly green cloud of smog.
Descending into the basin of Los Angeles, I just wanted to get through and head for home. I was 6 hours away and all I could think of after this
long trip was of reaching home.
As I switched freeways and headed north on I-5, the traffic started getting thinner and even more sparse till there were almost no other cars on the
road. So there I was just humming along on a 4 or 5 lane freeway on a Monday
afternoon all by myself in the middle of Los Angeles. Is something wrong
with this picture? Then up ahead, I noticed there were orange cones shunting people off the freeway.
What in the world? I took it all in stride, hey, this is LA, where they have fires, riots, unrest,
yadda, yadda- all sorts of weird things go on here. I
thought nothing of it nor did I think to ask anyone why. There must be another way to get out of LA. All I wanted to do was get out of the city and get
home. There was a cop car by the off ramp parked, unmoving. The officer
stood near the vehicle as if waiting for something to happen. It still
didn't strike me as odd. I just figured it was normal for LA. As I got off the freeway, there were people
milling around and not doing anything. People sitting on cars or standing there in groups talking. Everyone seemed to be outside. I thought to get
gas maybe while I was there but the gas stations were all closed in the middle of the day on a Monday.
Kind of weird, but this is probably normal for around here, only in LA I thought. Well, I'd just find another route out of LA. I got back on the
freeway and headed back south the opposite way. I ended up getting really lost and real
confused. My unfamiliarity with Los Angeles worked against me and my
United States road atlas proved difficult to read compared against the labyrinth of
options. There were signs for everything and I wasn't
sure what freeway went where. I missed the turnoff for 101 somehow and so I took 10 instead going east. I
rode awhile then the same thing
happened. A big roadblock and all the cars in a long line being sent to the street. I was at a loss, how do I get out of this city? Stuck in LA with no
way out. I should have kept on riding last night. I'd have gotten through early this
morning was the reoccurring mantra. Maybe there is a jack-knifed
semi up ahead or something like that.
This time I pulled the bike to a stop beside the long line of cars being shunted to the city streets. I spotted a motorcycle cop standing in the middle
of the freeway, just standing there all by himself. I hopped off the bike, peeled my helmet off, and strode over to
him carrying the helmet. He saw me and met me
halfway.
"How do I get out of Los Angeles, all the freeways are closed," I
said in a rather nonchalant way.
"Where've you been?" he replied flatly looking at me as
though I didn't belong. Freakin' tourists he was probably thinking.
He looked a bit unkempt, disheveled and I thought that a bit
odd. It was also an odd answer. I was still clueless.
"Well, I went through Phoenix early this morning," I said, "and before that came through New Mexico and Texas.
"Los Angeles got hit by an earthquake a couple hours ago. We know of over 30 people dead and there are a lot of fires and rescue personnel
everywhere..." He sort of trailed off a little bit.
I was stunned, an earthquake?
"The freeway up ahead has collapsed and an elevated section of I-5 up on the north side of town also collapsed," He spoke while looking at his
motorcycle. He sort of half spoke to it and me at the same time. "A fellow officer was riding to work this morning on his motorcycle when the
freeway gave way and he was killed." He paused for a moment and the words hung
in the air. "You can take 101 north, it's the only thing open right now."
And with that, he turn an began walking to his motorcycle as if I were no
longer interesting.
It suddenly occurred to me, like getting hit upside the head. I couldn't help but ask the question.
"What time?" I called to him before he was out of ear shot, "When was it?"
"Oh it was early this morning fortunately about 5 o'clock." He
replied not looking at me and continued walking back to the middle of the
deserted 4 lane elevated freeway rather alone and out of place.
There his white and black motorcycle sat with all of its emergency lights
flashing.
I was stunned for a moment and just stood there in the slow
lane because it finally all came together. Guess where I was supposed to be at 5 o'clock this
morning, or could have been if I hadn't stayed outside of
Phoenix for the night.
After all the things that have happened, I was amazed to have missed a major earthquake by mere hours?
It started to all make sense now and I slowly realized the entire city of
Los Angeles with its millions of people was
at a standstill. I was standing on an elevated freeway in the heart
of Los Angeles moments after one the of largest earthquakes in decades to
hit the city. I'd ridden right into the middle of a major
disaster. The people were all standing in the streets because they
were waiting out the aftershocks.
The time had come to get home before anything else happened. It took me awhile to find all the right paths to 101 but once I was on the freeway it
was clear sailing. I hadn't looked at the mileage on this road or even where exactly it went. I didn't even have a map of where I was. I didn't stop
to buy one to figure out the shortest route. Admittedly, maybe I wasn't thinking all that clearly. All I knew is that 101 went
northward to San Francisco and
from there it's pretty easy to finish the remaining 80 miles to Sacramento and I would be home. I didn't care. As long as it was headed out of this
city, I would've taken it north. I had to get home. I had to start another
semester of college the following morning.
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My last sunset on the road |
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What I had failed to take note of is that 101 heads all the way out to the Pacific
Coast and pretty much stays there snaking its way north along the
low mountains along the ocean. It adds quite a few hours to the distance. It would've been rather easy to find a way around the section of
I-5 that
had collapsed but I didn't know where it was. It had been only hours and I wasn't listening to the radio or reading newspapers or any mass
communication. The earth could've been discovered to be flat in the last week and I would not've known it. No mass communication with
anyone for over a week. I was simply out of the loop.
The temperature dropped quite a few degrees and the cities still all butted up against each other. People, people, more people, I love California,
yeah, right. Santa Barbara came and went and the sign for Highway 1 did too.
San Luis Obispo came and went and the mileage markers for San Francisco sure didn't seem to be decreasing in mileage very fast. Maybe the
road is too curvy or the number was too large or something. I felt like I was getting no where fast and I just wanted to finish off this last leg.
As I was riding along without a care in the world, I heard a popping noise beneath me, almost like a gasp. Now that couldn't be the Venture, no,
not now, I had already passed the 5500-mile mark earlier today and she'd been running like a tank since I left. A little while later, there it was
again, a gasp, that's really what it sounded like.
Dusk was coming on and the sun dropped rapidly out of the sky leaving me all alone with the road and the bike. Night driving once more. Once
more settling into that little world of just I and the bike and whatever appeared in the path of my headlight. Fortunately, no major animals or even
people popped up in the beam of my single headlight as I ran at full speed. I kept looking at the miles remaining on the signs and saying, that many
more?
The occasional popping sound I was hearing I finally isolated to the exhaust or in the carburetors. I've got 4 carbs and 2 mufflers and I couldn't
quite figure it out. It sounded almost like a motor coughing every now and then. Although it didn't sound serious like metal grinding on metal, it was
increasing in frequency as the minutes ticked into hours. The miles crept by, 50, 100, 150, geez this takes forever.
As I finally neared San Francisco and entered into the city traffic, the bike was popping and coughing its way home several times a minute. Now I
was getting a little worried.
I hit the home stretch near Vallejo running dead straight northeast to Sacramento, only a little more than an hour to go. I felt as though I had
thoroughly bonded with my new motorcycle as we have traveled together these last 6000 miles. Now if only it can gasp and weez its way home.
Halfway there the popping noise, or rather, noises, were constant. Sporadic, but constant and I was losing power in the motor. Not a good sign.
The Venture would no longer run in top gear with traffic. It was fading fast. I had to get home. I was less than 45 minutes away. I pulled into the
slow far right lane, dropped it down a gear, and ran it at a high RPM to make up for the losing power. The bike was coughing and weezing and
spitting, I still wasn't quite sure what it was but it sounded like gas. As if it were getting too much and it was gagging on all of it. A motorcycle
gagging? You say your motorcycle does what?
To say the least I made it home in the nick of time because the bike was a constant coughing and popping noise coming from the motor. I finally
exited the freeway and pretty much coasted the rest of the way home. I was exhausted. My mind was exhausted. My body was exhausted. The
bike was ready to die at any second. A perfect finish to a rather short and whirlwind tour of the south. Although I didn't experience as much
contact with people as I might have wanted, the trip was more about diving into a nation and seeing what's out there.
William Hazlitt, the off center British writer and philosopher wrote in 1822:
"One of the pleasantest things in the world is going on a journey...
The soul of a journey is liberty, perfect liberty, to think, feel, do just as one pleases."
The passion for riding is real to me and this burning desire to taste this land of ours and feel the hum of the bike beneath me has been stemmed for
now.
But just, for now.
(I'd just ridden nearly 2600 miles in less than 3 days.)
EPILOGUE
I made it to class the next morning still heavily worn out from the trip. I'd slept only a few hours having gotten back after midnight in
the wee hours of Tuesday. The popping noise was a very tired air filter, too much gas, not enough air- easily solved.
I never did find out why my friend wasn't there when I arrived at her house after riding 2000 miles in less than two days. I never spoke to
her again.
The cold front I experienced turned out to be the worst my father could remember in quite a few decades. In my hometown in Wisconsin
the temperature dropped to 60 below zero and a number of people died that winter as a result of the extreme cold. 22 degrees is still the
coldest I've ever experienced while motorcycle riding.
The Los Angeles 6.72 earthquake of January '94 will be remembered as one of the worst in decades. Aftershocks followed for over a week as
people slept on their lawns too scared to sleep indoors. Over 60 people died and the damage inflicted on the people of Los Angeles
accounted to over 10 billion dollars.
Seven months later after finishing out another semester and working all summer, I left on another trip on the same motorcycle. My quest
took me through Oregon, Washington, British Columbia, Vancouver Island, Alberta, the Yukon Territory, and the great land of Alaska. I
chose Alaska simply because it was there. I traveled alone 10,000 miles and spent 30 days, a whole month, riding on the motorcycle
across this great land of ours.
But that's another story...
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Picacho Peak State Park, Arizona to Sacramento, California
RoadTrip to Alaska!
A 10,000 Mile Pashnit Ride. |
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