The Wheel of Samsara

LAS VEGAS, Nev.—Like ingredients in an unholy Mulligan Stew, where dissonant flavors are purposely dumped into a cauldron and set atop a smokey fire to simmer, an odd collection of humanity mingles in this strange town.

Along the railroad tracks to the North, ramshackle tents and piles of filth betray the wherabouts of squatters existing below the government radar of Income Tax and Social Security Withholdings; sugar babies with their nubile twenty-something bodies and come-hither smiles adorn the arms of upper-middle-aged high-rollers who have come to town to spend an off-the-record weekend away from their wives; corpulent couples in caftans and baggy Christian Dior shirts emerge from their mobile homes to ponder buffet offerings, taking notes and making comparisons as if each entree were artwork vying for a spot in a juried exhibit; and the Tony Soprano wannabes—with their Hawaiian shirts, cultivated sneers and overly eager disdain for anyone who doesn't look like them—are ubiquitous.

So how do you make Las Vegas even weirder than it already is?

Import a couple thousand bike geeks from all points of the compass for the bike industry's largest annual tradeshow and set them loose in a big convention hall just off The Strip.

Interbike 2007 is a gear-head's dream! All the biggies are here: Fox Racing Shox, Sram components, Shimano, Clif Bar, WTB, Campagnolo. If it can fit on a bike or a bike rider, or something having to do with bikes, you'll find it stuffed in the overwhelming maze of booths crammed inside the Sands Convention Center.

Thousands of bike fanatics will wander these floors for three days. Shop owners looking for the latest and greatest product to help them get an edge on the competition, industry insiders looking to keep up with the competition, bike journalists not wanting to get scooped by the competition are all here. The Bike Industry is in a state of Perfect Compeition, said bike industry analyst Jay Townley, a statistics guru who spoke to a packed house of retailers on Wednesday.

For the past eight years, the bike industry has not kept pace with the U.S. economy. Profits are not growing appreciably, and in the past 14 years, the number of bike riders has declined by 23 million participants, shrinking to an all-time low of 36 million people.

Nevertheless, enthusiasm for the sport seems high. At least inside the Sands. In addition to all the staple products—frames, derailleurs, wheels, brakes, suspended forks and rear shock absorbers—entire lines of periphery products are on display as if bicycling were some kind of growth industry.

At the Incredibell booth, the company displayed a huge and colorful line of products that can be mounted on the handlebars to announce the arrival of a bike. Some of these contraptions let out a pleasing tinkle when twisted or struck with a thumb, but for the more organic person, a wooden variety let loose with tone similar to a woodpecker drumming on the shingles outside of your house.

Like the patent medicine shows of old, one booth offered a product guaranteed to clear up road rash in seven to 10 days. The proprietor offered his arm as proof, pointing to a fading patch of barely reddened, hairless flesh.

People have come from all over the world to this affair. When I tried photograph some fine looking components spread out on a table, a harried Asian booth attendant scrambled over and pushed my camera aside.

“Please, no photograph,” she said.

I pointed to my press pass.

“Please, no photograph,” she said cheerily.

“You don’t want any publicity?” I asked.

“Please, no photograph,” she smiled.

Here I was at the biggest bicycle product demo in the nation and apparently I had stumbled upon the Forbidden Fruit.

"What the hey?" I muttered to myself, scratching my temple.

She positioned herself between me and the gear like a guard dog. Her smile was more disarming than a growl. I was tempted to find one of the Sopranos hanging out in the BMX section of the show and dispatch him with a camera just to see what would happen. The thought passed quickly when a new bike caught my eye.

The big buzz of the day was at the Pivot booth. The bike is Chris Cocalis’ newest offering, a four- or five-inch travel machine with a manufacturer’s suggested price tag ranging from $3,600 to $5,700. This ain’t your grandpappy’s Schwinn.

The Sands is awash in other offerings, but I’m not sure how much more I can take. The best thing about bikes is riding them, and I’ve got a serious two-day bike jones going on after being cooped up here in Sin City for the past couple of days.

Yeah, Interbike is full of really cool stuff to drool over, but in the end, when it all comes down to it, it ain’t about the bike anyway.

Unless you happen to look like Tony Soprano.

Oddly displaced

LAS VEGAS, NV—Vegas, baby!

What a weird place. And, ironically, I feel strangely out of place. There are no real clowns here, not even in the Circus-Circus casino, nor is there any actual clown college—just an abandoned Post Office box belonging to some kind of Clown-College diploma mill. My dream of becoming a Ph.D'd Wizard of Wit has disappeared like white face-paint in the path of a cold-cream dipped cotton ball. Who is there to pick up the pieces when a clown cries, I wonder?

I hear only silence from an empty theater.

I guess there's always alcohol. And there seems to be plenty in this town. All you have to do is pretend to be feeding a slot machine, and women with boobs heaving out over the tops of their blouses thrust a drink in your hand. This is the American Dream, I suppose.

A few days ago we were driving monotonously through the backroads of Utah under gray watery skies on our way to Kanab, the gateway to Zion National Park. The day was dim, but despite the bad lighting, the colorful rocks and sands lit the way along Highway 89 like flourescent paint on a blacklight poster in downtown Haight-Ashbury during the height of the Summer of Love. Okay, so maybe that's a little bit of hyperbole, but after spending 24 hours in Vegas, everything seems a little large than life.

Out on the road to Kanab we passed a literal hole in the rock known as Moqui Cave. Sadly, this classic tourist trap was closed when we passed by (nowadays the "New Morality" of our nation apparently has kept even hardened Gyp-Joint owners from fleecing travelers out of 12 bucks on a Sunday).

Disappointed by our luck, we got back on the highway toward Kanab when something caught our eye across the road. An abandoned Tourist Trap cave dating back to the Golden Days of Travel in the 1950s sat overgrown and unused in the pouring rain. At the now-closed entrance stood an authentic looking Aztec rock-carved totem. A grown-over sign at the top of the cliff said something about Moctezuma, as if the place had been called Moctezuma's Cave or something like that.

In fact, here in Johnson Canyon, some people apparently believe Montezuma's treasure lies buried. Had I known that this might have been the resting place of the fiersome warrior-King's golden booty, I might have gone diving in the pond next to the carving; I certainly wouldn't have gotten any wetter than I did just standing outside in the rain snapping a photo.

The stone carving seemed strangely incongrous to the rest of the Anglo landscape nearby, and here in Las Vegas, I am that statue—big, ungainly and out-of-place. Yesterday we wandered around the Venetian for about an hour looking for a place to eat, getting pecked at by tuxedo-clad sales geese urging us to purchase nights of free entertainment from them at kiosks that had been erected around every bend.

I grabbed one such sweet old woman by the cheeks, pulled her close to me, planted a kiss on her kindly wrinkled face and said, "can't you just help me find a place to eat? I'm about to collapse into a diabetic low!"

We found ourselves at Wolfgang Puck's restaurant nearly immediately. Three thoughts about this place: Good food, tiny portions, huge prices. That's Vegas, baby!

Later that evening we watched the fountains at the Bellagio and prowled around. I watched the dumpiest looking man I had ever seen win $60,000 with the single roll of the dice.

Where did this man get the stakes to wager money for that kind of payoff in the first place, I wondered? But I didn't pursue that answer very far; its logic can only take a person down the kind of unsavory road of possibilities that even I'm hesitant to travel. That's Vegas, baby!

They have nice plants and things at the Bellagio, and I hate to admit that I was actually somewhat taken by this modern-day Tourist Trap. I guess in a town dominated by facades and fakery, actual vegetation held a strange calming appeal for me. They had even planted real pine trees on the walkway next to Las Vegas Boulevard at the fountain-viewing area. The trees all looked healthy, except for one, which seemed to be showing signs of drought stress, despite its location next to an artificial oasis of dancing water.

I read this morning that President George W. Bush didn't attend a United Nations Conference on Global Warming, and that only The Govinator, California's Arnold Schwartzenegger, was left to show the world that maybe someone in the United States is concerned about the future of the planet's climate.

Here in Las Vegas people seem unconcerned about such things, and you can bet there won't be any clamor to do anything about Global Warming until places like the Bellagio or the Venetian start to see its effects on their bottom lines. Then you can place a chip on the Pass Line that someone will start lobbying our national leaders to do something.

As the old saying goes, "What's good for business" ...

Send in the clowns.

Goofin' on Gooseberry

ST. GEORGE, UT—A long, long time ago I had a philosophy professor who gave us a simple phrase to chant for a spiritual awakening:

AWA TEGO SIAM

The good doctor told us that if we carefully spoke the phrase, over and over, faster and faster, we would get in touch with our true self. It worked.

The skies were cold and gray over St. George, Utah, and the nasty cold I thought I was starting to shake had crept over me during the night with a vengeance. It's terrible to wake up sick in a strange bed far from home. But it's even worse to go exploring a strange town while bound up in the grip of infirmity. So after tasting the hotel's "Deluxe" continental breakfast—with its lack of protein or any warm entree—I crawled back in bed, burrowing under the covers, hoping that things would be different next time I emerged.

It worked.

A few hours later the sun was up and warm and breakfast at the Bearpaw Coffee restaurant in western St. George, one of few non-chain eateries open here on Sunday, provided us with fine Belgian Waffles, perfectly poached eggs and a rasher of bacon. The resulting hit of cholesterol bound up many of the viruses coursing through my body and killed them with toxic efficiency.

In no time we were on the road and backtracking toward Hurricane, Utah. This sleepy little town is undergoing the ravages of tract development. Once-vacant fields located in the shadows of the striped red hills nearby are choked with cookie cutter residences; trophy homes have sprung up on the hillsides like mushrooms after a week of rains. In a few years the old Hurricane will hardly be recognizable if things keep going at this rate.

For those not in the know, Hurricane (pronounced Hurr-ah-can by the locals) is the gateway to Gooseberry Mesa, one of those still-mostly "undiscovered" mountain biking destinations sprinkled throughout this great nation of ours. Undiscovered isn't really the right word. Gooseberry has been fawned over and hyped up in nearly every bicycling publication on the planet. Everyone who's anyone on a bike has ridden Gooseberry Mesa. Nevertheless, because of its remote location away from established civilization, the trails are uncrowded and have not yet witnessed the horrible mob scenes of Moab and Fruita—the Disneylands of Dirt.

But that's all about to change. Troy Rarick, hailed by many as "the driving force" behind Fruita and proprietor of that community's famous bike shop, Over the Edge Sports, has set up his newest shop in Hurricane, Utah. Tucked in a prime location just off of Main Street on the winding road out of town toward Gooseberry, Rarick's new shop hasn't opened yet, but already Rarick is courtin' the crowds with social gatherings and group rides offered to sojourners on their way to Las Vegas for Interbike—the bike industry's annual trade show.

Rarick's people had already made it to the trailhead by the time we arrived at Gooseberry, during the late afternoon on the Autumnal Equinox, where the lighting was spectacular and the temperature perfect. Up here at this vantage point, you could actually feel North America slipping into a new season.

In the Old Days, that kind of Earthy talk could get you burned for Witchery. But feeling the perfect frequency of the spectrum piercing my flesh and rejuvinating my Common-Cold-ravaged body, I understand now why the Earth Worshipers and Wiccans perform their ceremonies at key times of the years like this one.

The day certainly worked magic on my bike handling skills and I found myself defying gravity and floating around the dirt and slickrock like I actually knew what the hell I was doing. Riding Gooseberry Mesa on this perfect day, I found myself chanting my professor's famous phrase over and over, undulating over the rocks with a big, stupid grin on my face. Out here, with no ski lifts to shuttle people to the top of the mountain for a rippin' ride back down, it's pure cross-country pleasure. At the end of the Mesa, the whole world opens right up in front of you in crimson splendor, and the valley below is mercifully free of the carbon-copy tile roofs that seem to dominate much of the urban landscape elsewhere.

Years from now, assuming cross-country mountain biking maintains its appeal, these trails probably won't be as silent and solitary as they are now. They will probably become a Theme Park attraction like their older cousins to the east. Let's hope they retain their magic.

A tricky situation

PAGE, AZ—As Friday evening waned in Page, AZ, a change in the weather brought a change of plans. For years we had talked about riding the fabled Thunder Mountain Trail, and this trip to Las Vegas would give us the chance.

We had planned to awaken at the Crack Of Dawn, the most fearsome of all of the major orifices, where squinty, crusty-eyed crabbiness, bad breath and no breakfasts are sure to dwell in the sleepy pre-dawn half-light. We were to drive 150 miles through this unsatisfying realm between light and darkness to hit the trail just after Sunrise.

Instead, the Weather Channel informed us that some kind of freak low pressure system was roaring out of California with 50 million gallons of moisture in tow. It was making a beeline toward Thunder Mountain and drowning everything in its path. The thought of becoming stranded in a thick soup of red earth far away from civilization in itself was not enough to make us think twice about possibly abandoning our dream. We've ridden wet and cold and unprepared before, and when it comes to being fools, we excel when we need to.

No, the coup de grace for our little plan actually was the increasingly miserable onset of a terrible cold I had acquired from a co-worker—one of those people who would not take the day off if he were dying of the bubonic plague. It's people like him who will turn the Bird Flu into a pandemic when the time comes. He will show up to work to open doors and rummage through community files with boogery fingers that constantly wipe a nose set firmly against the grindstone.

As a compulsive handwasher and germophobe, I'm usually the one who misses whatever office malady happens to be sweeping through. But I must have slipped up somewhere. In a big way. Whatever I had contracted was making up for two illness-free years just when I finally had some time off, and now it was tormenting me in a hotel room far away from home.

To say I felt like crap was an understatement. My nose had turned into a leaky faucet, my ears were plugged to the point where it sounded as if everyone were talking to me underwater. It felt like someone had taken an S.O.S Pad to my throat and tonsils. The thought of slogging around in the pouring rain in infirmity seemed not only stupid, but just no fun. We aborted our Thunder Mountain game plan and opted instead to linger here in the midst of Navajo Country for a couple extra hours of sleep and a test of the Rim Trail in the city of Page the next morning.

The hotel clock-radio blared 80's Hair Metal at 7 a.m. Ratt, Quiet Riot and Poison are not your friends at this tender hour of the morning, so they were hastily banished with the snooze bar. Alice Cooper would not suffer the same indignity, so I rolled out of bed and pushed the brew button on the thimble-sized coffee maker that had been placed in our room for our convenience.

In the hotel lobby, the entire country of Germany had converged to eat Free Continental Breakfast before enjoying what was to be a big day at Lake Powell. We carbo-loaded with German precision, eliciting nods of approval from our new-found friends.

A few minutes later we were at the Rim trailhead and riding just above the McDonald's, where a stream of cars were stalled in the Drive-Thru waiting for portions of Supersized Death. Some of the occupants in cars below pointed and stabbed at us with eyes full of scorn. The trail was not well marked, so we nervously wondered which way to go, not keen on standing around to suffer more indignities from the Fast Food crowd.

Suddenly, out of nowhere, a Native American woman appeared on a Wal-Mart bike with a shiny kickstand. She rode unsteadily up to us, dismounted and panted.

"Hurry! Hurry! This way!" she stammered breathlessly.

"Is this the way to the rim trail," I asked?

"Follow me!" she said.

And off she went, maneuvering her peculiarly shiny bike off the path and toward the road. She crossed the street, barely missing a speeding pickup truck.

"This way! This way!" she beckoned.

We followed. On the other side of the road a plastic sign post indicated the trail route. Just around a corner, an ancient Native American man sat in the dirt by the side of the trail with a beer, grinning with two front teeth.

"This way!" called the siren.

The old man's eyes twinkled as he looked up at us on our bikes, with our helmets and Spandex. He pointed at the woman and urged us to go. I heard him laughing as we went, but he didn't use the laugh of a drunk. It was the laugh of a wise man.

Unsettled, I hesitated and looked ahead on the trail at our scrambling guide, who was straddling the top tube and walking her bike at a blistering pace. She made a hard left off a small sidewalk and I followed. I was on the ground before I knew what had happened. The turn dropped off into a ditch lined with soft sand. I picked up my bike and brushed myself off and the strange woman was gone.

Seconds later another pair of cyclists appeared. They told us we were going the wrong way and that we should follow them to the Rim Trail.

"We were following that lady the other way," I said.

"What lady?" they asked with sincere puzzlement.

When we tried to follow our new guides, my bike wouldn't shift. A terrible clatter issued from the rear of the machine and the pedals would not turn easily. Close inspection revealed that my derailleur hanger was bent from the ridiculously slow tumble I had taken moments earlier. Luckily I had a spare.

As we changed it, I heard the old man on the trail nearby softly singing native songs to himself. Each time I looked up at him, he pointed at me and laughed.

We finally rode the Rim Trail and enjoyed spectacular views of Lake Powell, but I couldn't shake the thought that the mysterious woman from earlier in the morning was not of this Earth, but rather was a being who dwelled in the Crack Between the Worlds, a Trickster who had come to complicate our day.

"Naw," I finally said to myself, settling the question in my mind once and for all.

Then I heard a small hiss and felt a shudder rising up through the frame of the bicycle as we made it back to the McDonalds to complete our seven-mile, out-and-back ride. Both of my tires were flatter than the light dominating the reddish landscape. Close inspection revealed a fistfull of goat head stickers in the tread.

"That's really weird," said Caroline. "I don't have a single sticker in my tires. Where did you pick those up?"

Somewhere in the Crack Between the Worlds, I reckon.

Natural gas and gray aliens

AZTEC, NM—The approach of the Vernal Equinox brings a sense of urgency to go out and finish up all the unfinished summer business floating around out there. And this is precisely why we jumped into the car and hauled ass north for one more week of riding and fun before the onset of the pre-winter clampdown—with its early darkness and cooler-than-comfortable temperatures that force unrealized summer aspirations to be mothballed for another year.

This week we find ourselves on the road meandering toward Las Vegas, where I am endeavoring to spend a week in Clown College as a hedge against potential unemployment. The world needs more clowns. It is a lost art, and most of today's painted-faced gypsies are using their makeup to hide from law enforcement officials or leg-breakers looking to recover lost debt.

As such, I will make sure my chosen Clown Name—a moniker bestowed upon initiates by their mentors during the the sacred right of passage into Clowndom—has never been used by any former Clown felon or idler. I intend to make clowning an honest profession again. Like George W. Bush said, I will restore dignity to the Big Top.

It seemed natural that our first stop along the way would be an alleged UFO crash site. We haphazardly threw an enormous load of crap into the vehicle as we beat a hasty retreat from the Atomic City as darkness fell. It was on Highway 550 that we first noticed the headlight malfunction. An attempt to switch on the lowbeams plunged the vehicle into total darkness, never a good thing when you're out on unfamiliar, rain-slicked roads. So we endured the rest of the trip with every on-coming semi truck blasting us with high-beams that slashed their way through the veil of night and smashed into our retinas like lasers.

We arrived at the Back Off Inn in Aztec, NM, just before midnight. The victorian lace and wallpaper gave the place the feel of a haunted house and we slept fitfully between the slightly yellowed sheets. Mercifully we were not visited by silent apparitions or unexplained raps or knocks on the walls, other than an ominous torrent that chattered its way down a pipe behind the walls from the upstairs occupant's chamber pot.

The next morning we feasted on the Inn's signature hot, fresh cinnamon rolls. Our guidebook had crowed about homemade sugar-n-spice, but our breakfast consisted of microwaved Enteman's and strong Farmer Brother's coffee served on metal outdoor patio furniture that had been crammed inside the establishment's parlor (or "parlour" in the Victorian parlance that permeated the inn like an omnipresent potpourri).

Aztec, NM, is oil and gas country. You can smell it in the air, though not as obviously as in Bloomfield down the road. The air is rank with the sulphurous odor of money. Pumps are sprinkled liberally throughout the sage, bobbing up and down like giant grasshoppers, slurping valuable petrochemicals from the soft, gray Earth.

On a bluff above Hart Canyon a few miles from the edge of town, the drone of the pumps is drown out by whispers of conspiracy. Legend speaks of a flying saucer crash on this unlikely patch of ground back in 1948. The huge UFO reportedly carried more than a dozen little gray aliens in shiny silver suits. The lifeless bodies of these extraterrestrials were strewn across the crash site.

Locals say the government clandestinely cleaned up the mess using trucks disguised as oil and gas vehicles. It is rumored that the craft, among the largest ever recovered, was spirited away to Los Alamos National Laboratory for study, the alien corpses moved to Wright-Patterson in Ohio. Local folklore says the background radiation at the site is slightly higher than surrounding areas.

I don't know about all that, but what I do know, is the Alien Crash Site sure is a good place to ride a bike!

Several years ago a couple of locals, Al and Deral Saiz, scraped a trail into the forbidding landscape that heaves its way over long ledges of slickrock, twists its way through tight stands of piñon and juniper trees, and winds its way around the very site of the crash. A simple marker with a home-made plaque describes the mysterious events of 1948.

As I rode through the area, ducking low-hanging limbs and dodging around tight corners with branches that grabbed at me like alien fingers, I tried to imagine the implications of an alien crash. Well, not actually. I was concentrating really hard on the excellent trail. Round smooth rocks made navigation and control a constant challenge, and the plethora of low-hanging limbs along the route made decapitation an ever-looming possibility for a big guy like me. I have to suppose that the Saiz brothers are of short stature, else they would have trimmed these branches after getting bonked in the head for the umpteenth time along the route.

I expect that if the Aliens were chasing me in this landscape, I'd end up sporting the rectal probe. On this tight track through trees, a giant like me can only manuever so quickly. Three-foot-tall aliens could ramble through the brambles like Munchkins hopped up on methamphetamine if human prey were nearby, although the preponderance of branches might pose a hazard for their huge, staring almond-shaped eyes if the gauntlet were thrown down. Maybe I'd escape after all and the little bugggers would be left staggering around with dripping eye sockets and tender feet accustomed only to soft Martian soil bristling with cactus prickles.

After the ride we enjoyed a fine sandwich at the Main Street Bistro in downtown Aztec. The area is enjoying a resurgance. A local group is carving in a set of new trails and Main Street has been redone with period lamps to entice tourists for a weekend or an afternoon or even a short alien visit.

Hours later, after driving through some of the prettiest, lonliest country out here in the West, we ended up in Page, AZ, stepping off place for all procurers of houseboats for a week's vacation at Lake Powell. The Glen Canyon Dam made recreation possible for herds of drunks, and I celebrated this achievement with an interpretive dance on the red rocks high above the water at sunset.

Clown College grows nearer and I can already sense its energy—like flying saucer residue pulsing softly in the desert.

The Sushi Barge

Yeah, I love raw fish.

I gave up trout fishing a long time ago because my friends were always horrified to watch me snatch up a freshly caught rainbow, bash its little head on a rock and then bite off a huge hunk right there at stream side—chewing with my mouth open while fish juice ran down my chin. It was such a disturbing display that one buddy even took to calling me Smeagol, and this was long before Peter Jackson ever made The Lord of the Rings popular.

Just to be clear, I didn't do backflips on the rocks and sing fish songs after gnawing on some fresh catch or anything like that. But in these modern days, people get turned off by such atavistic displays. Here in robust America, with its ample waistlines and fingertip conveniences, there is no need to gnaw on raw fish, unless such is purchased at a reputable restaurant in the heart of civilized country.

Having said that, I have a very loose definition of what passes for civilization, and if I had to swear, I'd say I am on the fence of assigning that label to Pinetop-Lakeside, a community in Arizona's White Mountains that hosts a strange mix of the ultra-rich and total down-and-outers. This is a community of no middle class. This is a playground for Phoenix power brokers with second homes or a place where a largely industrial class of people hang their thread-bare hats on pegs hammered into the prefabricated walls of trailers tucked here and there in the woods.

But away from these trophy homes and shotgun shacks, we stumbled upon an excellent sushi restaurant here, far away from salt water and skilled commercial fisherman.

At the Kabuki restaurant—established by the same entrepreneur who reportedly brought the Goodwill Games to America—you can order the sushi "boat," described as being a meal for two. If you're in the White Mountains riding bikes with the same fervor as mosquitos have for feasting on the flesh of the warm-blooded, and you happen to stumble into the Kabuki, who are you to argue with the suggestion of ordering the signature entreé, particularly after downing a couple of Japanese beers?

The meal arrived in an actual boat—a three-foot galleon swamped to the yard arm in all manner of fresh fish and seafood. An entire Aji lay posed at the bow, expertly cut and ready for eatin'. One look at the little buggger's glassy eyes and fishy face, and I was ready for some backflips and head bashing. I let out a little screech and the other diners looked up with alarm.

The waiter assured me the delicious fish was already dead, so no tabletop whacking was necessary, and the entire restaurant breathed a sigh of relief.

In all, our schooner held about 10 pounds of sushi and sashimi, and the only offering that was a little too hardcore for our sensibilities was an entire tempura-ed shrimp head, whiskers and all, that laughed at us from atop his cushion of sticky rice.

Still, this far inland, in such a strange backward locale, a small hint of doubt lingered in the back of my mind that our feast would mutiny the next morning and we'd find ourselves doubled over the chamber pots instead of out on the trails. However, a quick taste of the banquet and the total absence of fishy flavor made me instantly realize that this food had been prepared by professionals and was fantastically fresh.

Indeed, our order was accompanied by the owner, who seemed interested in finding out who had ordered the house special. One look at our ruffled appearance and empty beer glasses, and he was instantly satisfied that we weren't millionaires or real-estate developers worth knowing beyond a warm smile and a genuine "Bon Appetit."

The next day on our ride, we rocked along the trails with sushi legs that allowed us to squirm though the technical sections like engergized salmon through a rocky stream bottom at the height of spawning season. We had boundless energy and we beat the rains. A beautiful rainbow descended from the clouds and we were glad to be alive.

Our tour through dusty ranching country on two wheels was a stark contrast to the fancy Kabuki restaurant the day before. But here in these mountains, we've grown accustomed to contrasts, and we look forward to them like bites of fine cold sashimi in a realm of stocktanks roiling with warm brackish waters.

At the edge of civilization

Our days in the White Mountains so far have been a blur of bike trails and restaurant meals; the trails are far better than the food!

There are miles of singletrack trails crisscrossing the thick forests up here. And while Phoenix swelters away at about 110-degress for the past few days, temperatures up here have hovered in the low 80s at their hottest. We've even had a little bit of rain to keep the trails nice and sticky.

So far we've logged nearly 70 miles of rides, the best one so far this afternoon. It was touch and go for a minute. We got a late start and needed to secure some supplies to fix a mechanical issue with one of the bikes, so by the time we got to the trailhead, big cumulonimbus thunder boomers were roiling up over the hills a short distance away. The roll of distant thunder pounded steady in the distance, like a drum beat keeping time for weary oarsman on a slave ship tossing in uncertain seas.

We hammered as best we could in an attempt to outflank the approaching storm, but the trail—an 18-inch wide ribbbon of dirt winding pleasantly through meadow and aspen stand—suddenly began to climb. Its smooth and friendly character transformed itself into a jarring journey up a ladder of sharp chickenheads (an annoying scatter of rocks that are smaller than "babyheads" for those unfamiliar with the peculiar parlance of the mountain biker). The trek might not have been as daunting had we had fresh legs, but the 30-mile epic ride the day before had taken its toll, and our legs felt like al dente pasta with each stroke of the pedal.

We watched the skies warily, wondering whether we would hit the bail-out point halfway through the trail before the lightning bolts began.

Luckily, we stayed one step ahead of the storm, skirting by it and then heading away from it as the trail mellowed and later provided us with some of the most rippin' downhill sections of the week. All this after meandering through fields of fern and oak that had been woven into the rich forest tapestry of Ponderosa Pine, aspen and fir.

This is fine country up here. It seems that some sections of the forest were ravaged by fire years ago and have been reborn into the kind of roomy forest that allows a generous amount of sunlight to pass through the tree canopies and energize the forest floor into a lush living carpet of brilliant color and texture.

All of this is cast upon a landscape of ancient volcanic rock. In some areas, trails and forest roads are covered with pea sized rust-colored cinder that crunches under the tires and makes a rider wonder whether the wheels will wash out around the next switchback.

In other areas, sections of cruel pock-marked babyheads force you to uncouple from your bicycle and dance above the seat with hands and feet light on the bars and pedals as the machine below bucks and heaves its way toward the next brief smooth section. With the slightly red cast of the soil and the abundance of rock, I imagined how it must be to mountain bike on Mars if such a thing were possible.

Up here the skies are a brilliant blue, rivalling the vistas of New Mexico, and it seems like these mountains are blessed with life-giving moisture. The mosquitos certainly have flourished, and our rides only commence after we have slathered ourselves in an unsavory chemical bath of SPF 30 sunscreen and 100 percent DEET.

We have tested this mixture for the past several days under the harshest conditions of sweat and dirt, and we can attest that neither chemical affects the performance of the other when used simultaneously. Were it not for sunscreen, we would fry like bacon during the long daily rides we have endured, and if we had not packed the DEET, our flesh would be as raw and bumpy as some of the sections of trail we have mastered. Any breather out here brings clouds of mosquitos that hover just out of range of the DEET molecules we exude.

This is life as we have discovered it out here on the Mogollon Rim—where the Colorado Plateau abdicates its majesty to the Basin and Range below. It is a marvelous place at the edge of civilization, but it seems as though people are trying as hard as they can to "civilize" the area with asphalt and tract developments. Wherever possible, realtors and developers are cramming houses together in every nook and cranny, whether that be on the site of a former wetland or within the migratory routes of great herds of elk.

As odd and ridiculous as it seems, developers are making big bucks carving gated communities into the middle of the wilderness here. Perhaps the city folk from Phoenix find comfort in the knowledge that their vacation home is walled off from surrounding acres of open space by a six-foot-high iron fence. This to us is pointless and weird. But apparently it sells; these gated communities have very few vacancies even with their abundance of smallish half-million-dollar pricetag homes that are used but a few weeks each year.

Fences may keep prowlers out, but they don't segregate humanity from things like the species of tiny toad we came across today on our ride, or from the thimble-sized vole that peeped up at us from just beyond the edge of the trail as we rode by. But people who hide behind fences in the middle of the woods don't keep their eye out for things like that anyway. At night in those sections of forest, pockets of trees are illuminated by the light of plasma-screen televisions blaring out through barred window panes.

Meanwhile, far away and too tired to care, we sleep like exhausted kittens after a wild day of nonstop play.

The Elephant Burial Ground

We are staying in a tomb.

This was not intentional. A brush with good fortune some time back allowed us to secure accommodations in an RCI time-share "resort" anyplace in the world for next to nothing. However, the lateness of the season narrowed our potential world view significantly, and by the time it was all said and done, we ended up choosing a location in what probably could be characterized as the most undesirable time-share vacation location in the world.

We are staying in the farthest corner of the time-share universe—a purgatory for penalizing all the late planners and procrastinators, or the suckers who don't really understand the nuances of wheeling and dealing for trade-ups to better locations.

There was plenty of space here in the White Mountains by the time our time-share opportunity arose. We are where nobody wants to be.

It seems time-share vacationers opt for places with access to beaches and casinos and parasailing and shopping. These jetsetters—with their one precious week a year to spend in pursuit of leisure—opt for locales where beautiful people don't mind showing off their tanned and ripped torsos during the hottest part of the day, where friendly bartenders have perfected the craft of whipping up good strong drinks garnished with fine sweet fruit and paper umbrellas.

Here in the White Mountains, there are big stands of Ponderosa Pine forests for as far as the eye can see. The sky is quiet and dark at night and the nearest shopping is a Family Dollar store five miles down the road. In their resort brochure, the RCI marketing folks admonished that a "car is necessary to enjoy the region's amenities," many of which are located "less than a six-hour drive away." We are in the middle of the forest in the middle of nowhere.

There are no casinos, no beaches. People walk around fully clothed at all times, and the median age of resort dwellers here must be about 75 years old. The tap water is impeccably good tasting, pumped up from an ancient aquifer that is untainted by the ravages of civilization and industrial processes.

For us, this place is perfect. We are enjoying ourselves immensely and we have no plans to drive anywhere. The White Mountains are rich with biking trails and we have spent the past two days enjoying singletrack trails that range from smooth cruisers to shockingly technical grinds over tire-ravaging lava rock. Our legs are already tired but we are still looking forward to riding a 30-plus-mile epic later this week.

In some respects, vacationing here is a lot like vacationing in The Atomic City—with "nothing to do" and "no place to shop"—so we feel close to home. The nearby Apache tribe has even erected a fine cheesey casino just twenty minutes away by car, as if a Pojoaque Pueblo Déja Vù had been placed here just for us.

But what of the others who have come here? We have little information, other than that they seem to be very old. The resort's common area is uncrowded by people and the place has very little buzz. There are puzzles out on the tables in the atrium that seem to get assembled a little more each day by the gray ghosts who have come here this week to populate this old tomb of a resort.

People of this age demographic eat dinner early, and the restaurants in town are standing room only from 5 until 6:30 p.m. Then the town empties out like one of those spooky Midwestern hamlets where the locals engage in unspeakable rituals to guarantee a favorable harvest next year.

Last night we awoke to the sound of thumping as we tried to sleep off the stupor of a days' worth of riding. A new set of Blue Hairs had arrived. Night creatures. A different breed from what has been here so far.

We will be watching them—like Fort Lauderdale residents wary of Spring Break interlopers.

Spirit of the Trail!

Ahh, the road!

Getting away has been an obsession of this nation, particularly in the West—where scoundrels and pioneers alike found solace on the trails. These days asphalt replaces the bumpy wagon ruts that guided our forefathers and their familes to Manifest Destiny. But some of the same routes remain despite the ravages of time and progress.

Here in Springerville, Ariz., they've erected a monument to all those hardy souls who've journeyed one place or another in search of fortune and glory. Next to the main drag through town, one of a handful of "Madonnas of the Trail" commemorates the pioneering spirit. The statue—a woman with a baby on her breast and a young boy clinging to her skirt—stands next to another modern marvel: the Home of the Big Mac!

Here, food pioneer Ray Kroc perfected a process in which Americans could eat the same-tasting food no matter where they were on the road. Unfortunately, the road that Ray paved was an express route to heart disease, diabetes and obesity—hardships for an affulent nation. These plagues came at a time when Marketing Geniuses were successful in convincing a fun-starved nation that food was entertainment.

Broken axles, diptheria and starvation hobbled the progress of a growing nation after throngs of people were urged to "Go West, Young Man" by Horace Greeley in 1865. But these travails pale in comparison to the ravages of modern convenience suffered by a Fast Food Nation. More time at work, less time in the kitchen: the benefits of a highly modern society. We work to put food on the table, no matter what form. More is better. We are a Super-Sized, Super-Charged society on the move. Except nobody's walking anymore.

The McDonna of the Trail stands as a mute reminder of a time when self-reliance was the key to prosperity, not warmed-over meat patties served to the microwaved masses.

And so, fellow travelers, once again I have fled the cities for a taste of the the wild and a cloak of solitude. Here in the White Mountains of Arizona we will smell the vanilla essence of ponderosa pine forest and savor the sticky darkness of the night sky, which coats the world like molasses after the sun has bid the day adieu.

We have secured a housesitter and pinch-workers to take care of matters in our absence and we will be reporting on our progress here as providence and whimsy allow. Perhaps we will learn a thing or two—even in this age when everyone seems to know everything about everything.

The trail ahead beckons. See you on down the road.