MY KINGDOM FOR A CINNAMON ROLL III: CA 89 - GREENVILLE, CA.

"The proof of the pudding is in the tasting."

Adage ripped off by “Dr. Smith”

in nearly every episode of Lost in Space,

circa 1960-something.

THEY HAVE ASSISTED SUICIDE in Oregon and apparently, Wendy, the waitress at the bar and café in Lakeview, Oregon thought it was among her duties to be the assistant. A group of ten state economic development staffers from Salem had preceded me by, perhaps, ten minutes. When I placed my order for a New York steak, medium rare, a wave of laughs and rolled through their number. “You have any idea what you’re in for?” “Good luck, stranger.” “Nice knowin’ ya, pal.” “You from California? Don’t do it! We need your money!”

The steak was preceded by a green salad slathered with bleu cheese and then some homemade soup that I hadn’t counted upon. By the time the entrée arrived, I was registering full. The New York stretched across both ends of a rather large oval-shaped plate and it was nearly buried in slippery, salty, hot deep-fried potatoes and onions. One of the state workers hummed “Taps” and others joined in.

I decided that tomorrow, I’d skip breakfast and take off with only a cup of motel coffee to amp me up and sustain me. I carved into the steak.


THE LAST DAY of an extended road trip is a mixture of excitement and melancholy. To be in Candi’s embrace was the reward at the end of a long trail, but the road’s siren song never really goes away. There is so much to see. So many places. And, as they say, so little time.

The entire trip had been pleasant. The only rain had been on a layover day in Jackson. Riding temperatures ranged from the fifties to the mid-eighties. Today, however, I’d need to craft a route home that would avoid the Sacramento Valley where the thermometer was expected to eclipse 100. Stay to the high country.

California’s route 89 is one of the most beautiful rides anywhere in creation. To the north, it starts at Mount Shasta, one of California’s most singular gems. As it courses along the spine of the Sierra, it passes through pastures, across fly-fishing streams, past Lassen Peak, and through towns rich with lumbering or mining heritage. It winds up on 395 just north of Bridgeport. Outside of the traffic around Lake Tahoe, this route is superlative.

I plotted a course down CA 299 to Bieber, a place I’d always wanted to visit. (The former publisher of Rider Magazine now grows wheat on ninety acres up in those parts and I was curious about the attraction.) Then I choose CA 89 through Lassen Park, down CA 32 along Deer Creek to Chico for a visit with mom, and home from there. But snow – in late June – still closed 89 through the park, so I detoured across the high grass lands of Lassen County on CA 44, took a forest service road through standing pines to Westwood, catching 89 below Lake Almanor.

It was around 12:30 when I rumbled into Greenville. Last night’s steak had run its course and I absolutely needed something light to hold me for the final three hours of the journey. Kathy’s Corner Café is a favorite spot. I parked out front, stretched my crushed backbone and butt-weary muscles and went in looking for some pie and a cup of coffee.

“Got pie?” I asked as I sat at the counter.

“Got cheesecake,” the young woman answered.

“No pie?”

“No pie,” she said. “But have a piece of pumpkin cheesecake. It’ll save me eating it at the end of my shift as I always do.”

A geography major and student of topography, I eyed the young woman up and down. Didn’t look to me as if she’d had too many pieces of pumpkin cheesecake in her time, I thought with appreciation, but said, “Okay, and coffee.”

Like ordering a Coca Cola but being asked if a Pepsi is okay, I hadn’t wanted cheesecake. I wanted pie. And while the cheesecake was good, it wasn’t pie and a scoop of ice cream.

I reached atop a rounded glass and chrome pastry unit and fetched a copy of the Indian Valley newspaper. Having lived in the region 15 years prior, I wanted to see if any names I recognized had made the blotter. I was bones-played-out tired from three solid days of riding a thousand miles of high sun roadway. The newsprint did not come into focus. I folded the rag and placed it atop the pastry container, readying myself for the last bite of cheesecake when I looked through the glass and chrome countertop display.

There: inside. Coiled. Lightly tan with reddish-brown edges under a creamy glaze of sweet whiteness, like a high-country snowfield on a distant summit. Big. Round. Eye level to me. I stared through the glass. The cinnamon roll had been fresh within the last hour or two. They didn’t ship them in from anywhere because anywhere was just too far away from Greenville. Sometime, during this period of reverie, my cup was refilled. I don’t think I blinked. I don’t think I thought. I just knew that the perfect cinnamon roll rested within inches – INCHES – of my waiting fork, and I’d just polished off a chunk of pumpkin cheesecake that now sat in my belly like a barrowful of wet, heavy concrete.

You okay, sir?” The pretty girl asked and I flushed.

“Yeah. Yeah. Check please.”


I RODE HOME through the Feather River Canyon. A great finale even though temperatures near Oroville and down the Sacramento Valley rose to over 100 degrees. But the familiar route gave me time to contemplate the great contrasts of the west. Beautiful mountains. Vast prairies. Mysterious and inviting roads coursing through canyons, over passes and across plains. Captivating history, geology, flora and fauna. Small towns that harkened back to times far less complex than present. Times before cell phone towers and internet access. And the people, both happy and challenged – wide with diversity – the people I met along the way.

I arrived home only one perfect cinnamon roll from complete satisfaction. But now, at least, I knew where to find it.



One cannot indulge in breakfast pastries after 10:00 AM and not be thought a glutton any more than one can have whiskey prior to 4:00 and not be thought a lush.

- "Duke"

June, 2010

© 2010

Church of the Open Road Press

THE LONELIEST ROAD IN AMERICA: US 395 – BURNS TO LAKEVIEW, OREGON

“Nobody goes there anymore. It’s too crowded.”

Lawrence Peter “Yogi” Berra -

explaining why he no longer patronized Ruggeri's,

a popular St. Louis restaurant in 1950-something.

I’D BEGUN THE TOUR taking US Route 50 through Nevada. Touted as “the loneliest road in America,” I remember when it was. Ten years ago, traveling west to east from my father’s old stomping grounds in and about Milford, Utah, my wife and I motored in our Mazda MPV, awestruck by the subtle nature of the high desert. Towns and former towns were listed along the corridor. I remember dust and vistas and getting gas in Austin, a postage stamp sized outpost about halfway across. The only other patron was a gentleman with Alaska plates on a 70s era BMW R-75.

I looked at his plates and asked, “Going or coming?”

“Goin’ home,” he said. “Thought I’d take the scenic route home from the reunion in Minnesota.”

Gotta get me another Beemer, I thought being without bike at the time.

My impression, that day, was that we might have seen a dozen and a half vehicles over the entire 400-mile course of Highway 50, making the Alaskan’s trip even more tantalizing.

Then, four years ago, my buddy from Washington and I engaged in a road trip from California to Missouri. Our mission was to deliver my 1997 Toyota pickup to daughter and son-in-law back in KC. This time heading west to east, the road was still desolate, but in Fernley, Fallon, Austin, Eureka and Ely, one could buy an I Survived the Loneliest Road t-shirt or commemorative pin at any gas station or mercantile. I succumbed in Baker, lugging a coffee mug with me for the rest of the trip.

The promotion worked. More cars – still not many – used this alternative to I-80. And each of the towns seemed to have just a bit more bustle and a little fresher paint.

I began my 2010 Wyoming loop strongly urged to have accommodations reserved should I care to stop for the night along US 50 in the Silver State. To be sure, lonely ain’t what it used to be.


SIX DAYS LATER, I link up to US 395 in Oregon around the town of Burns, about 100 miles west of the Idaho state line. I will follow it all the way to Lakeview, then, tomorrow, into Alturas, in California. The eastern Oregon air is pure. Bug hatch is minimal in the high desert so I open the face of my Arai helmet in order to enjoy the morning freshness. The subtle undulations of the rolling landscape punctuated by the occasional dry wash make for a mesmerizing ride. A trio of Harley riders roars past at some point forcing me to close the lid for a moment.

US 395 turns south at Riley. I’d been there twice before each time knowing I’d need gas. Each time passing the first business establishment in search of a nicer set of pumps. Each time turning back around to discover that the first business establishment was the only business establishment in Riley. The sales person at A&S BMW in Roseville reported that he’d done this turn-about as well. Twice.


TWENTY-EIGHT MILES SOUTH is the former town of Wagontire. (For the uninitiated, at wagon tire is the steel band that rings the wooden spokes and rims of a covered wagon.) In 1983, while riding an R-65 north, I’d hope to find a restroom at this place. Sorry. Closed. Then, two years ago, on the R-1150, same thing. Why would today be any different? Interesting thing about the bar/motel/gas station complex: In the window of the bar is an advertisement for Coors Lite. But Wagontire, the town, has been only a place name since long before Coors ever brewed a light beer. Go figure.

The trio of Harley riders – two men and a woman – had parked in the wide spot, smoking. One drank a beer pulled from a side case. Across the highway, a worn out sign comically points to a flat strip of land declaring: Wagontire International Airport. Sage chokes the strip.

“I hear tell,” I tell the Harley trio, “that when the daily flights ceased, the whole damn town just sorta dried up. Killed the place.”

The woman snorts, trying to withhold a laugh. Her man shoots her an evil glance.


SEVENTY MINUTES further down the road, blessedly, there’s a rest stop. I pull in. Leaning on the back of his early-90s era Ford F-350, a gentleman with twenty years on me drags on a Marlboro. He eyes my bike, asks where I’m going and where I’ve been.

“A case could be made,” I mention in the course of conversation, “that Highway 50 ain’t the loneliest road in the country. Not when you see all this… this… nothing.” I make a sweeping arms-length gesture at the endless steppe of sagebrush.

“Yep,” he says. “You see up there where the color of the road changes?” He pointed south. “One time, back in ’85, I was drivin’ a diesel Cadillac down that hill behind us,” he pointed north, “and was doin’ about 110.”

“110?”

“Allafasudden, I seen a light bar come on ahead o’ me up there. Cop stepped out right into the lane and held up his hand. By the time I stopped, I had my license and registration ready to hand him. I tol’ him, ‘Damn. You must not get much bid’ness out this away.’ He laughed and said, ‘that’s shore true, but when I git one, I git a good one.’”

The old gent drops his cigarette butt and steps on it. “Only wrote me up for 78.”


THROUGH ALKALI LAKE and Valley Falls, there’s not much of anything but some fine geology, signs warning of jay-walking antelope and old wooden poles with power lines lacing across section upon section of sage.

Turns out, I didn’t need those reservations I’d secured for the Best Western in Lakeview. I only hope they don’t start selling t-shirts and coffee mugs.

© 2010
Church of the Open Road Press

GOOD MORNING, SUNSHINE: VICTOR, IDAHO – STATE ROUTE 33

SOMEBODY WAS IMPACTING the rounded end of a ball peen hammer on the set of nerves bundled just behind my right eyeball. This somebody had been doing it all night. I awoke to an empty room and a head pounding in response to my last-night-in-Jackson celebratory double enjoyed at the balcony of the Towne Tavern overlooking the square. The perch is a great place to people watch, both those sharing the balcony and those on the square below. Up here and at an adjacent table sat the editor from a big publishing house in New York who’d read a sample of work I’d submitted. Her words about my feeble efforts in a voice nicely positioned between business-is-business and this-ain’t-New-York-City, along with her creamy, dark complexion, warm, smoky eyes and off the shoulder sweater battled some pretty fine scenery and roadways for a highlight of this trip. Aged about that of my daughters, I wondered how the young, these days, got so smart and sophisticated so early in life. Down below, a worldwide array of folks wandered the curio shops around the plaza. Of particular interest was the fellow who’d backed his 250 Honda Rebel in line with the Harleys parked out front of the Million Dollar Cowboy Bar. I glanced at my watch to chronicle the elapsed time it would take tonight’s latter-day Paul Reubens to get his rear-end kicked out to the curb. But the gang over ta the Million Dollar must have been a forgiving bunch this eve. That or “Pee Wee” ponied up a round for the house.


MY MODUS OPERANDI on departure days is to log some miles before breakfast. Breaks the ride into segments. Rests the butt. Keeps one fresh. Victor, Idaho, some twenty-eight miles from Jackson, up a 7500-foot Teton Pass, would be my first stop.

The fifty-degree morning did what it could, but any irregularity in the pavement reminded me that the smithy was still working on my interior head. Usually the Knob Creek 9-year small batch is my friend, but the double the night before departure proved that friends sometimes betray friends. The very first sip of organic dark roast at the Sunshine Deli and Café now serving breakfast! began to soften the blows and by about the third sip, the world had come into focus.

The first thing I realized was that I had a problem: a coffee problem. My occasional imbibing is just that, occasional. I never have any alcohol until I’m done riding for the day and I simply should have been smarter than to have a stiff one the night before. So it wasn’t the Knob Creek. It was the coffee. Whether or not I have fouled my brain the night before, every morning, that first sip of coffee melts whatever is going on in my head and opens the gate for each new tomorrow. So caffeine addiction: that’s a problem.

Second thing I noticed was the waitress who served me. In fact all of them. Not the stereotypical older, painted-up well-past-mid-life woman who had clearly worked greasy spoons since birth, calling each male customer “honey” in a voice that crackled dryly over decades of tobacco use. No, the gal waiting on me looked very natural in jeans and Keens, nicely rounded and lithe, and intelligent in her discourse up and down the counter, but just sassy enough to be entertaining this morning. She may have been the inspiration for the name of this little bid’ness. Sunshine. And, like the editor on the balcony the night before, young enough to be a daughter.

“May I have the world famous French toast and bacon?”

“You sure may, fella. More coffee?”

My third awareness was of the guy seated just around the corner at the counter. Age of a nephew of mine. Head shaved smooth. Apparently that’s the thing now. Body art tattoos wrist to shoulder that I’d didn’t have the eye for – and he likely won’t some fifteen years from now. If he lives that long.

It was 8:45 AM and he was halfway through a Sam Adams India Pale Ale. At maybe twenty-two. Next to him was an acquaintance that was doing his best to monitor and direct his conversation, keep him from falling off the stool and perhaps limit his exposure to more of the Brewer Patriot’s finest.

“It’s all down here from here,” the tattooed one said to whomever was in the room.

“Naw,” I said. I cocked my thumb over my shoulder. “It’s all down here from the pass.”

His partner laughed.

So did he. “Look,” he said, “I don’t even know how I got here this morning. Pulled an all nighter last night.”

“Get done at 5:00?” his partner asked.

“Nope. 3:30 I think. Which is worse ‘cause you can’t see where you’re going.”

He drained his ale and I winced. Hammering returned to my head, if only out of sympathy. I took another slug of coffee.

Tattoo and his sidekick talked and like a turbulent morning tide, their voices flowed and ebbed and flowed again.

“You know, there’s a centipede in the bathroom back there,” Tattoo said. “They’re poisonous, aren’t they?”

“I wouldn’t eat one,” his caretaker responded.

A bit subdued laughter rolled through the patrons of the house.

A cell phone rang and his colleague stepped outside to take it.

Tattoo pushed the bottle away and called over one of the young wait staff.

“Teton Mimosa, please.” He grinned broadly. His teeth were clustered into groups of two or three.

“Teton Mimosa?” I asked, looking for his buddy.

“Yeah. PBR and Orange juice,” Tattoo said.

I thought he was kidding until the thing showed up.

I focused on my French toast. Crusted with something sweet and crunchy, I began to believe that World Famous was not just idle bluster. “And maple syrup from Vermont.” Sunshine wanted me to be sure I knew.

Eventually the friend returned and said he had to “git.” He was due to guide a group on a raft trip down the Teton River rapids. He slipped a credit card across the counter, which was scooped up by the help.

“Me, too,” said Tattoo, who also produced a credit card.

Mom’s?

It was five or ten minutes before I finished. I’d declined a refill of my coffee, but by the time my bill came, I’d reconsidered. “Just half. Don’t want any of it to go to waste.”

“You’re such a liar,” Sunshine said with a laugh, as if we’d known each other since high school. That’d be forty years ago for me, and about eight for her.

She returned to fill my cup and scoop up the money I’d laid on the counter. “You’ll see us again?”


THE YOUNG MAN had wrested an older green Specialized® mountain bike from its mooring having won his skirmish with the cable and lock. He looked at me and shook his head twice. Violently. Then he straddled the machine and began to pedal.

After just two strokes, he was riding straight and true toward where ever it was he was going. I pictured him wearing a yellow jersey. Perhaps he did as well. Passers-by would never suspect the content of his morning repast.

Moments later, after donning my protective jacket, helmet and gloves, I motored by. Tattoo waved and I hoped for him the best. The ball peen had quit hammering in my head. For Tattoo, it would likely continue for some time.

© 2010
Church of the Open Road Press

“DUKE:” JACKSON HOLE, WYOMING.

HE SAID HIS NAME WAS DUKE, but I didn’t find this out until the end. In the beginning, I only knew, right off, he was a poser. A pseudo cowboy, one whose horseshit was not on the outside of his footwear. All hat, no cattle, as they might say in this section, except that he wasn’t wearing a hat. A faded blue bandana, knotted at the back, wrapped his shaven head. His thick, sandy blonde goatee told me he wasn’t all that old.

I’d sidled up to a breakfast counter and before my proudly served Starbucks was even ordered he asked, “Where you from?”

“Sacramenta area,” I said. “What about you?”

“Here,” he said.

Bullshit, I thought. “No one around here is from around here,” I told him lightheartedly. He assured me that he was.

The Eatery is one of those establishments that cannot exist outside of towns like Taos, New Mexico, Virginia City in Nevada, Telluride, Colorado, perhaps Mendocino, California and, of course here, in Jackson, Wyoming. The menu speaks to hearty breakfasts with large servings, but the hens lay amazingly small eggs (it must be nearly painless) and the pigs from which rashers of bacon are sliced may not have been fully corn-fed. The period quilted placemats and matching napkins are manufactured in Vietnam and available for sale at the register.

Towns like this used to exist primarily because the populous actually did something. They mined ore, cut trees, raised cattle or fished fish. We visit these places and view their past through lenses tinted by romance. Here and now, we never see the backbreaking toil and good luck that brought about the boom; nor the heartbreak – only the boarded up windows – that accompanied the bust. History, the revisionist kind, is recounted on the fronts of Hanes 50/50s displayed in store windows around the square.

“Duke” was wearing a t-shirt, the undershirt kind – not the I been to Jackson kind – and over the undershirt a ragged plaid that had likely seen many wearings and too few washings. He wasn’t shod in Justins or Naconas either, now that I think about it. He did have a collection of silver rings, enough for one on each finger of his left hand and three on his right.

Can’t do much ranch handing or timber felling like that, I thought, and a sharp tug by an angry sea bass or big-fin tuna would render any of those ring-decorated fingers simple, inglorious fish bait.

“Yeah, I’m from these parts.” His face was straight and serious, perhaps a little disappointed-in-self. His Starbucks had arrived. “Just tryin’ to figure a way out.”

Right.

My coffee arrived. This morning, before my conference session, I’d hoped to read the free local paper I’d picked up outside and then give some thought to the places I’d passed through on my way to Jackson. Places that formerly existed but lacked the grandeur of the Tetons or the drama of the ocean as a backdrop. Places where the concrete walks are cracked and lifted by roots of trees planted for shade now run-away in form or dead of neglect. Boardwalks once smoothed by years of boots scrubbing across them en route to the mercantile or saloon, now splintered by decades of rain, frost and sun, rain frost and sun. Poverty or fate had swallowed up and spit out countless towns in today’s American west. And I’d been through ‘em.

“I considered myself too smart for high school so I quit in ’92 and went off to live on my own. Just down the street from mom and dad, it was, but on my own like an adult.” He laughed at himself.

The Latina waitress, merrily plump, speaking thick, broken English, slipped a blueberry muffin his way. Offering thanks in circa-sixth grade Spanish, he continued: “Yep. Too smart for my folks and my own good. Didn’t get much further than just down the street, damn-it-all.”

I wasn’t fully convinced and wondered what, here, might be for sale.

“Duke” was shorter than I. My feet both rested flat on the floor while my butt perched atop the stool. His right foot dangled while his left toe just touched the brick-patterned linoleum.

“Got me a few jobs. Buckin’ hay. Runnin’ cows.”

In those Converse All Stars? C’mon.

“Hauling sundries to and from. Once got ta goin’ too fast and flipped the boss’ truck end for end six times. Hell of a mess of hay bales busted up all over th’ road. Good news is I learnt I could fly. Through the back window. Bad news is I couldn’t land all that good.” He tapped the blue bandana twice and grinned. “Steel plate.”

A covey of young females entered and filled the six places of the table behind us.

“Tourists,” he said to me and then to a filly in nicely rounded jeans and a hot pink tube top, “Hey.”

“Hey.”

“How long you here?”

“Leavin’ for Boise on Sunday,” I said. I turned and saw he was talking to the girl.

Their conversation was short. Perhaps not unlike some previous encounter. Certainly more abbreviated than I might have desired had I been “Duke.”

“Sunday,” he said to me. “That’s not much time.”

I explained my purpose in town, the writers’ conference, trying not to command the conversation. Rather, I wanted to hear more from him for some reason. Find out who this “Duke” really was. The free newspaper I slipped under my butt on the stool so I wouldn’t be distracted by the tragic headline of a young bronc rider dying the other night over ta the fairgrounds.

Duke was a post-modern everyman. And fancied himself a local gadabout. There’d be a cigar tasting at the smoke shop next to the old picture show this evening. Best beer in town was the 10.5% brew concocted a few blocks over in the backroom of a small restaurant. Scotch? He’d developed his palette, or so he claimed.

“Want to keep you busy in your free time,” he explained as he finished his blueberry muffin. “I’m pulling a double shift over ta the Cadillac today. 9:30 to 1:00 AM. Stop by. I can get you in.”

The plump senorita slipped my tab beneath my coffee cup and slid his under some derelict muffin crumbs.

“Tell you what,” I said, picking up both. “You leave a tip.”

He protested.

“Just leave a tip, friend,” my statement too much a command.

He caught up with me on the street outside. “Hey,” he said, “I never got your name.”

I turned. “Charley Brilliant,” a moniker I’d wrested from the far side of plausibility a while back. I held out my hand.

“I’m going by Duke.”

I sized him up. Not tall. Not stout. No particular swagger. Just a young man of a far different sort than myself trying to get out of town and eating a blueberry muffin along the way.

“Well, thank you kindly, Charley Brilliant.”

Our hands clasped. I thought about his schooling, the wrecked truck, the tourist girl and his man-about-town self-perception.

“Sure,” I said giving him a familial slap on the shoulder and went to meeting.


THAT NIGHT, LATE, after readings by two authors, I moseyed on down to the Cadillac. Through the window, I could see the kitchen and in the kitchen was Duke dumping a basket of sliced potatoes into the deep fryer.

I didn’t stop in for that drink. I didn’t like the reflection I saw in the window of that kitchen.

© 2010
Church of the Open Road Press

LOGAN (Utah) CANYON RUN: US 89

OCCASIONALLY PARISHIONERS at the Church of the Open Road receive proof that God rides. Exhibit A this day (Thursday, June 24) comes in the form of US 89 between Logan, Utah and Garden City. Within three miles of departing the home of Utah State University, US 89 enters the mouth of Logan Canyon, coursing for some 33 miles east northeast along the river of the same name.

Beginning at cottonwood elevation – an environ prompting me to wish I’d taken my Claritin knock-off along with my acid blocker and arthritis formula this morning – the road sweeps skyward. God, on her Ducati – I assume the Ducati part, given that she can ride any bike she chooses – must revel in this work of man. Leaning left, then right, then left again, it is as if a Viennese waltz has been set to pavement. The river tumbles first to one side, then the other of the strip of smoothly engineered asphalt. The route follows the animated river as it gorges itself on rock particles, scouring and slicing through 1500 feet of sediment from the basement of an ocean She knew once upon a time, not too long ago.

Upward, the cottonwoods yield to aspen whose leaves, this first day after the summer solstice, have just reached maturity. I look at the stands ringing high country glades and reaching like fingers into groves of fir and consider the life cycle of the aspen leaf. In ten weeks or so, the first frost will spread its icy glaze across this elevation – so close to heaven – if only for a night or two. But it will be enough to turn the delicate leaves to a twittering gold, dancing on twig stems until, shortly thereafter, a big snow will blow in and strip them all away. The aspen will grow dormant. The fan-shaped leaves, stomas welded shut, will have performed their task: 75 days of respiration for the host. And until sometime late next spring, everything will rest.

Geologic time. Botanic time.

© 2010
Church of the Open Road Press

MY KINGDOM FOR A CINNAMON ROLL II: LOGAN, UTAH

FROM THE BORDER of Nevada and Utah, heading east, I wonder what must have happened to our Mormon brethren that they should be exiled to a place such as this. Shared routes US 50 and 6 split at Delta, Utah after a several mile run through pretty desolate stuff. And the poor town of Delta, at least what I could see during my short stop there for a Coke and a smile, looks as if it exists because “it’s about time we stuck a town somewhere.” The usual businesses line the highways with the usual number of closures of moms and pops and the usual numbers of upstart national franchises. But the town seems, again at only a glance, tired, dusty, work-a-day and sad.

Traveling north it will be several miles until the next town of any size, but shortly after heading north, the arid land becomes less arid. Those industrious folks in Delta had tamed the water and created pastures out of the dust. Long sweeping arcs of Rain Bird sprinklers fed huge green circles that I remember seeing from the air.

The closer I get to Salt Lake City, the more I marvel at the efforts of folks to tame an arid west into productivity and commerce. Each small berg has at least one Mormon Church and I am given to understand that the word “ward” refers to something other than Beaver Cleaver’s dad or a ne’er-do-well under charge of the court.


AT A POINT, I have hooked up with I-84 and am motoring north through Salt Lake. It is a city in all respects with drivers who perform as if they apprenticed in Sacramento. Coupled with highway construction through the heart of town, the inability of cagers to allow a reasonable distance between self and others at speed prompts me to take my fatigued body off the freeway and find an alternate route.

State Routes in California are paved. Some shoddily so, but paved none-the-less. I supposed state routes in every state would be similarly surfaced.

Route 39 heads east out of Ogden and, according to the map, route 162 will head north through both Eden and Paradise – two places I’m not likely to see in the next life – and take me to Logan, this day’s destination.

The great thing about the BMW GS Adventure is the versatility engineered into it. Somewhere along the 162, after about 390 miles of riding, the pavement ended. A touch of a button and the suspension is adjusted for single rider, bags, and mountain surface. I click off the ABS and plunge into the dust and rock. In first and second gear and standing on the pegs, the road unfolds, as does the view. I am entering the Front Range of the Wasatch and actually find the slow, bumpy going a bit therapeutic on my bum.

At the crest of the ride, I stop for pictures of a field of yellow daisy-like flowers and a view of Eden, with all of its pastoral and garden-like qualities.


THE SOJOURN cut a substantial distance from what was to be a 450 miler. I arrived at the Best Western, showered and took a walk along a wonderful Main Street. Rounding one corner, about ¾ of a mile from the motel, I know I heard angels. I looked up and saw not only the word “Bakery” but listed on the window in painted manuscript were the words “Cinnamon Rolls.” I knew where breakfast would be on the morrow.

Evening had me walk through neighborhoods and find a seat behind a Tabernacle where the brethren were just leaving evening services. A park bench afforded a lovely view of nighttime creeping up the base of the Front Range. I placed a phone call or two and scanned the local paper. Good way to spend fifteen minutes – until it got too dark to read.

I trundled down the hill and bedded down thinking about tomorrow’s early departure after the cinnamon roll.


I ARRIVED AT THE BAKERY at 6:55. Five minutes early. A young man let me in.

“Cinnamon roll, please.”

“The fresh ones will be out in about 90 minutes. I can sell you one of yesterday’s for half price, though.”

“I’ll walk around the block, thanks.”

“For ninety minutes?”

I thought about this and my desire for an early start. It was 228 miles to Jackson and I needed to be there by 2:00.

“You’re right. I’ll take a used one.”

“A used one?” He laughed and handed me product wrapped in cellophane.

I tipped him a buck for letting me in early and sat down outside thinking the next time I come to Logan, I need to not be in such a hurry to leave.

Day-old dry and with coffee unavailable, I couldn’t finish the pastry.

© 2010
Church of the Open Road Press

THOUGHTS FROM THE BORDER CAFÉ: NEVADA-UTAH STATE LINE - US 50

I SUSPECT THE UTES still inhabit the deep reaches of the arroyos sweeping down from the peaks of heaven. I suspect they’re still up there – the pure ones – and like Sasquatch, prefer to remain unseen.

They see us though. And, as we race by on the blacktop we’ve laid, between fences we’ve strung, inside cocoons of plastic and metal and glass, they laugh at the immediacy of our every need and weep over what we’ve done to our precious mother.

And they wait – wait until we simply go away.

Or so I suspect.

EUREKA, NEVADA - EAST TO ELY: US 50

"So this is where God decided to put the west.” 

- John Wayne to director John Ford upon seeing Monument Valley, 1938.

WELL, MR. WAYNE – may I call you Marion? – Monument Valley is a fine example, but the west is full of vistas and stretches, passes, arroyos and vales.

Seven AM or shortly thereafter, the sun has crested some nameless range east of Eureka. Shadows are in a tiptoe retreat and the road, having emerged from the former range darts east-northeast straight as a rifle shot. The hillsides and swales are dotted with pinion pine – one wind-swept example looking like a fanciful rider on horseback climaxing a ridge.

Elsewhere, sage blossoms and fragrates the morning air.

In a land where the population density is less than one per section, eighty-five miles per hour seems like fifty-five, and fifty-five a crawl. Although I know the road will not last forever – at least not at this rate of speed – I pray the west will.

MY KINGDOM FOR A CINNAMON ROLL: I-80 - TRUCKEE, CA

FIRST, THEY MAKE YOU PAY TO PARK, which is really okay because the parking fees support really fine restroom facilities in the Chamber of Commerce/Amtrak Depot. However, one can either pay in coin or with credit card. Lacking pocket change I inserted my Visa to discover I’ll be tagged for a two-hour minimum at a buck an hour. The good news is that I got credit until noon even though I slipped the card in at 9:40. Very liberal meter, I’m thinking in a very liberal town.

So I hiked across the street to the bakery and find one of those white oval shaped stickers in the window of the door. You know, the ones often seen on cars and SUVs with black lettering that brags of the owner’s travel exploits saying “LT” for Lake Tahoe, or “JH” for Jackson Hole – and you feel like an idiot for sneaking a peek at the small print because you’re not hip enough to know what the initials stand for. This one had “NRA” on it and I was just about to settle in for a cup of Joe and a cinnamon roll, when my curiosity got the better of me. In this berg, NRA must mean something hip. It can’t be that NRA. Well I looked. I was wrong.


THE OTHER DAY, I received a letter from Wayne LaPierre telling me that forces were afoot trying to restrict my second amendment right to bear an arm and they were comprised of the Hollywood elites (who have spent the last eighty years glorifying the use of firearms, Wayn-oh), the liberals in Congress and the current administration. Coincidentally, that same day, five folks standing in their driveway in Del Paso Heights after the recent Lakers victory were cut down in a hail of bullets from a passing car. Two died. One still may. No additional number of guns in that or many other situations would have reduced the mayhem. Quite the opposite.

The waitress may have had a “What the hell?” moment as I left without ordering. An ethical thing for me to do would have been to stop by the owner/manager and say:

“I will respect to my dying breath your right to hold a point of view and your courage for putting it out there for all to see and, in some cases, like this one, risking some small loss of business because of it. Good for you, sister! However, because individual gun ownership is constitutionally reserved only for those members of a well-regulated militia, and because of the NRA’s wanton disregard for this and their constant fear-mongering, I shall be seeking my cinnamon roll elsewhere.”

But I didn’t man-up and say this. I just marched on out.


DOWN THE SIDEWALK I strolled, finding coffee and pastry just a few doors away. Eight bucks later, after having what must have been yesterday’s brew and what appeared to be a grocery store variety Entenmanns’s bear claw (bad) smothered in butter (good!), I headed back for the bike a little lighter of pocket than seemed reasonable.

Two hours remained on my two-hour parking pass. A livin’-the-dream twenty-something pulled up in an older Toyota Highlander. A well-worn river kayak strapped to the roof. He looked like he could use some free parking this day.

“Dude,” he said, as I handed the pass his way, “that’s very kind of you.”

“Hope you’re not in the market for a pastry this morning,” I replied, hoping to alert him to the seriousness of the current circumstance.

His quizzical look was not lost on me as I mounted the motorcycle and drove off.

© 2010
Church of the Open Road Press