1984 Revisited

Lots of stuff happened In 1984. The Olympics came to Los Angeles, we lost Marvin Gaye, and Harry Dean Stanton was in Repo Man and Paris Texas.

I was planning to start graduate school at the University of Iowa in the fall and I desperately wanted to spend the summer on a bike.   I connected with a couple of friends that were thinking the same thing and we rode out to California.

There were lots of adventures along the way.  Like a Basque Festival in Idaho that included feats of strength, free beer and chorizo sausage.   And there were tornadoes in Nebraska that left us seeking refuge in a jail... and plenty more.

Well, I recently reconnected with one of the guys I rode with that summer when he bought a set of Ironweeds.  It turns out he had a bunch of slides from the ride that he passed on to me.  I had the local camera shop convert them to digital.  Here are a few of  the slides from that trip.

Breaking camp in the wind and rain. The first week of the trip featured brutal headwinds and plenty of rain.

Taking shelter from an early morning tornado in a subterranean city park rest room. I think it was Imperial, Nebraska.

There are several road-side repair photos.

Siesta.

Dinosaur National Monument

Giant Sequoias in Humboldt County.

A little tire repair theater to dramatize the desolate. Somewhere on a road in Nebraska. Flat and straight, you could see a car approaching from a mile away.

High desert campsite... Utah maybe?

We'd gone about 80 miles with no services and ran out of water. We finally reached this convenience store and I bought a bottle of Gatorade. That was back when there was but one "flavor" and it came in a glass bottle. I chugged it, got nauseous, and then took a nap in the gravel next to the building - the only shade for miles.

A quote from The Seekers by John Masefield.

On the beach - Trinidad CA.