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A cold night in the desert, or mucho frio (repost)

First let me apologize for my butchering of Espanol, and my horrendous grammar, lack of punctuation, and bad spelling, I will try and do better.

I am pretty well prepared for any weather, I went to sleep under the light of a huge moon (Las Lunas Grande). To say it was cold is definitely an understatement, I slept in the back of the open car on my Thermarest, wearing silk thermals, under a sub-zero sleeping bag, thick fleece blanket, and a couple flannel sheets, one would think that would have been sufficient, but lets just say if I needed to cut some glass, my nipples would have done the job nicely.

I awoke as the sun was rising; it took about an hour and a couple cups of thick coffee to get my blood pumping again. When my nipples began to soften, and my thumbs seemed almost opposable again I began organizing the car, preparing it to spend the day (or more) alone, I kept considering what was vital and what was expendable, mostly my stuff is secure, but not everything can be locked down.

Once I felt secure that everything was as safe as it could be, I packed a bag of essentials, and headed down the road. The road between has little or no shoulder in most spots, and lots of twists, turns and elevation and sundry sharp stuff.

I decided rolling against traffic would be the best way to travel because at least I could see death coming at me and there were less giant trucks headed South. I can hardly remember being scared of much of anything at any time in my life, but thinking about rolling down that road had be more than a little nervous, and it took some time to get my courage up.

Once I began rolling down the hill, headed north a pickup truck with a giant bull in the back stopped and asked if I needed help, I explained I was headed South not North and they wished me luck, and handed me two ciggarros. As I started down the road again I saw a small car headed fast in my direction, it was maybe half a mile ahead over the next rise, giving me plenty of time to swap lanes, (provided a semi wasn’t headed North at that moment), I stayed close to the center lane so at least I had options. The car saw me and came to a screeching halt, the two men inside the decrepid old Nissan asked if everything was OK (esta bien?). I began to tell them what was up, and they told me they were ranch hands (vaqueros) and need to go feed some animals (comidar los animales) but when the finished they would take me wherever I wanted to go for gasoline.

I happily jumped in the car, and we tried our best to communicate in my bad Spanish and their worse English, (thank God for “lonely planets” Mexican Spanish book) anyways after about 30k we pulled off onto a tiny dirt path headed towards El Rancho, I don’t know what I expected, but when we arrived all I could think of was that place in Kill Bill where Uma Thurman go buried alive. A couple of dogs, a broken down motor home, a pig pen with a giant sow and maybe a dozen piglets, lots of old tires, chickens and goats. One of the goats were lying dead in the hot sun, not yet bloated but no one seemed to mind, expect maybe the living goats, they seemed a little nervous (either they could sense how long it has been since IU have had sex or maybe they didn’t want to end up like their compadre, who knows, if I could have spoken goat I would have assured them they weren’t my flavor). The rest of the ranch was a dozen plastic drums of water and a pallet of feedbags, all of it was owned by a man from Bakersfield.

As minimalist as it was it could definitely sustain a person down here, and was really beautifully if you sat looking in any direction but the actual ranch itself which was pretty well a trash pit.

I played with the two nameless dogs (who seemed more interested in attention that the kibble they were fed) while Jesus, and Christian mixed slop for the pigs and fed and watered the other animals it took less than half an hour, we filled the radiator with water and headed North, fast.

The Nissan began to shimmy and shake somewhere around 70 mph, I think it may have been the steel belts that were showing through the rubber trying to meld with the hot blacktop, somehow it smoothed out around 85 though but I can’t be sure, we stopped back at my car for beer and jello shots, the icy cold Sierra and the processed horse hooves laced with alcohol made the shimmy seem less dangerous for sure…

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