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| Manride Part 7 |
| Mon Jun 21 18:10:20 2010 PST, by Testcase |
| [email] [webpage] |
Warm Springs
TL;DR: Grown men get naked in hot water.
I woke the next day in Ely refreshed and ready to face the next day of Manride. I was full of hope and optimism that today would be a better day. I opened the curtains and took in the world outside.
There was a layer of snow on the bike and the skies were gray.
Figures.
I closed the curtains and went back to bed. No rush for the day, anyway. It was a hour or so later that I dared to poke my head back out of the curtains and was pleasantly surprised to see that all the snow had melted and there were blue skies. After abusing the excellent shower yet again, I packed everything back onto the bike. I was pleased to find that everything packed and rolled right back up easily. I'd been a little worried that the packing I'd done at home under 'controlled conditions' wouldn't be easy to do out on the trip. I munched on Pop-tarts and breakfast bars and then checked out, taking the bike towards the 6. I hoped that Kevin was going to have better luck today then he did yesterday. He'd be transversing the Extraterrestrial Highway, so that probably meant abductions and anal probes for him.
Good thing he was wearing leather pants.
It turns out, I learned, that it is indeed possible to get lost with a GPS. Unlike the 93 or the 50, there's a weird convoluted way to get to the 6 in Ely. It involves going through some neighborhoods. The GPS was still trying to sort my position out, I guess, so I ended up doubling back once or twice before it had me all squared out. Riding through the small neighborhoods behind Ely's main drag was interesting. Everyone waved as I rode by. Just small-town Americana, I guess.
With brothels.
The ride on the 6 was a repeat of yesterday's ride on the 93. Despite still being chilly, the sun was shining and the traffic minimal. The most looming fear I had was running out of gas somewhere on the 6 before we made it to Tonopah, so I kept the throttle at an even 60 and settled back to watch the scenery flow by. I suffered the second technical problem of the trip on this leg. I was trying to rotate the handlebar mount for the camera around to get some panning shots of the landscape and it snapped off in my hand. Oops. Fortunately, one of the things I had packed in my small "oh-shit" kit (along with the plug repair and air compressor) was an syringe of epoxy. I figured once I got to Warm Springs, I'd sit down and see about trying to repair the mount. We were planning to film as much of the trip as possible to try and make a video and would need a decent amount of on bike-footage to go with it.
I was sad when I passed the road intersection for the Lunar Crater. It would have been cool to see.
I pulled into fabulous Warm Springs a bit around lunch time. As promised, the place was a ghost town. Or ghost rest-stop. There were two modern buildings; one appeared to be a house and the other was a boarded-up cafe. Behind the cafe were a number of what appeared to smaller, older buildings built primarily from wood and stone. They seemed significantly older then the cafe but they were far enough off the road that I didn't feel like hiking over to them. Everything was behind barbed wire fencing. I guess when they closed the place down, they didn't want anyone coming to monkey with the whole lotta nothing left behind. Warm Springs essentially sits alone at the intersection of 6 and 375. Someone said, at one point, "Hey, maybe people traveling these roads would want to stop and eat." Little did they know that people traveling those roads would just want to get the hell to where they were going.
I got off the bike and strolled around. I was unsure of how much time I would have before Kevin showed up. I broke out the kit and had a small lunch. I set about attempting to repair the handlebar camera mount. The mount is a pretty simple and hollow construction. I figured my best chance at repairing it with the epoxy I had would be to fill the hollow with epoxy. To help with the strength, I dug around for a stone that would approximate the size and shape of the hollow to try and serve as a backbone for the epoxy. I found a rock that was almost right and in the process of trying to pare it down, I ended up destroying the cheap Chinese clone of a Leatherman tool I had gotten free somewhere. The pot metal construction bent easily went paired against a rock. Which, at least, gave me some hope for my scheme.
Every now and then, a car would drive by and, interestingly enough, stop more often then not to see if I needed help. Nice to see people were still essentially good folks, especially when out in the middle of nowhere (aka Warm Springs). One van that passed by me pulled over to the side and sat there for a good ten minutes before continuing on its way. No one ever got out. Don't know what was going on there.
Sometime later, a truck pulled up and three cowboy looking guys got out. One of them promptly hopped over the barbed wire fence and went around the back of the closed Warm Springs cafe while another came over to talk to me. After finding out I was just hanging around (and that I was recording with video), we chatted for a bit. The three of them were coming back from a construction job in Fallon. Apparently, they spent a lot of time on this route. He jerked his thumb over his shoulder toward a small building set behind and a ways to the side of the cafe. All I could really make out was that it was fenced in on its on and had a big red 'Keep Out' painted on it.
"Know what that is?" he asked. I told him no.
"It's the warm spring."
"I thought that's the Warm Springs," I replied, pointing to the closed cafe.
"Nah, that's the restaurant. That," he said, jerking his thumb again, "is the actual hot spring."
"Hot spring?"
"Yeah, hunnert degree water. Still coming outta the ground and running down the channel they built into the pool. You can just go up to it and get in. All the running water around here is coming from that." He indicated a small stream that ran perpendicular to the road.
"It's OK?" I asked, thinking maybe of fungus or something.
"Oh, yeah, it's great. Lots of people go there. You ought to check it out if you're going to be here awhile." By about that time, his friend had come back and climbed into the truck. We said our goodbyes and then the truck drove away and left me staring up the small hill at the outbuilding.
"Hundred degrees, huh." I looked at the small outbuilding. Then I looked down both ways of the 6 and saw no cars. I looked down the 375. Couldn't see anything coming. I walked along the barbed wire fence a bit and found that, at the point nearest to the hot spring, the wire had been bent and twisted out so that you could walk through. The guy must have been right about people still coming here. I walked on in and up the hill to the outbuilding. Here again, the chainlink fence surrounding it had been cut up the side and a makeshift entry way, right next to the padlocked one, created.
Indeed, it was a pool with steam coming out of it. It was artificial, but not as finished as a pool you might find at the YMCA and considerably smaller. The outbuilding turned out to be changing rooms, split down the middle; presumably for genders. I bent down and stuck my hand in. Yeah, that's hot water alright. I could see a channel on the other side, made from wood maybe, that went under the fence and funneled the water in from wherever the spring was. It wasn't clear where the water went since the level always seemed to stay the same. The sides of the pool were slightly spongy, from algae and decay, I think.
I was just about to shuck my clothes and jump in when Kevin finally rolled up. I walked back out to meet him and as soon as I said, "There's a hot spring up there", he was all over it. Funny enough, we used the men's side changing room to strip down to our clothes. Funny how some things still matter. Inside the changing rooms, the walls were covered with grafitti from past visitors and how awesome it was to find the hot spring. I could only hope none of them suffered horrible rash-related deaths.
No, we didn't go naked in the water. We both wore boxers. Partly because we were filming everything and partly because I didn't want to see Kevin's ass. The water was hot and refreshing as promised. The bottom of the pool was a spongy mass of I-don't-know-what. I did my best not to actually stand in the pool and just sort of float. After a half-day of riding, it was awesome. This was exactly the kind of thing we'd been hoping to run into on the Manride.
After a good long soak, we got out, dried off, and climbed back into our clothes. We walked over to the abandoned cafe and found that the side window was open. After a soak in a closed hot spring, waltzing into a long abandoned restaurant seemed only natural. It seemed a popular spot with kids, judging from all the graffiti. We found a couple of old booth seats lined up in a way that made us think they were for making out. It struck me that Warm Springs was a long ways to go to find a place for making out. There was also a big ass pool table. I ought to go back with a truck one night and take it!
Curiosity satisfied, we headed back out to the bikes and I got my first good look at Kevin's ride. The first thing that struck me was that he had a small roller suitcase strapped to the back of his bike. He said it was something his brother suggested, but I don't know. It didn't seem that great idea to me. It's a rigid form that's occupying a defined amount of space. Something that's at a premium on a motorcycle. Unless he was shoving that thing bulging full of stuff, I don't think it would be something I do.
That and it didn't look cool at all.
We mounted up and headed off toward Tonopah. We were both worried about whether we'd make it there not due to gas concerns. We kept to 60 miles an hour and nursed our way west.
To be continued...
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There are 4 replies
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...Fear The Room...
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