The Longest Running Clandestine Operation in the History of the Zakes Family - Part III

Part III – The Room

This is the third installment of a three part story from my childhood. If you missed part one or two, please go back and read it now. (Click HERE for Part I or Click HERE for Part II).

The tunnel hadn’t taken as long as the shaft, and the room would form even faster. Since the tunnel was only long enough to reach the front wall of the room, we had to continue to tunnel another foot or two in order to begin to dig up. And that is when things got fun.

To dig the room, especially initially, required the digger to punch his digging screwdriver up into the ceiling above his head. Obviously the dislodged dirt would fall directly down – most often directly onto the face of the digger. This is when the snorkel and scuba mask actually helped. It was extremely hot and sweaty work. The humidity from being underground, surrounded by moist dirt walls, was stifling. Add in the exertion of pushing mounds of dirt down the tunnel over and around your body to be loaded and hoisted by the non-digger, and a couple of 100-watt light bulbs, and it was bordering on ridiculous. The loosened dirt clung to your body and as time went on and little critters found “the hole” it became a dwelling filled with spiders, cockroaches, and crickets. Claustrophobia was overcome daily.

In a short time though, there was enough room to sit Indian-style in the “room” and then progress began to really pick up. Before long we could both fit and then shortly thereafter both stand.

Soon the room was large enough for four people. Sure that wasn’t big enough for my entire family, but really it was bigger and better than I had ever conceptualized. And with the project complete in my mind – and just as the project had quickly been initiated by the imagination of a 10-year-old – something else had caught the imagination of my now 13-year-old mind – the bicycle. And just as quickly as we’d started, I pretty much just walked away – tired, filthy, and satisfied.

For the first several years, Dan and I had kept the entire project completely secret. As we finished the shaft though and then the tunnel, the secret became too great and we each had introduced a friend or two to the project. Dan and few friends soldiered on briefly, enlarging the room slightly by digging benches out of the walls, but it was really “our” project, and when I left, we essentially both left.

In 2005 my parents sold the house. A year before selling the house my dad replaced the pool shed floor because over the years dripping wet kids going in and out to get pool toys and inner tubes had weakened the plywood floor and eventually someone was going to fall through and get hurt.

When they sold the house, to my knowledge, they didn’t tell the buyer about the tunnel. The pool shed floor no longer had a secret trap door and what they didn’t know wouldn’t hurt them. To this day though, every once in a while I’ll wonder about the reaction of the next guy to replace the floor of that shed.

“Honey, you’re never going to believe this…there’s a shaft going down underneath the shed floor – it’s so deep I can’t even see the bottom…”

My dad was the one who enabled all of this. He didn’t laugh at my fears or attempt to brush them aside. He didn’t tell us it was too dangerous or too…anything. Instead he supported and loved and encouraged. He did the perfect thing – he created memories and experiences for Dan and me that will be recalled with fondness and shape our lives for decades.


You can follow me on Twitter @eddyzakes

The Longest Running Clandestine Operation in the History of the Zakes Family - Part II

Part II – The Tunnel

This is the second installment of a three part story from my childhood. If you missed part one, please go back and read it now. (Click HERE for Part I).

After two years of digging the shaft, we finally had permission to continue with Phase II of our secret operation.

At the very base of the shaft, on the east end of our 18-inch wide, by 30-inch long, by 6-foot deep shaft, we started chipping away at the super hard packed clay. Bit by bit, bucket by bucket, we began to make our lateral traverse.

Since the shaft was a little over six feet deep and we were just young boys we developed an elaborate dirt removal system. Even then Dan was a rope and knot genius and between the two of us we had a multi-bucket pulley system.

Whoever the tunnel digger was would load up a small pail – usually a five quart ice cream bucket – and whoever was “topside” would hoist it out when it was full. As soon as the full bucket cleared the shed floor, an empty bucket was lowered down so that tunneling wouldn’t have to stop while the first bucket was being dumped.

The five quart pail was dumped into a five gallon bucket. We had fifteen to twenty of those. Immediately after we began the project, long before the shaft was six feet deep, we’d run into the problem of getting rid of the dirt. What do two boys do with literally tons of dirt?

At first we loaded it, double bagged, into plastic groceries sacks, looped a bag over either side of the handlebars of our bikes, and pedaled to a discreet dumping site, say perhaps the farm field at the end of our block, or eventually a few housing developments that were being prepared, and then nonchalantly pour the dirt out. We did it just like the POWs in The Great Escape, sprinkling it about so that “no one” would catch on.

That was great and all when we were digging a couple of spoonfuls worth of dirt out per hour. However, once summer came and we started getting into softer dirt as the shaft got deeper, the bike-bag method became insufficient.

Instead, every couple of weeks we’d load all 15 or so five-gallon buckets, each weighing over 50 pounds, into the back of my dad’s work van. Eventually we got tired of carrying the buckets out to the curb and graduated to putting them in our Red Radio Flyer wagon and pulling them out to the van two at a time. Once the van was loaded, Dan and I would “talk” my dad into driving the van to church. Our church had several acres of undeveloped property and a lot of it was very uneven. So really you could say we were just helping out.

As we tunneled we became more and more concerned about cave-ins. Logical, right? But again in our infinite young minds we were prepared.

The answer: Cave-in Drills.

Every time we dug in the tunnel we’d wear our “safety equipment.” It wasn’t much and thankfully it was never required to really work, but we had it none-the-less. In order to dig, we would usually lie on our backs and dig headfirst above and behind our heads. Whoever was tunneling would wear scuba-style swim goggles to prevent the collapsing dirt from falling in his eyes or nose. They’d breathe through a snorkel, modified so that it lay on their chest toward the mouth of the tunnel, in case a large cave-in occurred. Again in our brilliance, as the tunnel got longer, we duct taped a length of rubber hosing to the end of the snorkel to enhance its range.

Bucket by bucket load we awkwardly inched forward. A foot of tunnel became two and then three. And eventually we had an 18-inch wide, 18-inch tall, and 6-foot long tunnel. We called my dad out and after a quick inspection he approved our progress enough to allow us to commence construction of “The Room.”

To be continued… (Click HERE to read Part III.)

The Longest Running Clandestine Operation in the History of the Zakes Family - Part I

Part I - The Shaft

This is the first installment of a three part story from my childhood. It is recalled to the best of my ability. (To read Part II, please click HERE.)

What goes through the mind of a 10-year-old?

There were race riots in Los Angeles, just one state over, as a result of the Rodney King beating. By the time the police, the U.S. Army, the Marines, and the National Guard restored order, the casualties included 53 deaths, 2,383 injuries, more than 7,000 fires, damages to 3,100 businesses, and nearly $1 billion in financial losses.

The year before, the First Gulf War had ended. Every night the network news had shown missile launch after missile launch, bombing run after bombing run.

In school I was beginning to learn of and grasp the horrors of the Holocaust.

I knew that smaller race riots had spread to other cities and I had gradually grown concerned that they would move to Phoenix. I wasn’t sleeping well—I was scared.

I went and talked to my dad and told him of my concerns. Thankfully he didn’t laugh at me – instead he sensed I had a solution and asked what I had in mind.

I felt that my family should build a safe space somewhere. Some sort of combination between the European smuggler’s room that Jews were hidden in – this would protect me from race riots or a Holocaust-like nightmare – and a bomb shelter – which would protect me from Saddam Hussein and World War III.

“Well…I was thinkin’ we should dig a room under the house. Maybe put something over it to hide it.” I’d seen The Great Escape where Steve McQueen and the other POW’s had used a stove to conceal the entrance to their escape tunnel—something like that seemed pretty smart to me.

“How do ya think you’ll get through the concrete foundation?” my dad asked.

I didn’t know. I hadn’t fully thought this through—I was only 10.

Being the good dad he was, he had a different idea for me.

“What do you think of starting somewhere on the outside of the house and then digging under it?” he suggested. “Maybe you could start in the shed.”

A plan was formulated. He gave my brother Dan and I permission to dig a shaft down beneath the pool shed until it had reached an ‘appropriate depth,’ then tunnel over until we were under the house, and then, finally, we could dig a ‘room.’

I’d imagine my dad probably thought that my fears would subside in a few weeks and we’d never make it to the ambiguous ‘appropriate depth.’

My dad did get us started though. He cut an 18 by 30-inch section of the plywood shed floor to create our access hatch. We pounded nails into it and then cut them off underneath in an effort to camouflage our trap door—it looked like it was secured just the same as the rest of the floor. We could pop it up with a flat-headed screwdriver in the right spot.

And so…

My brother Dan and I commenced the longest running clandestine operation in the history of the Zakes family.

Quickly we settled into a routine. We’d get home from school, change into our swimming suits, and head out into the backyard for a swim in our pool—that was our cover story anyways.

After a quick dip in the pool, we’d look both ways, then round the corner into our corrugated tin pool shed. If it was even remotely hot outside then the swim wasn’t just a convenient alibi, it was a survival mechanism. It was unexaggerably hot in the shed.

The shed was hot enough by itself, but if the reflector oven nature of a tin shed in Arizona sunshine wasn’t bad enough, we always worked with the door shut. While the project was a “secret operation,” even we probably wouldn’t have gone to that length if it wasn’t for the worst neighbors ever.

No, seriously – the worst ever.

John and Jenny moved in shortly after we did. You’ve probably read books or seen movies where less than stellar neighbors were depicted. John and Jenny trumped them. For instance, one time at Christmas, my brother Dan – maybe 5 years old at the time – took a plate of Christmas goodies over to their house as a gift from our family. My parents had picked Dan because they figured the neighbors would be nicest to him – he was the youngest and cutest at the time. Dan reached up on his tippy-toes and rang the doorbell. After a few seconds of waiting, John opened the door. Dan lifted the plastic wrapped and ribbon-tied plate up to reach John’s hands and chimed, “Merry Christmas.” John looked at the plate, then down at Dan, said, “We don’t eat that stuff,” and turned and slammed the door.

Or one time we were having a stray cat problem in our neighborhood. The cat population had exploded and the cats were inbreeding and infected and dying. So we trapped a few in a humane live trap and took them to the Maricopa County Animal Control. John and Jenny called the police and the story was converted to, “The Zakes family has been trapping cats, loading them in burlap sacks, then drowning them in irrigation canals.” Once the police arrived, a quick look at the records cleared that one up.

Or one time me and my friends were playing catch and an errant throw landed the ball over the fence and in their yard. Rather than tossing it back over, John walked over, picked up the football in one hand, picked up a knife in the other, popped it, and then dropped it in his dumpster (in full view of us).

Or if you need more convincing, their were all of the times they would use their leaf blower to blow all of their leaves into our yard, or the time they called the cops on Dan for “trying to shoot their dog,” or any of the times they yelled over the fence at us to shut up, or fired up their gas-powered and mufflerless 100-gallon air compressor at 6:00 on a Saturday morning, or…you probably get the point.

Needless to say, the shed door was always shut while we were working. It dampened the noise and prevented prying eyes.

The beginning was nearly intolerably slow. We’d taken some of my dad’s tools—“he probably won’t miss this screw driver or that hammer”—and we’d hammer the screwdriver into the dirt and then pry up a chunk. The chunk would go into a bucket and we’d pry out another chunk.

Once we had a small depression in the ground, at the end of each day we would drag our garden hose over to the shed and push it through a little corner of the shed wall that we’d bent aside. With the spigot on for even a few seconds our tiny divot would overflow and that was the end of our digging for that day.

The next night when we’d trot back out there, the ground would be just slightly softer than concrete—maybe more like fresh asphalt. We’d chip away some more and finally, after perhaps a month, Dan who was younger and smaller could curl into a contortionist’s fetal position, and I could close the trap door on top of him.

We were so proud. But it was a mere shadow of what was to come.

For the next several years – I’m not kidding, really YEARS – we pried and dug our way downward. We used every conceivable tool: hammers, screwdrivers, a saw, scissors, a pitchfork, shovels (pointed, flat, even sandbox shovels). And eventually we could both stand up in the shaft and pull the lid over our heads.

The shaft was narrow and looked pretty ominous. The shed interior wasn’t big or bright and so if you stood over the hole, even with the shed door open, you couldn’t see the bottom without accessory lighting. The shaft got to the point that it was so deep we couldn’t get in or out without assistance—the hand and footholds carved into the walls were the only ingress and egress mechanisms.

Every so often my fantastic father would come out and check on us and our progress. At last, the day arrived when he came out and said the hole was deep enough and we could begin the part we’d been dreaming of – the TUNNEL.

And to this point we’d told no one.

To be continued… Click HERE for Part II.

The Epic of Eddy

I spent a lot of time thinking about what the best way to post the following story would be.

I’ve been a “storyteller” for years, but it wasn’t until fairly recently that I began to write my stories down. I’ve now written over 50 pages worth of stories for my blog alone. The one that follows is the “lifestory” I wrote first. My blog EddyZWanderings was started at the end of 2005, but this story was committed to paper long before that, in August of 2001.

The reason I’ve been debating the way to post it is that it is an incomplete piece.
I suppose it could pass for poetry, but when anyone asks me about it, I tell them that all I employ is what I call “dumb rhyme”—I’ve made the story rhyme. There is no real meter, no genuine rhyme scheme other than a basic couplet, no stanzas, no repetition. The working title that I first saved it under was “Epic Poem,” and I’d like to believe that in some fashion it qualifies as an epic.

I wrote the “coming-of-age” story in the margins of notebook paper during my freshman year of college. I’d write it a couplet at a time, frequently switching from notebook to notebook as I switched from subject to subject, class to class. Halfway through the first semester I collected all of the fragments, put them in order, and that collection is what I have here, completely unedited except for spelling.

In the summer of 2000, I was 17 years old. I was heading into my senior year of high school. I’d been riding my bike for years and it was where I felt most at home. I smelled, ate, slept, dreamed, and lived bicycling. I raced for Arizona Velo at the time and had chalked up a good handful of wins and podiums.

A few summers before, when I was 14, my mom and I went on a 9 day bike trip. We’d ridden from Phoenix, Arizona to Alamosa, Colorado in a serious adventure, and I was dying to do something similar once more.

Somehow my amazing and trusting parents gave me permission to pursue doing another extended bike ride. I started talking to my best friend Nishan. I had started him riding about a year earlier and he had progressed into a real natural. He raced with me occasionally and he was good.

Nishan and I ultimately planned a 9-day bike trip that coincided with the end of our church’s summer camp during the summer of 2001, right before I entered college. We used the camp’s location in the minuscule historic mining town of Marble, Colorado as the starting point of an 800 mile ride home to Phoenix.

(Just outside the camp, near Marble, CO.)

Our bikes and gear were added to the truck that followed the church bus carrying the campers’ luggage. When they reboarded the bus to return home, we stayed behind—then started riding.

It was frightening to be so vulnerable. I don’t know about Nishan (who at the time alternately went by Nick), but I know that I had never faced responsibility like I did that evening when the bus pulled away. We were fully on our own and it was up to us to make sure that we made it home.

When the church group left the camp that Friday night, the camp staff also left. They let us stay in one of the cabins overnight, telling us to lock the door behind us when we left. At 8,600 feet above sea level we had an unadulterated view of the stars through the cold night air. Just like on the final night of the trip when we sat out and looked at the stars, Nishan and I both probably realized that we were at a point of no return in our lives. We had talked about our trip, we had dreamed about our trip, we had fretted over every detail—but now the time for that had all passed and there was nothing left for us to do except start putting into motion the plan we had prepared. The unknowns would be answered tomorrow morning. We didn’t stay up very late, but I know neither of us slept well. All of the what-ifs flooded my mind. In the morning we jolted our way down several miles of steep dirt road to Marble and started our ride in earnest.

(Inside the cabin at the camp just before we started.)

We rode from Marble to Delta the first day, Delta to a freezing cold “campground” on the south side of Red Mountain Pass the second day, the “campground” to Durango on the third, over to Cortez on the fourth, and entered into New Mexico on the fifth.

My freshman year of college, sitting bored in some class (more than likely Accounting 101, History of Civilization, or English) and seeking an escape I began to write starting with that fifth day.

(Our sad, cold campsite at 10,000 feet just south of Red Mtn. Pass)

The fifth day, we were riding from Cortez, Colorado to an honest-to-goodness nuns’ convent in the middle of the Navajo Indian Reservation. When we arrived for the night in the exhausted and forsaken village of Naschitti, New Mexico, the convent was deserted. Facing the dangerous prospect of trying to find other suitable sleeping quarters for the night, we pressed on to Gallup, which was not much of an alternative. From there we rode on the sixth day to Sanders, crossing into Arizona, then to Snowflake, then to Payson, and finally on the ninth day home to Phoenix.

As with most poems, not every detail is expounded.

A brief synopsis of how we found the strangers we stayed with is important I think. A few months before the trip we laid out what we thought was a reasonable itinerary. Next we would Google the churches in each specific town. I’d call a church and say, “Good morning, my name is Eddy Zakes. My friend Nishan Campbell and I are riding our bikes part way across the U.S. this summer and will be in your town on Monday night, July 17. We were wondering if we could spend the night in your church or with a member of your church.”

(Nishan heading up a valley south of Montrose)

Most of the towns we were staying in were fairly small so this worked fantastically well. We’d start with the denominations we were closest to and work our way down the list. Hence why eventually we were planning to stay at the convent and why later in the trip we stayed with a Mormon family.

It is by far the cheapest way to travel. You can get by on this recipe for about $10 a day. You arrive at your host family’s house sometime around 4:30, enjoy dinner with them, spend the evening getting to know them, going to bed, waking up, eating breakfast with the family, and then riding off at 8:00ish. The only thing that I was responsible for was lunch and any incidentals.

The exposure to the real America was invaluable. I stayed with World War II vets, American Indians, nuns, a lumberjack, a professional bow hunter, farmers, missionaries, the postmaster of a small town, video store owners, and regular everyday Joes. At the age of 14 and then again at 18, I was exposed to what makes America great—work ethic, capitalism, democracy, freedom of religion, and hospitality.

(The climb up Red Mtn. Pass)

No matter the creed, race, or sex, all Americans share the same triumphs and difficulties. Everyone struggles to maintain a decent living, and rejoices when things go well. What makes America great is this unity of purpose and of destination. People rejoiced in the triumph of our trip, rallied behind us, and were inspired by us.

And finally the poem itself...



Nick crashed in the sand,
His bike became unmanned
His front wheel ran amuck
His feet in the pedals were stuck.
So down he fell.
He let out a yell.
Eddy thought it was funny -
He laughed until his tears were runny.

We got to the mission
We knocked to ask permission;
And…no one was home,
The two boys were very alone.
On the reservation,
They would stay with hesitation.
They were scared,
They weren’t prepared.
We knew where we had to be -
To Gallup we must flee.
We ate some burritos,
Eddy ate a few cheetos.
Then we had to go
We two-in-a-row.

(Nishan on the devil's highway between Cortez and Gallup)

It was going to get dark,
This would be no ride in the park.
As night fell it began to rain
Both boys were beginning to pain.
Nick fell again, like déjà vu
Across an intersection he really flew.
The first sop was Ramada Inn
They were so filthy like a coal bin.
The manager was like, “Hey Sonny,
You ain’t look like ya got any money.”
We said “Thanks, but no thanks
Do we look like we own any banks?”
So again we went out into the storm.
We really, really wanted to get warm.
We found a hotel run by an Indian dude.
He wasn’t like the last man, so very rude,
He said, “I gi’ yoo room fo’ se’teen buck.”
Man, oh man, we were really in luck.
We wheeled our bikes in,
The room seemed made out of tin.
Our day was done.
It hadn’t all been fun.
We’d ridden 136 miles,
But now all we had were smiles.
We turned up the heat
We were really beat
The room was junk,
But it had spunk.
We were all muddy,
And Nick was even bloody.
I jumped in the shower
It had too much power.
It was a pipe in the wall,
And my skin it did maul.
Before I had dried my toes,
Nishan had called Domino’s,
“Bring me a large,
I think I could eat a barge.
Have your driver be quick…
Oh, its raining, oh well, we don’t give a lick.”
The driver made the quick trip,
He wanted his tip.
We scarffed down the food
Our dinner was crude.
We tried out the 1975 TV,
So ancient, its case was made from a tree
Truly wondering what channels there’d be.
There was supposed to be 185 options on the table
All there truly was was real basic cable.
SportsCenter was running for the fifteenth time.
Man, I’m really running out of things to rhyme.

Into Arizona—that hot, hot state
The pace we held was still first rate.
Forty miles from Gallup we’d ride that day
So we didn’t have to wake up with the Sun’s first ray.
We slept in long,
We woke up and watched King Kong.
We turned in the key,
To that man who drank tea,
Then went to McDonald’s to get a meal.
We convinced a customer that our trip was real.
Wherever we went people thought we were tough,
Girls all over said we were so buff.
“Good luch” people told us, we were living their dream,
They wished they were us it really did seem.
“A dream long ago,” they’d say in a trance,
They’d do it themselves, “If I had the chance.”
Then off we pedaled, out into the wet—
Again we were chased by somebody’s pet.
The fastest dog I ever did see
Of legendary status that pooch shall be.
Through the fence came the deranged dog,
We quickly did shift to our smallest cog.
We pedaled like mad,
Nishan he could have had -
Nick swerved toward me, I was out in the lane
Nearly hit by a semi—like a freight train.
The dog couldn’t hold the pace
He dropped off without a trace.
We crossed the border very soon,
Halfway there and still not noon.
We had to try to slow down, It was still to early to enter town.
To burn some time for icecream we did stop.
We got some cones and a bunch of pop.
Mountain Dew was the way to go
In my veins it surely must flow.
Without it my muscles would shrivel and die
If I rode all day my body would cry,
“I need some Dew.”
Of course this story is true.
The day heated up, it got way too hot
It seemed like we were riding in a boiling pot.
Up the off ramp then turn to the right
We entered Sanders with no people in sight.
We found the church,
We stopped with a lurch.
In the parking lot were three mean, ugly dogs,
To defend our bike (and ourselves secondly, of course) we picked up some logs.
We shouted and yelled and out came their owner,
He was the pastor and he was quite the loner.
We would sleep on the benches;
The nearby kitchen was loaded with stenches.
We cleaned ourselves up
We tried to figure out where we would sup.
This town was small,
They’d never heard of a strip mall.
We ate at the Mobil
The only business in town that was global
In the store was an Express Taco Bell
Hopefully tomorrow we wouldn’t really smell.
We got ten burritos
Much better than the 20 frozen taquitos.
We went back and ate our food then played a guitar—
Nick punking out like an old rock star
We went and talked to the Navajo man
All his opinions would fit in a tuna can.
We left him alone then went to bed—
Those wooden pews were tough on my head.


I woke up and – oh my back –
All my bones were way out of whack.
Fifteen minutes to load up our gear
Not enough time to look in the mirror (maybe out of fear).
Into the chilly, crisp morning we rode
There was no breakfast at last night’s humble abode.
Back to the Mobil station
Oh what a joy, what an elation,
We bought some pop tarts then ate them in the sun
When four drunks came up we got ready to run.
Finally off the reservation we forsook
When we rode the straight-arrow road down to Holbrook.
With only one turn, the route was an “L”
Of the scenery, there’s not much to tell
45 miles one way, then 45 the next
All that was noteworthy was a 20-foot T-rex.
According to folk, this was a home for old dinosaur
Their fossils are found on the desert floor.

(Nishan cruisin' through the desert)

In Holbrook at Denny’s again we ate
We both got water to save on the rate.
We left to begin our second straight leg
30 miles up hill would make our legs beg.
We had some film we needed to “waste”
We tried to take pictures with a touch of taste.

(Bleak, arid landscape baking under 110 degree heat)

Eddy took them while riding next to Nishan
The pictures clearly show both of their brawn.
Nick tried to take on of Eddy while riding,
But out of the viewfinder Eddy kept sliding.
It was so hot Eddy’s skin did bubble,
Both the boys could sense this was trouble.
We stayed in Snowflake, a Mormon habitat
We got to the church and there we sat.
We waited for a lady who never came—
This was just like the nun’s house, it was just the same.
We soon found out at the church that night
If we had to stay there, we would be all right.
They were throwing a party for Mormons still single
Half the night with them we could mingle.
Finally Nick decided that we were at the wrong place,
However I’ve promised not to rub it in his face.
Down two blocks, then take a sharp left,
Their move to the seminary was really deft.
A Mormon professor told the of the “Great Church” he loved
Mormon propaganda on the boys was shoved.
A really nice lady soon came in a truck,
She told them they with her family were stuck.
Quickly that family they did meet
Four boys and girl—all super neat.
Quickly we had called our parents on their phones
Nearly as quickly we realized the daughter was loaded with hormones
She was very pretty she didn’t make us gag
In fact, she invited us to play capture the flag.
Navajo tacos were cooked for dinner
The food was terrific, really a winner.
Some errands we did run
That was way too fun.
“For dessert, get some ice cream,” the mom did say.
At the store Matt decided to call it Cherise’s birthday
Up to the intercom he did walk
On it to the customers he did talk.
“Cherise on aisle four just turned eight,
If we could have a moment of silence that would be great…
All right, that was perfect and thanks for shopping at Reggie’s
Before you leave be sure to check out our super fresh veggies.”
Next to the movie store that the family did own
It was an old shop, it was made out of stone.
“Pick any show,
And then we’ll go.”
We grabbed some candy but didn’t pay
It felt like in jail that night I should lay.
There was a sign, I did read:
“All shop lifters please take heed,
We’ll prosecute you to the fullest extent,
You’ll live in a house with bars where you won’t pay rent
(To a house with bars you will be sent.)
Next we found out their “mad” break dancing skills
When two of the brothers broke into wild windmills
Right in the middle of the parking lot
(If we were in Phoenix we would have been shot)
They had learned from a video in the movie store;
People never watched it, they thought it was a bore
Their mom was going to throw it away
The boys took it home for their VCR to play.
All the moves they soon learned
And now before us they danced and turned.
This is when the daughter asked us to go out
It would have been fun without a doubt.
“Capture the flag, so that’s what they call it now,”
The brother said, we thought that was funny, but she had a cow.
But we were tired from that 90 mile leg,
If we partied all night tomorrow we’d beg.
So most of the night we just goofed around,
From all the ice cream we probably gained 10 pounds.
On a double wide couch we slept that night,
That next morning we were quite a sight.

When we got up we ate some food—
Of their hospitality the Mormons couldn’t be sued.
We packed our junk for the second to last time,
We didn’t want the trip to end, it was so sublime.
Then out into the chill,
On our bikes we did spill.
Over hill, over dale
The wind at our tail
We flew forty miles to Dairy Queen
We bought huge blizzards for $3.17.
When we left it got really bad,
It really did make both of us mad.
As before we had had a strong wind on our back,
It had now switched to blow so hard, we had to tack.
It was 20 miles of this, doing enormous rollers—
We clenched our jaws and pedaled (it hurt my molars).
We were trying to make it to the edge of the Mogollon Rim
When we’d dropped off the plateau the wind would dim.
Two miles from the lip we stopped at a country store
Of candy bars and Mountain Dew, we consumed some more
In one more mile we saw our favorite sign
It was yellow with a truck descending a 45-degree line
One more mile and then we did drop
We got going so fast we couldn’t stop
Down to the valley onto a tiny road
With enormous semis we abode.
It was super scary
We pedaled fast so we didn’t tarry.
We were in Payson
Riding like the devil himself was chasin’.
It was so hot it vaguely like hell,
It made our bodies to reek and smell.
We were staying with a retired friend of Nick’s dad
This guy was happy to have us, more than just a tad.
He set up signs so we couldn’t find the house
When we got there, with water, us he did douse.
He and his wife lived on the top of a super steep hill,
If we made it to the top, us it would probably kill.
Eddy pedaled it all, Nick went so slow it looked like he might fall
They pulled into the driveway
He brought us drinks on a serving tray.
They took nice, slow, cool showers
Next came food which was set on the table in towers.
The man asked, “You boys want to go to a concert?”
They said yes, this guy’s feelings they weren’t going to hurt.
There was no mosh pit
On the grass they calmly did sit.
It was all Western songs like “The Streets of Laredo.”
It was so boring they started praying for a tornado.
When they got back they sat on the porch and looked at the stars.
Quiet and reflective as they ate ice cream with chocolate bars.
This was their last night of being free,
This trip was as great as it could be—
Never again would life be the same,
It would get more difficult, this was so tame.
This was a dream they didn’t want to end,
But it was inevitable, tomorrow they’d round that final bend.
Then they’d be home,
Probably never so freely to roam—
To live this life on the road
When they knew no permanent abode.
They went slowly, introspectively to their beds
Myriads of thought were in both of their heads.

They woke up early so they could beat
That which they hated, that loathsome heat.
The retired couple got up also to make bacon and eggs
So those “poor boys would have energy in their legs.”
Food and water was their biggest concern—
In the desert they’d surely burn
If something went wrong
For these roads were desolate, this day would be long.
Eddy took six water bottles and Nick took four
In 100 miles, in over 100°, they’d probably need more.
Fruit, candy, sandwiches into their pockets they did stuff
As I’ve mentioned 10 times, this day would be rough.
For this last day they set out at 5:45
Again down a mountain they did dive.
That first 15 miles was a lot of fun
Unfortunately for the boys of downhills there wasn’t a ton.
In 3 hours the sun was out with lots of power
They wished there was shade under which to cower.

(From cool Payson down to the desert floor)

By 11:00 they had only 40 miles to go
They stopped at the first store where water did flow
Which was that gas station in Fountain Hills
In which, of Mountain Dew they did drink their fills.
Those first 60 miles had taken their toll
But they were so close to home so away they did roll.
Into that nasty traffic grind
In their ears the beastly cars whined.
The first major town in nine days
The boys detested it in so many ways.
Quickly the mile countdown was started
Rapidly through 25, 24, 23 miles they darted.
With about 10 to go they again called the house
So when we arrived, us with water they would douse.
5, 4, 3 away they did slip
And now their hearts were beginning to skip.
They knew they would make it, they would be done.
2 to go, then 1, they were rejoicing having loads of fun.
Then they got serious, they slowed, for one last talk
Each praised the other, congratulated, proclaimed the other “the rock.”
They had stuck it out
They would finish the route.
Two blocks to go they were talking still
The end of this journey like a hard-swallowed pill
Those last few words I cannot share
To neither boy that would be fair.

(Almost home)

A shout went up from Nick’s little sister,
She was cheering us homeward, we should have kissed her.
One slow right turn and into the family crowd.
We were done, we all were proud.
So ends this saga; this journey of two
Who in nine days from boys to men grew.

(Legs browned up like hamburger from days out in the sun)

Epilogue:
Eddy and Nick at Bob Jones School
Still think back on this trip and drool.
Now more than ever they wish to be free.
Alas, not while they’re there will that ever be.
Often together they dream of going all the way—
Of riding together across the whole country someday.
Whether it’ll happen there’s no guarantee
You’ll just have to wait, pray, hope, and see.


—Eddy Zakes

eazakes@juno.com

A Plea for Amnesty (or How Dan Became "Brother Dan")

I’ve sat for a month or two trying to think of the next significant story for my blog.

I’ve worried that maybe I’ve disassociated some of my readers after suffering long bouts of mogigraphia (a fancy word for writer’s cramp). Now that I’m in my house I think I’m cured, but this will be a more accurate test than my recent efforts. For the few of you who remain, I hope you enjoy my work.

The most encouraging praise came from my brother Dan recently. He wrote me a note after reading “How Far?” a post from back in June.

Don't know why I hadn't read it till now, but I just walked away from reading this with a renewed sense of respect for your principles as regarding independence and adventure. Makes me wonder what I was doing then, and remember that you didn't talk about it much, but I know you told me the story of the day and recalled much of it. I was only 12 then, so I didn't quite get it.—Dan

That made me want to write again. To make people think about adventure and independence.

This story is dedicated to my brother Dan.

You’ll know why at the end…


When I was seventeen, my brother Dan and I got permission from my parents to go camping out in the desert. Even in the first sentence here, I notice something of significance that anybody that has heard me talk about my brother Dan would recognize.

Brother Dan.

It is an extreme rarity for me to call my brother Dan anything other than “Brother Dan.”

There was no specific day that I can remember starting to call him that. I’ve called him that for years. It isn’t derogatory, quite the opposite. I want people to associate him with me. I want them to recognize our relationship, our tie, our connection. He isn’t just some kid, some friend, some anybody. He’s my brother. It isn’t meant to be a “tag-along” title, and more than likely it probably started in college when the people I was meeting hadn’t met him or didn’t know who I was talking to if I just referred to him as Dan.

It didn’t take long for my friends to get to know him though. Since he accompanied me on nearly every significant trip and witnessed practically every important event of my life, I’d reference him in stories left and right.

Well, one day, we got permission to camp out for a quick overnighter in the desert. We’d been asking my parents for a while. It wasn’t hard to pack. We tossed a couple of armloads worth of stuff, the majority of which had something to do with water, into the back of the station wagon that was our ticket around town.

We drove north on I-17 for half an hour and turned east into the desert. We followed the Carefree Highway—which was a perfect street name for the day—for 10 miles, then turned north for 18 miles of graded dirt road to a free campground hidden down in a little depression. This little impression in the high desert plateau is something of an oasis amidst the arid high scrub and gravelly buttes in the vicinity.

I got my driver’s license when I was sixteen. Driving came naturally after years of riding my bike trying not to get squished between city buses or pan-caked by distracted drivers. I had gotten my permit six months earlier, hours before a family vacation when my parents thought I might be helpful as a third string driver. I was hooked. I loved to drive.

“My” car was a 1983 Grand Marquis station wagon. I thought it was especially meaningful that it was born the same year as I. It was awesome. Maybe it wasn’t the coolest car on the road—especially without air conditioning, but it met my needs with the perfect combination of attributes. It was big. I once took 14 people to a high school football game (12 of them were girls—bonus points for Eddy). There were seat belts for 12. The hood was like a queen size bed.

Usually though when you get a car that can ferry an abundance of passengers you lose gas mileage. Granted it wasn’t exceptional, but if I was conservative with my accelerator I could get the “Beast” into the 18-20 mile per gallon range. The other thing that usually suffers with passenger capacity is acceleration. Again the wagon was nothing extraordinary, but it could hold its head high with rear wheel drive and a 5.8-liter, small block V-8. The speedometer only went to 80 miles per hour, so I have no idea how fast it could really go, but I had it pegged a few times. Pegged at 80, the pedal was only a third of the way to the floor.

But if you have a fast car, you usually get a harsher ride. Not so with the wagon. That baby floated—speed bumps, no problem. It was so wide and heavy, even with the soft suspension, I could corner as fast as I wanted to.

On top of all of that it was old, so it was cheap to insure.

Fast, big, comfortable, reasonably fuel efficient and very safe—built like a tank in fact.

On the dirt road run into the camp ground I drove aggressively. Too much gas in the corners, fishtailing on the dirt having fun. I was too cheap to wear out my tires on asphalt and afraid of getting tickets anyways so the dirt roads were where I let loose.

We got there in one piece. We set up our meager camp, built a fire, ate a few hot dogs and way too may marshmellows as the sun went down painting a firestorm of pinks, red, oranges, purples, and blues across the cloudless sky.

We sat in our lawn chairs late into the night with the fire hissing and popping. Coyotes howled in the distance. The desert cools drastically in the night, and the warmth of the fire illuminated our ruddy, boyish faces as we laughed, debated, and teased our way through the typical conundrums of youth.

We slept.

In the morning we woke up. After a simple breakfast we packed our gear back into the wagon. We made our lunch and then drove a few miles back towards Phoenix to the jumping off point for our hike.

The solitude of the desert is immense.

"...In sublimity - the superlative degree of beauty - what land can equal the desert with its wide plains, its grim mountains, and its expanding canopy of sky! You shall never see elsewhere as here the dome, the pinnacle, the minaret fretted with golden fire at sunrise and sunset; you shall never see elsewhere as here the sunset valleys swimming in a pink and lilac haze, the great mesas and plateaus fading into blue distance, the gorges and canyons banked full of purple shadow. Never again shall you see such light and air and color; never such opaline mirage, such rosy dawn, such fiery twilight. And wherever you go, by land or by sea, you shall not forget that which you saw not but rather felt - the desolation and the silence of the desert..." — John C. Van Dyke, 1898, The Desert

We hiked for an hour up a narrow canyon, ate our lunch, and hiked an hour back.

What happened next irreversibly tied me to my brother Dan—interminably made him brother Dan.

I decided to continue with my foolishly aggressive driving. No one was in danger other than the two of us. I took the twists and turns, rises and drops inspired by rally racing videos I’d seen. I’d brake hard into a corner putting the car sideways, drifting my way into position to accelerate hard on the exit.

I went up a short hill semi-blinded by the slope, turned right at the top, and dropped down continuing to the right. We were on the flank of a mountain. At the bottom of the quick descent was a left hand bend. To the right of us was the mountain, to the left a hundred foot expanse as the slope fell away from the unprotected side of the road.

The left hand bend was my undoing. I drifted too much. As the back of the wagon slid through behind me, it pointed the hood of the Beast towards the gulch. I was skidding out of control, heading for sure extermination.

Growing up in Minnesota long before I’d gotten my turn behind the wheel, over and over I heard coaching that to regain control you’ve got to turn your tires in the direction of the skid. The problem with that advice was that to steer my tires in that direction was to steer to certain destruction.

Somehow my muscles overcame my fear and for the briefest moment I whipped the wheel to the left, toward the edge, gained a fraction of traction, then wrenched the wheel back to the right.

My overcorrection, drove the car into the side of the mountain.

The impact was lessened by the pile of loose dirt that accumulates on the side of graded dirt roads. When we hit that berm, it lifted the right front corner of the car into the air and the car was promptly high-centered on an 18-inch pile of scree.

The engine was killed by the impact.

Dazed and scared, but completely unhurt we sat in the car. I broke the silence first, but unfortunately even with my memory for story telling I can’t remember what was said.

I tried to open my door but it wouldn’t. The car was at such an angle that the door was pressed into the ground. Dan pushed his door open and climbed out and I followed, climbing up and out across the front bench of seats.

After surveying the damage we set to work. The mound of dirt ran between the front two wheels and exited the side of the car between the front and back right tires. The back left corner of the bumper was resting on the ground supporting the car. Both of the right side tires were suspended in the air, most importantly the right rear which was the driving wheel.

Dan started scooping out the dirt and I pulled out the jack. Fortunately it wasn’t one of the new small jacks that stows away under the hood of the car—it was an old-school jack for an old-school car.

Around this point the first car drove by. The driver rolled down the window of his Subaru and asked us if we needed help. We certainly did, but refused. We’d only been there for 10 minutes at most and weren’t ready to throw in the towel yet. Plus I was scared that he’d call the cops, my parents, or a tow truck and I’d be stuck explaining my stupidity.

With increasing futility and mounting frustration we scraped at the roadside trying to get enough clearance to get our right rear tire back onto the ground.

Another car drove up, this time a truck. A young guy and his girlfriend were headed out into the desert to do some four wheeling. Again we turned down their help with a “We almost got it, but thanks.

After 45 minutes an old Ford Bronco pulled up. The loan passenger was a guy in his fifties, a week’s stubble on his chin and a filthy ball cap propped on his oily hair.

“You boys look to be in a heap o’ trouble.”

Dan, knowing the drill, nonchalantly said, “Nah, we almost got it…thanks though.”

The guy dropped his jacked up Bronco back into gear, and slowly pulled away. He made it 30 feet before he put it in reverse and came back to us.

"Ain’t no way ya almost got it. Lemme help ya.”

It wasn’t a question. He was telling us what he was going to do. Thankfully he knew just what needed to be done. He clambered down with a tow strap and looped through the tow hooks on the wagon. I climbed into the driver’s seat of the wagon and he gingerly applied the gas on his end of the line. Initially nothing happened, but slowly the Beast regained its proper place on the road.

Without getting out of his vehicle the guy took the strap from my uplifted hands, accepted my appreciation, and said, “I’ll bet you’ll never be that stupid again.” He dropped it into gear and this time didn’t come back.

Dan and I gave the car a perfunctory inspection. On the exterior everything seemed sound. Underneath the car a part was hanging down, sheered from its mounting bolts by the impact. It gently swayed, held in place by its wiring harness. We found a coat hanger in the back of the wagon and wired it back into place. Other than that nothing was conspicuously amiss. Dirt was packed into every imaginable crevice under the whole front of the car.

We climbed back in, refastened our seatbelts, and crept down the remaining five miles of dirt road. The vibration of the washboard road freed most of the dirt deposits and soon we were back onto the Carefree Highway—without such a carefree attitude this time.

We were supposed to be home by 4:00. We pulled into the driveway at 3:55 and unbelievably my parents weren’t home. I reexamined the car and miraculously our initial analysis held. Somehow the car sustained no significant damage.

At that point we made the choice not to tell my parents—another bad decision in a day full of them.

My brother Dan, that day, went from being my tag-a-long annoyance to full-fledged, acknowledged and accepted participant in the epic of my life. It wasn’t just him keeping his mouth shut, it was a bond that transcended tattletaling. We shared something.

We still share that something. He gets me, understands my passions, my pursuit of adventure, my strengths, weaknesses, victories, and failures. He understands why, though separated by age and distance, we can talk as though we have never been separated.

He is indeed my Brother Dan.

I tell this story now after all of these years with the hope for amnesty. This year my parents sold the Beast. The Beast with a mythical figure to us older kids in the family. We all learned to drive on it, enshrouded by the safety of its size. As time passed, the car approached 200,000 miles and became less and less reliable. Eventually my parents replaced it with a newer car for the young drivers of the family and the wagon was relegated to the last and lowliest position in the family driveway. It sat undriven for extended periods until finally it wasn’t driven at all. We worried that the car would die an anonymous death, crushed into a cube of steel, when my parents finally got rid of it. It wouldn’t be fair for a car with such a storied life to die such an obscure death.

Thankfully my parents wanted more for the car than the $150 per ton that the scrap yard was offering. They posted it on Craigslist. A man drove from a small town over an hour away and bought the car. When he finished putting it on his trailer with my youngest brother and sister in near tears observing from the porch, my mom asked him what he was going to do with it. Hesitantly, lest he offend, he told her that he would be entering it into his small county’s demolition derby later that summer.

My entire family attended (except me—work obligated).

The Beast didn’t win the derby, but she gave it everything she had. She lost due to immobilization, but after she was towed back to the pits, the man climbed back in and fired the engine back up, one last time, on the first try.

The wagon died that day—a legend in life and a legend in death. As a gladiator in the arena, she fought, she suffered, and she ultimately succumbed. Her greatest accomplishment, giving me a brother I can’t take for granted, lives.

Eddy Zakes
eazakes@juno.com

Our new house - 170 Richard Dr.

I've received request after request to post some pictures of our new house. I'm sorry for the delay. I'll try to keep up a little better now. As you'll be able to see from the pictures, I've been pretty busy. Enjoy...

From the street

From the back--the house sits on just over a half acre.

The kitchen needed to be completely replaced. Several of the built in appliances no longer worked and due to their age were unrepairable.

The other side of the kitchen...note the lovely shutter-blinds.

And who could miss the quilted flooring (oops, I mean carpet)?

So we started ripping it out in the last week of June.

There were big beams supporting the old ceiling.

Autumn, Alex, and I gutted the majority of the kitchen in two mornings.

Then we reframed and rewired the whole room.

All of the demo debris went into the garage and has been subsequently burned and dumpstered.

When we bought the house we referred to this room as the Green Bay Packers room. It had such a lovely color scheme. It was such a shame to tear up the green carpet.

Under the carpet though was 12-inch asbestos tile that we'd just ripped up in this picture.

Hard to believe that this is the same room. It is going to be Autumn's "office."

Here is the gorgeous master bedroom. This room was named the Aquarium when we bought it.

Still blue, but a much better shade. Teal wasn't our thing.

If Autumn gets an office, then I get a Manspace.

But with a better paint job.

As other rooms are finished, I'll try to post updates in a more timely fashion. We have a lot more to do, but we're definitely coming along. As you may have noticed, a lot of the windows need to be replaced. The kitchen has been drywalled and tonight my father-in-law is putting on the third coat of mud.

There weren't any pictures of the living room yet, but when that room, which needs a lot of work, starts seeing improvement, I'll post some pictures.

eazakes@juno.com

How far?

I used to ride my bicycle a lot.

Actually—I rode it so much that most people thought I was weird.

But anyways, I really liked it so I didn’t care what people thought. I wore those skin-tight little shorts. You know, the ones with the pad in them that makes you look like you’re wearing a spandex diaper. I shaved my legs religiously and was proud of my incredible tan lines.

Most serious cyclists have ridden 100 miles in a day. It’s typically called a ‘century,’ and is to the cyclist what a marathon is to the runner.

I’d knocked off my first century at 15 years old and routinely rode 75 miles on a Saturday, come ‘that one place’ or high water. During the winter I stuffed newspapers up my jersey to block the wind and during the summer I’d drink two or three gallons of water to combat the 100-plus degree heat of an Arizona morning.

I raced the regional junior races and did fairly well, winning in the smallest local races, hitting the top five in state level races, and finishing around tenth in the bigger regional races.

I didn’t have all of the best equipment but I loved to ride and loved the weirdness and recognition of participating in a sport that doesn’t usually attract teenagers.

Out of that love to ride hatched the insane idea of riding 200 miles in one day.

Two hundred miles is not outside the range of the possible, but it is definitely on the far side of the absolute fringe of the extreme. Normal riders, even most who’ve been riding for years, haven’t ridden 200 miles in day, nor even want to.

There really isn’t that great of a reason to do it. It isn’t really that great of training because that sort of distance is ultimately more debilitating the constructive. It produces a physiological strain on the body that takes months to recover from.

And nobody really cares.

That’s probably the real reason few pursue riding ultra-long distances. There is no recognition. Pretty much everybody thinks you should be committed to an asylum, but then after a week or two everybody forgets what you did and things get back to normal.

Kind of like a runner. A runner is cool if he runs a marathon. There isn’t any added ‘coolness ranking’ if the runner ran 30 miles instead of the 26.2. The same with the bicycling thing. If you want coolness, ride you’re bike 100 miles. Normal people think that riding your bicycle 25 miles is a lot, so 100 is amazing, but 200 is so unfathomable that people don’t place it higher than the ‘amazing’ of the 100 mile ride.

Regardless, that is what I wanted to do. I wanted to ride my bike 200 miles in one day.

I posed the idea to my parents and they actually went for it. They just wanted me to tell them when I was leaving, give them a detailed route description, and call them from one or two points along the way.

First, I worked on figuring out where I wanted to ride. I knew I had absolutely no desire to do an out-and-back course for two reasons. I thought it would be too boring and the opportunity to turn around was too great.

I settled on a loop riding from my house in Glendale up I-17 to Cordes Junction, over to Prescott, down to Wickenburg, and then home to Glendale.

I got busy with other things but held the ride in the back of my head for when the opportunity was right. I couldn’t go in the summer because it’d be to hot; since part of my ride was over 5,000 feet of elevation, I couldn’t go in the winter because it’d be to cold and snowy. The challenge with the spring and fall was getting the right blend of weather over the whole 200 miles. It might be perfect in one place and not in the next.

At dinner one night in April, things just felt right. So just like that I announced, without much fanfare, that tomorrow was the day.

I set my alarm for 4:30am and went to bed around 8:00pm. I slept fine, but woke up earlier than I wanted to around 4:00, probably because of my nervous excitement. When I get really nervously excited about something I shiver, so I quietly shivered my way around the kitchen packing up some food, filling my water bottles, and eating a quick bowl of oatmeal. I let myself out the garage door and left without an audience around 4:30.

I wound through the quiet, cool suburban streets of the fifth largest metropolis in the U.S. Past hundreds of sleeping households, a few barking dogs, and just stirring birds. The sun was pausing behind the horizon’s curtain, waiting for its cue to shine on the day’s stage.

All was well. I was the boy on the bike.

I rode slowly knowing what was ahead, making sure not to crash into anything in the dark. I had a handlebar bag full of food, warmer clothing for the mountains, and a map, and my three jersey pockets were full of even more food and water.

After thirty minutes I was on the wide shoulder of the interstate, with warm breezes washing over me whenever semi’s chugged by. I picked up my pace and was faced with the biggest climb of the ride.

About thirty miles from my front door is a climb of 10 miles. From the relatively low desert to the high desert plateau, the Black Canyon Freeway climbs roughly 1,500 feet. Nearing the top of this climb, I was starting to get hungry. I knew 35 minutes ahead was the first real chance of stopping that I’d had yet. I started craving—I know it’s strange, but after a few hours of hard exercise, you crave weird things—I started craving a McDonald’s number one value meal. You know, the Big Mac, super-sized fries, and replacing the pop with a strawberry milkshake.

Well that’s what I wanted.

So I pulled into the only restaurant in Cordes Junction, which conveniently is a McDonald’s, leaned my bike against the glass window in a spot where it would be clearly visible to me on the inside (it would be bad to have your bicycle stolen partway through a 200 mile ride), and walked up to the counter.

“Can I have a number one value meal please?” I asked the older lady behind the counter.

She looked over the counter at me, the gangly teenager, salt-crusted from sweat, wearing funny looking shoes, let alone funny looking shorts, and said, “Sorry honey, we don’t serve burgers ‘til 10:00.”

So I asked the next obvious question. “Could I have a large strawberry milkshake then?”

“Weeell, I’m real sorry son, but our ice cream machine is broken, so I’ll have to say nope to that too.”

I was crushed. For nearly an hour I’d been fantasizing about this meal. All they could give me was something from their breakfast menu. I settled—grumbling all the way—for a couple of Egg McMuffins and an orange juice.

I finished my breakfast, refilled my water bottles, having drank three of them, and set off for Prescott around 9:00am.

The road to Prescott is nothing spectacular, but…it was struggling through a resurfacing and widening project. For two hours I rode squeezed against a concrete barrier, cars blaring their horns trying to get by me on the single grooved concrete lane that the Department of Transportation had left open. For the first few minutes I pondered the road sign stating that fines were doubled in construction zones. Wondering first if it would apply to whoever ran me over, and second if my parents would get any of the fine. After that I just concentrated on my riding and trying to keep my front wheel from being captured in a groove.

I rode into Prescott with a new craving. I wanted Mountain Dew. Everybody says that sugar is bad, caffeine is bad, blah, blah, blah… Well, it can be, but that day that was what I needed. I figured most people argued against sugar because it caused a sugar high, which is generally followed by a sugar low, which can be difficult to recover from. I resolved that I just wouldn’t let myself come off of the high. If you keep pumping in more sugar then you’ll have a hard time achieving the low. Besides, I needed the sugar because at this point I’d ridden 91 miles and climbed a total of 8, 500 feet.

The only place that I could think of that served Mountain Dew was Taco Bell. That’s not a problem because I’ve always liked Taco Bell. Same routine—I leaned my bike up against the glass window, walked in clicking my carbon fiber bike cleats across the tile floor, and asked the employee for six bean burritos and three soft tacos and an extra large pop.

He kind of looked at me funny.

He got me what I wanted and I started in on it. I ate all of it except two bean burritos which went into my jersey pockets. Then I walked out to my bike and grabbed two of my water bottles and filled them up with Mountain Dew also. Then I pedaled away.

The next part of my ride was the hardest. The wind turned against me and I was lethargic from having sat down to eat. I rode up over a hill to get out of Prescott heading south. The sun was full blast and it was the pits. The absolute pits. And then the sun went behind some clouds and it got really cold, but I’d been sweating from the sun and the climb, but then I was freezing and couldn’t get warm, and…it was the pits.

I rode through Yarnell and was hungry again. I pulled off the road but there weren’t any establishments that sold real food. I stopped into something like a general store just to stretch my legs and bought a few candy bars (sugar again).

Then came the best part of the whole trip.

The Yarnell Hill.

This isn’t just any hill, it is one the biggest climbs in the state. It soars 2,500 feet up the side of Table Top Mountain in a scant four miles. I however, had the privilege of going down it.

At the crest of the mountain I looked down onto my desert home. The warmth of desert floor was calling me and I answered by one again stepping into the pedals and dropping my bicycle into its biggest gear. Four miles wasn’t enough to pay for my suffering, but it brought the balance closer to being back in line.

It was probably around 3:00 when I got to the bottom. I pedaled my way to Wickenburg and finally got to treat myself to that number one value meal from McDonald’s. And then a second one.

Just one last leg home. About 45 miles.

It was getting dark and I was about 10 miles from home when I endured my only mechanical mishap of the trip. A flat tire. I was pretty close to past caring, so I just reinflated the tire and kept riding without patching it.

Two miles later it was flat again. I just wanted to quit, but no, I had to deal with this joke of a tire. Exhausted, I pulled out a spare tube and inserted into the tire casing and inflated it once more.

I climbed back onto my bike with my body screaming no.

I said yes. Audibly.

I pedaled the last few miles to my house and looked down at the computer on my handlebars. It read 195.70. That wasn’t going to cut it so I rode straight past my house.

My knee was throbbing and visibly swollen. My feet were blistered, my hands were numb. But I rode on.

Phoenix at Night

The last two miles were giving me such excruciating pain in my left knee that I unclipped my left foot and just pedaled with my right.

Around 8:15pm I pulled into my driveway and unclipped my right foot from the pedal. My body was disagreeing with me and I nearly fell over. My legs didn’t want to walk they wanted to turn circles so I stumbled up to the garage door, just as I’d left it nearly 16 hours before, audienceless.

I opened the door, pushed my bike in, and leaned it against the wall in its customary place. Next I pulled my helmet off. Sweat trickled out of the foam pads that help it to sit comfortably on your head. Then I took off my shoes. Then my gloves. I took one last swig of warm Mountain Dew out of my bottle and walked into the house.

My body ached, but now it could rest. My family was in the living room watching TV and I didn’t immediately announce my presence. I just sat down in the kitchen and sat.

Sat still.

I had ridden myself into a hallowed land. The few who really knew were amazed. A 16-year old—200 miles in one day, and with 12,500 feet of climbing at that, and alone, without the psychological assistance of competition or friends.

Simply unbelievable.

And to most it was. And to most it will be.

And it needs to be that way or wouldn’t mean the same thing.

But me, and to you. We know.

-Eddy Zakes
eazakes@juno.com