The final day of the Siege was quite pleasant: a mellow ride back to civilization taking the highway vs. the godawful Dillon Road (it was shockingly quicker). We rode past the grounds at Indio that hosts the annual Coachella Music Festival, set to commence in just a few days. Crews were setting up the stage where Jay-Z will play to hordes of the unwashed who, somehow, managed to come up with $200 to spend the weekend acquiring heatstroke and interesting diseases.
Shimmering in the distance was our destination, the glorious monument to Americana, the beacon of hope, the great symbol of the power of Western Civilization: Wal-Mart. Specifically the Wal-Mart whose parking lot rested the '97 Saturn that may lose a quart of oil a week, but at least it was cheap. Our mission complete, we celebrated by partaking in another peculiar American institution: the All-You-Can-Eat Buffet, where we made damn sure we had our $9.36 worth of heavily processed, chemically-enhanced industrial agricultural products that can make towns like Mecca and El Centro viable in the 21st century.
...It was a long, straight, runway-esque road that will make any man, even milquetoast Sierra Clubbers, wish they had a Lamborghini, if only for just 5 minutes. Pitch black with the Kinks' Greatest Hits on the tape deck, we reviewed the Siege's highlights and lowlights, a procedure ML adopted in Europe. Logic would dictate it was high time to put the panniers away and get back to the 40/50 grind, but we are not logical people. The ink was still wet on this chapter when ML asked the obvious question: "What's next? I'm thinking South America". "Too mountainous...perhaps SE Asia, but the humidity would be draining. How about North Africa?" "Yeah, Morocco, Tunisia, maybe Egypt...hopefully we'll both be unemployed this fall and can make it happen..."
Suddenly I had less incentive to polish the old resume. But first I have to give my aching quads a bit of a rest...
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