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.
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.
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.
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!
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.
