Nevada Nights
It was unnerving to be woken from a sound sleep, under the stars after midnight, by a voice from the past, deep in the Nevada desert, miles from the nearest city.
M1 - #1 of 4 stories, describing events on a 12,000 mile motorcycle journey across North America in 1971, including the entire Trans-Canada Highway, from Victoria BC to Newfoundland.
I’m sleeping in the Nevada desert. It’s after midnight. My motorcycle is still cooling down from the hot ride out of Salt Lake City on I-80 West. It had been a serendipity stop. A rest area sign had appeared, I waved to the other two bikers I was traveling with, and we took the exit. There had been no plan to stop there.
At sunset, near the Independence Mountains west of Elko we rolled out our bedrolls and watched the stars appear overhead. It was a magnificent evening. We talked about the ride ahead, our dreams in life. We told stories, talked about our construction job at Parley’s Summit. There was not a care in the world.
My friends were only going to Reno. I was in it for the long haul - up the West Coast, across across Canada to Newfoundland and back - a 12,000 mile journey. That was the only plan in my head when I fell asleep that night in the Nevada desert west of Elko.
After midnight, someone shakes me. Groggy at first, then confused, a woman’s voice. I can see her silhouette against the star-studded sky. She’s talking to me. “Jon,” she says, “It’s Margot.”
I’m trying to put this together. It’s not a dream. It’s real. I’m in the desert. It’s after midnight. My motorcycle is right there. Nobody in the world knows I’m here other than my two biker friends. We just took an arbitrary exit. And now, Margot, my childhood neighbor, is trying to wake me up. I refuse to believe it’s not a dream.
I’m stunned and confused. There was no plan conveyed to anybody. This was way before cell phones. Text messages were 40 years out. Yet here I am being woken at midnight by this young woman from my hometown, Eureka, California, who I’d grown up with, known my whole life, since we were six years old. We lived a block apart. Somehow, Margot found me in the middle of the night in the Nevada desert.
We sat there and pieced together the extraordinary events that led to this moment.
She was traveling with her husband, Alan, who was standing there too. We’d gone to high school together. They were just out driving around the West - Nevada, Utah and Wyoming - seeing the sights.
Then, on the I-80, I-15 interchange in Salt Lake City, they saw another friend from our hometown, from our high school, driving a red Volkswagen. They recognized the car first and then him Randy, was driving west on I-80. Ten days before, he’d come out to Utah to visit me.
Randy and I backpacked in the Uinta Mountains and hung out in Park City before it was popular. We had no plan to rendezvous after our Park City get together. He went on his way to Wyoming to hike the Wind River Mountains. I stayed in Park City another week before heading out with a couple buddies from work for the 12,000-mile motorcycle odyssey.
But let’s go back to that Interstate freeway in Salt Lake City. Margot and Alan see that red Volkswagen around sunset in Salt Lake City. They flag Randy down from their pickup truck. They all pull over on the Interstate, excited to discover each other out in Utah a thousand miles from home. Then they caravan west together across Nevada for the next four hours.
And they too had that same serendipity moment at that midnight hour ... saw a rest area in their headlights west of Elko and swung in for the night.
Randy recognized my motorcycle immediately (metallic red, sweeping crash bars, four chrome pipes soaring up the tail, travel gear mounted on the rear bar.)
Dumbfounded, at the midnight hour, he told Margot, “That’s Jon’s bike…he’s here!”
She tiptoed over in the darkness to my sleeping bag and woke me up. Right there. Forty miles West of Elko, in the middle of the night, in the Nevada desert.
What are the chances of that?
jhg - 1971
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Stay tuned for a few more ‘unusual stories’ from that 12,000 mile motorcycle trip across Canada and back to Utah.