We are on
the way to Death Valley. Lovely little one horse towns along the way and great
open stretches of road. The Harley on-board thermometer has just cracked over
the 90 degrees Fahrenheit mark. Phew this is getting warm.
The Old Man at Brady’s Mini Mart
One of the most unearthly bits of scenery you will ever see.
As you are heading into Death Valley, just before it gets real serious, you find
yourself on this stretch of road. It is hot, it is dry and very little grows. You are surrounded by all of this heat and nothingness but on your right, in the distance, is a snow
capped mountain peak. Snow. What? How? What kind of drugs? That was so odd to see. The peak is
around 12000 feet or so. Keep that altitude in mind for later on in the story.
The on-board fuel warning light comes on just as we arrive
at this little outpost type gas station just on the boarder of the Death Valley
National Park. She has just gone past the 95 degrees mark as I pop into the
little shop. Brady’s Mini Mart in a town with a population of 17.
Jingle jingle from the little bell mounted above the door as
I enter the shop and head for the fridges. I loaded up two liters of water and
made my way to the counter. Not a soul in sight. Actually I am quite sure they
shot that Crow Scene from Resident Evil here. You know the one with the bus and
the Alfred Hitchcock sort of remake? Anyway, nobody around. “Hellooo?” as I
wander about the shop poking my head into little corners and crannies. Then,
from behind me, back at the counter somehow I hear this:
“Nhar. Jew hookin virr sommin?”. He is
old. Proper old. I mean carbon dating old. “Oh, Hi there Sir. Yes please may I
pay for this water and get five dollars petrol please?” I say. “Nhaaaar?!?” he
scolds back at me with one eye bulging. Damn – my South African accent is too strong. Now, it is at
this point that Barbara walks into the shop from outside and all she hears is me
doing my best Country Western accent that I have picked up from a mixture of Breaker Breaker and some Clint Eastwood movies. It worked – he understood – she pissed herself laughing.
The elderly fella showed us around his store, told us about his late wife and
how he has been there since the dawn of time. Great guy actually – great little
experience.
Right. Bike is brimmed with “Gas” and we fill up with a few
cups of water.
Old Man River to Badwater.
95 degrees Fahrenheit. We enter into the park. As you travel
you feel your body telling you something is wrong. Something is odd about this place.
It’s not that hot just yet, it’s not that Deathly but something is making your
insides cringe.
100 degrees Fahrenheit. Still quite bearable and now the road
gets twisty. Twisty? I thought it is meant to be this dagger straight stretch
of road? Anyway, the twisty bits were great. The road surface is immaculate and
there is plenty room to pull over and snap pictures of places named: “Stovepipe
Wells” and “Furnace Creek”. As you traveling along you come up and over a small
blind ridge and then you see this road in front of you. It is as if Salvidor
Dali found the straight-line ruler he was looking for all these years. Surreal environment
with this pitch black tear line through the middle of it. Dead straight.
105 degrees Fahrenheit. Okay. It’s getting hot. We pull over
for a drink of water. Rationing ourselves but 1 liter each should be plenty
right? The road stretched out in front of you for what looks like 20 miles or
so.
110 degree Fahrenheit. It’s not 20 miles. I think it is
because it is so flat and so desolate that you misjudge the distance. It goes
on at a slight incline for 40 or 50 miles before you see the right turn up
ahead of you. Phew – that right turn must be us then getting out of this basin
and back up onto the ridge on the other side right?
115 degree Fahrenheit. Geez – when is this ridge going to
get to us? Pull over and have a bit of water. Keep going. It’s so flat and so
dry. It expands on the left and right hand side of you to the end of the earth.
The colours are pale and this creates the most immense glare. Like driving through
those mirror things ladies used to use to tan the bottom of their chins.
Finally we get to that right turn, start climbing again up and out of the
valley. Up, over the ridge and this is when shit got real.
It doesn’t end. It goes on. I cannot describe to you how
your stomach sinks as you realise the endlessness of it all. You will die out
here. It is the most alien place I have even seen. If God and the Angels made
the earth then this place was Lucifer’s playground. His Sistine Chapel. 20
miles to Badwater.
116 degrees Fahrenheit. The scenery starts to change. The
heat intensifies. Orange, yellow, turquoise rocks with massive red faced cliffs
sitting toe to toe with epic flat pans of hazy mysteriousness. Soft dessert
like sand dunes in a pocket surrounded by jagged corral reef like rocks. The
mixture of stone types, the variations in sedimentary layers and the relative
position of all those layers to each other in a criss-cross fashion makes for
the most unearthly surroundings. It’s almost as if the heavens dumped material
from all over the world here like a massive stock piling area. It makes no sense.
117 degrees Fahrenheit. 10 miles to Badwater. We keep losing
altitude. Not sharply, just slowly and progressively. Like a 150 mile long pool
table with that one “lucky pocket”.
118 degrees Fahrenheit. Barbara loses consciousness for a
split second. Her lid bangs into the back of mine as she flops forward. We pull
over for a drink of water and finish off the bottle. Barbara isn’t looking so
good but reassures me we should press onto Badwater. Just get us there.
119 degrees Fahrenheit. Holy shit. I just can’t describe it.
We arrive in Badwater. 282 feet BELOW sea level. We just dropped off around
10 000 feet in less than 150 miles. How does anything survive that? How
does anything survive here? I remember hearing that spooky voice from the Resident Evil film (again) ...you know the one with the little girl: "You're all going to die down here".
As I pull up to Badwater I feel Barbara getting
uneasy on the back. I haven’t stopped the bike fully yet as she hops off, stumbles
up to the curb and starts stripping off her jacket, throws her lid down and
starts to panic. It is hot. She is dehydrated and, as I find out later, she
thought Badwater was like a resort of some kind. You know – with air conditioning
and all of that? It is not. It is an open air walkway leading to a scene from Star
Gate. Its 119 Fahrenheit. The curb must be 200 degrees to the touch as she sits
down and burns her ass cheeks.
“Eff! Eff this! Everything is so effing hot! Effing eff frikken
hot Eff!” and she is losing her mind. Now I am worried but also I am witness to
one the nicest women dropping more eff bombs than Jay and Silent Bob skit. I
walk her over to the toilet structure, which is tiny, and sit her down in the
little shadow cast by the structure. Take off her shoes, socks and roll up her
pants. Need to cool her down before she overheats.
As I was returning from the bike a couple, driving their
fancy airconned SUV pulled over and started talking to Barbara. I can see this
as I am heading from the bike back to her again – admittedly having a little
giggle to myself about the eff bomb scene. Thankfully they gave her two bottles
of water out the trunk and gave me a glare of disgust. Turns out Barbara
pointed at me when they asked who she was with, and they said “Who? The guy
laughing at you?” Not impressed with me.
She demolished the first bottle of water, I poured half of
the second one on her head and she polished that last bit off as well. We sat
there for a moment. “Umm... Love…you know we can’t sit here much longer hey?” I
started to worry as the sun was setting. She mustered up the last bit of energy,
got dressed back into the black leather jacket and hopped back onto the bike. I
held my left had behind my back for her to squeeze as sign of life and we
blasted out of Death Valley as fast as we could.
119, 118, 115, 110, 105 as the temperature progressively
lowered the further we got from that suicide show. 105, 104 as the sun started
to set.
Extra Crispy to Vegas Baybeee
The sun set as we entered the main freeway to Las Vegas. Fortunately
the speed limit there was 75 mile per hour so we could attack this last stretch
in the dark.
This is something I believe you cannot experience anywhere
else in the world in such a short time frame. We left Badwater three hours ago
at 119 degrees Fahrenheit. Now, 2 hours after sunset it is 69 degrees. We lost 50
degrees in 3 hours. Your focus, your perception of time and space all go mental
as your system crashes under the stress of that temperature inversion. I
started to lose sensitivity in my fingers as I gripped the bars tighter and tighter.
Tweak. I felt it, I’m almost sure I heard it as well. A muscle between my neck
and my shoulder blade tweaked and pulled me into a new world of pain. Can’t
stop though – kind of get the feeling we are about to die here.
All’s well that ends well they say. We got to Vegas. That
muscle in my neck was a terrible irritation for the rest of the month long
journey with stick-on pads and pills to get me through. I forced Barbara into a
mild shower and slowly lowered the water temperature to try stabilise her
system. Its 21:00 and I put her to sleep.
“That was so stupid” I thought to myself. We hit Death Valley
entirely unprepared and with nothing but good graces from a few locals did we
make it out without an ambulance. I sat there for a moment while Barbara slept
and gathered my thoughts.
Hey, hold on a minute. I’m in Vegas? Vegas Baybeee!!!
We are still on Day 3 here guys, check out Part 3 of this
blog tomorrow.
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