Into The Valley-of-Death Valley: Meaty, Beatty, Big and Bouncy

It seemed like a good idea at the time. “Death Valley 350”, the flyer read. “2-Day Adventure Bike Tour”, it went on, with some fine-print stuff about a “Dual Sport” route along the bottom. 

“Sounds like fun”, said I. In the same upbeat way people must have looked forward to that festive first voyage of the Titanic.

One of my riding buddies, Oliver Rathlein, had been talking up these dual sport rides for years. “What the hell?” I thought. “Normal people do it—how hard could it be?

I prepped my DRZ400S, and myself, as best I could. 4-gallon IMS tank? Check. Watermelon-sized Camelback? Check. And a huge tube of Butt Butter, the miracle lubricant that, slathered like Subway mayo inside one’s bike shorts, is supposed to prevent the most hideous forms of buttockal gangrene. 

Things started looking bad about two minutes in, when we rode off the pavement in front of the Ridgecrest Wal-Mart and into a mushroom cloud of dust. Bikes were zagging and roosting in all directions, and it took just eight panicked heartbeats to lose my buddies.

The strip-chart of the route, rolled in my spanking new holder, was about as helpful as a dictionary is to a dolphin. I was faced with a Rosetta Stone of numbers and bizarre hieroglyphics: Let’s see, at 3.65 something, I either do a double back flip, flashing a peace sign, or turn into the Egyptian god Thoth—half man, half raven. 

As the dust settled, to my great relief, Oliver and company reappeared. Then disappeared over the horizon, commencing the grim process of beating me into a gasping, heaving, twitching pulp.

It became clear that there was an “easy way” and a “hard way”. “Easy” would be merely life-threatening. “Hard?” A brutal mix of masochistic and suicidal. It was also clear that these guys—Oliver, Gary, Greg and Jim, on their featherweight, state-of-the-art KTMs and Huskys and WRs—would rather floss with barbed wire than take the “easy” way.

After 20 soul-killing miles, through sand and rocks and cliffs and a flat tire, we coasted into a pile of industrial wreckage called “Trona”. I was ready to feed my head between the chain and the rear sprocket, just to make it all stop. “That was the hardest part”, said a perky, sweat-free Oliver—a phrase he was to repeat about every five miles. For the next 350.

“Dual Sport” sounds so sunny, so life-affirming. The ride I had imagined was a carefree romp, rolling free under azure skies, taking all the time in the world to at least see, if not smell, the spring flowers. Instead, I was grunting through the off-road equivalent of the Bataan Death March, bashing and lurching across four mountain ranges, in two states, before I could fall over and die.

Scenery? Don’t make me laugh. It took every neuron I had just to keep breathing. I once glanced up and saw a big striped butte. It’s called “Striped Butte”, I later learned. In the two seconds I was looking up, I hit a rock the size of a lunch box and nearly stuffed my head into the sand like a lawn dart. Didn’t look up again.

Because we were on such a fun-loving, relaxed schedule—190 miles of rocks and rubble the first day—we didn’t have time to eat. Surrounded by loud, sunburned Harley guys in jaunty Nazi helmets, we wolfed down Clif Bars and sucked on our Camelbacks at an aptly named place called Furnace Creek. Then went on bashing, sliding, wobbling and, in my case, dreading what I knew awaited.

Weeks before Oliver had warned: “There’s only one place that’s really difficult. There’s a ‘step up’”..and his voice trailed off, as if the details were too horrible to speak out loud. 

When I came around the corner and saw Oliver’s “step up”, I nearly browned my Butt Butter. In a jeep-wide, solid-granite canyon, there it was, a ten-foot-high scale model of Hoover Dam blocking the road.

By this point, my hands looked, and felt, like steak tartare doused in Tabasco. My legs were so hashed, it was taking me two or three tries to stand up on the pegs. My brain had defaulted to “limp home” mode 30 miles back. 

What could happen?

I did the only smart thing I had done all day. I turned to Oliver and said, in a quavering, yet resolute voice: “You ride the goddam thing up that.”

Which he did. Oliver now has a season’s pass for beers, any time I can persuade him to sit down and drink like a normal person. 

Somehow, as the sun sank and the dust settled deep into my lungs, I made it to Beatty, Nevada, a tiny town with a smoky casino, rusting mine equipment, and a gas station named Eddie’s World, complete with ten-foot-high photos of Eddie as an apple-cheeked boy.

OK, the next day was easier. If it hadn’t been, I’d still be out there. Smoother roads, beautiful vistas of snowcapped peaks and salt-encrusted valleys, and a long chat with George, the sole permanent resident of Ballarat, California. George has already died three times…“So I know a little something about it,” he advised. According to George, when the time comes, you’ll see a light “Like a headlight in the fog, you know?”

Somehow, I managed to keep from dying even once.  Even made it back to The Minivan, after fighting a 50-knot headwind the last few miles, complete with flying sand that felt like so many acupuncture needles.

Got back home Sunday night. Thursday was the first day I could make it down the stairs while bending my knees normally.

Can’t wait for next year.