“Where is the summer, the unimaginable Zero Summer” That line from the little Gidding section of the Four Quartets by T.S. Eliot popped into my mind this morning. It hasn't gotten above freezing; until today, in Salt Lake since about the 29th of December. Although I know it will just be a short hop, skip and a jump, in calendar and the speed of life, until it will be summer hot, it seems like a life time away. I am not a winter hater, I can not imagine not living in an area without the four seasons, but these seemingly long cold winter days, make me even more melancholy than I usually am, and I am not sure that is all that healthy for me. The past is a country I inhabited, the future is a place I am investigating.
I certainly have, in earlier years been able to go on short motorcycle rides and trips in January. Back in 2005 when I was breaking in my then new K1200RS, I ventured up to Snowville and then took the loop into Park Valley and Montello, then back to Wendover and home about the second or third week of January. That same month I rode South from Tooele , down to Eureka and then home via the West side of Utah Lake. One year I even ventured to Death Valley in January for a get together. Usually I have gone to Death Valley in February. I remember that I rode home alone, and instead of re-tracing my steps back up the slab of I-15, I instead wended my way up to Tonopah and traversed in Winter Highway 6 back to Ely, and then from Ely to Wendover and back on I-80. I have friends who will trailer their bike to Mesquite and ride from there, but I have never tried that and have always had mixed feelings about hauling bikes to X or Y and then riding from there.
With Winter gear of heated coat, heated gloves, I wasn't cold to speak off, although because of this I have written a cold song, which I would only repeat to a few people and never in polite company. The only real thing that I vividly remember from this trek, which would have been about 8 years ago, was that between Ely and Wendover, about White Horse Pass, I passed a Nevada Highway Patrolman, coming from Wendover, I was speeding, and he certainly could have given me a ticket, but I have always suspected, that just possibly he might have not believed his eyes, a sole motorcycle in the middle of January! It had started to snow on this stretch of road, but was not at that point sticking to the road.
By the time I got to Wendover, it had turned to rain, and I had a tail wind the rest of the way back to the Salt Lake Valley. My treks to Death Valley in February, the President's day weekend, have had some dicey weather, both coming and going, and one year, after riding in the snow, all the way from Nephi home, it was on my dirt road, that I ended up having trouble, and having to get help to get my bike out of a snow bank and back to the garage. I am not sure that I will ever try to leave Salt Lake in January or February for Death Valley on a motorcycle again.
I happened to be channel surfing last weekend; I don't have cable or satellite, I have never seen Big Love, Sister Wives, Sex in the City, Mad Men or the Sopranos, so its just local stations and I ran across a program on channel 9, part of the Utah Education Network, it was a program about the Great Basin and chronicled several characters of the desert. It was a fascinating program and offered similar feelings about the Great Basin that I feel and have voiced on this blog. There was a character who for years lived at the Wendover Dump, a man who built a shrine and raised a family almost right off the freeway, and the world's shortest hitchhiker, who was a double amputee and walked, after a fashion with crutches and swinging his legs and using his knees as feet. He was once picked up by the then Governor of Nevada Paul Laxalt and after the Governor, bought the hitchhiker a six pack of beer, he had his driver, drive the hitchhiker any where in the State he wanted to go. It ended with a segment surrounding the black rock desert where they hold the burning man festival and a man who had placed signs all over the desert near the Playa of Gerlach.
I am waiting till it warms up a little to fix my bike. I have the heli coil parts and some instructions down loaded from the Internet on how to re-drill and tap for the insert, and after I have done that, it will just take me putting in the new spark plug and I will be back to chasing western sunsets around the Great Basin and the Mountain States.
