Cycling the Mojave

Abstract

Cycling the Mojave Kevin Honold (bio) There were times when I would talk to my bicycle or the sky. Usually, it was just a greeting or an observation. “Hello, moon,” I would say on its appearance, or, “That was a good ride, wasn’t it?” to my bicycle leaning into a bush. And whenever I spoke, my voice would startle me with its intrusiveness, and the words jarred like a casual profanity. John Van Dyke writes, in The Desert, You perhaps think to break the spell by raising your voice in a cry; but you will not do so again. The sound goes but a little way and then seems to come back to your ear with a suggestion of insanity about it. When I read those words, months after the trip, I felt comforted, and I knew that nothing John Van Dyke could do would ever lessen my love for him, though he’s been dead these hundred years. I don’t know why people take long bicycle rides. There are as many reasons as people who do it. A man in Needles asked me why I was cycling to Flagstaff and I said, without deliberating much, that sometimes I needed to kick the shit out of myself. I was surprised at how [End Page 59] readily he understood exactly what I meant, even when I didn’t. Some things we do without knowing why, but with a kind of faith that the purpose will be made plain with time, and we don’t examine the issue overmuch because few people care enough to question us about it anyway. Cycling is like that. California City, California, April, 2013 I packed a point-and-click camera, sunscreen, a pouch of Drum tobacco, an air pump, a water pack, headlamp, highway map, sleeping bag, bivouac tent, two long-sleeved shirts, one sweater, one pair of long underwear, knit hat, poncho, rain hat, a pencil and notebook, a ditty bag of toiletries, a multi-purpose bike tool, spare tube, tin cup, two pair of socks, two pair of underwear, electrical tape, binoculars, and a bird guide. For heating food and water I had an Esbit stove and thirty heat tabs. One tab heats a pint of water, enough for a cup of oatmeal and a cup of coffee. The Esbit stove is a German product, the same kind of stove that Wehrmacht troops carried into Russia in 1941. The tabs ignite readily in rain and wind. At Tony’s place in California City, laying out my gear on the bed in the spare room, I had to decide what to leave behind. This culling is both liberating and nauseating. You have to commit to doing without. A sleeping mat is nice to have, but you can sleep without one. A paring knife with a plastic handle weighs a fraction of a Swiss Army knife. I’m not certain but I would bet that Swiss infantrymen are not issued Swiss Army knives and I’m confident they don’t pedal the Alps with collapsible nail files and corkscrews. At night, Tony and I sat on the porch and talked about family and drank beer. He had recently returned to the United States from a yearlong assignment in Afghanistan, where he worked as a contractor at a remote base. He invited me out to California, guessing that I was feeling restless, and he was right, but that was an easy call, since most of us are restless most of the time. We talked about being middle-aged, [End Page 60] unmarried men without children. We talked about the twenty years that had passed since the Army, and the things in life that remained to be done. The things we might have done differently, the places we wished we could return to. He gave me an e-reader as a gift for the ride. He showed me how to use it and we loaded it with e-books. That gift solved a big problem. During past cycling trips I had carried too many pounds of real books. I hung around at his place a few more days, because it takes me some time to work...