Day Eighty Three: Austin to Middlegate Station
Distance: 64 mi.
Song of the Day: Sleepwalk — Santo & Johnny
6AM: Find a water spigot on a playground in Austin’s recreational area; it’s two feet off the ground but I manage a shameful but much-needed shower by kneeling and stuffing the spigot into the front and back of my swim trunks, hand soap from the nearby bathroom stall helps scrub away some grime. Then I wash my head, neck and back on all fours.
The diner so disappointingly shuttered last evening is open now; you can judge for yourself how desirous a hot meal would be based on the aforementioned shower experience. I eat a breakfast combo that provides all the breakfast staples, including a pancake; Lizzie and I share a coffee and orange juice, then descend the switchbacks at the west side of Austin into cloudless, unliving desert.
Ride fast and hard. Thirteen miles from Middlegate Station Lizzie’s had enough of the feverish pace so we break for Eastgate station. Hundreds of tents and encampments represent the heaps of volunteer firefighters and medics who flew into the area to battle the fire storms ravaging the area. The encampment has a single building, a white ranch house converted into a small convenience shop and restaurant/bar. We each eat an ice cream sandwich while chatting with a man hired onto Tesla’s Gigafactory, which has just pumped out its first car from the production line, a major accomplishment despite the car being riddled with defects (man explains he’s a mechanical automation engineer contracting to solve them.) Lizzie murmurs to me: I could eat another ice cream sandwich. ‘Me too,’ I say and hand her money to buy two more.
Reach Middlegate Station, this one has a few trees throwing shade onto the encampment. There’s no power lines and it seems likely the whole operation runs on well water and a rickety gas generator. If you’ve seen the Mad Max movies, you’ve sen this place.
We slip into a small table in the back of the air conditioned diner/pub and stretch out a sandwich and a beer over a long number of hours. Lizzie sneaks some trail mix under the table — it’s never polite to bring outside food into a restaurant. At some point the whole establishment begins to reek of gasoline and the population pours outside into the heat. Firefighters are called in from Eastgate to pile flame retardant onto a gas leak somewhere. It isn’t clear that the restaurant actually re-opens — seems more likely that the cook gets tired of new passers-by driving in and wrenching open the door, which has no lock — eventually we shrug and head back inside ourselves.
When the sun begins to set we grab another water from the fountain and meander off into desert rock and sagebrush to camp somewhere. It’s utterly aimless, and we go until the generator isn’t so numbingly loud. Camp under a panoply of stars and clouds until the clouds win the day and drip a few drops of rain onto us, late twilight or early dawn, you wouldn’t be able to tell the difference if you were as tired and dry-eyed as I am.
