Pleasant surprises

Alligator junipers are the coolest trees ever!

PINETOP-LAKESIDE, Ariz.—After spending the morning cooped up inside our temporary home because of dreary gray skies, cold wind and minefields of puddles all over the ground, we could no longer stand it. We got dressed and went for a bike ride. Damn the consequences!

We knew full well that the previous night's rains might have made the trails unrideable, but there's only so much television a person can stomach, and we'd already reached our weekly toxic allowance 24 hours earlier. So we set out for the Land of the Pioneers trailhead hoping for the best. The skies were still loaded with puffy gray rain clouds, and temperatures hovered at a chilly 45 degrees. It was a day for wool jerseys and knickers.

As we drove toward our destination, the skies dried out considerably and the sun beat down on us, leading us to believe that we were grossly overdressed for our ride. When we finally reached the trailhead about an hour later, however, the skies had once again grown dark and the air had grown even cooler. We quickly hopped on our bikes and made our way down the unfamiliar trail.

Show Low bike shop owner Todd Fernau had tipped us off to the rideability of the Land of the Pioneers trail the previous day when we happened to pop into Cycle Mania, Fernau's most excellent shop. With impending rain in the forecast, we wondered which of the White Mountain trails would dry out first in wet conditions.

The forest service map describes this as an "interesting box canyon." That's a total
understatement. It's an absolutely stunning box canyon!

A few years earlier during the annual Tour of the White Mountains ride/race, we had seen some of the trails turn into nightmarish mud bogs after a downpour. When exposed to rain, some of the soil in these parts transforms into a fearsome sticky-yet-slick clay that can totally gum up a bike, so we were anxious to avoid the trauma of becoming paralyzed in oobleck someplace way out on an unfamiliar trail in a community where nobody even knew who we were or that we were even out there riding.

When we inquired about the Land of the Pioneers—mostly because we had never ridden it—Fernau told us that the trail had been greatly improved during the past couple of years and that it was totally worth a ride. We needed to hear nothing more than that, so we made immediate plans to ride the trail a day later.

We enjoyed every minute of the trail! Despite its designation as "difficult," we navigated the rocky, winding path with ease. Maybe we rode well to ward off the chill, or maybe it was the simple fact that riding for five out of the past seven days had put us into great shape. Whatever it was, we enjoyed the ride more than we ever thought we would. Even better, the night of rains made the trails perfect and dustless.

If you wonder why they call this trail Land of the Pioneers, the ruins of an old home-
stead provide a quick answer.

In addition to enjoying the flow of the trail, we enjoyed the scenery as well. Giant alligator juniper trees loomed alongside us in many areas. Ancient oak trees stood guard over their piñon and juniper colleagues. As we climbed Eckes peak, we were able to look across vast expanses of Arizona wilderness. Newly re-routed sections melded perfectly with the landscape. Land of the Pioneers was much different from the grueling Hell Ride we'd heard it called when we first visited the White Mountains five years ago.

After our ride we returned home to clean up and get dressed for dinner. Hot water never felt so good! We dressed and visited the Sakura Buffet restaurant located in a strip mall in Pinetop. During our first visit here, we had dined at Sakura's predecessor—a delightful, four-star restaurant that served some of the finest sushi we had ever tasted.

The White Mountain Trail system is truly a mountain biking paradise.
The system has nearly 200 miles of well-marked, non-motorized
trails.

The new Sakura Buffet provided all-you-can-eat sushi and Asian food that was absolutely soulless and uninspiring. We had found the Furr's cafeteria of Japanese cuisine, except that I actually enjoy eating at Furr's sometimes. It seemed to us as though the Sakura 
Buffet food was simply created to reap a profit. There didn't seem to be any love or care put into the food. It was industrial, pedestrian...dead.

As a last thought on Sakura Buffet, I refer you all to one of the last scenes in the 1997 Hollywood blockbuster, Titanic. In that scene, actress Gloria Stuart as the Old Rose Dawson recalls her experience, so I'm summing mine up something like this:

"But now you know there was a restaurant named Sakura Buffet and that it was wretched...in every way that a restaurant can be wretched. I don't even have a picture of it. It exists now...only in my memory."

The good thing about a bad restaurant is that it makes the good ones seem even better!

See you on down the road.

Rain delay

Rains have made our bicycles a prisoner of the porch and have caused nearly every
single pine needle in this place to fall to the ground.

PINETOP-LAKESIDE, Ariz.—A good friend of mine once told me that I need to learn how to relax. I guess he's right.

The rains have come to our little hideaway, banishing us from the trails for the past day. It's forced us inside, where the inescapable siren's song of television finally lured us away from the easy jabber amongst ourselves that we had been enjoying on this vacation.

If I've learned two things on this trip, it's this:

1.) Riding bikes is always much better than not riding bikes; and

2.) television sucks no matter where you are.

Here in Arizona, the political races are underway hot and heavy, and the airwaves are fetid with vicious political advertising made possible by faceless corporate-sponsored political action committees. Thanks to the stooges on the supreme court and the Citizens United ruling, anyone with money can now say pretty much anything they want about pretty much any political candidate. The result is a stinking haze of lies and innuendo plastered all over the airwaves in an attempt to support candidates who will gleefully serve their Corporate Overlords, and defeat any candidates who still have a shred of integrity.

Arizona political advertising in this neck of the woods has boiled down to a never-ending video character assassination of democrat Richard Carmona, who apparently could tip the balance of power in the U.S. Senate. Another ad for some candidate around here accuses the other candidate of beating his wife in front of the other candidate's child. Or something like that. People make fun of the "Have-you-stopped-beating-your-wife" routine, but this is the first time I've actually seen it used. It screams of desperation.

The tiresome 24-hour parade of crap-vertising has prompted me to subconsciously tune out all political advertisements and substitute them in my own head with hilarious parodies of political advertising that go something like this:

"Baby-eating space alien Barack Obama is a presidential impostor who has a smelly butt that hides a business-destroying socialist agenda—This ad paid for by the Secret Handshake Club for Grotesquely Wealthy Fat Cats who Live Off of Corporate Welfare and Pretty Much Hate Anyone Else Who Doesn't Earn an Annual Income of More Than $16 Million."

But there was one upside about watching television because of the rain: We caught the Joe Biden/Paul Ryan debate last night. I guess that's good. I guess...

But now that we've grown sick of the never-ending squeal of the Glowing Box of Idiocy, and we are forced to remain indoors on this gray rainy day. We sit here inside our little hideaway, which is alive with the smell of bacon, hunched over our computers, waiting for the sun to dry out the ground so we can get another ride in.

I'm learning to deal with these circumstances, but I don't exactly call it relaxation.

See you on down the road.

Silence is golden

PINETOP-LAKESIDE, Ariz.—Civilization is damned noisy.

A good breakfast is the most important meal
of the day before a big ride.

You don't realize that until you have the luxury of being in a really quiet place, and currently we are in a really, really quiet place. They have fabulous trails up here in Pinetop-Lakeside. About 200 miles of them to be exact. There are people up here, too, but not many of them go out on the trails I guess.

We selected a very nice 26-mile route that took us deep into the woods on some fine technical singletrack. The dirt here is foreign to us. It's reddish and strewn with volcanic cinders. Sharp, jagged igneous rocks that could easily shred the sidewall of a carelessly piloted bicycle tire jut out of the ground every few feet or so, creating a treacherous gauntlet that requires your A Game. But every few miles, we encountered long stretches of narrow, flowy singletrack that demanded to be ridden at top speed. This place really is a mountain biking paradise.

A peaceful stretch along the Los Burros trail.

In addition to the thrill of riding, we discovered out on these trails the thrill of silence. If you've never experienced it, I suggest you do so as quickly as you can. About a quarter of the way into our ride, we found ourselves winding up a fairly steep pitch that traversed the side of a mountain. We were working diligently to avoid getting bucked off of our bikes by the merciless terrain when we noticed the silence. Or maybe we didn't notice it. Whatever it was, we realized that all we could hear was the sound of our own breathing and the almost subliminal clockwork-like buzz of a well-oiled chain orbiting a binary system of clustered cogs and gears.

It's dusty riding alright.

Fighting the natural human instinct to break silence with meaningless jabber, we immersed ourselves in noiselessness. We rode for miles this way. There was no background noise of vehicles on highways, the world was free of the endless chatter of television and radio, there was no drone of mechanical devices or manufacturing plants, and, best of all, we didn't hear a single ringtone anywhere for hours. There was only sweet, clean intoxicating silence. 

This area has been free of wildfire for all too long. The woods are thick and tall. Giant Gambel Oaks have grown into trees that must be at least a 100 years old in some areas. Autumn and a long dry summer had morphed the ferns into crispy golden fans that seemed as though they would crumble into a fine dust on contact.

Thankfully, thinning operations haven't affected the trail system.

Apparently the land managers in this area have come up with an arrangement to allow companies to come in and thin vast areas while laying claim to the lumber for commercial use. While some people may condemn such practices, we were pleasantly surprised to see that the trail corridors had been maintained despite logging operations taking place in their midst. Even radically thinned, the forest still looked healthy and it was easy to see that these places would survive the inevitable catastrophic wildfires that will continue to ravage the West with increasing, alarming frequency in the coming years as our species continues to despoil its only habitat with toxins of wanton excess.

The one trail-user we met along the way—a nice woman from Colorado riding a beautiful horse with the company of her doberman—disagreed with our sentiments about thinning. That's okay. Once we rounded the corner away from the logging operations, we once again slipped into silence and back into the overgrown forest. Having come from a place that is mostly blackened sticks after having been ravaged by wildfire multiple times, a tall, complete forest was a sight to behold!

Civilization holds food, drink and dorks.

We rode for nearly three hours, and returned hungry and tired back to our temporary home. Later we feasted on grilled steak and spicy red chile enchiladas and giant mugs of delicious craft beers. Our meal made by hand was better than anything we would have gotten in the local restaurants, none of which probably served such gargantuan beers anyway.

Only a hearty belch or two broke the silence of the evening.

See you on down the road.

A tin can and fingernails

Travelers disembark from a tour bus at Ortega's Indian Arts travel center in Gallup, N.M.

Giant size arrows in the parking lot give the illusion that an old fashion massacre has just

occurred. That's the type of fun a person doesn't even need to pay for.

GALLUP, N.M.—It seems that many tourists don't end up in Gallup by their own free will. The majority, it seems, get herded into Gallup as part of package tours that promise to expose travelers to authentic Indian jewelry and a taste of the old West. Others are diverted from their travels simply out of necessity—for gasoline stops, restroom breaks, court summonses, that type of thing. We, on the other hand, regularly visit Gallup on our own terms because we like it. Or maybe that's just the donut talking.

Clover Club chili chips and orange and black
cherry sodas.

I've been traveling through Gallup since I was a kid. A long time ago I remember going into the storied city with my father. We had been traveling on old Route 66 when the American Bar beckoned him off of the road to stretch his legs and enjoy some old fashioned refreshment. I remember him sitting at one of the small tables with a Tom Collins in one hand and some fresh fry bread in the other. The place was packed with people. I tried hard not to look at any of them very carefully because most of the clientele was drunk.

Gallup's High Desert Trail System rocks!

I enjoyed a virgin Tom Collins and surreptitious sips of Dad's real one. That was big living for an eight year old. Later, after Dad had gotten pretty loaded off of multiple cocktails and the chips and salsa had run out, we left the bar and wandered the streets. Dad ended up bewitching an Indian vagrant who recited Shakespeare. Dad rewarded the man's folly with a can of refried beans, which the hungry fellow attempted to scratch open. I had never seen someone hungry enough to try and outsmart a tin can with fingernails before, and I've never seen it since.

The whole scene made me very uncomfortable, but I was glad that Dad had the good sense to check us in to the El Rancho motel that night and spare us from becoming a highway statistic of the worst kind. I stayed far away from Gallup after that, remembering the place as a haven of bars and drunken natives who roamed the streets. 

Beautiful singletrack in the Zuni Mountains

After I started mountain biking, I learned to like Gallup. The city has gone through a renaissance of sorts. The streets are cleaned up and mostly free of drunks. Adventure tourism is now as big of a draw as Indian jewelry for outside visitors. Gallup's High Desert Trail system is world renowned now, and the new Zuni Mountain Trails are home to a successful 24-hour endurance race and frequent out-of-town visitors.

The New Gallup awakened a sense nostalgia in me and I found myself purchasing fruit-flavored soda pop and Clover Club potato chips at one of the local stores as a post-ride treat. On our last day there we got up at the crack of dawn and drove back out to the Zuni Mountains to ride out there one last time before winter.

There is no exaggeration available to properly express how good this
thing tasted after a 17-mile mountain bike ride first thing in the
morning.

On the way out of town we stopped by Glen's Bakery for a raised donut adorned with frosting that was as pink as a baboon's ass. It was the best donut I've had in years. We left town without giving away any of our canned goods and without hearing someone recite telepathically implanted plays written by the Bard. That's big living for a 50 year old.

See you on down the road.

It's sugar time

GALLUP, N.M.—We arrived at the Hilso Trailhead in the Zuni Mountains outside of Gallup, NM, in the late afternoon. We were meeting friends for a bike ride and a photo shoot, and already before the ride had even started, one of our "models" had opened up a bottle of ice-cold IPA to loosen up a bit. The wasps were on him in no time.

An awesomely skilled rider rails a berm along the trail.

Their legion could be heard as an almost subliminal buzz vibrating beneath the stillness of the forest air, and the chorus of their numbers instilled a wary respect in us. We dove and danced as they dive bombed us one right after another as we struggled to prepare for our ride.

Yellow jackets are always aggressive in the woods in autumn. With just a short time until the first freeze and the first snowfall, the little buggers are on a constant patrol for sugar and water and any other useful provisions that will help them weather the coming period of cold and scarcity. They will not hesitate to sting anyone who gets in the way of their relentless scavenging, and woe unto those who would deliver a careless errant swat; a puff of attack pheromone from the threatened or crippled insect will bring a cloud of swift and speedy justice from the entire tribe.

We are seeing the same type of behavior from the One Percent right now. America's richest, greediest, most-aggressive hoarders are on a hunt for wealth and bargains that will carry them through the quickly-approaching winter of economic cataclysm. Elsewhere, like us poor unfortunates at the trailhead who had naively given the predators a whiff of sweet, wet, fermented barely and hops, people are doing their best to stay out of the way.

We have driven on Route 66 countless times now in the past 12 years or so. It never gets old. The world along the Mother Road provides a glimpse into the True American Condition. This strip of asphalt is a barometer, a harbinger of change and consistency. She seldom lies.

Cruising Route 66 on our way to the turnoff to the trailhead, we saw on this trip what seemed like an increase in the number of vagabonds slowly staggering under the relentless glare of unfiltered sunlight toward whatever kind of promise of redemption had lured them out onto the open road and undefined waypoints east and west. Like carrier pigeons set loose to deliver messages to unnamed recipients, these hobos, with their overstuffed backpacks, threadbare clothing, and grime-darkened skin, are sending a message to anyone who will listen: America is in decline—despite the cheery rhetoric and economic indicators that are routinely fed to the public by politicians and pundits seeking to avoid panic and subsequent meltdown.

It is autumn in America, and the wasps know it all too well.

This is about the only "technical" part of the trail.

Fortunately, bike riding allows us to forget about such things, so off we went into the woods for a spin on some of the finest trails in the Western United States. The McGaffey trail system in the Zuni Mountains offers some of the narrowest, flowiest singletrack in these parts, and it's hard to be morose about the economy or our current choices for president when you are winding in and out of stands of tall ponderosa pine, and darting through ancient groves of Gambel Oak whose amber leaves glow in the shimmering light of late afternoon. Arriving back at the trailhead when the shadows had grown long and the cool hints of early evening had banished most of the wasps, it was easy to nestle into a cool beer and warm conversation about nothing in particular with friends old and new.

Traveling is a good antidote for whatever ails you, which is probably why we're seeing so many people on the road right now—whether their mode of transportation happens to be by car, foot or rail. Like the chorus of the wasps who have seen a breakdown in societal structure and are now searching for sustenance as an unaffiliated group of free agents, the song of the road reminds us that there is opportunity and danger out there. It just depends on what you're looking for.

See you on down the road.