Not much sleep at all last night. While the service station is very quiet for a service station, probably due to the fact that they literally add a 100% surcharge to everything due to being so remote, our neighbour was shouting at the sky most of the night. By the time the alarm went off at 5 am she had worn herself out, so we had a break for a short time, but in the middle of packing she started again.
It’s difficult to describe the shouting, but I’ll try. Firstly, to paint the picture, Lena wore dirty white pyjamas under a dirty and torn cream terry-towelling dressing gown, loosely tied in the middle with the dressing gown belt. The shouting itself was done while standing at attention, but with her head back looking at the sky. Think of a Colour Sergeant shouting orders at a military parade, only with phrases such as “I’m not a belly dancer”, “I don’t know why I am here”, or “If I see my brother I’m going to chop his head off”.
A guy filling up his car came over to me and asked if I knew what she was up to. I told him that I believe the police dropped her off yesterday and left her. The conversation then got a bit bizarre…
Me: The guy in the shop said there was nothing that they could do. In the UK we would call the police or social services as she is clearly not well.
Guy: Are you a socialist?
Me: What’s that got to do with helping someone?
Guy: Are you a socialist?
Me: No I’m not a socialist, I’m a humanist. This lady needs help and all I am asking is a number for someone that can be called to help her.
Guy: You are a f***ing communist. All she needs is a f***ing bullet.
At which point he walked away, got into his car and drove off.
We finished packing and we both cycled over to Lena, who at this stage was just marching around in circles. I told her that I had tried to help, but that there was nobody going to get her out of this one and she needed to try to think of someone to call that might be able to come and get her. She thanked us but started to rant that she had been phoning people all night and was now “wired” and that everyone would be sorry. We felt sad to leave Lena in this state, but with it being the police that left her here in the first place and nobody that should have an idea of an agency that could be called wanting to help, we had little choice other than to cycle away.
Within less than a mile of leaving the service station, we hit the first road closed sign of the day. The National Trails Highway and Route 66 was closed, with the only alternative I-40, which had a sign stating cycles were not allowed. It was a risk cycling through the barriers, as today was a 70-mile cycle, so if we came to an obstacle that we couldn’t’ get around and had to retrace our steps we would be in trouble as we wouldn’t be able to make it to our destination and we with no other towns or even houses out there, we would likely run out of the water as the day heats up.
It was immediately clear one reason the road was closed after we had cycled through the road closed signs. The road surface was crumbling and a challenge to cycle on. We were able to weave in and around the holes and cracks, but any other vehicle would have had to plough straight through, making the road worse and likely damaging the suspension. Clearly the road closed signs were going to be there for a while.
The road was a slight downhill run, but due to the conditions, we were not able to make the most of it. As we cycled on we came across more road closed signs, as if to emphasize that the road was really closed for anyone that might have ignored the previous signs. The only positive in all of this is that we had the road to ourselves. Mile after mile it was like we were the last people on earth cycling through a rather boring desert plain with mountains in the background all around.
Eventually, the road signs changed to “Road Works Ahead”. By this time we were about 15 miles in, so being forced to turn back would have cost us 30 miles, and even then it wasn’t clear if we would be allowed on the I-40. As we had left early, it was still a little before 8 am so we decided to push on a little harder and get through the work zone before 9 am, the time we guessed workman might start work on the road. We came to more barriers across the road ahead, which we guessed was where the work was happening. When we arrived we found that the road bridge had been cordoned off, which was easy to cycle around, but no sign of any work. We continued down the road, within a mile or two coming to another bridge which had also been cordoned off, with no sign of any work happening, so again cycled around and continue on.
We did this more than ten times. One of the bridges had collapsed altogether, so we had to cycle around it through a dried-up river bed. A few others were in a state of collapse, with a whole in the road where it seems water had washed away the bridge foundation. What was clear is that while the road was closed and there were plenty of signs, no working was being done on the road or the bridges, so as long as we could navigate the obstacles we would be fine to continue.
After about 30 miles we passed the last of the barriers, this set informing anyone travelling east the road was closed ahead.
Our few hours of having the wide-open plains and a long straight road to ourselves was at an end. A few more miles down another infinity road we came to the oasis that is Roy’s at Amboy, offering a service station from the time of the Route 66 heyday in the middle of nowhere. The adjoining motel had long since closed, but it was still possible to fill up a fossil fuel-powered vehicle or quench the thirst of a pedal-powered one. We bought an ice-lolly and a couple of cold cans and sheltered in the shade for a while, chatting to a few others passing through as we did so.
We didn’t stay too long as we still had 28 miles to cover, with the first 25 miles being uphill. The most notable change from when we pulled off the road to when we pulled back on it was that our long-absent nemesis had returned, the headwind, just in time for the road to start its attempt to regain the height we had lost all morning. Adding to the misery, the temperature was back up in the mid-thirties again. The scenery didn’t change much to take our minds off the relentless slog apart from the section passing through the Amboy Crater and lava field, but we didn’t have time to climb the volcano cone.
We passed a number of town names on the map that no longer existed on the ground. In fact, of the only town that we went through that had anything marking that it ever existed was the strangely named Siberia, made by the name of the town painted on an old tractor tyre at the side of the road.
Finally, we started our descent down to Ludlow and back out of the desert to join the I-40 that had been responsible for changing a once vibrate road that supported businesses along the way into decaying shacks in the desert.
While it was clear from the newspaper clippings that adorned the walls of Roy’s service station at Amboy that everything is being done to preserve it, it’s likely it will go the way of the others in time, leaving a 70 mile stretch of old Route 66 completely barren.
We arrived in Ludlow at about 4 pm, glad to be finished what was a long gruelling day. The plan was to check in to the only accommodation in Ludlow, the Ludlow Motel. Ludlow in its entirety being centred around a service station, with a motel, cafe and tyre shop to add a little variation. As the motel is connected to the service station, while Deborah was paying for her first brain freezing drink in a long time I asked about a room at the motel. Unfortunately, a crew working on the highway had the rooms blocked out.
The town after Ludlow with accommodation or even an RV park is Barstow, 52 miles further down Route 66 and our planned stop for tomorrow night, so we would need to make do with where we were. The chap that give us the bad news on the motel suggested we could camp beside the motel, so with no other alternatives, we did just that, on a gravel area off the side of the motel car park.
We checked out the Ludlow cafe for food, but it was clear that no vegetarian aware person had any involvement in the creation of the menu, with the only option for us being fries and onion rings.
As we were putting up the tent, one of the guys that were staying in OUR motel returned, dragging along a coolbox. Eddie introduced himself, give us a couple of bottles out of his cool box and headed over to our OUR room. Once we had the tent up we got started on our evening meal. We had been putting it off for weeks, but with little option, the time had come to cook our pasta meals, tomato pasta for Deborah and cheese pasta for me, with powered potato mash for a side dish. Even trying to convince myself it was fuel I only managed to stomach half of it. Deborah managed to eat all of hers, but she is used to her own cooking, so has more of a constitution for awful tasting food.
As we were packing away Eddie came back over and asked if there was anything we needed. He and his fellow highway crew members were sitting outside of their rooms (one of which was OURS) enjoying a barbeque and a few beers. A very nice guy, originally from New York, but now based in Las Vegas, when not blocking out one of the rooms in OUR motel. We said we would accept his offer to fill up our water bottles before we finished for the night, but first, we were heading back over to the service station for Deborah to buy a hot chocolate.
When we returned, Deborah took our water bottles over to get filled while I chatted a little more. While we had heard them plenty during this trip, while we spoke we saw our first coyote as it ran around the back of the motel and past our tent. Our plan was to start tomorrow at 5 am so that we could get over to Barstow early, so we thanked Eddie for being such a nice chap and headed to bed, leaving them to their evening ritual and the music playing. I started to drift to sleep with the sound of the Proclaimers ‘I’m gonna be (500 miles)’ in my ears.
Wow, what a day of (literally) obstacles. Welcome to the beautiful United States! It is certainly colorful, for sure. Poor Lena–as a retired School social Worker, all I can say is there are more of her. Our social services are understaffed and underfunded as well. Our current “President” does not help in this department either. At least you tried. So enjoy following your trip when I can.