July 31, 2019
A good travel story should have a great opening. Something like "Call me Ishmael." Or, "The sea-reach of the Thames stretched before us like the beginning of an interminable waterway."
Unfortunately, nothing's coming to me that isn't either a tongue-in-cheek knockoff of Joseph Conrad or just embarrassingly self consciously poetic. Besides, the takeoff this morning was blurred by a need for many more hours of sleep and a kind of dread that's been hanging in the back of my mind for days. Not the stuff of grand beginnings.
Nevertheless, there were some moments. Shortly after getting on the 14 freeway just as the sky was beginning to lighten, I crested a rise and before me was a mile long solid 3-lane river of white lights coming toward me - commuters heading into LA. Aliens watching this will observe that our particular type of intelligence (there must be many in the universe) has arrived at a surprisingly (laughably, if these aliens have humor) wasteful means of moving our species about. Probably they will classify ours as an inherently self-destructive intelligence. Such are the thoughts one has on a motorcycle at 5:30 am with no more than 4 hours sleep.
My guardian angel compelled me to stop after 100 miles in Mojave for fuel and (ostensibly) to get an early read on miles per gallon (just over 50 at that point - not great, but ok). I took a quick look around the bike to make sure luggage was secure and nothing looked amiss and was about to get back on. Then something prompted me to look at the front wheel and discovered the bolts on the front brake caliper were working loose. That this occurred was inexcusable on my part. I wonder if deep in my subconscious I knew that I'd overlooked something and this was the source of the unease leading up to departure.
Anyway, still alive, I quite enjoyed the ride after that. The desert and then the beginning of the Sierras were lit up beautifully by the low morning sun. The phrase "subtly spectacular" came to mind if that's not a contradiction in terms. Colors range across the rainbow but in mostly pastel shades punctuated by clumps of black igneous rock and the dark green of certain vegetation. I'm always taken by how hot dry landscapes assume a speckled appearance as shrubs sort themselves out to be separated from water thirsty neighbors by a certain amount of bare soil.
The ride up US-395 through the Owens Valley to Bishop and beyond is a treat. The Sierra Nevada mountains are a wall on your left and off to the right are low brown mountains somewhere beyond which lies Death Valley. There's a surprising amount of water here in lakes. I stopped at a lookout point by Crowley Lake where a sign informed that it is man made and supplies water and hydroelectric power to LA. The hydro part surprised me as I've noticed no tall dams. On the other hand the land here is several thousand feet higher than LA. I'd be interested to learn how they extract the power.
As the road rises the vegetation, some sort of sage scrub, grows denser and the air begins to smell of sage. Momentarily the road rises into pine forest and the scent changes abruptly to pine before the road descends back to the sage. The highest point is a bit over 8000 feet at Deadman's Summit.
That sign at Crowley Lake also said that the area was formed by a volcanic explosion many times larger than Mount St. Helens some 760,000 years ago. That seems fairly recent in geologic time though long before humans evolved. Now I have a time frame for when all the igneous rock in the area was formed.