MM2000: Englishmen in the Desert
by george perfect

The first journey for Leo and I involved just a short plane ride. This was followed by a somewhat longer plane ride whose discomforts were only somewhat reduced by the thoughtful provision of Nintendo games in the in-seat entertainment consoles. I slept.
    Paul’s wife, Freda, met us at San Francisco airport and tackled the most arduous part of our journey—that through the commuter traffic that extended all the way to Sacramento where Paul and Freda have their beautiful turn-of-the-century home. On this occasion Leo and I were no more than B&B lodgers as we were up with the jet-lagged lark early on Saturday morning and on the road in Paul’s lovingly prepared Bora by 8:30am, shamefully leaving Paul to worry whether restoration of his Indy would be finished in time for Monterey in just the next few days.

Saturday, 12th August—
Sacramento to Elko

I have a complaint. For such a big country you have awfully small maps. At home I can cover the generally accepted unit of map distance (the “thumb”) in about 20 minutes. It took almost four hours to reach our first rest stop east of Reno which by my reckoning is only four-and-a-half thumbs from Sacramento.
    The weather as we left Sacramento was typically Californian: blue sky, warm breeze but with temperatures threatening to rise alarmingly as the day progressed. I say “alarmingly” not because we Northern Europeans enjoy a somewhat cooler climate but because the Bora’s air conditioning was not working. This fact would prove significant as we headed into the desert.
    Leo’s navigational workload reduced as we turned on to the ramp for I-80 East, a road we had no need to deviate from until we reached Salt Lake City two days later. As the road climbed the western flanks of the Sierra Nevada range and we entered the Tahoe National Forest the majesty of the scenery struck me once again. The air was cooler up here and, once through Emigrant Gap and descending towards Reno, traffic thinned and the road provided a few bends to alleviate the monotony of cruising at what seemed to both me and the Bora an unnaturally low speed. Honestly, I was only thinking of the car when I occasionally allowed it to clear its throat.
    Leo is a veteran of many of my daft escapades in various Maseratis and claims that 3000 miles in a Bora is less exciting than 30 miles in a 450Sr*, though I suspect that this has something to do with his need to wear full-face helmet and a race suit for a run to the local shops. In any case as a thoroughly modern young man he would rather die than display enthusiasm. However a flicker of interest had momentarily appeared when he saw the words “Indian Reservation” on the map just east of Reno. I was instructed to refuel at Wadsworth.
    Thoughts of tepees and blazing saddles were quickly dispelled as we drew up to the gas station and general store. Our still pale complexions must have revealed that we were from out of town because nobody objected to me filling the Bora’s tank before handing over a credit card. Inside the store the native “produce” largely consisted of six-packs of ice-cold cola and bags of potato chips so large that Leo might have used one as a sleeping bag. Leo looked disappointed so I filled him up with Coke (we had yet to discover the thirst-quenching properties of Frost Flavor GatorAid) and drove on.
    Before leaving England we had received lunch invitations from Reno residents Sam Dibitonto and Harry Keast but I had declined explaining that we would see them when we returned for an overnight stop in Reno in just a few days time and that we still had many long American thumbs to travel before finding our beds that night in Elko. Months earlier I had asked Paul, Sam, Harry, Seymour, and just about everyone else I knew about driving conditions and sight-seeing opportunities along I-80. Years of work by your Highway Patrol’s PR department were destroyed in just a couple of emails assuring me that the risk of being hauled off to jail for exceeding 60mph was slim. As to the scenery, all I heard was the sound of laughter.
    It’s a strange and possibly sad fact that we tend to dismiss the familiar and seek out only what is novel. Driving along I-80, we didn’t sightsee. We gawped! To us the sight of desert brush, hot springs, and semi trucks the size of our village qualify as novel. As our journey progressed we learned to appreciate the subtly changing colors of the desert landscape as the local flavor of ground-down mountain varied and the Humboldt River wound its cobalt blue way in and out of view.
    And surely we are not the first travellers to discover the sport of gopher-spotting? This proved to be quite a challenging activity when played from a fast-moving Maserati and can lead to much good humored debate! I can’t remember who won. Or how many points I was beaten by.
    We had lunch in Leo’s first casino hotel in Winnemucca. He gamely ignored the one-armed bandits but homed in on the games arcade until his stack of quarters ran out. I feigned a lack of dollar bills as we still had several thumbs ahead of us. At Carlin we stopped for fuel and were met by a “dust devil.” This may have been the Wild West’s smallest tornado but it impressed us as it careened down the road, picking up an impressive amount of desert sand and rattling the trash-cans of every house it passed. It was here that we discovered GatorAid, whose subtle blend of nutrients and rare salts in a syrup base was to provide our lubricating fluid of choice for the rest of our journey.
    A short final drive brought us to Elko, a surprisingly large town for somewhere that appeared truly to be in the middle of nowhere. The guide book credited its affluence to a resurgence in the local mining industry. Strange then that we didn’t see a single mine or anybody carrying a shovel, but we did see a lot of banks.
    It turned out that the Red Lion Hotel (a name which in England conjures up images of an oak beamed pub with roaring fires and steak and kidney pie on the menu served by the landlord’s wife whose name is inevitably “Betty”) was in some small part a hotel but mainly a place where people handed over money to see colored lights flash and wheels spin round. Some folks are easily pleased, I guess.
    Our problem was how to get into the place—not the building, you understand, but the car park whose speed bumps (we call them “sleeping policemen” but we are a quaint people) present no obstacle to the locals in their four wheel drive pickups with four foot high tires but threatened to remove bits of the Bora we might later find useful. Such as the sump.
    We made a tactical entry ignoring the “No Entry” signs above the service ramp and, after overcoming my belief that I had mistakenly chosen the wrong door, crossed the casino floor and eventually located a small desk that said “Check-in.”
    That night we dined on burgers and ketchup in the company of young families whose Moms and Pops (along with quite a few of the children) sported vibrant tattoos. Between courses we watched a floor show of blue-rinsed old ladies performing a kind of synchronized ballet on the fruit machines. Strangely most of our fellow diners didn’t spare this unfamiliar scene a second glance. They must have been locals.
    We also spotted a new profession that I had not come across before. That of ash-collector. Those entrusted with this work scurried about the floor trailing large carts with heavy lids. I trust they were well paid as many of the ashtrays they emptied contained piles of oxidized tobacco so high that they must have required planning permission, not to mention their own structural survey and a red light on top to ward off passing aircraft. Before long the fog became too thick so we made our way to bed and well-earned sleep.

Sunday, 13th August—
Elko to Vernal

We awoke to the sound of the public address system informing us (and everyone else within two city blocks) that “the bus to Detroit, Michigan leaves in ten minutes—get your asses on the bus or walk!”
    We sat at our favorite table for breakfast. Most of the tattooed families seemed to be making their way on to the Detroit bus but the blue-rinsed pensioners were still performing their slow choreography to a backdrop of 15 channels of different TV programs displayed on a wall of monitors just above our heads. Nobody had thought to turn the sound down so all 15 presenters competed for our attention. The NFL sports commentators won.
    As we paid our bill a sign offered to exchange our social security check for gaming chips—provided we could produce two forms of ID. We both thought this just a little tacky so we left.
    Residual jet-lag meant that our departure was favorably early. By the time we reached Wells all our “can’t be far to go now” jokes had been exhausted so we paid a quick visit to the Pep Boys store to buy instant tyre inflator and LHM fluid—life blood to a Bora.
    By 10am we were attempting our ascent of the Pequop Summit (elev. 6,987’) when the Bora’s engine started to misfire. It rapidly lost power and before long it was necessary to use the safety lane. Then we stopped. The air temperature had risen into the 80s even at such an early hour, and after twenty minutes of head scratching and peering earnestly at the whirring bits it occurred to me that the car might be performing the Bora’s favorite high altitude trick of boiling its fuel. The realization that the racket I had been listening to was the fuel pumps sucking nothing in particular was easily confirmed thirty seconds later as I stared at an unnaturally dry fuel filter. We waited, engine cover high, for the fuel to regain liquid form. Ten minutes later the fuel pumps got their first sniff of fuel and shortly afterwards the engine sprang back into life.
    Less than a thumb further on the problem happened again as we climbed the Silver Zone Pass. This time we just made it into a rest area nanoseconds before a 400-ton semi travelling just shy of the speed of sound would have knocked us into the middle of next week. I parked (technically, I got out of the car when it rolled to a halt) and skillfully repeated the resuscitation procedure that earlier had served us so well. That is, we opened the engine cover and talked among ourselves while time passed.
    As Interstate 80 flows down the eastern side of the Toana Range you are presented with one of Nature’s most amazing vistas. The Great Salt Lake Desert appears for all the world as some enormous snow field, so large that its far edge lies beyond the distant horizon. Only the extreme heat and the fact that at this stage Leo and I resembled nothing more than two boil-in-the-bag chickens that had been left to simmer while the cook went on holiday, gave the game away. Snow would have melted. We come from a snowy region and there’s no fooling us.
    I confess some concern at the prospect of crossing a 100-mile wide desert in a car whose lack of air conditioning appeared quite endearing compared to its new-found delight of lurching to a halt at unfortunate moments. Nevertheless we decided to ignore the brash commercial hoardings encouraging us to sample the delights of West Wendover which sits at Gas Mark 5 on the very lip of the desert floor. No, our nerve lasted all the way to Wendover proper (another five miles further on) before we turned off the Interstate and found a Texaco station where the Bora drank deeply of the highest octane brew on offer and its occupants drank equally deeply of ice-cold GatorAid purchased in handy truck size containers at a bargain dollar ninety-nine a pop.
    With its belly now full of nice-cold Texaco, the Bora showed no more signs of misbehaving so we hit the road. As we approached the I-80 on-ramp, a far-from-brash sign beckoned. It said “Bonneville Speedway” and a friendly arrow pointed straight on. I tugged and tugged at the wheel but the Bora just would not turn. I gave up and drove out towards the salt flats.

    It transpires that you don’t have to drive very far before your belief in what is virtuously real, and what can only be virtually real, is turned upside down. When it happens it makes you feel just like the salt in an egg timer—a strange sinking feeling quickly followed by collapse into a heap. Barely a mile up the road, the highway now almost invisible behind us through the haze, there is a bend. Turn this bend and the scene that confronts you denies the passing of countless millennia. It is as if dinosaurs still trod the Earth and our ancestors still lived in caves (though I bet they didn’t wear fur in this heat!). The sound of an internal combustion engine revving to bursting point broke the spell. For once, it wasn’t my engine that was making the noise.
    A couple of miles further on all pretense that this was a road that we travelled on ended as the tarmac faded into the salt. A scene so ludicrous that it could have been devised for a Monty Python movie appeared before us. Like the troll bridge of fable, someone had set up a canopied ticket booth in the middle of the “road.” As the “road” at this point consisted of a few optimistically placed marker cones surrounded by a clear seventy miles of hard packed salt in every direction but behind us the toll-collector’s faith in human honesty appeared to rest on the understanding that nobody would simply drive around the booth.
    He asked for $4 in return for which I received a self-adhesive sticker that said “Pit Pass” in bold letters. I stuck it on my shirt and accepted the advice to “follow the car in front.” The man within whose authority lies responsibility for treks across the Great Salt Lake Desert must surely have been having a laugh as he ordered the erection of signs declaring a 55mph speed limit on a road whose edges were by now marked by lines of cones separated laterally by at least a quarter of a mile of the same nothing you were in danger of hitting if you strayed off the marked course. To someone who expects to hit a tree or worse if he overcooks a bend this just added to the surreal feel of the place. Lane discipline becomes an academic concept on a road where a Bora could make a determined attempt at a 0-60 dash between the curbs. I remembered my pilot training—it’s the ones that don’t appear to be moving as they hurtle toward you that are going to hurt!
    By the way, 55mph is not too low a limit across that salt. It’s an amusing target to aim for, as at any speed above a crawl so much salt is flung up into crevices of your vehicle that I suspect its weight would double before you’d covered a mile.
 Some six miles along we came to a fork in the “road.” If you can call a hand-painted sign pointing to “Pits” one way and “Start line” another a fork. I had a “pit pass” so we drove straight on. At the entrance to the pits complex (more cones—how did you guess?) we were stopped because someone wanted to check our passes. Like the toll collector before him it hadn’t occurred to this chap either that a short detour around the cones would have denied him his opportunity to meet us.
    So far on our journey any opportunity to climb out of the Bora’s cabin had been greeted with relief in the expectation of cooler air. This time we climbed out of the oven-like cabin only to discover that the oven had been sitting inside a furnace! I put on a hat only to realize that most of the heat was being reflected UPWARDS off the salt. We made a beeline for the first trade stall. The proprietor was making more money than MacDonalds, selling garden water spray bottles with small battery fans attached. We figured that if the Bora’s water-cooled engine could survive in this heat, water-cooling the occupants wasn’t a bad idea either. Money changed hands and our last two bottles of mineral water were sacrificed in the interests of being merely frazzled rather than burnt to a crisp. Don’t worry—we still had our reserve stocks of GatorAid to look forward to!
    Any thoughts that the informal nature of our surroundings might reflect, shall we say, a relaxed approach to achieving silly velocities on the part of the participants were dispelled with one glance at the quality of the engineering deployed—not just in the racing projectiles themselves (I hesitate to describe them as either cars or bikes) but in the open tool chests and every piece of supporting machinery in sight. These people take their pursuit of speed seriously. In a suitably surreal way, of course.
    I got talking to a weather-beaten chap about the long, sleek, dragster-style car he was working on. A huge V8 with serious looking fuel and ignition systems sat between two knitting needles to whose sharp ends had been affixed a pair of pram wheels while at the rear a couple of rubber coated garden rollers were destined to transmit all that raw power to the salt or die in the attempt. A sticker on the driver’s cowl announced its 283mph credentials. I was about to congratulate him when he informed me that his daughter had completed a “two-seventy” that morning and she was hoping for three hundred that afternoon. The penny dropped as I realized that this softly-spoken man was in the habit of strapping his cheerleader of a daughter into this contraption and patting her on the head as she set off to find the point at which it reverted to form and tried to perform a ‘knit-one, pearl-two’ about her lovely person. As I said, surreal.
    We stopped long enough for Leo to take my picture in front of the “200 mph Club.” Well—I almost qualify for membership and, had I not been restricted to a public road, I would have been sorely tempted to have the final drive of the 450Sr upped enough to wring the last 6mph out of the beast. That’s my excuse, anyway.

TOP

    As we walked back to the car a short, wiry man approached from under the brim of his tattered straw hat. He asked about the Bora—top speed, 0-60 times, you know the drill—seemed suitably impressed and then offered to show me his steed. We walked to his trailer whereupon sat “Project Goldwing.” As promised, its redness bore a striking resemblance to the paint of the Bora. The vehicle seemed sadly deficient in other departments however, lacking at least two wheels and possessing a shape that would have appeared more at home in the pointy end of a submarine. Motive power was provided by a Honda motorbike engine of 2000cc. By lying prone (his feet taking the position that would normally be occupied by the detonator) he had already achieved 232.439mph and was hoping to see the far side of 250mph before tea. A sheet of paper testifying to the achievement was thrust into my hands.
    His behaviour was so delightfully bonkers that, had I spent any more time in his company, I would have had to call him a true friend. Who’d have thought to find a kindred spirit in the middle of the most ludicrously surreal place on Earth? His name was (hopefully still is) Ken Lyons and for a day job he delivers the mail in Torrance, California. He is looking for sponsors and for pit crew to help in his 2001 campaign. If you feel like lending a hand let me know and I’ll pass on his address.
    With the map showing many thumbs yet to travel we had to leave. This was probably just as well as I spied several vultures circling directly above and had begun to notice that the local, albeit temporary population fell into two readily identifiable groups—those with air conditioned vehicles in which to shelter and those being eyed by the vultures as tonight’s TV dinner. We left.
    Before rejoining the Interstate we spent a happy half hour removing salt from parts of the Bora I had previously been blissfully unaware existed.
    Given a choice, Leo and I would have speared across that salty desert just as fast as our wheels would turn. However, the discomfort we felt at the heat was nothing to that felt by the engine whose coolant temperature would only remain reasonable at a speed of 65mph or less. Accordingly we experienced more of the desert’s sights and smells than we would otherwise have liked. To my surprise this desert was far from dry, even at its heart. Great pools of stagnant, fetid water regularly dotted its surface and a stinking stream ran fitfully along the side of the road. At 65mph we found ourselves the object of curiosity from every passing truck and even (oh shame of shame) the occupants of an AMC Pacer that drifted past exuding cool.
    At one point we appeared in danger of being overtaken by a train, at least a mile and a quarter long, but we decided that it was just a mirage on the grounds that anything that big travelling that fast was a very unnatural thing indeed. In this way was honor salvaged.
    I’ll let Leo describe the road across the remaining seventy or so miles of the Great Salt Lake Desert. I quote him correctly when he says that it was “hot!” and “smelly!” Aahh, youthful understatement.
    “Hot!” translates to about 130ºF inside the car while the smell of the Great Salt Lake itself from a distance of several miles is best described as that of a fishwife’s unwashed laundry left to ripen in the sun for a couple of months. As we came closer yachts could be seen on the lake, their occupants each sporting a large clothes peg on the nose. Thinking about it this must be the safest lake in the world on which to sail as, should disaster befall, it would prove impossible to sink or drown. More importantly the effect on your social life of a dousing in its medicinal waters probably makes for the world’s safest sailors as well. Be honest, would you invite a pickled herring to your cocktail party?
    I had always intended to skirt ‘round Salt Lake City as any kind of visit to its heart would have destroyed reasonable progress towards Denver. This was just as well as I-80 and all the roads on to which we were diverted were suffering such a plague of roadworks that I think all the world’s navies must take their summer holidays in this city.
    Many detours later we started the long climb into the Uinta Mountain range. The Bora showed its pleasure by having another fit of fuel boiling. Having already carried us safely so far, a rest was well-deserved and we treated it to more nice-cold Texaco and a slurp of the finest motor oil the Mormon State could provide while Leo and I cooled ourselves in the air-conditioned luxury of a Taco Bell restaurant.
    By now it was mid-afternoon and as we gained altitude and the sun sank the air temperature dropped to a level that both we and the Bora found comfortable, allowing our rate of progress to improve dramatically. Route 40 provided a welcome change from the monotony of the Interstate. The road through the Indian reservation was broad and the scenery delightful to the eye. There was just enough traffic to require a regular rat-a-tat of overtaking manoeuvres while every now and then a bend or hill crest would call for a gear change to exercise mind and arm.
    A few miles west of Duchesne, UT I came tanking round a particularly glorious bend on a road long since emptied of even local traffic. As the road straightened the unmistakable profile of an approaching highway patrol car appeared. His reflexes must have been quick because almost before I saw him his car lit up like it was Christmas. I reduced our velocity to a speed he must have found acceptable because the lights were turned off and he did no more than wag a disapproving finger as he sailed past. I checked the mirrors, half-hoping to see a Hollywood style handbrake turn complete with smoking tires but was disappointed to see him continue out of sight. Perhaps he was as late for his dinner as we were for ours.
    We had booked a room at the Best Western “Dinosaur Inn” in Vernal, UT—a town that bills itself as “Dinosaur Capital Of The World!” Tired and hungry, we two grizzled travellers rolled into town and stopped at the Best Western. A sign said “No restaurant.” We discovered it was the wrong Best Western so we drove through the town which appeared unnaturally quiet and almost out the other side to find the Dinosaur version. A large plastic construction that might have borne some resemblance to the Flintstones pet Dino convinced us we had found the right place.
    At check in a sign apologized that the hotel’s restaurant was “closed for remodeling.” The friendly teenage reception clerk assured me that a list of restaurants had been placed in our room to aid our quest for sustenance. Just time for a quick shower to remove the desert salt before dinner then. It occurred that local knowledge might aid our choice of eating establishment so, taking the list of local restaurants which—true to her word—had been placed in our room, we retraced our steps to ask the receptionist her recommendation. She was particularly fond of the local steak house but, unfortunately, it being Sunday and everything, it was closed. Her second choice was a “fancy foreign place, maybe fifteen minutes walk if you walk fast” but again, it was Sunday. Half way through the list, I chanced to ask whether any of the restaurants on the list might be open on Sunday evening. You could see the lights coming on as she sweetly acknowledged “No.”
    For the future comfort of travellers to the World’s Dinosaur Capital allow me to report that Vernal is closed on Sunday. Leo and I returned to our room, thumbed through the saviour of all good men (Yellow Pages) and phoned for pizza. Leo ate in the style he would most like to become accustomed to—pizza by the pool. Our long day of travelling did away with any cares that the pool was separated by no more than a filigree of industrial steel fencing from the car park of a Best Western Motel. As far as we were concerned we were settled in our favorite loungers at the Monte Carlo Beach Club.
    After dinner, as the sun gave out its last rays of the day, our attention was drawn across the road to a store we had not previously noticed. The sign above it said “Indian Trading Post” and the neon sign in its window spelled out the magic word “OPEN.” How could we resist? The staff consisted of two more teenagers. Having chosen our rare artifacts, I attempted to trade but it seemed that the only things we possessed that they were interested in trading were some pictures of George Washington. In fact, they seemed rather keen on them and were happy to relieve me of quite a bit of weight from my wallet. I must tell George’s family next time I see them (his ancestral home—by Utah standards—is a stone’s throw from my front door). By the time we crossed the road and found our room we were too tired to watch the Disney channel but fell immediately to sleep.

Monday, 14th August—
Vernal to Denver

The Best Western’s breakfast menu consisted of anything we could desire—as long as it came from one of the vending machines behind the pool house. We left though not before engaging in a rerun of the previous night’s conversation (regarding local restaurants) with the morning shift of equally young hotel reception staff (apparently all the restaurants were closed on account of it being Monday). I know we spent just a few scant hours in Vernal, UT but in the whole of that time we did not encounter a single soul over the age of seventeen. Either the population has discovered something in old fossils that provides the secret of eternal youth or somebody from the National Enquirer should pay them a visit to ask what they’ve done with their parents. My theory is that they all starved to death when the restaurants closed and only the young were able to sustain themselves on a diet of Mars bars and vending machine potato chips.
    We had neglected to refuel the Bora the previous evening so the search for fuel took on even more urgency than our search for breakfast. As we drove out of Vernal we passed two large, modern gas stations. Both closed. Spooky, I call it.
    A twenty-minute drive from Vernal on Route 40 will bring you to the township of Jensen. The town consists of a gas station, restaurant, supermarket, and convenience store. Conveniently these are all housed in the same small building on the junction of the road leading to the Dinosaur National Monument and its visitor center. The fuel hose fit the Bora’s tank and the store sold GatorAid so Leo and I voted Jensen a hit, even though the restaurant was closed (it was Monday). As our planned visit to the Dinosaur Monument involved a twenty-mile detour I thought I’d better ask about its opening hours. It was closed. An as yet undetected cluster of Maserati-driving, six-foot males with broad English accents among the population of Jensen is the only explanation I can come up with for the store owner’s suggestion—proffered without so much as a smirk—that it would be open if we could come back tomorrow.
    Once again I conducted a minor across a state line. Breakfast was found in a small roadside restaurant in Blue Mountain, Colorado. The place was staffed by its owners—a mother and daughter partnership —who could give Best Western lessons in customer care. We feasted on freshly cooked eggs, strip bacon, and hash browns washed down with orange juice and watery coffee while listening to a couple of local farmers lamenting the price of corn and discussing in almost poetic terms the beauty of a lightning storm that had passed by as we slept the night away.
 Much to Leo’s delight, Route 40 turned out to be Main Street, Cowboyville as it passed between farmsteads and ranch land straight off the set of Bonanza. We stopped in the town of Craig to buy a genuine cowboy hat in size 11¾ years. Joy of joys, the supermarket next to the cowboy store sold GatorAid in industrial size flagons. We stocked up as much as the Bora could safely carry—the thought of more deserts to come (and the prospect of more Best Westerns) spurring us on.

TOP

    After the somewhat Spartan scenery of the foothills of the Colorado Mountains, the town of Steamboat Springs delivers all the surprise of a Disney set transported to the top of a mountain plateau. Which is, I suspect, precisely what it is.
 I’ll let you in on a secret: the road from Steamboat Springs to Wolcott provided the best drive of this trip before we had even met up with the MM crew and two days before we saw our first dry lake bed. Forget 150mph max speed runs, this is a road for drivers not drag artists. This road writhes and wriggles, it twists and turns, it bucks and kicks with every bend and blind crest straining to throw you out of the saddle as it tumbles more than a thousand feet from Rabbit Ears Pass into the valley of the Colorado River. It gets narrow (by American standards) in places and many of its bends offer the excitement of an unguarded 100’ drop with a touch of adverse camber to help you heavenward, should exuberance prevail over natural fear. After almost three days of Interstates followed by the broad sweeping roads of Utah, Route 131 was just what I needed.
    A challenge!
    I rowed the Bora down that mountain, paddling the gear lever between 2nd and 3rd for all I was worth. Second gear, accelerate hard, six thousand, dab the clutch and pull the lever back to third, accelerate again, another bend, hard on the brakes while still straight, blip throttle push lever forward, ease off brakes and clutch, and squeeze the power back on as the nose of the Bora turns, faithful as ever, into the bend. Then do it again and again until eventually the road straightens and flattens for a mile just as sanity calls for a period of calm to restore muscles and mind. Then it starts once more providing a roller-coaster ride better than any West Coast theme park. What a road! And, what a car with which to enjoy it.
    Dampening my enjoyment only slightly, another challenger joined us as we pulled away from a failed attempt to obtain fuel in Oak Creek. A black Volvo 860 station wagon tailgated us out of town. I don’t like tailgaters so he didn’t get to stay there for long once outside the city limits but a mile or two down the road he was right behind us again. As I braked for a cautious entry into a right hand bend (did I mention that I was driving Paul’s car?) he proceeded to prove that he was either (a) a local or, (b) a devout existentialist by overtaking me on the outside. As we went round the bend. A blind bend. A bend that tightened as it went. One where, as it turned out, a few seconds later he would have met a rough looking chap driving a rough looking truck in the opposite direction. I put my surprise at this banzai manoeuvre aside in recognition of the fact that I am foreign and unaccustomed to the ways of Rocky Mountain travel.
    Now let’s have no snootiness amongst Maserati folk, please. These newer Volvos are pretty quick cars. Drop an 860 and a Bora off a cliff at the same time and see which hits the beach first—an object lesson in mass overcoming aerodynamics if ever there was.  In the right hands, they even go round corners. But where I come from (and I suspect where you come from too) overtaking on the outside of a blind bend either means your name is Nigel Mansell or you have just made a point. As my breath returned and we regained lost ground I could see that the driver didn’t have a moustache.
    We followed long enough to see that driver Dad was showing teenage son that those Volvo adverts are true! He’d probably scorned the one where a 2 litre base model laden with bags of cement overtakes a jet fighter from a standing start. We appeared to be cast in the role of jet fighter.
 In the back of the station wagon sat teenage son’s Mom, sister, and Grandma. Dad didn’t care—he just kept swinging that Volvo round the bends and, if he thought of them at all, it was only to recognize that their shifting mass (as they cannoned from one armrest to the other) provided more than enough polar momentum to offset the Volvo’s natural understeer.
    Much though Leo and I were enjoying this display of natural talent (we particularly enjoyed his attempt to exit a reducing radius curve backwards while giving a light show on the Volvo’s brake lights) Leo felt we had dallied long enough and the Volvo’s passengers looked as if they had already spent too long as involuntary ballast. A clear line presented itself through a short series of bends and we passed. We saw no more of Mr. Volvo. Until we stopped for fuel that is. Somewhere near McCoy there is a gas station on the side of the road which unlike the one in Oak Creek, sells fuel rather than everything else. The Bora was thirsty so we stopped to let it have a drink. As we joined the main road again our friendly Volvo passed us once more.
    This time it took no time at all to catch up and as we approached it became obvious that somebody in the back seat was driving—the Volvo now proceeding with all the grace and pace of an arthritic snail while Mom gave Dad some frank and honest advice. Leo and I waved cheerily as we passed and I gave thanks that at least someone in there appeared to have a survival instinct. Unfortunately that someone was not the driver and a mile later the familiar black shape loomed large in our mirrors once more. Fearing that our red Bora was being mistaken for a red rag I found somewhere safe to wave them past. We watched in awe while another spectacular display of near-miss driving unfolded as the Volvo made its way downhill and out of sight.
    Time passed. Long enough, I thought, for the Volvo to be long gone. But no sooner it seemed had I pressed the accelerator than we came upon a large black station wagon. Again. This time our relative speed allowed us to overtake in a most emphatic manner followed by the display of a very clean pair of heels. We enjoyed the last few miles of the 131 and every one of its diverse challenges in peace, apart from Leo’s occasional whoop of delight that is.
    As the road reaches Wolcott it ends in a T-section. I turned east toward I-70 and parked to make a phone call and check our next set of directions. After a few minutes a screech of tires announced that the Volvo had made it safely to the bottom of the hill. I tipped my hat to show respect for a driver who survived. As they passed Mom gave a look to suggest that not all the natives were friendly. Thankfully she wasn’t aiming her gaze at me. Never one to believe adverts I am now convinced that Volvos are the world’s safest cars!
    This was one of only two examples of really bad driving I saw on this trip—and the only time I felt another driver was reacting badly to the proximity of an Italian supercar. I’m sure I’ll be accused of tourist syndrome but I still have to say that on the whole I found other drivers considerate and displaying good road manners. In Europe (and especially the UK) I am wearily accustomed to the tailgating and the race-baiting antics of other drivers, the honorable exceptions being the Italians whose machinations, bred as they are on centuries of chariot racing, indicate nothing more than good-natured encouragement which you ignore only if you wish to have your manhood impugned.
    The tentacles of the Maserati fraternity never cease to amaze me. Not only do my almost nearest neighbors in the UK Maserati Club have a house in Vail, CO but they were planning to join the MM crew for the first day of the run into Utah. John Bennett owns a successful travel company and he and partner Susan were in Colorado to make arrangements for the following ski season. We arrived late (so what’s new?) but still in time to borrow John’s hoover to remove the final remains of the Bonneville salt from the carpets and sills of the Bora. On hearing that I had failed to feed Leo (I pleaded “Route 131!”) Susan amazed by providing an impromptu lunch of leftovers that proved as good as any meal we had throughout the trip (I’m thinking Monterey and Carmel here, Susan—not Elko!).
    Lunch over we helped John pack their belongings into his hired convertible and set off together for Denver. But not before John had pointed out that the Bora’s rear tires were rapidly turning into a pair of racing slicks. Hhhmmm… Some quick modifications to my borrowed Bora would be needed prior to arrival at the Start Line.

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