The moment I clapped eyes on Wells, Nevada, I knew it wouldn’t have a bicycle shop. A soulless dive of a town, its raison d’etre was encapsulated by a huge mock Mexican service station called the 4-Way Casino which dominated the intersection in the valley. The four ways appeared to be gas, gambling, booze and sex. On the counter, the Best Cat Houses in Nevada, a book which had nothing to do with felines, was displayed in a titillating dispenser. In the restroom, the first condom machines I had seen in an American toilet offered French Ticklers, Passion Plus and Hot Fudge — nothing standard. You couldn’t move for people pumping money into slot machines, and that was in the convenience store. The gaming room was thick with sweaty truckers and overweight tourists clutching fistfuls of E numbers in one hand and cups of cash in the other. Round the back, a trade show of forty big rigs were lined up in the truck park.
After weeks on the road, hauliers could usually get a bath and a haircut at the barbers down the road, except he was away ‘On an ambulance call out’, the note in the window said. Clean and smelling sweet, they were ready to play with the cats at Donna’s Ranch and ride one of her fillies. On the way back, if they had money and energy to spare, they could try their luck at the Ranch House Casino Café or the Chinatown Casino Motel. Finally cleaned out and feeling guilty as sin about the wife back home, they might wish to beg forgiveness at the St. Thomas Aquinas Church, strategically located in the middle of Main Street. St. Thomas’ was one priest who was never short of work. I couldn’t get out of Sin City fast enough, but looked forward to the morrow like one looks forward to curing a toothache by extraction.
It was fifty miles to Elko — fifty of 175 miles before I could quit the interstate. The trip would be boring in a Formula One Maclaren, but on a bicycle… Elko was also fifty miles further than I could reasonably expect my front tyre to survive. With no option but to proceed, I made a point of not inspecting how the patches were holding up. To know they weren’t wouldn’t have helped. If they were, there was still every chance the tyre would explode, either from the heat or the unavoidable rumble strips which ribbed the hard shoulder.
Most gold seekers wrote unusually little about their days trudging down the Humboldt Valley. Between the state of the diarist’s mind and the sorry condition of the company, there wasn’t anything new to say about the scorching sun, tiresome terrain, lousy food and mind warping wind. ‘“My God, McKinstry,”’ one noted of a colleague’s reaction to his scribbling, ‘“why do you write about this trip so you can remember it? All I hope is to get home alive as soon as possible so I can forget it!”’ Until I cycled across Nevada, I didn’t know what sensory deprivation meant.
For most companies, ‘each day’s events were substantially a repetition of those of the day before’, but a few had the misfortune to be preyed on by the local Paiute Indians, who had a taste for beef and mule-meat and, in 1849, found it a lot easier to raid the wagon trains than track fresh meat in the desert. The natives did not, however, attack the whites in the way depicted by Hollywood, galloping round wagons drawn up in a circle, offering themselves as easy targets. The Paiutes weren’t stupid, nor were they sufficiently cohesive as a tribe for any one family to mount much more than a small, covert raid on the overlanders. Most stories concern the loss of no more than a handful of animals driven off under cover of night and maybe a shoot out in the hills where the Indians had settled down to cook up their booty. While incredibly frustrating for the wagon trains, particular for those who lost a full team of oxen in a single raid, the confrontation with the Indians of the middle Humboldt was a lot less dramatic than the myth would have us believe.
Eighteen miles from Wells, I crossed the web of sluggish rivulets lacing through swamp land which comprised the famous Humboldt River, originally called Mary’s River. Somewhat appropriately, the ‘Humbug’, as some diarists called it, starts nowhere in particular near Wells and, 290 miles later, ends nowhere in particular at the aptly named Humboldt Sink. Described by different overlanders as ‘nothing but horse broth seasoned with alkali and salt’ and ‘the meanest and muddiest, filthiest stream’, little had changed about Nevada’s longest river except its colour and clarity. If there was no shortage of running water along this indescribably turgid valley, there was also no shortage of piss bottles. This late in the great trek, Forty-Niners were still dumping non-consumables overboard. In modern day America, it was soda bottles full of frothing urine which long distance drivers jettisoned. Spotted beside every length of tarmac since leaving Lincoln, Nebraska, their frequency shot up crossing the deserts. Thanks to motorists too lazy to stop for a slash, an entire medical history of America lies bottled beside its interstates waiting to be analysed.
The sprawl of Elko started fifteen miles before the town limits in the dirt diggings of Ryndon. It defied understanding why anybody would want to live in this ugly blotch of trailers, part built bungalows and piles of scrap vehicles. A handful of miles further on, another hard desert hollow contained a second ghastly sleeper community. Osino was that much closer to Elko and that much older. Between the mounds of twisted metal and bleak trailer homes, some bungalows actually had roofs instead of polythene.
As the pulsating neon of the big city (population: 14,800) hove into view, an enormous billboard welcomed me to the ‘Home of the Annual Cowboy Poetry Gathering’. Elko is one of the last remaining kosher cowboy towns in the Wild West, and their annual jamboree of campfires, country music and rhyming couplets was an attempt to preserve the traditions of a way of life which was riding into the sunset. Angled up the talus slope footing the southern range, the trace of a checkerboard had been platted and clouds of dust issuing from the wasteland indicated bulldozers were digging foundations. The town was evidently expanding and mining was now the core industry, along with get-rich-quick tourism. The Silver Dollar Casino was up for sale, but at the Stockmen’s, Commercial and Red Lion Casinos the car parks were full.
With a massive sigh of relief, I slipped off the interstate late in the afternoon and collapsed outside the first gas station I came to. I felt filthy and looked like I had been rounding up steers for a month. In a town which wore its wealth on its sleeve, I had a feeling my saddle-tramp appearance wasn’t going to earn me cowboy credibility, even if I could recite a witty limerick. I asked a child on a BMX where the nearest bike shop was. He told me the one and only closed down last Christmas.
Undeterred, I set off along the main drag, Idaho Street, to find the tourist information office. After a lengthy discussion cross-referenced with a woman in another office, the two young women behind the counter confirmed there was no longer a bicycle store in Elko. “If’n it’s just a tyre you’ll be wanting, try K-Mart or Western Auto.”
I pedalled back down Idaho Street to rifle through the rack of bicycle tyres stocked by Western Auto, opposite the gas station where I started out. They had nothing to fit. Following a lead from an assistant who seemed unusually curious about when I last slept in a bed, I cycled back up Idaho Street, beyond the tourist information office, calling in on various stores at the Plaza Forty Shopping Center and the Rancho Plaza Shopping Mall. Nobody had anything remotely suitable for the wheel of an average mountain bike but, at K-Mart, the assistant had a buddy who was “massively into bicycling.” He made a phone call.
“He says there are two bicycle stores in the vicinity.” The assistant imparted the information with a broad grin which said my problems were over. “If it’s still trading, there’s one in Winnemucca, 140 miles that a-way.” He jerked the thumb of his left hand. “But there’s several in Salt Lake City, 250 miles that a-way.” His right thumb jerked.
On the way back down Idaho Street, I called in at a garage cunningly called Auto-Truck Repair. They were closing up, but one of the fitters inspected Kenobi’s front tyre and gave me his assessment. The inner tube bulged through tears in the kevlar in a way that reminded me of my hernia of the previous year. How far did he think I would get?
“If’n y’got the Lord on y’side, end of the next block. You sure ain’t gonna make it to Winnemucca.”
So it was back down Idaho Street and back into the tourist information office to enquire about public transport out of Elko. The girls gave me a town map and pointed out the Amtrak station. The whereabouts of the Greyhound terminus was more of a challenge involving several phone calls.
It was hard to miss the Amtrak station, but not because it was a grand edifice. Elko’s railroad station consisted of two bus shelters, one beside the westbound track and one beside the east. No train timetable was displayed, and there was no ticket office or information booth. Their whereabouts was a question nobody on the street could answer. Round the corner, along from the Stockman’s Casino, I went in search of the Greyhound terminus. Directed down a urine stained alleyway, I entered an airless office where a queue of bored customers drummed their fingers while a gargantuan woman in a ripped quilted jacket argued vociferously with the desk clerk. A large sign made it clear I would only be allowed four items of hand luggage on the coach — two inside and two underneath — not exceeding fixed dimensions. It would require powers of compression I didn’t have.
That left me just one possibility for getting out of town — Larry Donovan Smith’s patent hitch-biking. Different states have different laws covering hitch-hiking and it is wise to be informed, so I pedalled back up Idaho Street to find the police station. It was locked and in darkness. Through a squawk box, I was invited into the reception area to wait for the ring of a red telephone which would connect me to Traveller’s Aid. Half an hour later, a charming female voice informed me that hitch-hiking was allowed everywhere in Nevada, except on the interstates and slip roads. If I had a couple of hundred dollars going spare, she recommended taking a taxi to Winnemucca but, to the best of her knowledge, the nearest bicycle store was in Reno, just this side of California. She didn’t recommend setting out tonight. “There are some wild people in Nevada.”
Unlike Wells, Elko is a family town. On the city park opposite the police station, folk took advantage of the cool evening to picnic while their kids played on the swings and slides. In the Ball Park, Elko Junior High were training, watched by the critical eyes of mums and dads on the look out for the next Mark McGuire. I made to ask a middle-aged man sat reading at a table what the situation was regarding camping in the park.
“Excuse me, sir…”
“No!” He turned his back and buried himself further into his book.
“I was just wondering if…”
“No! I ain’t got no money.” He arched deeper over the page.
“I’m sorry. You misunderstand. I’m from England…”
“I don’t care if you’ve come from God. No!”
In a town where a man can go from riches to rags at the roll of a dice, I guess it was fair to assume I was begging. Either that or I was one of the notorious “wild people.” As I pushed my way towards an expensive night in a motel, a gravel voice called from inside a Chevy van whose dented bodywork had been attacked by chisels.
“Looks like you’ve been travellin’ some.”
Ray Mabella was a poker-faced man in his fifties, with a pot belly visible between the buttons of his shirt and hair swept over a shining crown. He was sat at the wheel of his Chevy behind a mess of litter spilling from the dashboard. I leant in on the passenger’s side and told him woes. The van was piled to the roof with boxes, papers, files, clothing, a mattress, two sleeping bags, diver’s weights, fishing rods, golf clubs and a bicycle.
“Don’t recommend sleepin’ in the park,” Ray hissed. “It ain’t the cops y’gotta worry ‘bout. It’s the young Mexican element. If they choose to fuck with you, y’on your own far as the cops’ concerned. Y’could try the river bank, south of the city. That’s where all the transients sleep, but they’s mostly drunks, smackheads and tweekers (speed addicts). Don’t fuckin’ trust drunks myself, and the smackheads and tweekers’ll strip y’bare.”
It was fairly obvious Ray was a ’76 Chevy away from being a transient himself. Transients without wheels were called ‘footies’.
“Fuckin’ footies lower the tone of the place and make it tough for the rest of us. Me? I got me a little patch of ground down off Errecart Boulevard where I pull off for the night. Private property next to the river, but y’couldn’t put a tent there. An’ y’ain’t gonna getta ride out of Elko. No fucker goes to Winnemucca, ’cept to get laid. Got the biggest red light district on I-80, Winnemucca.”
Mulling over the possibilities, Ray finally agreed I was up Shit Creek.
“Tell you what. You pay for the juice, I’ll run you over.” He made it sound like we were nipping across town. “Give me a chance to ask you lots of questions about Britain. Kinda curious about Britain.”
Ray had nothing better to do with his time. He was an unemployed miner, laid off a couple of years ago when the price of gold suddenly dived. His helmet and overalls hung in the van. Before that, he was a painter-decorator and before that, a golf caddy for former Governor Ronald Reagan of California, whom he detested. It was difficult to believe, but he said he survived on a weekly food coupon of $10. Before he pulled up at the city park, he had begged five bucks off a Presbyterian priest. Three had gone on gas and the remainder on a bottle of milk and couple of hard boiled eggs. He said he was just waiting for a call before starting back down the mines, though exactly where the call would be directed puzzled me. Ray had a hi-fi, TV and a computer on board, but no mobile phone.
Having rearranged his chaos and made space in the van for my clobber, we drove back down Idaho Street to the garage where my search for a bicycle tyre began. Like a fool, I didn’t think to ask how big the Chevy’s tank was. While I went into the store to get grub for the trip, Ray filled up round the blind side of the van. Having read every label and map in the kiosk waiting for him to finish, I leant over the cash desk to read the digital display. It registered fifty-eight flippin’ bucks! And 36¢…and 37¢… The numbers took forever to change.
Paid up, I walked round the van to find Ray with cupped hands scooping dribbles of petrol back in the tank. Filled right to the brim, petrol squirted everywhere when he tried to replace the cap. More dripped from rust holes in the filler pipe. The forecourt was awash with gasoline.
“Better get out fast. He’s a nice guy,” Ray said, referring to the Latino sales clerk. “He knows me. Lets me buy little squirts of gas. Don’t wanna push it.”
The sales clerk did know Ray. I had checked with him that the old gold miner was sound, if a little loopy.
I would like to say we roared away from Elko, wheels spinning, but Ray Mabella didn’t roar anywhere.
“Don’t like to take it above forty-five,” he said, spluttering up the slip road onto I-80. “That’s fast enough. Get the best fuel economy at forty-five, y’know. It’ll make it to Winnemucca okay. Went there once before in the ol’ Chevy. Forty-five gets you the most for your dollar. Gonna enjoy this. I love the Nevada sunset. Look at those blues and greys and French blues.”
Ray’s passion for the Nevada landscape was contagious. The glow of warm sand lit by a becalmed sun and the chartreuse mounds of smooth mountains set before an orange and grey cloudscape did look spectacular, this side of a windscreen.
“Look at that sunset. Isn’t it awesome? And look behind, in the mirror. I sure hope those Republican fuckwits behind are appreciatin’ this beauty rather than gettin’ steamed up ’cos I ain’t goin’ a dot over forty-five.”
The interstate was being repaired at that point and we were backing up vehicles for a mile, an achievement on a motorway where traffic volume could best be describes as slight.
Ray could talk the hind legs off a mule. He had four monologues which he repeated and embellished throughout the night, though not always recounted in the same order. Firstly, he repeated everything he had said before about the benefits of driving at forty-five, mostly when he had “Republican fuck-wits” on his tail. Secondly, he was in training for the triathlon.
“That bike of mine — it’s a tri-bike. I’m trainin’ with a guy from Austria. My running’s not goin’ too well. Got me a femur problem, but reckon we’ll be competin’ up in Canada this Fall.”
His tri-bike was an ancient tourer and his femur problem probably had more to do with his weight problem.
The third monologue followed his flashing every truck which overtook us.
“They appreciate the courtesy of flashin’ lights, y’know. I wanna work for them — Swift — the blue rigs. Gonna get my CVL (commercial vehicle licence). Get it in Winnemucca. It’s a little easier there. Then get me some experience drivin’ dumpsters.”
His last monologue was about the love of his life, Kimberly, who was “from good British stock. Gonna marry her some day, have kids, build a home. I’ve already designed it. Got the plans in the back. Gonna be at Paradise Valley. Gonna get married as soon as I find my mother’s weddin’ ring. Kimberly lives in Orange County. Works at the sports store where I get my triathlon kit.”
Fifty-eight bucks was cheap to bring a little happiness into Ray Mabella’s life. The man hadn’t driven further than between the town park and his night stand off Errecart Boulevard in two years, and it would have been good to hear his life story. With 140 miles to go at a breakneck forty-five, we had no shortage of time, but I was exhausted. Grateful he wasn’t asking any questions about the UK, I faded in and out of his monologues until the lights of Battle Mountain flickered in the distance and I died.
We pulled into Winnemucca around one in the morning. The town was uncommonly dark for a hotbed of vice. Store security lights projected pale yellow rectangles onto deserted sidewalks, augmented by the diluted beams from weak standard lamps. The pixilated neon of Winners Casino beat out a hypnotic rhythm, but there was nobody on the strip to be compelled towards it. A coyote crossed our path, stopped, stared into the headlights, squatted for a pee, then trotted off towards the rail sidings.
It took me two hours to get rid of dear old Ray. I bought him a McDonalds in the only place still open, and had to drag him away from a courting couple who didn’t know where Harry Jay’s Fishing Store was, had never heard of the man and had no interest in listening to a nutter banging on about fly fishing in Paradise Valley. Having levered him back in the van, Ray insisted on trying to find the cycle store for me.
“Cheers, Ray, but I’m not going to get a lot of shopping done at this hour. I’d just as soon get my head down and worry about it tomorrow.”
He wasn’t listening. For an hour we drove around gloomy streets before stumbling on Bikes & More three blocks from the town park. Winnemucca wasn’t that big, but Ray was a creature of habit. He took his bearings from the town park. After every sortie, he homed back on the green before setting out for a different side of town. Wearily, I thanked Ray for the lift and we parted, or almost. Leaning out of the window, he asked, “Is it true what they say? The English eat roast beef and somethin’ called Yorkshire pudding?”
Finally, he had asked me a question about Britain.
“Is it good? That’s what I want to do. Go to England and eat roast beef and Yorkshire pudding.”
After three attempts at different hotels to raise a night porter, I gave up on dreams of a bed for the night, cycled back to the park and slung up the canvas wherever. Awoken ten minutes later by a loud clatter, I struggled out of my sleeping bag to discover morning had broken. It was barely 6.00am, but golfers and grass cutters were doing the rounds. Three insufferably jolly men striding to the next green waved their clubs in the air and shouted, “Great morning.” I had pitched on the edge of the eighth freeway and the club’s lawn dog had trimmed a neat oval round my tent.