Bike Odyssey 2014 – Day 16 (Sunday June 1st 2014) – Day of rest

A much-needed rest day, with 5 days of riding ahead, two of them longish, before we hit Ventura Freeway (I’ll spare you the refrains – 2 songs at least) and Los Angeles; a day spent napping and idly picturing the life – as many others have – of Mabel (or Mable) Dodge Luhan (or Lujan) Sterne, Queen Mabel whose palazzo (now a glorified B&B) we hope to see tomorrow: Mabel the relentlessly manipulative human being I’m only too glad never to have known, wonderful rich brilliant Mabel with her unsuccessful attempts to unseat the marriages of D H Lawrence and Frieda (another tough nut, probably tougher than Queen Mabel) and Rob and Una Jeffers – a despairing Una did shoot herself in one of the bedrooms of Casa Luhan, but happily recovered.

Plate-throwing Frieda; hubby Lorenzo smashing a long-playing record over her head; are these the distant echoes we should listen for tomorrow? Or Dorothy Brett calling for her ear trumpet (whose name was Toby)? Or the clickety clack of Dorothy typing out Lorenzo’s novels at Rancho Lawrence, just up the road from Mabel’s place, and now owned and cared for by NMU tho’ alas unavailable to visits by casual pilgrims? This evening spent mostly gazing at the Sandia Mountains behind ABQ, a last spur of the Rockies, as sunset cycles them through their astonishing change from gold to orange, through brick to purple, and finally to a bright silver ash. My camera lens can’t capture it. But then again it’s good that there’s something for which you have to actually be here.