After a long Libre weekend fruitlessly trying to sort out the automotive electricals we left with a  load of windows and miscellaneous sculptures to find these people presuming [probably because of the horse trailer] we were going to give them a ride, which we didn’t…

Gardner [without our last crucial batch of mail, which had mistakenly gone to Trinidad for Labor Day] and a little roadwork on the way to Westcliffe didn’t delay things much;

Once there the very good people at Westcliffe Petroleum [a full-on garage with very fine ’50 Ford fuel truck as well as the local U-Haul dealer] figured out the wiring [mostly having to do with the Tundra] while I explored the wonders of an exotic used vehicle lot next door before an idiosyncratic lunch nearby;

Back on the road we dragged our load over various mountain passes [Monarch being the most notable] and onto the eastern deserts of Utah, landing for the night next to a melon stand in Green River for a pretty good sleep after a couple of curiously watery steaks at the Tamarisk…

Wednesday morning early out for that 180 mile drive to breakfast [I once – only once – ate at “Mom’s” in Salina; the additional seventy miles to The Rancher in Delta is well worth it, digestion-wise; going east hold out until Green River… as William Burroughs said…”and don’t play cards with anybody named ‘Doc'”, either], then the 88 miles of “Western Desert” to Nevada, the Border Inn, Ely [trailer inspection and the NVDMV, there], hours of 50, a hazy lunch between Eureka and Austin in increasingly smoky/dusty airs and more hours of 50 to Fernley, for a meeting about a building…

…plus two immense Cobb Salads at the WigWam before taking 447 north to Pyramid Lake and the constant stream of outbound burners’ buses towing flatbeds of dusty bicycles and other sketchy rigs coming at us in the increasing dark…scary!

With so many hits to the dimmer switch the dash and tail lights blew before Empire but we snuck into Gerlach just as, symmetrically enough, Willey’s father Cecil pulled in to the post office [Willey being the last person seen as we left there two months ago; http://mikesmooreptgs.com/wordpress/?p=458] while L. was collecting the mail.

Once on the dirt actual rabbits joined intermittent hallucinatory dark creatures darting across the road heading home, fifteen hours out of Green River to the gate and soon to bed…Thursday early awake to walk around depleted ponds, breakfast, unload, unhook the horseless trailer and, on a clear still morning, alas, away before ten down the desert;

Sierra Valley…

Eventually ending the day with dinner in Benicia-by-the-Bay, traffic of all sorts afoot and etc. up and down the mild Thursday streets….city water that stinks and that constant electrical hum, hmmm?

M