Monday, September 27, 2010

We're almost there!!


Hey all you kit-n-caboodle snickerdoodles and frisky-risky coonhunters!

Here we are, a couple a dudes, you know, us, Alex and Emelio, a couple a dudes... you know, us guys? Remember us, the ones who are on biketour? You know? The guys whose blog you've been following for the past eight weeks? Us? HELLOOOOOOO?????!!??? Well, whatever. Not like it even matters anyway to you bunch of phonies......

We last left you in Fabluous Ely, Nevada (parenthetical: Emelio just literally dropped the A-Bomb on Hiroshima AKA on this library's computer area. It smells so eggtastically repugnant that the guy to our left literally is standing up and finishing his session early, which is surprising because he wasn't even halfway through writing that Twilight fan-fic). Ely was the sight of Rest Day 2012 AKA Rest Day in Ely AKA Rest Day in Ely, Nevada. In the morning, we woke to 35-degree weather patterns and went out in frantic search of cover (read: warmth).

Our fireplace of joy manifested itself in the form of the pleasantly kitschy Silver State Restauraunt (read: Diner). Alex basically popped a chubby when, upon perusing the menu, perused a menu item that transplanted him back to his wonderyears in that dark, horrifying country sandwiched between the Fine Portuguese and the Illustrious French (and the Weird Monacoans(?)). It was a Basque Food Item Skillet! More specifically, it was generally a Basque-style chorizo skillet. You may be interested to know, unless you are a rube, that the Basque people have sizeably presented themselves throughout the Silver State such that many eateries currently offer certain original delicacies to tantalize the tastebuds. The Basques are also reputed to be reliable sheepherders.

Transition, we had an excellent breakfast and sure took our time in that there establisment right there, drinking coffee there and writing some postcards in that place.

As we were leaving, we were accosted by some dude (not one of us couple dudes, mind you, simply a different dude). He told us the tallest tale that'd ever snarked our furry ears, lying (through his teeth) that he was a cameraman with a crew of dudes traveling around Nevada filming basically whatever the hell they felt like with the intention of doing god knows what with the footage. We good-naturedly listened to his hellraising fib, bid the gentleman farewell, and spent exactly one hour calming each other down because we were in such a state of infuriation due to the fib-blasting we had just suffered.

But as it turned out, that dude was actually David, a nice and friendly cameraman from Vegas. He and his likewisely nice and friendly accomplice Jonathan bought us a delicious Mexican dinner that night, and boy were our ears red when we found out they had never told a lie in their entire lives! We talked to D&J for like, a good while, and enjoyed the night out on the town with our new friends even though everyone in the entire restaurant was openly laughing at us as we left (not JK).

That night, we fulfilled our destiny of lodging our grubby-ass bodies in the grubbiest-ass motel in town: El Rancho. For those of you looking forward to a smarmy description of the knee-nursing that went down in this $35.00 hotel room, you will be sorely disappointed unless you visit www.rubbingdisplaysinelynevada.com Let's just say that showers were had, awful (really awful) HBO was watched,
and when Alex went to sleep Emelio spooned him.



You could hardly tell, but this place is run by some Fijians on the lam!

The next morning we rendezvoued with D&J, who were interested in capturing our bearded mugs on film! Can ya buh-leeve it! They basically dressed us down with questions about our bikejourneyundertaking, and got a couple sweet closeups of the maggots squirming around in all of our crevices. It was really neat, and we even got into character and started beating them with rolled-up newspapers while hollering, "Back, Paparazzi Scum!" Alex got a little annoyed when Emelio refused to put down the skull he was holding in his left hand for the duration of filming, but he didn't realize that Emelio is a Stanislavsky-trained disciple of the stage.

Oh what a surprise! Alex is talking about himself!

D&J filmed us riding out of Ely, on our way Westward along U.S. Highway 50. We should mention to you, our loyal followers, our pandering audience, our lamentable compatriots in this pathetic charade we call life, that US HWY 50 is commonly referred to, locally and globally, as "America's Loneliest Road." If only it was referred to as "America's Road that is Packed with Free Prostitutes," we would have been in a good place in our opinion!!

As it was, Nevada's Hwy 50 is very truly (seriously) an extremely people-less, yet desloate strip of pavement. There are four towns along this remote 280-mile stretch, and literally no human presence in between. We were surprised when we saw a few houses in the distance until we realized that they were absolutely abandoned and tipping over.


Along Hwy 50, there is a stretch of barren land that is decorated with years' worth of people's names
(and other messages) spelled out from rocks gleaned from the roadside
So we did it too. We're hoping this becomes a meme (check 4chan!)

Our bicycle-experience on this road was as follows: 1) Climb mountain range 2) Descend 3) Cross a gigantic dried basin 4) Repeat. Some of you may be interested to know that Nevada is home to more mountain ranges than any other U.S. state. We felt like we had to ride through just about every single one of them.

Bonus chips! And they said this road was lonely...

Okay this next part is REALLY cool, so you should definitely read it!!!!!!!!!!!!!! :D :D :'(

We got into the-town-after-Ely (locally known as Eureka, but we both had actually found it GREEK JOKE GREEK JOKE!) just after night had oozed its way down the sky. After checking out a couple establishments, Emelio decided that he needed to sate his ravenous appetite for chocolate milkshakes with a chocolate milkshake. It was at this point that Dame Fate intervened. DJ's diner was slowing down for the night, but us couple dudes nevertheless nabbed a cushy booth adjacent to another booth that was occupied by a trio of dudes on huntingtriptour from Vegas. We got to chatting (asl?) with the bros, and they were freakin sweet! When the ringleader noticed that only one of us had decided to purchase consolidated energy, and that it was Emelio and that it was simply a chocolate milkshake, he asked us, "When was the last time you guys ate a decent meal?" We candidly responded, "Some guys in Ely bought us a really nice meal just last night!" He basically didn't care that we'd been well-fed in the past 24 hours, and with all the flair of a huntsman towering over his recently-felled mule deer, he offered to buy us dinner. Wowzachowza! Alex mistakenly ordered a basket of chicken strips and onion rings with a small vanilla shake, and Emelio correctly ordered a 12" cheese pizza to complement his large chocolate shake. Emelio was heard to say (by Alex) that it was the best meal of the entire trip, and Alex was heard to say (by Emelio) that he wished he had ordered a fucking pizza.

This food is seriously making Emelio salivate even now, and making Alex jealous also even now

Let's cut to the chase. We camped in Eureka on a stupid thing, then we rode for a long time the next day, passed a nice town called Austin, camped in the Nevada shrubbery, woke up and rode for a long time again until we got to a town called Fallon.
We heard coyotes yipping and howling nearby!

On the way to Fallon, we both realized at the exact same time (and even screeched it aloud to each other at the exact same time) that it was SUNDAY NIGHT. And on Sunday Night, in the United States of America, when it is Football Season, a Lot of People watch Football on the Television. So we went to a bar and ordered a lot of beer and watched the Miami Jets beat the New York Dolphins! It was fun, and Alex ate a burger that weighed about six and a half pounds. Three people talked to us at the bar: one was from Colombia, one liked the Raiders, and one was an almost entirely incomprihensible drunk/village idiot. The bartenders were hot: one wore a short purple dress, the other was short with an ample chest. Both happened to be female.

Unfortunately we had the rainfly on, so we couldn't catch
any sweet upskirts from the girls playing on the jungle gym

We slept in Fallon's expansive city park on a beautiful patch of woodchips, and missed the sprinklers by a margin of 1.73 feet. God bless America.

In the morning, we talked to a guy who was on house arrest (and had even spent 7 months in prison) because he was caught with shrooms at Burning Man in an explicit example of entrapment. We both marveled at the fellow's tale of woe, and immediately threw away our stash of shrooms, meth, heroin, peyote, cough syrup, and poisonous toads.

Alex claimed Nevada's capitol building in the name of peace

And then he claimed that the capitol grounds could stand for some proper landscaping!

Today we arrived in Nevada's state capital, also known as Irkutsk (JK it's Carson City). Along the way, we met a really cool dude named Pete who is also riding his bicycle to San Francisco! We decided to ride our bicycles with him today, and we hope to repeat the process tomorrow and the following day as we approach the San Francisco Bay. It's a little bit late to be mentioning this, but we are actually truly but four days from the end of this, our epic quest. Tomorrow we even cross into Cali-fornia, a state that we know practically nothing about and has little-to-no mystique about it whatsoever. Unbelievable.

Pete has replaced Emelio as Alex's #2

Now we're going to go gamble the night away. See you in Hell!

Alex always says a finger-prayer over his gold ring before dining at a casino

Love,

Couple Dudes, Walex and Welio.

17 comments:

  1. The photos on this post are the best yet. Both pictures of Alex at the restaurants are classic.

    Having said that, your writing indicates that your heads have been fried like a proverbial egg by the desert sun.

    Placing the tent next to a playground shows how remarkably stupid you are - in Nevada they'll shoot you for something like that and drag your dusty bodies to the desert to feed the buzzards. Cyclist from Ohio? I didn't see any cyclists from Ohio.

    I watched all 6:41 of the Raising Arizona video link - classic Coen.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Emelio promised me his winnings at the Carson City Casino if I updated the map, so here's the link...

    http://maps.google.com/maps/ms?ie=UTF8&hl=en&msa=0&msid=102934719952465334988.00048d839424c0af0c79f&z=5

    I think you have to copy and paste it.

    ReplyDelete
  3. You missed the S&M fest and Oktoberfest in San Fran. You better just turn around. JK--there's always naked people with whips in the city.

    Sorry I missed you hairy dudes. Make sure to go to the science museum on Thursday-it's open till 10 and you can drink while learning!

    ReplyDelete
  4. BTW - You already used the Greek joke back in Eureka, Kansas! What is the Greek word for redundant?

    ReplyDelete
  5. the photo of emelio sprawled out on the bed of that skeezy motel room is the best ever. i just want to print it out and glue it to my desk.

    ReplyDelete
  6. I agree that these are some nice pics. I like the message you left in rocks. I might just ride my bicycle to Nevada to check it out in person. JK. Just wish Pete was with you at that current, exact, moment in time, to snap a pic with both you in it!

    Thanks for texting this morning when you crossed into CA. How exciting for you couple a dudes!

    I believe the blog has been a somewhat less-edited lately, thanks in part to both Alex's aunts' comments to him via FB that “the family can handle it". Enjoying it all the same.

    Gonna see one and both of you dudes soon (exciting for me!). Ride the crap out of those Sierra mountains dudes!

    ReplyDelete
  7. Alex, and Emilio, who I haven't met yet, I don't want your trip to end! Do you? I really look forward to reading your blogs...and your grammar is awesome! Your links are way to fun and I enjoy wasting time checking them all out.
    This neighborhood is stronger with you here, but the country sure has had some fun with you couple of dudes riding across it.
    Alex's "fossil" English teacher, Denise

    ReplyDelete
  8. So proud of you freaks!
    Virg and Pete

    ReplyDelete
  9. Could someone who reads this thing please explain to me why Emelio's farts always smell like nasty eggs? How much egg has he eaten? Also, this the most NSFW post yet!

    -Sure do miss you...

    ReplyDelete
  10. sleezball-americanized-mariachi-style tacos + greasy-bambino-lust-inducing pizza (connected only by america's lonliest road, where cactuses become hookers) = nasty ass egg gas

    two days! huzza!

    ReplyDelete
  11. So, you know how you've seen Western movies and TV shows and often one of the characters is a grizzled old hermit who has lived away from civilization for years and is part curmudgeon, part sweetheart, and part peculiar? Well, judging from both the comments about this blog, as well as the blog itself, I'm kinda suspecting that Emelio & Alex are reaching their goal --and the "civilization"of San Francisco-- just in the nick of time! Whew! A few more days riding through the wild and beautiful and desolate backroads might bring us a couple a dudes who live off the food nestled in their beards and who bathe only at the summer solstice. And those would be the normal aspects of their existence . ..

    It's so exciting you are almost there . . . be safe!

    ReplyDelete
  12. Thanks, Rick, for continuing to give us the map link - I am printing it for Alex's grandma and grandpa to look at today and it will make their day - no, their week. I am serious - they will look at it and be proud of him and smile for days! Nice work dudes - I, too, will be sad when this ends. What's the plan for how to get home? Love you

    ReplyDelete
  13. Emelio's farts really are the worst. If you don't believe me you haven't smelt them... (which means you haven't met Emelio.)

    ReplyDelete
  14. ugh, rick, how many times do you have to comment? get a job, will ya???

    your description of the pizza/milkshake has made me extremely hungry, and why didn't you just camp on the capitol building's lawn?

    ReplyDelete