The Back Roads

I rolled out west on my scooter Friday to visit my dad. He's 86 years old and a source of inspiration to all of us aging pirates. He lives alone, has a girfriend ( he can't get her to play strip cribbage though), and still drives ( but I don't know for how much longer) his big old white caddilac all over McAllen and the surrounding towns.

I got a notion to take the day off, the winds were pretty light, and skies blue and I had the option to sail, but it'd been about a couple of months since I've seen the old man. D was substituting over at the elementary school, and called just as I was getting ready to take off so we met at Manuels for a quick breakfast of chorizo con huevos before I rode, and with a fueled body, I fueled the iron pony, cranked the power on, heading west out the back roads.

The back roads run through towns that pretty much resemble the Rio Grande Valley the way it was when I was a kid. Back in the 1960's there was little urban development, the area was mostly agriculture, and going to the island was an all day experience, once here there was little to do except play in the Gulf of Mexico or fish. Miles of farm fields, brushland and small towns, untouched by progress separated our family home in Mission from the coast. It was an endless expanse of flat two-lane blacktop running east to west, north to south. It's as if the original designers had no concept of anything but the cardinal compass points.

I turn north on Farm Road 1847 just past Bayview, gunning the two wheeler about sixty five, just humming along, all systems go. At FM 106, I turn left (west), and roll along past some of the remaining orchards, some still in blossom, the early morning air heavy with the scent of orange. When I was a kid, learning to drive, it seemed like most of the Valley was orchard, and it was easy to get lost. It was like driving in a maze, and since many of the roads were poorly marked, there were times when I actually was lost, which was OK in those days because gas only cost something like thirty five cents a gallon, and besides, it gave me an excuse to push my grandmothers bald-tired Buick Skylark at insane and unsafe high speeds along the lonely, neverending straight road, always searching for that one different road, the road that led home.

The air begins to turn hot, and then hotter, the farther from the coast I ride. I find myself slowing down for the towns of Rio Hondo on the Arroyo Colorado, Combes and Santa Rosa, all puctuation marks in an otherwise open throttle ride. At the town of Santa Rosa, there's a north joggle where 106 turns into 107. I always wondered what the reason was for this apparent right angle joggle in an otherwise seamless highway. I found out many years ago when taking the first of many geology classes, the professor explained that the surveyors, coming from Cameron County had surveyed FM 107 on magnetic north and the surveyors coming from the opposite direction (Hidalgo County) had surveyed FM 106 on true north, and where they met (Santa Rosa), well....there had to be a compensation for magnetic deviation. I think I would've joggled the roads in less than a ninety degree angle of meeting if I had been the planner. Just a perverse sense of doing something different, maybe show my prodgeny that I really do know more than just the cardinal compass points.

Riding a motorcycle is a sensory experience, as addictive as cocaine or heroin, but driving a car is a mindless job, something best done on internal autopilot. Driving (as opposed to riding) is a brain numbing experience that isolates you from the world, with life as a surreal movie played out in fast forward just on the other side of the windshield. No matter what the commercials try to tell you, the average person usually looks for ways to escape the task at hand when driving in a car, especially in the city. Too often I find myself locked into the jeep, air conditioning on, talk radio jabbering incessantly, the rest of the world blowing by, pretty much unaware that I'm stuck in a steel shell rocketing through an unfelt, unexperienced world with the only sense of travel being the motion of things going by, lost forever just outside the windows.

On the steel horse, experiencing the outside is manditory and without question, you're an integral part of it. Every buffet of the bike in the wind, each gust on your chest, the noise of it in your ears along with the drone of the engine lets you know that you are alive, bound to this world, you are a player in this world, not just traveling through it. At low speeds, the smells and sounds of the world filter through, untouched by glass and air conditioning, some sucked in to the carburetor destined to become the explosion of fuel and air that produces the power that propels you down the road, others sucked into your brain in the explosion of senses that evoke distant or maybe new memories, energy that propels you through life . Just past Santa Rosa, the sugar mill is operating, and I can pretty much taste the sweet odor of sugarcane being processed in the morning air already hot and redolent with the smell of tar and asphalt, blooming wildflowers and native brush which line the searing road, all flashing by in a kaleidoscope of bright color.

I slow down for the towns of Edcouch and Elsa. These towns date back to the early 20th century, when a local gringo developer, Ed Couch named the two nascent cities after he and his wife, Elsa Couch. For many years they were small farm communities north of Weslaco, roughshod composites of little tacquerias and cantinas lining the dusty street, with maybe an auto parts store or a llantaria (tire repair) breaking the monotony of the otherwise unremarkable, flat landscape. From here, the world is truly flat. Today I notice a Pizza Hut, a Stars, a Jack in the Box and a Whataburger all lining the main street of Edcouch. And of course there's the requisite Circle K (Circle Jerk) Wells Fart-go Bank and Auto Zone. Progress marches on.

Nearing McAllen, the traffic begans to mimic any other big town I have ever been in, ever had the misfortune to live in. Consturction, filth and inconsiderate driving, buildings jammed up against buildings, apartments, houses and businesses all within whisper of each other. People living an arms distance from one another, never knowing one another, doors locked, hearts locked. I am claustraphobic, agorophobic, wanting to flee before I finish the task at hand. Why would anyone want to live there? Almost immediately I begin to long for my island, for my stretch of the coast, the endless expanse of wind and wave. I think about just turning the bike around and pointing it east towards the water, where I know we both want to return to, but I complete the journey at my fathers doorstep.

An eternal afternoon spent with the old man, saying adios in the late afternoon heat, sinking into the saddle of my iron pony, once again rolling the throttle on, and with the sun on my back, head east, thankful to be going home.