Having reached Fallon, David and I knew that we were less than a day away from familiar roads with lots of memories.

In the summers of 1967 and 1968, when we were in high school, we had worked together at Lake Tahoe, at David’s grandfather’s small “rustic” resort, Meadow Park, across from Meeks Bay, on the California side of the lake. We had our own green tar-paper-covered shack all to ourselves – kind of like a treehouse on the ground.

We were on our own at 16 and 17. We shopped for ourselves, cooked for ourselves and generally goofed around.  Parents 200 miles away. Nice work if you can get it.

 

 

Our first long distance bicycle trip had been in 1968, from Lake Tahoe to the San Francisco Bay area. We had crossed the Sierra Nevada Mountains at Pacific Grade Pass, now known as Ebbets Pass, the next pass south from Carson Pass where we would cross this time. Stretches of this 1972 ride would be the same, before and after.

I still have two strong memories from that 1968 trip. The armada of tarantula spiders out for an afternoon stroll spread out across the road. We slalomed through the supersized arachnids, and decided to bag the idea of camping thereabouts.

In planning for the trip, we decided that after we crossed the Sierras, it would be best if we should meet two young women in the Gold Rush country of the Sierra foothills. It was a running joke as our trip approached, but it felt so real.

And then it wasn’t.  We missed the start of our senior year in high school by a couple of days, but we couldn’t have cared less. Nikki and Benicia were the best. Here’s to you.

 

In our homestretch of 1972, we would be faced with no tarantulas. Nor would we be gifted any dream girls. These memories and more lingered, though, as we rolled the final miles towards home.

Day 32,  Sunday June 25, 98 miles out of the desert into the Sierra Nevada to Hope Valley, CA

“Approaching Carson City the winds changed from hot desert to cooler coastal winds from the northwest. Our spirits lifted and our pace quickened as we rolled into California and into the Sierras along highway 88.

 

Mid-afternoon we decided to call it a day at Snowshoe Springs Campground at the base of the Hope Valley, 7,000 feet in elevation. It was still early and we had plenty of energy left, but this campground was not only beautiful, but an old friend. 

 

 

We had stopped here 4 years earlier on our 1968 bicycle trip home from Tahoe. 

The west fork of the Carson River runs right through the campground, and there are huge, flat rocks in the middle of the river where we dozed away the rest of the afternoon.

Day 33, Monday June 26, 122 miles over the Sierras to Stockton California 

 

We were over Carson Pass at 8,574 feet early in the morning. Then it was down, down, down the other side in heavy traffic. Cars weren’t an issue, but the logging trucks were. When pushed, we bailed, pulling off the road. No harm, no foul, no problem. Our spirits were up.

 

We pulled into Stockton, smack dab in the center of the Central Valley of California, late afternoon and camped out in the old Victorian home where we had lived only a month earlier. It was now empty, waiting out its final days before demolition.” 

It was a last of the Mohicans, a classic gothic 2 story Victorian mansion from the 1800s in a generic, one-story, lower-end, suburban, central valley, 1950’s neighborhood. We called it the White House.

There were palm trees on either side of the driveway and a now-dry fountain out front. There was a commanding porte cochere, which had received horse-drawn carriages in its day, a grand stairway, a 40’ long living room with 12 foot ceilings- where you could pass a football, a full butler pantry, library, dining room and so forth. 

 

 

It had been the perfect, real-deal, haunted house for our Halloween extravaganza the year before. And we had had the props. 

When we moved in, gurneys, with drip intravenous bottles and other paraphernalia had been abandoned by the previous tenant- a rest home. 

The gas station, across the road, shut down that Halloween and became the bleacher seats for the locals. We heard the hoots and howls of appreciation, as the bravest of children approached the freakish-looking drug crazed hippie- who really was exactly that- sitting silently motionless by the front door lit only by a single candle. 

When the kid or kids were almost on the porch, we’d burst out of an adjacent door with a corpse on one of the gurneys, who would proceed to leap up and scare the bejesus out everyone. And so forth.

This house had soul and it had been a survivor. 

It hadn’t been built here in the heart of the San Joaquin River Delta, but rather 100 miles away in the gold-rush country of the California foothills, perhaps near Angels Camp. It had been moved to Stockton, when the neighborhood had been open fields. 

My room had been the old library with beautiful bookcases from floor to ceiling. For a long time, I had slept on a pad which I used to roll up and stash in lower, doored cabinets where I also kept all my other stuff. If anyone were to walk in, it was, for all intents and purposes, an empty room. 

Why?

I have no idea now. It had seemed like an amusing idea at the time. I would lie there on the floor imagining previous events which had happened in this room in bygone days- a ghost haunting my own room. 

When David and I arrived in 1972, the house was once again in shambles- this time for the last time. This survivor would soon be no more – demolished to make way for a parking lot.

We knew we were keeping our friend company in it’s last days. A vigil for more than a hundred  years of memories. 

Day 34 Tuesday June 27, 68 miles to the San Francisco Bay Area and Orinda, CA. The End

We rolled out of Stockton just after dawn on highway 4, a major truck route. After 25 miles, we turned off onto a less-travelled road on top of the levees of the San Joaquin River Delta. 

By now we were fast. 50 miles on the flats, no problem. We didn’t even break a sweat. We wound our way around Mt. Diablo in the coastal foothills and sliced through 15 miles of suburbs and we were home. At least for David. 

 

My mother, to her credit, had sold our house the year before and hopped on a freighter for France with the family dog. Both were still in Europe.

I camped out at David’s for a week or so. I remember cooking a cheesecake and then finishing it off after having promised David’s Mom, Jean, a slice. She was most disappointed, and to this day, I regret that one. 

I put on 10 pounds in a week, decided to drop out of college and head off for Alaska with three other friends. Never made it.

David had hit choppy waters with his first love, my-loss, Shirley. He was still all in. They headed off for a big circle trip to Yellowstone, the Tetons, Glacier Park, Banff, over to Vancouver and back down the California coast. It wasn’t enough. 

Shirley had decided that she wanted to date other men. One in particular, a Vietnam Vet, a  fighter pilot, ten years older.

David was heartbroken. Took him years to re-set his compass. It took me years to find mine.

Our ride of 3178 miles across the USA in those 34 days in 1972, rapidly faded to a footnote. 

Neither of us paid any attention to the much publicized Bikecentennial in 1976, in which roughly 1750 cyclists rode 4250 miles across the USA in 82 days. 

In 1976, David was still sagebrush bicycling. He owned a fledgling bicycle touring company for a time. On his own, he toured the Owens Valley in California, pushing his limits.

That year, I was living in the Valley of the Orphans in Louis L’Amour cowboy country in southern Colorado with my soon-to-be Cubana wife, up to my eyeballs in exotic Tibetan meditation practices, post-drop city communes, and Pentitentes- practicing the real-deal ex-communicable Catholicism of the 16th century. 

Today in 2018, curiously 1972 resonates once again at the onset of my retirement years. 

I have asked myself, “So now what do you want to do?”

Well, I’d like to get another really nice bike, a tandem this time, that can be packed into suitcases, and I’d like to take it wherever I want in the world, and ride some interesting roads with mi Latina.

Check.

 

Next stop, the Finnish Archipelago- Åland to Hanko to toss my Mom’s ashes into the Baltic, from those rocks near the cafe once owned by Mannerheim. Mom totally surprised me with that request in her last days.

Always good to keep your kids on their toes. I hope to do as well.

Japan is starting to talk to me and the Camino across Spain with a Paris start. One trip not on the list is another ride across the USA.

After hearing my stories of this 1972 Trans Am, mi Cubana quipped:

“Fools rush in where angels fear to tread.”

Yep. Back in 1972 David and I were the fools. But in our defense, as David puts it, we were “decisive fools.” To which I would add “mostly harmless.”

The fates seemed to have found our antics amusing. We were given a pass, for which I am most grateful.

That said, no need to push the luck, as a senior citizen.