American Quickie
And so it begins…. Two weeks to cross the States, easily done when encapsulated in a four wheeled car machine, not so easy on an open air two wheeled motorbike machine getting battered by the elements, spring showers and swirling highway gusts whilst try to jam in some touristy things along the way. But what a feeling to finally hit the road after months of planning. I had created a man cave with walls adorned with detailed African maps and tables piled high with what I suspect may prove to be unnecessary camping gadgets. But now it is finally happening, I pull out of my garage and tire touches tar. And I will, the Universe permitting, re-enter said garage six months from now. No more work emails, no more daily commute, no more trying to remember if I put the alarm on, for six months anyway. Stephen would join me for the first two nights of this trans continental quickie, camping and hiking in Yosemite National Park.
We attempted to get a spot in the Valley but it’s almost impossible without having it booked well in advance. We instead got a spot ten miles South of the Park, no problem, everything is beautiful in the Sierras… We spent the first day scampering along the bottom of Yosemite Valley. Day two saw us directly ascending the side of the Valley to the top of Yosemite Falls. The weather was perfect, warm and sunny but still cool from the melting snows which made the cascading waterfalls bulge. Fresh air, beautiful scenery and a good hike, what more does one need? I could go on about the stupendous beauty of Yosemite Valley, but I don’t think the nouns I’d use could truly do it justice. It is awesome, in the truest sense of the word. After the second day of hiking the two of us were knackered, me more so than Stephen, I have become pretty unfit. I used to be able to dash upside these cathedrals of granite.. Now I huff and puff like a pig hungry wolf, insisting on many mini breaks along the way. Well it’s not a race, and each stop is a chance to inhale/exhale and take in the scenery. On the way out of the valley we stopped below El Capitan and had a beer in his honor. En route back to our campsite I saw perhaps the largest bear I have ever seen, 40 feet away moseying along a stream probing around for something to eat… ‘Not me Mr. Bear, not today Mr. Bear!’…On our last night camping we had a roaring fire, steaks, beer, wine, dark chocolate, backgammon and then we watched the stars dance.
The next morning we packed up our tents and drove twenty miles to town to grab a quick breakfast. Our goodbyes were rushed, as someone in an overly big pickup truck wanted our parking space. To Stephen I said: ‘don’t crash on your way down the mountain’. To I Stephen said ‘don’t eat the yellow snow’…… and with that we parted ways. Good advice both. Stephen and I have been on many a moto adventure before but alas he won’t be with me on this one. I am sure there will be more in the future, such as Dublin to Hanoi 2025 (one year before the Zombie Apocalypse 2026)
My next stop was Area 51 but the Tioga pass was still closed which meant I had to drive North almost to Tahoe before dipping East and South. And so a trip that would usually take six hours took me ten darting from Mountain to Desert. Damn you snow! Melt faster! I passed through Hawthorne Nevada, which boasts that it is the World’s largest ammunition depot. Not something to be proud of if you ask me.. I was booked into the Little AleInn in Rachel Nevada, the nearest town to Edwards Air Force base aka groom lake aka Area 51. If you can call it a town, it’s just the Inn and a few ramshackle trailers. This place really is in the arse end of nowhere. I don’t mean that in a disparaging way, I like the arse end of nowhere and if I were to experiment on Alf this would be the place to do it, away from prying eyes.
Onwards East from Alien Land, North of Vegas Land, North of the Grand Canyon and into the Indian Reservation Lands straddling the border between Arizona and Utah, the Great Nations of Hopi, Navajo, Zuni and Apache. Sparsely populated towns of Native Americans, who are today the most ignored minority in America. They suffer from the highest unemployment rates in the country, highest suicide rates, highest alcoholism rates, highest mortality rates and often subside in terrible poverty and yet people don’t talk about it. Alcohol-related deaths occur at a rate 520% greater than the American average. Captain crazy pants in the White House has slashed funding for Native Americans and voter suppression is widespread. When I had my US citizenship interview I luckily got a proud Native American as my officer. We spent the interview chatting about how the Choctaw had raised money for the victims of the Irish Famine. These poor people who had been abused and broken by their own Government and only a few years previously had been forced off their land in the Trail of Tears, had gotten together and tried help as best they could the dying people of Ireland. What an incredible story and such a beautiful act of generosity. I believe there is today still events celebrating the Choctaw at famine commemorations which are attended by Choctaw representatives, and last year Leo Varadkar went to Oklahoma to thank them on behalf of the Irish Nation. Years ago I read ‘Bury my heart at Wounded Knee’, the history of the Native Americans told from their perspective and the one thing that always stuck in my head was the story of child kidnappings and their results. Now, this is all anecdotal but during conflicts with Indians white settlers would often take Native children captive and try to raise and educate them in a civilized Christian way, the children would always try to escape and return to their tribe. But when white pioneer children were taken by Indians and later rescued they too would often try to escape and return to the tribe, their preference being for the Native American way of life. Benjamin Franklin commented on it. “They become disgusted with our manner of life,” he once wrote about the white children captured by native tribes, “and take the first good opportunity of escaping again into the woods, from whence there is no reclaiming them.” There was much that could have been learnt from this yet I fear perhaps the opportunity has been lost.
Deep into arid rocky Reservation lands I pulled off the side of the road to look at my map. A drunken Indian appeared out of nowhere with a smile sprawled across his face. What was I doing here? Where was I going? He asked intrigued. He warned me these are strange and dangerous places and bad things happen to people around here. I smiled and told him I would be careful, but was still slightly unnerved by the foreboding message of danger.. His native tongue being Navajo he tried to teach me some phrases all of which I managed to successfully butcher. When The Navajo refer to themselves they call themselves Diné , which simply means the People. This word is very similar to the Irish word for people ‘Daoine’. I’m not suggesting there is a connection, but Saint Brendan did reach these shores before Columbus! I handed my inebriated roadside friend the $20 he requested for his words of wisdom and went on my merry way.
Again, another long day on the bike. Exhaustion setting in as I reached the epic red rocks of Oljato-Monument Valley situated high up on the Colorado plateau. This Valley is of course at once recognizable to anyone who has ever seen an MGM cowboy and Indian film, it would seem that each and every one of them used this as a backdrop. Or Back to the Future when Marty McFlys flux capacitor housing Delorean drops in on the usual Cowboy/Indian nonsense! I stayed in a Tipi that night overlooking the Valley, a view you could not buy. As night fell I built a rager of a fire and grilled some food. Up at the crack of dawn the next day I went to hike around the Valley. These tremendous natural structures were created by erosion, each giant red sandstone butte stretching up skywards. The Navajo who live here call this place “Tse-Bii-Ndzisgaii” (the valley within the rock). The hike was great, not many humans, just me and some free roaming horses.
I packed up my bike and headed South East out of the Valley but not before getting hit by a few rainstorms that appeared out of nowhere. Long hours on the bike, cramped muscles and damp clothes.. I pulled into Albuquerque, New Mexico. Quick saunter around the Old Town, quick saunter around a bar and a quick saunter back to my hotel room. The next day I began East taking back roads to Fort Sumner, New Mexico, the village best known for being the location where 21 year old Billy the Kid was shot dead by Pat Garrett. Although what it should probably be better known for is as the location of the forced internment of thousands of Native Americans in the 1860s, many of whom died here due to poor conditions. But the Billy the Kid story fits the Wild West building of a Nation narrative better. I went to the Billy the Kid Museum, they had some fantastic exhibits. I had once read that Billy the Kid was in fact a distant relation of Ned Kelly. Billy’s real name was Henry McCarty and both he and Kelly had Irish parentage. It wouldn’t have been the first time that a Kelly had been a cousin of a McCarty. I asked the curator of the Museum about this possible link but he knew not of what I spoke. Perhaps I made it up in my mind, I checked it online but couldn’t find anything. But there are similarities between the two, outlaw rebels of Irish decent on the run from law. I like idea that they were somehow distant relatives so I will just go on half believing it. Although Kelly’s capture was certainly more cinematic, going out in a blaze glory shooting from home made armored suits whereas Billy the Kid was shot down while sneaking into a house in the middle of the night by the waiting Garrett. Billy had risen to notoriety during the Lincoln County war in 1878 which had broken out between two rival factions over control of groceries and cattle (isn’t it always the way!?) Twenty-two people were killed during the conflict. If you look at the names of the people involved in the war half of them were Irish: Murphy, Reily, Brady, Dolan, McNab , Mc Sween, sounds like an average Saturday night on the streets of Athlone except with guns.
From there I crossed the Texan State line and proceeded to the city of Lubbock, the hometown of Buddy Holly. Unfortunately, I arrived at the Buddy Holly Museum ten minutes after its closure. I had evidently spent too much time reading all the exhibits at the Billy the Kid Museum. Oh well, you can’t do everything, but you can certainly try. The Clash played in Lubbock Texas on their very first tour of the States. Originally their record label had booked them all the big cities but Joe Strummer said no, I want to play the towns that nobody plays at, I want to play where Buddy Holly is from. And so they did, and nobody knew who the hell these scrawny English Punks were. From Lubbock I once again headed East but somewhere along the way I took a wrong turn and spent the next few hours on secondary back roads towards Dallas instead of the highways. It’s more interesting that way; the back roads took me through numerous half deserted rural Texan towns that have passed their peak. Beautiful red-bricked streets with boarded up storefronts. Towns reminiscent of Peter Bogdnovich’s ‘The Last Picture Show’. Rural communities in America are being decimated. But the same is happening in Ireland and all around the world. Humans are moving to urban areas. It’s sad but true. The largest migration of mammals in the history of the world was the movement of Chinese people from rural areas to cities in the twentieth century. It’s happening in China, it’s happening in Texas and it’s happening in Ballyvourney.
I arrived in Dallas early the next morning. I’m a JFK assassination nut, which began at a young age having watched Oliver Stone’s JFK. It’s bizarre to stand in Dealey Plaza, the place where the bad thing happened, a place I have never been before but feel I know well. And so I pretty much spent my day in Dallas there. The Sixth Floor Museum where Oswald apparently took his shots is excellent. Wonderful exhibits and details regarding the era in which the bad thing happened, the bad thing itself and theories as to why the bad thing happened. My own belief is that it was a Coup d’état and many people were involved, but hey that’s just me, what do I know?! My mother saw Kennedy on his visit to Ireland just a few months prior to the bad thing. She was a young teenage girl at the time and saw him in his open top limo on the Grand Parade in Cork City. I asked her what specifically she remembered about him, she replied that she had never in her life seen someone so tanned and with a mouthful of shining white teeth! In Ireland we didn’t get tans or white teeth till the 1990’s… And then of course she heard about the bad thing in Dallas over the wireless five months later. People in Ireland were devastated. If you like history and have an hour to kill here is a good RTE Documentary from 1993 about the Kennedy visit:
Eastward I went, on to Graceland, Graceland, Memphis Tennessee… I had reason to believe that I would be received in Graceland. Ok, that’s from Paul Simon’s Graceland (great album). And I cannot help but think of that when finally visiting. The house itself is much smaller than I expected. And it is now a shrine to the king, a place of pilgrimage for many American Families who come here to see where the man himself lived. The modest size of the house stands in contrast to the giant warehouse museums across the road, which houses all of the musical memorabilia, costumes, cars, motorbikes and of course two planes. The man certainly lived a full life.
Ok, this blog is too long, too many words, too much typing and most likely too much reading for you! So I’m going to speed up here.. From Memphis I went to Knoxville and the next day a big one on through the Shenandoah Valley and on to Philadelphia. This is where I finally met up with Iva. We stayed with her Bulgarian friend Stella for two nights, went to see Santigold live (good) and Benjamin Franklin museum (could have been better) and then on to New York. We dropped our bikes off to be crated near JFK and kissed them goodbye, promising to see them again Africa side and headed to the bright lights of the city for two more nights of fun and frolicking. I booked seats at the Comedy Cellar months beforehand without knowing who would be playing and we got Colin Quinn, Michelle Wolf and Jim Norton, all brilliant. And on the second night we had tickets to a recording of the Late Show with Stephen Colbert. It was interesting to see TV being made but I probably would not do it again. Guests were Keanu Reeves and Bryan Cranston. Cranston was promoting his Broadway Show Network, an adaptation of the 70’s film about news anchorman Howard Beale.. “I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take it anymore”! Originally I had planned to go see the play on our visit but tickets were $300 and upwards! But then something crazy happened, Cranston invited the whole studio audience, hundreds of us to come see the play there and then… And so we did, we marched out of the Ed Sullivan Theatre and walked through Time Square with Police escort to go see a showing of Network. And it was fantastic. Great play, great acting and a great stage production. Cranston has subsequently won Best Actor Tony for it. The other people must have been pissed as they had paid top dollar to see it and we commoners were getting it for free. Here is a video of it:
Anyway, that’s it for now. But not a bad slice of Americana in two weeks: Yosemite, Area 51, Monument Valley, Billy the Kid, Cowboys & Indians, Buddy Holly, JFK, Elvis, Benjamin Franklin, Comedy Cellar and a Broadway Show… We now head off this Continent and on to another… Let the Africa begin.
