Bike Odyssey 2014 – Day 21 (June 6) – Thalassa! Thalassa!

Leaving Barstow. No wonder Tarantino had Uma Thurman buried alive outside Barstow, in Kill Bill. To be in Barstow is to be buried alive. 4000 miles, 1500 of them on Route 66 (ending in ‘Kingman, Barstow, San Bernardino’ as my pal Tommy crooned to me – quoting the Stones & ‘Route 66’ – down the phone this morning) / I-40, and finally we were able to echo Xenophon’s glimpse of the Black Sea near Trebizond after the epic march of the stranded 10,000: The sea! The sea! 60 years ago the Anabasis was the first Classical Greek text I read in class (similar in simplicity to Caesar’s Gallic Wars, which we studied at the same time), as did so many others, once.

The ride to Los Angeles from Barstow included one of the thrills of the trip: on Route 15, as we were about to cascade into its curvaceous 2000-foot plunge (down to 3000 feet above sea level) from the high plains, a blast of cold air met us so strongly that for a moment it seemed less like a change in temperature than a bizarre mistake – as if the doors had blown open on a refrigerator truck right in front of us. We’d become so used to 100-degree-plus riding that the effect of the sudden uprush of cool air was as much alarming as refreshing. The next astonishing this was the worst traffic jam I’ve ever witnessed – more than 30 miles of motionless cars and trucks, mercifully going the opposite way to us, trying to get out of L.A. in the middle of Friday, up 210 through Pasadena to 15. Horrible sight. Not as bad for a/c-equipped car passengers – not as bad as if we were stuck in it at the mercy of the heat.

As always the chief joy of the trip, making otherwise anodyne or noxious coffee and gas stops at gas station food marts into a truly American contrast between the sordid culture and the lively humans who endure (and are addicted to) it. I spent a while with an Atkinson Construction driver whose mother had bought a Harley Softail when she was 65, to ride east across the continent to honor a buddy fallen in the Vietnam War and recorded on the Wall in D.C.

In L.A. we were greeted by our wonderful host and hostess, Eric and Tanya Idle (departing shortly for the gigantic Monty Python reunion in London, soon to be broadcast across the world), and shown to a sumptuous room each, followed by a dinner in honor of one of American’s great contemporary historians, Stephen Greenblatt, whom Eric and I met 50 years ago in Cambridge, when we were all students. I was the surprise guest – I hadn’t seen Stephen since those days – and was the most surprised of all when he instantly recognized and embraced me. Eric had decided to set him a further, even harder test by asking me to expose my naked back to the dinner table and its august gathering (including the distinguished actors Julian Sands and Anjelica Huston, and the prince of magicians, Ricky Jay, who forgave me this display and were all extraordinarily nice to me), in order to see if Stephen could identify the author of the very long German text that tattoos its way all down my back. It’s an obscure piece, but on close inspection of its distinctive style, Stephen identified the author, the philosopher Theodor Adorno – greatly to his credit and everyone’s amazed admiration, and to my huge relief that he hadn’t been elaborately discomfited at an event in his honor!