We landed in Quincy, CA late Thursday night – after a flat tire just as we edged out of the Bay Area (changed in under eight minutes – go team!) and a drawn out Thai dinner in Marysville that left us burping curry and feeling sleepy. Two hours later Ross was wiped from keeping his eyes glued on the windy mountain road, I was simply giddy to be suddenly on a work vacation, and Rick was, as usual, shooting photos.
rick and ross
Outside the Airstream, folks picked guitars and sang folk songs under the strange light of the adjacent sawmill – the giant piles of lumber misting into the night…something about keeping the wood wet so it doesn’t crack someone said. I thought the scene was just plain creepy – a perfect backdrop for a scary movie. But the guy playing the Melodian with incredible finesse made the whole horror movie notion less plausible – I returned to feeling giddy with each song perfectly accompanied by the master Melodianeer.
Our camp spot was primo – right on the corner, in the more bourgeois RV camping zone, sure to yield great foot traffic and ridiculously close to the main music stage. Truly, a fantastic spot to pop out the Airstream porch and break into the 8 lbs of organic raspberries we scored at Costco .
all set up!
Up went the Xtracycle tent, out came the Radishes, and quickly they were plucked up by High Sierra staff ready to release their golf carts in the name of a more social, undeniably more sexy mode of transport. Box office administrators, merchandise divas, well caffeinated paramedics, hipster artist liasons came one by one to meet their steed.
Rick quickly walked them through the essentials of Xtracycling – how to carry people (slide forward for better control) and stuff (big stuff, little stuff, long stuff, heavy stuff). And off they went, diminishing our fleet and leaving us strangely without much “work” to do after all.
There is truly nothing like the moment when you realize that the work that is calling you to task involves riding out into the night with a DeWalt portable job-site stereo strapped to the back of your bike, a cowboy hat on your head, a bottle of tequila in your FreeLoaders and an available seat on the back of your Radish. Except perhaps the moment right after when you realize that you have four more days of “work” to go.
When I wasn’t cavorting by bike, I spent a good deal of time just sitting in my orange Alite chair, catching up on what is about 30 years of too few evenings spent “stooping” (sitting on one’s porch, people watching, falling into conversation, sharing food or drink with a stranger). Passers by were curious about the bikes, wishing they could borrow them, rent them, buy them. I realized we could stand to bring 3 times as many bikes as we did next year, but for now, Xtracycle was a limited resource, a finite source of human powered fun in this quaint mountain town.
- This place was perfect for the bicycle – flat, just big enough where a bike gets you where you want to go in no time, and not too crowded. At night we would cruiser over to some music at the main stage.
cruising towards the music.
John Butler tore up the stage with incredible guitar work and vocals. Ani DiFranco was fantastic, refreshing, The Loyd family players – a marching band from Oakland – soothed my funk deprived soul. Michael Jackson could be heard after hours in several directions at once – as folks at this event paid tribute to a legend. Drums and guitars and the rare Melodian wound their way into the night as big stages quieted down and the stars came alive. Laughter was universal.
nate salutes the mountains
Each day we’d cruise across the flats of this Sierra foothills town – maybe three miles – to the river at the opposite end of the valley. We stumbled upon that phenomenon I’ve come to love about California in the summertime: the mountain river rope swing spectator scene. A perfect viewing spot was created by a road pullout, where one bathing suited body after another would endeavor to understand the physics of a rope swing terminated by a BMX handlebar and a ladder made of an old freight pallet – the crowd cheered on the adventurous and the stupid. To my amazement, I managed to pull off a back flip – my first of the season – without a hiccup. Isn’t that always the case for firsts in a while – the brain is pleasantly surprised to see the body do what it knows so well. My second rope-swing improvisation became a sideways fetal position belly-flop that folks wouldn’t even acknowledge with a sarcastic cheer or laugh at my expense – so I called it a day for aerial stunts and laid out under the sunshine until I couldn’t take another milligram of Vitamin D coursing through my system. I quickly downed two beers to my system in check.
And so the days rolled on, in a kind of perfect repetitive haze, a throwback to the days of summer camp and romance and rivers and rope swings and bikes. The music all around us acted as a soundtrack to the weekend, each song indelibly marked with the feeling of total freedom afforded by two wheels and nothing specific you have to do except manifest a good time.
jam friends
When it came time to depart on Sunday, the bikes came back in great shape, and we downloaded the stories and adventures of their caretakers. Two of the bikes remained at large, and, perhaps ironically, happened to be the bikes loaned to two of the key organizers of the entire event. As I’d suspected, the two perpetrators had been converted to Xtracycle lovers, and each negotiated a deal with us to keep their bikes through the end of the event – we did our best to drive a hard bargain, but in the end, we capitulated to their demands, flattered that our Red Hot Roots had woven themselves into the fabric of this event.
The last two Radish’ have since been returned, and we eagerly look forward to facilitating more adventures with Radish and the Red Hot Roots Tour at next year’s High Sierra. But that’s a long ways away – we’ve got a lot of events to hit before then.
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