Got a mouthful of feathers, bit off more than I could chew

One of the advantages of being so net-centric among a community of net-centrics enabled by the latest technology is you know where people are, or at least where they’re about to go, at any given moment.  This is actually a disadvantage when they have a holiday weekend and you don’t, but never mind that because they’re not getting two weeks off in August and nyeah nyeah.

So I’m sitting here at my work computer and wading through the messages piled up on Facebook from CA burner friends headed out to the Black Rock.  They’re stuck in traffic at Truckee.  They’re turning off at Wadsworth.  They’re streaking down 447, on the lookout for jackrabbits and coyotes in the road, juggling the wheel and the iPhone keyboard.  And so on.  It makes me a little green to think they’re on that long two-lane north right now and I’m not and at the moment the nyeah nyeah magic just ain’t working so well.  I long for Nevada pretty much any time of year but this weekend especially.

Once upon a time I wrote of this road:

No matter what time of afternoon it is you finally get out of the Bay Area, it's always dark by the time you turn off I-80 30 miles east of Reno and onto 447. As you climb the hill outside of Nixon the last lights of the town drop away behind you and the last gleam of Pyramid Lake is hidden by the dunes. The dry surface of Lake Winnemucca draws closer on the right and keeps you company for miles as the road goes on and on and seems to continue rising with each mile. There is virtually no traffic on the road - there rarely is, unless it's around Labor Day weekend - and you can see the headlights of a vehicle approaching from about 10 miles away; you can pull to a stop in the middle of the road, get out and walk around your car and maybe take a leak right in the middle of the road and there's nobody will ever know. The farther north you go, the larger this Nevada night sky seems to become and the more ominous the feeling grows; you realize that you're totally alone, more totally than you could ever imagine in your city existence. And that you'd be in a world of hurt if anything happened. But that doesn't keep you from putting the pedal to the metal - the road is wide and well-maintained with few curves - and if you know what you're doing you can make it from Nixon to Empire in a little over an hour. You pass through Empire - really a wide spot in the road, but with the only store for the next 75 miles, the sign says - and turn right on the gravel road and it's another 14 miles until you reach the hot springs at Frog Farm where you're finally stopping for the night; the whiteness of the Black Rock Desert shines to your left that whole last stretch. It's lonely out here, and kinda scary - and you like it.

That was a caption for a mix CD I made in 2001 – a mix to start playing right outside Nixon, beginning with the Cowboy Junkies’ “Crescent Moon” and timed to end on the gravel road to the springs with Grant McClennan’s “Horsebreaker Star”: this road that we’re on/we’ve traveled so far.  Or so I expected, since I never actually got to field-test the mix.  I haven’t driven 447 since October 2000. 

I plan to next month.  In full daylight, so I’ll be missing much of the mystery and sensuality that makes it such a special drive but on the upside I’ll get a lot better pictures.  Haven’t yet decided whether I’ll recreate that long-ago mix, and if so whether I’ll play it on the ‘Pod or burn it to CD.  Some things need to be experienced as they were originally intended and sliding a CD into the dashboard player is something I always expected to be a big part of this one.

But that’ll be me on my own, later.  This weekend my peeps, if I can still call them that, are going to be there without me.  It’s the big 4th of July campout cleverly called Fourth of Juplaya and it’s been going on for a long time now -11 years, I think.  I know 10 for sure because I was there for 99.  Even then it was a large affair, maybe even 300 people at the height, and we got a visit from the BLM ranger for exceeding the 50-vehicles limit over which you need a permit.  All sorts of highly-memorable stuff happened that weekend, most of which I’ll have to write about some other time.  All I can say is it was a wild-ass four days and it’s a bit of a shock to realize this is its 10th anniversary.

Remember what I said last entry about having trouble fathoming the passage of time.  This is how that shit creeps up on you.  But that’s why you keep in touch with friends, even at a distance through technology – because them just doing what they’re going to do today can remind you of things you did together way back when.  Or something like that.

 
Meanwhile I get to sit at my desk and look over old journal entries and try to piece together a narrative or maybe two – one for today, one for ten years ago.  And watch the messages as they trickle in from 1600 miles away.  I’ve had worse ways in which to pass a day.