Salvador Dali's gas station

June 2008: It's already hot as we leave the hotel in the morning in Ehrenberg, Arizona, and cross the state line into California. We're looking for a gas station because the one next to the hotel was packed with cars and some of the pumps weren't working, which guaranteed sweaty, irritable waits. We'd endured soul-killing heat throughout Arizona and I was too tired to fill up the night before.

The bike has enough fuel to get us into Blythe and we sail across the Colorado River bridge on I-10, getting no relief from the heat even over water. The sun is glaring. I pull into the first station, an Exxon just off the highway. It's on the edge of agricultural fields that are baking in the heat, dry, dusty acres impossibly kept alive only by irrigation. It's about 105 degrees already and the air is still and dry. Even the cement of the road looks bleached. "How could anyone live here?" I wonder.

There is little relief even under the awning over the pumps. Linda gets off the bike and heads for the store. I pull the bike onto its centerstand, put my helmet on top of the gas pump, and fumble for the credit card. While filling the tank I look around. There's a small green metal shed with doors standing open that's filled with old soda and beer cans. A collection point of some kind. A forlorn motel sits next door. The station itself is quiet and nearly deserted, only one other car or two.

I finish refueling and Linda returns. She stays with the bike as I go inside to use the restroom. When I come out, she's talking with a woman who has seen the bike and wandered over, curious. She's deeply tanned and dressed to be looked at, sunglasses, sandals, shredded cut-offs, and a ragged shirt tied up under her breasts, leaving her belly bare. You can't help but notice her muscular physique, like a female weightlifter, but there's something wrong, because she looks wasted somehow, as if she'd spent a week in rehab before being kicked out. "She's going to ask Linda for money," I think.

But she doesn't. Instead she's telling Linda most of her life story, how she was a bodybuilder in California and did pretty well, but then had some sort of medical problem that required brain surgery and a plate in her head.

She and her husband stay at the motel next door after he lost his truck driving permit and they're collecting cans and she should be taking medication but the medicine doesn't really work for her so she drinks beer instead, calling it self-medication. Linda gently suggests this may not be a good idea, and the woman says she knows, but…

I catch movement out of the corner of my eye and turn to see a Hispanic man, a little older than me, pulling a kid's wagon with a makeshift awning on it -- four sticks and a towel stretched above. It's piled with junk and cans and two small dogs are sitting in it, in the shade. They have to be dying out here, I think, and the man pulls the wagon up to the hose at the station's side and gives the dogs some water. They drink and he goes inside.

The bodybuilder is telling Linda she knows the man and that he collects cans, and she and her husband look after him. The man comes outside carrying a small bag of ice, which he puts in the wagon.

I search the pockets of my riding suit, looking for cash because I have to give this guy something, anything. And I don't have a damn thing on me. I used up the last of my cash late last night in Ehrenberg because the truck stop's credit card machine wasn't working and we were buying food.

I find only four crumpled dollars but take them to the man. I put them in his hands and say "Vaya con Dios, señor," the only Spanish I know, and in English he says, "in the name of Christ Jesus, amen," and I walk back to the bike, ashamed of the four dollars, ashamed I can't change anything for him, ashamed that I'm leaving him and his dogs in the heat.

The bodybuilder says good-bye and we climb back aboard the bike and I watch the Hispanic man leave. Where he is going I can't imagine but later I will find him, again and again, burned into memory as he pulls the wagon and the dogs sit resigned and the ice bag melts, down the silent bone-white road, in the heat, in the sun, in the heat.

The 1964 odyssey

June 2002: I think my fascination with motorcycles truly began in February 1964 when Robert McDaniel, an adventurous uncle of mine, rode a black 305cc Honda Dream from San Diego to Cleveland, more than 2,000 miles.

He intended to ride to Florida to see his parents (my grandparents) but learned enroute they were in Ohio. He turned north in New Mexico, riding U.S. 70 where he passed through starkly beautiful country. He paused on the roadside for a smoke near the craggy mountains of Organ, N.M., and dreamed of Indians crossing the valley floor.

He had not anticipated riding north and was ill-prepared; his gear consisted of a leather jacket, Levis, light gloves, and three-quarter helmet with face shield. It was warm when he left California but he ran into a blizzard in central Ohio and skidded off an icy road and was nearly hit by a delivery truck.

But he toughed it out, kept going and finally arrived; Instamatic photos show him exhausted and disheveled in a black motorcycle jacket, images of family legend.

I tell you of his ride because it was the first pivotal moment in my personal history; I was six years old and it seized my imagination. We recreated his ride in June 2002 and stopped at the same place he did 38 years earlier; the mountains were still stark and serene.

Crossing paths

June 2007: Fleeing the desert heat, I refuel the motorcycle at the Shell station in Gila Bend, Arizona. Interstate 8 is a lonely road across the heat sink between Casa Grande in the east and Yuma to the west and this Gila Bend station is a well-known oasis to us; it's a truck stop on the edge of town and a good place to stop, guzzle Gatorade, pause in the shade, and stuff your neck bandanna with ice in preparation for the next leg of desert travel. It's 102 degrees and rising.

I park the bike in the spotty shade of a palm tree and we put our helmets and riding jackets on one of the three aluminum picnic tables beneath an awning. In the desert, finding shade is the key, especially when you're on a motorcycle; otherwise, the sun bakes the seat and handlebars and you feel as if you're climbing into an oven when you saddle up. And you always put your helmet in shade, or, better yet, take it with you into the air-conditioned store. Leave your helmet to bake during a rest stop just once and you'll never do it again.

Back home, I have photographs taken here from cross-country bike rides that started nine years ago. The place looks about the same; the endless clay pots and figurines lined up for sale outside the building and bottled drinks in frosty cases inside. In the restrooms, the water from both taps is warm. At the store counter, one clerk tells me, "Woman asked me why there's no cold water. I told her, 'you want cold water in Gila Bend, you come in December.'"

This station used to be a Texaco, but corporate deals have turned it into a Shell. Lots of vacationers stop here, many recreational vehicles and SUVs, whose occupants spill out of their air-conditioned compartments in search of drinks and bathrooms and look shocked as they're hit by the heat. There's no such surprise for a motorcycle rider.

Linda wanders back inside the store and I stay to watch the bike, our gear, and the land beyond. A few miles away, the desert is silent except for the wind; here, the station's air conditioner rattles and a diesel idles out back.

The relentless heat and remote isolation of Gila Bend never fail to move me. I marvel at how far removed this place is, lost in the desert, and how difficult it must have been for early travelers without gas-powered engines, air conditioning, or ice.

As I sit there, heat-sapped and lost in thought, a rider on black Harley-Davidson touring bike pulls in and shuts down behind my BMW. Motorcycle riders commonly seek each other out at rest stops and such places; it's a chance to swap stories, compare destinations, and sometimes see if the other guy is suffering as much as you are.

The Harley rider takes off his helmet, revealing thick gray hair, and relaxes a moment on the saddle. "Nice bike," he says to me, in greeting.

"Thanks," I say. "Where you headed?"

"San Diego," he says. "You?"

"We just came from there. We're headed back East to Cleveland, and then home to Washington."

"Really?" he says. "I live near Cleveland."

"No kidding?" Cleveland is more than 2,000 miles from here. "My parents live in Bedford Heights," a suburb.

"I grew up in Bedford," he says.

"Did you go to Bedford High?" I ask.

"Yes, I did."

"That's amazing," I say, and I stand up and put out my hand. "George Petras, class of '76."

He shakes my hand. "Terry Salvi, class of '76."

Out of the rain

August 2006: I'm on the motorcycle, rolling westbound on I-10 outside of El Paso in western Texas in the early evening when I see a huge dark cloud build up to the south. It's so impressive I stop and take a few pictures as I put on a jacket.

The cloud keeps growing and getting darker, promising rain (rare for this part of the country). When the rain finally comes down, hard, I bail, looking desperately for a building with an overhang -- a car wash, a bank with a drive-through window, a funeral home (don't laugh, I spent an hour at one during a downpour in Eddyville, Kentucky).

In Socorro I find a darkened school administration building with a recessed entry way and nearly empty parking lot and I ride the bike right up the handicap ramp. The entry is 30 feet wide, 10 feet deep, and totally dry. Perfect!

A stack of sandbags lines one inside wall. I back the motorcycle into the opposite corner and set her up on the centerstand. Then I put my helmet and gloves on the top row of sandbags and sit down...I find it's really comfortable, because the wall is angled inward toward the windows, giving me a natural place to recline.

I relax on the bags and watch the rain pour down. I'm dry and I have a half bottle of Gatorade and a package of peanut butter-and-toast crackers. Things could not be any better...I feel almost smug. The rain continues to alternate between moderate and ferocious.

A little over an hour later, the main door opens and a janitor comes out. He glances at me, says hello in a friendly way, and turns to watch the rain.

"Hi," I say. "I'm going to give it another 20 minutes and then take off. I should be going anyway."

"Oh, no problem," he says. "Just watch out for the black widows."

"Black widows?" I say. "Where?"

"There," he says, and points in my direction. "They like to hide in the sandbags."