So it’s time for another motorcycle tour. I’ve been on three others since Alaska, the Midnight Sun Game and my first (and only) blog effort. Time to try again.

Tours include:

• Spring Training and the Final Four – Arizona and the south California coast
  • Plus Arlo Guthrie at the BellyUp
  • Plus house concert in Cambria
• Braun Brothers Reunion (Challis, ID) and the eclipse in totality in Lander, WY
  • On a wild horse sanctuary
  • Followed by Reckless Kelly in the town park
• Braun Brothers 2019, Eugene and the California coast

We’ve all heard that the more things change, the more they stay the same. For me, the world has warped, but the ethic is the same. Between the pandemic, constant news that our beloved “West is on fire,” the end of citizen civility, and having two children enter adulthood, have I reconsidered? Nope, same day, just different lens.

I believe we all get today once. Seek to make the most of it — revel in it. Am I doing what’s needed to feel great about the day….

It was a strange start. I couldn’t leave until after 3pm and I do not ride at speed after dark. Sunset in Elko was 7:45pm. Had to GO. Interstate 80 through Nevada is no picnic. Huge roaring trucks, 104-degree heat, high winds and stark landscapes made this a “set-up” day.

I saw the same old streets for far too long
I put the rubber on the road
I left it all behind
And now paid with memories
Those streets are long since gone
Rubber on the road & the blood inside

Reckless Kelly, Desolation Angels

Note, you will see more from this song.

Strange signs made the ride intriguing. Near Elko, there is the “California Trail Interpretive Center.” It is a long, long way to California from there. I couldn’t interpret.

Town after tiny town, really not towns, more like “collections of 1 building” dot the landscape. Sparsely. My favorite was Mote, which means “a tiny piece of substance.” I looked it up and it now represents HUGE substance. On the one hand, “What you see is basically what there is to Mote. Nothing. Mote was originally a railroad siding and that’s all it’s ever been.”

But the world has changed. Now 640 acres south of the Mote interchange is a huge solar farm. Looks like a giant mirror. It’s WAY more than it was.

Just 10 miles down the road is Battle Mountain. “After exhaustive research into the nation’s crummiest localities,” Gene Weingarten of the Washington Post awarded the town the title of “Armpit of America.” I remember reading of this study and the articles some years ago. Gene said, “Seated at the foothills of a mini-mountain upon which the town proudly proclaims its identity with a gigantic arrangement of rocks (‘B.M.’), this place of fewer than 4,000 benighted souls contains no movie theater, no ice cream parlor, no department store, no clothing store, no sense of culture, no feel of history, no sign of architecture, and one whorehouse. (The ladies are nice, but kind of skanky.)”

But on August 12, 2021, I can tell you that I found a lot of beauty around Battle Mountain. So before I wrote this, I delved in a little more. You see, the people of BM sought to make the most of their plight. After hosting Gene during his “exhaustive research,” (and having read the articles, he did try to play this fairly and do real analysis), Battle Mountain’s anger turned to resolve.

While Gene did protest that he “actually respected and liked this crappy little town, and that I was actually trying to help it by giving it a national identity, [but was] widely rejected as being disingenuous.”

For 5 years, Battle Mountain hosted the “Festival of the Pit,” with billboards, dunk tanks, volleyball tournament, massage therapist (?), horseshoe throwing contest, wheelbarrow contest, Poker Run, boxing, rapelling off the water tower, and Indian fry bread. It was sponsored by Old Spice (why not Febreeze?)

Anyway, for a tough, lonely and not particularly beautiful Day 1, the beauty of Battle Mountain, it’s citizenry’s resilience and for what has become a blue-grass Festival of the Trees, I salute my Battle Mountain start! THEY make the most of what they have. Good on ya!