The worst form of government

Near bottom of paragraph 3 I misspelled specter. Did you get new head shot?
   DB

-------- Original Message --------
Subject: The worst form of government
From: David Brankley <kleybran@gmail.com>
Sent: Saturday, April 23, 2016, 6:12 PM
To: editor <editor@telluridedailyplanet.com>
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      Everything about Donald Trump's candidacy has been surprising. Maybe it's just me. I am shocked that so many in my party ,or drawn to my party at least temporarily by this singular candidate from who knows what political netherworld, would find Trump an acceptable choice for president. Why aren't they seeing what I see? It's a good question. I find myself asking it at least once a day, but then I do think about politics way too much. I have this funny idea that understanding politics, especially the how and why of people coming to their political views tells us something significant about humanity, maybe even more than what shows we watch. Some say the two are related.
      If you're not a Republican you're probably thinking, "Of course he's popular. He speaks to people's fears and appeals to all their bassist instincts. That's exactly what your party has been about since Goldwater and Nixon." I don't think that's a fair assessment, but given Trumps success among a large portion of traditional GOP supporters there's undoubtedly some truth in it.
       In this election cycle you are either very cynical or you're not paying attention. My cynicism has been fed recently by coming across the very scholarly " Democracy for Realists" a book by social scientists Christopher Achen and Larry Bartels. They show that study after study highlights the conclusion that very little of our political thinking results from actual thought. Our opinions grow out of our affiliations rather than lead us to them. Our political opinions are largely an accident of circumstance. We use our rational minds mostly to justify these views, not so much for rearranging them, less still for originating them or changing our minds. Even worse than this finding is that the votes that really count in most national elections come from those who haven't even thought things through enough to have a cogent political opinion one way or the other. This group is unburdened by ideological considerations but surprisingly open to considerations as arbitrary and beside the point as ,for instance, the weather, or the color tie last seen on the candidate under consideration. God help us! These are the people who's spector keeps me up at night. Not only do they vote, often elections turn on their irrational impulses and proclivities .
        When it comes right down to it the state of the weather is just as good a reason for voting for or against a candidate or party as the state of the economy. Consider that there are a multitude of factors to hamper,crash, or promote an economy. There are so many, and the process is so complex ,that otherwise reasonable economists can't come to any sort of consensus. Not even Nobel prize winning economists. Like most of the rest of us they come down on ideological lines on economic questions. Little wonder that the rest of us, who haven't devoted a lifetime to studying economics, reach for any trope that's comes handy to base or justify an opinion. Nothing beats a simplistic answer, especially when it reinforces what we already believe and is accepted by those around us. Unfortunately, simplistic answers never work in economics. Maybe that's why it's called the dismal science.
         Did the Clinton tax hike of 1993 stimulate the economic growth that followed, and help lower the deficit? Well actually the economic boom of that period was largely due to the digital revolution that was making economies all around the world more productive and efficient. The reduction in the deficit ( but not the debt) was due to the stimulation of that tech boom combined with budget slashing measures taken by a largely Republican reformist minded Congress. Of course, that tax hike didn't hurt the economy as many of us feared, and it did help considerably to lower the deficit. How you view those events depends almost entirely on what side of the political fence you sit on.
       We like giving credit to our side whenever we can, and accuse the other side of only hurting the causes we care most about. Both sides, right and left, take this to extremes. So you have two opposing sides, alike in blind loyalty to the faith, determined to not give an inch. In the middle you have those who have somehow arrived at their views without the encumbrance of thought. From such strange preferences and enmitys you get modern politics, Hillary Clinton, Bernie Sanders, Donald Trump, and Ted Cruz. As Churchill said " Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all those others that have been tried from time to time."

Rounding for home

   There comes a time in every journey when you realize it's nearly over. Despite all appearances this isn't it. Today on the rolling steppe of the Eastern Navajo reservation in New Mexico I came over a rise and was surprised by the sudden aberration of the San Juans hovering over the Northern horizon like a brilliant cloud. Because of the lack of landmarks out here either foreground or middle- ground ,snow covered peaks ,even while still one hundred miles away or more, make a distinct impression. The impression is underlined by the realization that my home is up there. Up there is the end of this winter's cycling tour of the Western States.
     If you were to trace this ride on a map it could be confusing. Rather than straight lines and definite objectives there would be curves, loops, ellipticals and diversions. The only discernable theme would be a route that ties together most of the best desert riding the American west has to offer joined to much of the best coastal riding along the Pacific.
     Tomorrow morning I'll be in be in Farmington, noon at the latest. Once there a several day famine from WiFi will be over. I will pour over Facebook and maybe post some photos, check my email, and post this column. The desert doesn't offer a lot in the way of WiFi coverage , or even cell phone coverage. What it offers is a whole lot worth posting about. There are spectacular sunsets, and starry nights, coyote choruses, firey meteors, and overwhelming silence, nature's extravagance amid severe austerity. There are pronghorns, and javalina, ravens, and horned larks , lizards, tortoise, and roadrunners. Roadrunners are throwbacks to the age of dinosaurs. They rarely fly. They use their long legs for chasing lizards across the sand. Their motions are dinosaur-like and so is their general appearance. Unless you're a lizard that appearance is not really intimidating so most people don't make a big deal out of watching roadrunners . Replace those feathers with scales or flesh and the sight of them transports you back a hundred million years in time, an era so fitting to this scenery. Desert travel is time travel. This planet spent a tremendous amount of time doing nicely without us. It's revelatory to keep in touch with that reality. We're not that big a deal and we only just arrived. Here is where we do that.
     I've managed to gain a few extra pounds lately, not in fat or muscle, in dust. The winds have been raging in Northern New Mexico this spring, as they do every spring. What's to stop them? That's how so much New Mexico soil, and Northern Arizona dust end up on our snow most springs. Maybe their loss is our gain but I'm not so sure. I like my snow white. I like me white too, or at least tanned. Instead I've become the color of the desert that surrounds me. So are my clothes. So is my gear. We are all color coordinated at last. All the bottle showers in the world won't remove it. I can feel fresh for an hour maybe, but the dust returns. I'm sort of a magnet for dust I suppose. A real bath would be nice, or a long hot shower. Some of the state parks in Utah have showers. That's all the more reason for heading back to Utah.
   In all these years on a bike saddle I've never been blown over by wind. This spring, about three days ago, in Northern New Mexico I was able to cross that one off my list. I was on Old 66 closing in on Grants. Most of the day I'd enjoyed soul satisfying tailwind but I was making one of those curves I was talking about and now I had it against me. Against me is exactly the way to say it. This wind had it in for me. Suddenly a whirlwind grew around me. I took a glancing left then a powerful right hook that layed me out on the road before I knew what was happening. That may have been a blessing. If I tried to prevent injury I would probably caused it instead.  I was alright, just shaken and sore for a few days.
   I'm only rounding for home at this point. I'm not really headed there. It's too early in the season still. Spring arrives at different times in different places. At 9000 feet it can't be expected to arrive until some time in early May. That's when you can expect me to make the climb up the San Juans and intoTelluride. In the meantime there's more riding ahead, more curvy confusing paths to follow, ellipticals, loop-t-loops, and parabolas. More wind, more dust are in store, maybe another delightful fall, but so are moments of unusual beauty and transcendent peace. It all comes in one package.

Free to choose

   In the 18th century when British explorer Capt. James Cook discovered a spectacular chain of islands in the middle of the Pacific and named them after expedition sponsor the Earl of Sandwich, he had every reason to believe that he had just stumbled upon paradise on Earth. Sandwiche's name would live on for his culinary innovation but those islands are now called Hawaii. It was a place utterly unlike the kingdom Cook had sailed from. Although it was then the richest ,most advanced and powerful empire in the world ,it's capitol contained enormous unhealthy slums, it's countryside had numerous poor and landless. In that age of enormous economic upheaval many of its people were worse off than their serf ancestors.
    Hawaiians, on the other hand wanted for nothing. Nature provided a rich diet in fruit and seafood. Where nature left off Hawaiians supplemented its offerings with the tarro and pigs they had brought with them centuries earlier from Polynesia. Their surroundings were beautiful. The climate was ideal. 
    After initial contact Cook and the scientists on board began to reassess their first impressions .All was not well in paradise. Hawaiians were pitted in conflict with each other. The wars between and within royal households were bloody and protracted, almost genocidal. Their rulers were absolute, and rarely benign. The penalty for allowing your shadow to fall on anyone of royal blood was death. The Hawaiian word taboo applied to a vast code of conduct. The penalties for even accidental slips in decorum could entail execution or banishment. Many, even most of the strictures of taboo appear arbitrary and ridiculous to us.. In Hawaii before Cook's  discovery ,the code of taboo meant everything, and no man or woman dared disobey.
   I've often wondered how and why Hawaiians got it so wrong. They had such a good thing going for them. There was passion fruit and mahi mahi, rich volcanic soil, lush vegetation, and beautiful wahinees, hula and pig roasts on the beach. Why not concentrate on just enjoying what life had to offer? Why mess things up with spiteful warfare and so many meaningless ,wasteful, and harmful rules? With all those natural advantages why discard the opportunity to be the happiest ,freest people on Earth?  I'm not sure I want an answer to those questions. I'm afraid it may be that freedom is not entirely compatible with human nature .Freedom is a burden few of us wish to bare. Hawaii is not an outlier or an anomaly, it's just an extreme example of the problem with human nature.
     In a library a few days ago I'd picked up an article to read about a nine year old super athlete.  Milla Bizzotto had taken up exercise to increase strength when bullies at school were making life difficult. She loved working out .Recently she won top place in her age group in a national test of strength in the form of a grueling obstacle course based on Navy Seals training.  She had this to say," I don't want to play video games. I don't want to Hoverboard. I don't want to do things to make life easier. I want to be comfortable being uncomfortable." . She's my hero. At nine she's already wiser than 99 point something of all the adults I've ever met. Putting the article down I almost shouted her words to the boys playing animated games on the library computers nearby. I managed to restrain the impulse. All the boys looked to me to prefer playing computer games to anything requiring actual physical effort. All were overweight. One was obese. 
   Freedom begins with the liberty to act for ourselves, but once that is possible the extent of our actual freedom depends on what we do with that liberty. Mostly it's squandered. Making bad choices and acting on them, or failing to act deepens our loss of a sense of accountability .Choosing not to grow is choosing to loose ground to our own worst instincts .When we face the results of our own poor decisions, human nature has us looking for external causes to our problems rather than facing our own deficiencies head on. There will always be others to channel our  disfatifications to feed their insatiable need for power. Take a look at the candidates in this election season.
     On a positive note I try to remember that the loss of freedom is not inevitable. When all around you are heading down the wrong path you are free to step aside and set your our own agenda. There's nothing stopping you . Choose freedom, accept accountability over comfort even when it runs counter to popular opinion, respectability, or convenience. It matters.

Special Agent
     Laundry day in Hawthorne Nevada. I didn't get much wrong apart from loading my wash plus soap into the dryer instead of the washer before inserting my quarters and turning on the machine, then waiting thirty minutes for it to thoroughly dry my already dry, but still unwashed clothes. I was just pulling them out when another customer walked in to whome I exclaimed, " Wow, this washer actually dries your clothes too." He noticed my mistake about half a moment before it finally dawned on me. He gave me a look that said, how stupid can you get? Before he could press that point home the camp manager ( this was at the Good Sam campground where I'd stopped to buy a shower and inspired by my new found cleanliness was following that up with some laundry) stopped in to say hello to the man who had just arrived. He asked him if he had caucused, they knew each other, and the Nevada caucuses of the 2016 presidential race had just occurred. Yes , he answered, and he'd "voted for the idiot". There was no question who he was referring to. He meant Trump. He also seemed very proud to have promoted the candidate that he considered an idiot. Trump had won the Nevada caucus. He was winning most of them. The other candidates were helpless to stop him, and unable to explain or understand his broad appeal inside, much less outside the Republican party.
    Apart from the strangers odd way of characterizing his choice for president, and a genius for discriminating between washers and dryers far exceedingly my own, there was nothing about him that struck you as impressive. He looked just like any other old coot living out in the desert. Turns out ,as we talked, and he told me about his life he was much more impressive in life story than appearance. But what do we expect of people who have lived life much larger than the rest of us? Should they resemble the people who play them in Hollywood? My experience is, they seldom do. They tend to look like the rest of us schlubs.
      We got as far back as 1958 in his story. He told me that that was when he was in the military, in Indochina, and he was recruited by the CIA, a career that lasted almost twenty years. He'd killed for his country, and been shot at, he said. It would have been a suspicious story coming from anyone else but I was warming up to him, and still find it all believable. Then came marriage to a beautiful casino floor manager in Las Vegas. After her untimely death he took to drinking and misspent the money she had left him. Much of it went to buying brothels in central Nevada. He had owned three, including the famous Bunny Ranch. It was there he'd had the misfortune of having partners who were skimming off the profits for themselves. This lead to a fight. That led to two bullet holes in his belly which he was happy to show me. The other guy didn't walk away. You don't get into a gun battle with ex-CIA may be the moral of that story.
      Was any of this true? Was all of it or none of it? Who knows? Might make a great book really. Someone could buy the movie rights. Someone could play a younger, slightly more chiseled version of our hero. I'm thinking ,Matt Damon.
     I eventually got those confusing machines worked out, which one was dry and which one was wet, and in what order to use them. I rode out of Hawthorne cleaner, happier, and wondering about all the schlubs out there. They've all got some kind of story to tell. An hour alone with them in the laundromat of a one horse town might be enough to throw off all your first impressions, or maybe just confirm your harshest suspicions. Maybe you just need to pick the right laundry, or the wrong machine.

Populist times, populist choices

     "Populism is an impulse ,not an ideology". Historian Michael Kazin

       This may go down as the most entertaining election for president of our lifetime. You can substitute the word "entertaining" with disturbing, or saddest ,or disastrous if you like. I'm not saying that this election makes me hopeful ,or bolsters my faith in democracy, I'm just pointing out that even when life appears hopelessly out of kilter there is still some amusement to be had.
        Nothing could be more preposterous than the campaign of Donald Trump; preposterous, and apparently unstoppable. He is managing to do what no leading Republican presidential candidate has done and which all have strived for over the last thirty years. He is attracting new blood into the grand old party. His appeal crosses all lines of color, education, ideology, and religious commitment. There seems to be no common denominator to the Trumpians except a generally right of center point of view and a mistrust of Republican party leaders. That ought to define Cruz's support. His Senate career has been all about sticking it in the eye of party leaders, while holding down the right of the party of the right. He has a track record. He has the rhetorical style of a street preacher, but he lacks Trumps gift of banter and over the top bluster. This has brought to Trump the votes that Cruz has failed to win. The message that he presents more skilfully and authentically is muffled by the noise of the Trump circus.
         If you're looking for consistency in the Trump campaign, or evidence of core beliefs you're looking in the wrong direction. What you get from the Trump campaign is Donald Trump, and whatever he happens to believe, or says he believes at that moment. Over the the last sixteen years as Trump has been considering a run, or running for president ,he has changed his views on almost everything. Recently we saw an astounding triple reversal in a three day period. 
        You may have guessed I'm not a Trump fan. That's not to say I'm feeling the Bern either. Bernie represents an opposing populism to Trumps right of center approach. Populism crops up from time to time in American politics, especially during traumatic times. The great depression saw the rise of left wing populist movements ;Father Coughlin and Hughy Long. At the end of the tumultuous 1960s former Democrat governor George Wallace ran as an independent candidate for President to the right of Republicans and Democrats and did a better job of threatening the two party monopoly than anyone apart from Theodore Roosevelt in 1912. The message of populism is this : The people are the rightful rulers and their influence is being usurped by powerful and unscrupulous elites. It's time to take back our party. It's time we take back our nation and throw the bums out! I suppose there's something to be said for that. Does that make me a populist? Populists rarely self identify. I guess that's the second reason for suspecting me of populist tendencies. I deny that that I am one.
       Sanders populism identifies Wall Street bankers as the culprits of choice. Billionaires ,and the rest of the top one percent are not far behind. Somehow in the Sanders imagination if we can get a hold of the piece of their wealth that is truly excess and spread that out to the more deserving we will become another Sweden. Want will be banished, neighbor will look after neighbor, education will be free, and we'll all be driving solar powered Volvos. Oh, happy day!
         Somewhere between Trumps chameleon flexibility, and Sanders democratic socialism, and Cruz's thundering sermons, there must be some less offensive choice in this election. This quieter, more sensible choice would be a doer rather than a blusterer. They would have a track record for getting things done, bringing people of disparate viewpoints together and hammering out consensus, or standing in the way of popular folly when that is called for, and bending popular will to their greater courage or insight like Churchill or Lincoln. They would not be facing indictment for recklessly exposing vital secrets to enemy agents and hackers then lying about it. They would not have a past record of unseemly financial arrangements, or a history of facilitating the threatening of victims of their husbands unwanted sexual advances, or the reputation assassination of those who came forward. I'm asking too much. It's a bit like asking for normal times when the cosmic calender has you scheduled for interesting times instead. In times like these all you may be able to do is sit back and enjoy the show, or at least find a little time for laughter between the tears.

A trappers improbable tale

  Hugh Glass was born near the end of the 18th century. For someone who would make his name in the untamed American west this was either the perfect time to come into the world or the worst. The territory that would later form the western States was raw, primordial, without cities or towns west of St. Louis, hostile to outsiders, and dangerous to anyone that lived there. America had bought this territory from Napoleon when he needed the money to wage war against the British Empire while Glass was still a boy, The United States lacked the resources, or even the population to fully claim it. Into the breach stepped adventures, traders, and entrepreneurs. Glass was among them.
   One version of his story has him becoming the captive of Gulf Coast pirate Jean Lafitte and pressed into service to man his fleet. After his escape from life as as a pirate he went westward to join  the Pawnees, or perhaps, taken captive by them before winning freedom. He took a Pawnee wife and later joined a delegation of chiefs to represent the tribes interests in Saint Louis.., When Saint Louis trader, General William Henry Ashton  assembled a hundred trappers to establish his financial empire in the Rocky Mountains, Glass was chosen as a guide. Ashton business model was innovative, and characteristically American.  His beaver trappers would be largely self financed free trappers. Up until then the fur trade in North America had relied on native Americans to do the trapping, and hired men ( engages) to do the trading. What Ashley introduced was a little like Uber going up against entrenched taxi interests.  It was wildly successful, and it would change the history of the west beyond anything that had happened since the Louisiana Purchase.
    Glass became famous not as a successful trapper or even an explorer, but for the awful mauling he received from a Grizzly sow and his overcoming those injuries after being left for dead by his companions. His story became entwined with the story of the western fur trade. It's also the basis of the Oscar winning film the Revenant starring Leonardo DiCaprio. His struggle to survive was almost super human, and if anything, even more dramatic and improbable than the drama captured on film. 
    I loved the movie, but was disappointed to find it had played so fast and loose with the story as it has been recorded. I don't fault it for moving the action  from its Great Plains setting to the Rockies. The cinematography is stunning, and the setting more in keeping with the old west as we imagine it. Anyhow, where can you film in the Dakotas that looks anything like that territory before large scale farming, powerlines and roads, the damming of its rivers, or fracking?
     Ashton's hundred would become the vanguard of the movement that would discover the ranges and valleys of the western United States long before other European Americans would arrive on their way to the oilfields of California or the forests of Oregon. After the beaver of the American west were nearly wiped out from trapping those trappers who against all odds were still alive, would guide explorers and  surveyors, and emigrants. Manifest destiny was their destiny, made manifest. Their trails became the west's highways, as their camps would become our cities and towns.
       In the almost two centuries since Glass's ordeal so much has changed. It's astonishing that much of the scenery has not.
       As an itinerant bicyclist in the west, looking for a little adventure I move daily through scenes that excite the history buff in me. This last week I cycled from the Northeastern corner of California to Pyramid Lake in Nevada, then South to the Eastern side of the Sierra Nevada range, Mono Lake and the Owens Valley. Wagon trails passed through here during the California gold rush. Kit Carson, himself a former trapper, guided the explorer John C. Fremont across this same route so little changed by the passage of time. To see what they saw, to drink from the same springs and bath in the same hot springs, to watch the moon's rise over the mountains as they did, is a privilege and a thrill. The trail is a little smoother for the grading and the paving, the ride a little faster on two wheels, but the continuity is astonishing. Best of all there's so little danger anymore of being mauled by angry bears, or pierced with arrows .
    

Desert Traveler

     My flight from Philadelphia to Las Vegas on Wednesday night was delayed three hours while we waited for a storm to pass through Las Vegas. We arrived at McCarran a little after midnight. I tried sleeping in the airport. Wasn't very successful. Dawn through the large airport Windows revealed fresh snow on surrounding mountains almost as low as the valley.    
      Only three goals for Thursday;  get bike out of storage unit, obtain food for the following week, and get bike, myself, and food past the edge of town, into the desert for a place to sleep in seclusion. I was asleep by six and didn't rise from bed till dawn, which came at six.
    Seven weeks out of the saddle is long enough for a body to grow fat and soft. When I returned to Las Vegas last week to be reunited with my bicycle and return to this winter's tour I was in less than ideal shape. No matter , the best way to get back in touring shape is to go out and tour, the rest will take care of itself. Fortunately, Las Vegas provides the westbound toured with the perfect opportunity to get back into shape in a hurry. First you have to climb over Mountain Spring Pass with its elevation gain of 3500 feet. If that seems too easy then add a weeks worth of food to your bike trailer. It's a long way from Vegas to the next super market.
       On the climb I met a cyclist heading the other way, going from California to Colorado and another at the summit going my way to the coast but much faster and without all the camping. Over many years of desert travel I've run into only a handful of winter desert touring enthusiasts. Here were two on the same day, an auspicious start.
        Camped that night in the dunes near stump spring , a stop on the old Spanish trail in the early nineteenth century. From this vantage point I could see the lights of Pahrump to the north as well as the sweep of headlights coming down mountain springs pass about fifteen or twenty miles to the east. Sunset was spectacular that evening due to the dramatic clouds being torn from the Springs range and mt. Charleston by the wind.
          The old Spanish Trail connected the former Spanish colony of New Mexico with the towns, missions and ranches of California between 1826 and the Mexican war of 1848. In its earliest years it was an honest, if grueling trade route. In later years it devolved into an outlaw trail for moving Piute slaves and stolen California horses to New Mexico. Kitt Carson famously used it to transfer some of the first samples of ft. Sutter gold to Washington D.C. sparking the California gold rush. It passes through Vegas as well as Moab Utah and San Bernardino California, though most communities along its path are little aware of its significance, it's history, or even of its existence. On many of my desert rides I've enjoyed following its several paths. It's fabulous story adds dimension and depth to otherwise aimless wandering.
        The next day I leave the Spanish Trail at Tecopa hot spring to head north to Shoshone and the the trickle of the Amorgossa river. At Shoshone there are a large number of cars parked, something I've never seen there. As I get closer I see the reason why. An enormous line of people have lined up to enter its only store to by lottery tickets. The line appears to stretch for a quarter mile. These are Las Vegans who have come to this outpost of California to try their luck at the power ball lottery which has entered historic proportions. All will fail to win. Several days later it will roll over to amount to over a billion and a half dollars. Unless the traveled further to buy their lottery tickets at Chino Hills, or Tennessee or Florida the will have purchased them in vain again, at least for that grand jackpot to be split three ways.
           I camped north of Shoshone along the Amorgossa a little south of Death Valley junction. I found a coconut stuck in the mud there and broke it open . It fed me for days. Why a coconut would fall so far from any tree I didn't ask. You take what you can get when it's offered to you. Why question?
          From Death Valley junction where there is an improbably situated hotel with an improbable story of a ballerina willing a once decrepit motel back to life through her art the trail sets west again to Death Valley itself. The pass is easy to reach, with minimal grade, rewarded with eighteen miles of steady, exhilarating descent to Furnace Creek ,the headquarters of the national monument. From there, armed with new maps, I head to Stovepipe Wells and a night in the dunes. The National Monument is a difficult place for free camping. It's part of the National Park service, which frowns on such behavior, and it's mostly open desert land, which doesn't allow itself to easy concealment. You've got to know the territory pretty well, or be extraordinarily lucky to make it happen. It's part of my religion to never pay for a campsite and avoid campgrounds altogether. This is not a religion recognized by the Federal government or any of its branches.
         The next day finds me on the very long ascent to Towne Pass, then veering southward for the still longer ascent of Emigrant Pass. It takes me all day. I begin the descent near sundown, passing a herd of wild burros along the way, as I drop into Wildrose Canyon, which is blessedly wet, fed by a small spring, at its head. A little picnic ground, two or three miles further down, provides a place to sleep conveniently out of the rising wind. Not much chance of being discovered here, the park has closed the road due to washouts.  I have the Panamint mountains all to myself, and the delicious sound of wind of Palm fronds being shaken by the wind to lure me into sleep.
          Wednesday it was south through Panamint valley to Trona. Trina is an odd town of tar paper shacks and unpaved streets like something out of the third world. The major industry is the extraction and processing of minerals from Searles Lake, an enormous dry lake about fifteen miles east of Ridgecrest. As I passed through town I went by the only other cyclist in town at that moment, a black man, who looked up and declared " a desert traveler". I guess I look it. Ill own it.