Grounded in Gerlach

I pick Dave up at the Dunsmuir traintracks and we prepare to set out on an adventure: Southern Oregon to Gerlach, Nevada. We want to crash Burning Man, free party style, then we'll ride some trains if there's time.

The Burn has already started. Before we head south, we need to pick Kendra up from a Klamath Falls rail yard. Kendra, freshly hitched from Alaska to Olympia (in a mere four days) is our nightwatch, scout, and navigator.

Dave and I make our way toward Klamath but we don't get far. My nineties Tacoma just hit three hundred thousand miles and is making some bad sounds: a little squeaking, some grinding, and occasional shudders from the rear.

Dave groans. He's the engineer on this voyage. I'm the skipper. Our captain is the fickle and uncaring wind.

Neither of us is pleased at the prospect of working on this truck with my limited tool selection. First, I'll have to figure out exactly where all my tools have gotten to. My truck is a token altar to chaos; completely disorganized.

We warmed up our "fuck shit up while fixing it" muscles when we installed roof rack into my fiberglass canopy. I managed to shatter the rear canopy window while installing a sheet metal screw (attempting to reinforce it).

It was a two hardware store trips kind of day.

We dumpster'd some clear vinyl and Dave engineered the finest ghetto window replacement I've ever seen. A brute wizard, that one.

An unhappy truck and hot as fuck in Oregon, I make way to an oil stop, asking them to grease my drivetrain, inquiring over access to the lower bay so I can peek at my undercarriage.

The oil technician hands us hard hats, warning us of slick grates as we peer upward toward the rear axle, where all the bad sounds seem to be emanating from. There's brake fluid streaming down the inside hub. That would explain the splotch of fluid in my driveway.

We drive to Medford for brake parts and bust into the rear cylinder in the Harbor Freight parking lot.

It's all moving slowly.

My socket set is in disarray and it's missing pieces. I go into my reserve stash: a pouch of sockets I've groundscored while walking long stretches of highway. For some reason, they're all standard and we need metric.

Dave grabs more tools while I bother the local fitness center for gloves and paper towels, muttering something about a mess I made.

Dave wrenches away, peeling all the hardware out and finding the source of the leak: a bad valve. He curses my pliers,

"We gotta get you a set of Man's pliers. These needlenose pliers are trash."

I start searching for "Man's" pliers on the internet.

Now he's pounding away with a hammer at the brake shoes I just bought. I ask him to stop.

"You're right. We need a bigger hammer."

Dave's favorite tool is a hammer. He once successfully fixed a broken battery cable with a hammer.

Another time, in the 9th ward of New Orleans, Dave perpetually asked for bigger hammers while savagely pounding at a huffy bicycle i a community bike shop. You could hear it down the block; the place sounded like a 17th century blacksmith.

He ruined some crank arms and fucked the axle up a bit but he fixed the bike, working through a milk crate of parts destined to be hammer-fixed and hammer-fucked. The Huffy was aptly stickered with a large "Suicidal Tendencies" logo (it didn't have much in the way of brakes). The famous crackhead Huffy: the only original part is the frame and it's the only bike in his fleet that hasn't been stolen from him.

The brake shoes we bought for this truck don't match. I return them opened and greasy and got my $40 back.

It's getting dark so we decide to put the old thin brake shoes back on.

A mere three hours and we're riding high once again. Kendra's train is behind schedule so we dock for another night in Oregon.

Setting out the next morning, we stop to see the cactus doctor for a few feet of San Pedro. We are well-supplied. Herb, mushrooms, San Pedro, some Swiss mic'd at 225, a whole slew of random pharmaceuticals, and tinctured herbs. Lots of food. We hit a food bank before leaving town. Plenty of water. Plenty of cold beverages in the cooler.

Coming down a massive hill, my truck squeals, occasionally shuddering. Is it brakes? It stops when I need to. Dave tells me not to worry.

I'm worrying anyway. Everything in my bones tells me to stay home. Your home mechanic is there. You'd never go on a trip with your truck making noises like this. Just tell Dave the trip is cancelled.

Dave's impatience overrides any misgivings I carry. His momentum is contagious. I'm not sure I can blame someone for giving me highway fever, but I still want to.

After visiting a yard sale in the high country, we make it to KFalls. Dave really wanted that tiller but didn't want to figure how he'd get it on the train back to New Orleans. I traded $2.65 and a few loose 7.62x39 cartridges for a vacuum sealer.

We retrieve Kendra near the railyard in KFalls and get some Indian food at a hobo-famous shell station. It's great.

We head south and make it to Alturas by evening.

This is when my truck starts shuddering violently at slow speeds.

"That's a noise." Kendra says.

"Yup, that's a noise." Dave confirms.

"I don't wanna go further with my truck sounding like this." I protest.

"It's just the shoes. The brake fluid must've eaten them. And the disk is probably warped. It looked cracked when we took it off."

I'm scratching my head. Why the fuck didn't I slow things down and get the right parts to swap and be road-ready?

Dave reassures me that the old shoes and disks will make it to Gerlach and probably back. If anything goes wrong in Gerlach we can "figure it out". We're naively hoping that the good natured & well-supplied Burner counter-culture community will support us through any mechanical hardship that we cannot ourselves endure.

Also, there's probably a service station.

Immediacy, check. Self-reliance, sorta-check.

We make it to Gerlach. Unsurprisingly, the truck sounds worse. Poor Sibyl Shakeera.

We spend the night on a beautiful hill overlooking the town and playa, just up from the Gerlach transfer station.

Come morning we round up and decide to spend the day resting and swimming at a nearby reservoir. We're resting up for a late night illegal border crossing into Black Rock City.

The water is clear, the fish are jumping, the air is cool under the few shady trees. There's fire opal and obsidian all over the ground. Dragonflies and long-tailed birds flutter about. It's positively rejuvenating.

In the reservoir parking lot, A BRC volunteer strikes up a conversation with Dave. She begins to chastise us after he reveals our intention of sneaking in. A $500 trespassing fine and a misdemeanor charge, she says. Just buy a ticket at the gates, she says. Support the BMorg, she says. We leave.

On our way to Trego hot springs, the rear drum seems ready to break apart. We stop in Empire to assess the situation.

It's time to isolate the rear drum brake. Turn the fucker off, make it stop rattling like a death machine.

We need a metric bolt to replace the brake bleeder bolt (whatever the fuck that thing is called), along with thread tape to seal it.

Dave pulls the brake line going to the drum and walks off into the desert with a brake cable in hand and the clothes on his back.

He'll walk-hitch to Gerlach while Kendra and I fly signs.

I'm holding the bleeder bolt to see if anyone has something we can match threads with.

                               "Thread Tape?..."

We get thread tape within fifteen minutes. A few locals in a pickup look positively high, perhaps a little paranoid. We offer them beer in exchange to which they ascent. They pull off before we can access the cooler.

Sign number one worked well. Time for sign number two, “Got Bolts?”

“Sounds like drugs. People probably think it’s drug slang.”

A local fresy out of BRC with a machine shop in Empire stops to help. He asks for the brake cable so size things up. I try calling Dave but his phone's off.

Dave finally upgraded from a flip phone to a haggard iphone. It doesn't charge well and barely holds one. I can't tell if he doesn't know how to use the thing or if he just hates using it.

The kind & rowdy stranger says he's going out to dinner in Gerlach with his wife. When he gets back he'll see if we're still stuck.

I bust out my typewriter. Maybe this will attract someone with bolts.

No results.

Kendra is flying the bolts sign.

A steady stream of out-of-town Burners looks us over, smiles, waves, nods, keeps driving. Every. Last. One. The only people stopping are locals. We're rapidly losing our appetite for the playa.

No bolts. No Dave. We wait.

The sun gets low. Kendra and I set up a TV tray and lay out some tapas, watch the cars go by as the sun tucks itself behind the mountains. We're in front of the Empire gypsum mine, watching big trucks come and go with their haul, tractors churning loads of moon-white powdered mineral. The sky is windshield fluid blue and coolant orange.

Dave returns unsuccessful. We sit in our comfortable chairs, drinking cold beer and seltzer, with a whole-ass tray of snacks on a table, watching cars go by.

"This is pretty good. I'd come back next year." Dave says.

At some point our help arrives,

"I'm here and you're not even dressed up?" He flirts.

Dave and him get to business, debating methods of capping, crimping, and otherwise inhibiting the flow of brake fluid to drum. They land on a solution. Dave asks to tag along but gets turned down.

"I don't have permission to bring you into the shop."

Our help comes back, hands us two cut and crimped brake line sections. We thank him emphatically, cutting him a fat piece of San Pedro to eat and/or plant.

Dave pulls all the brake parts and empties the drum, fastens the hub back together, and plugs the brake line while I help, a nurse to the operation as he teaches me along the way.

Excited and rolling smooth, we decide to hit Gerlach for a celebratory dinner at Bruno's. We make it a few miles before the noise is back, and worse. The truck is rolling rough. We're feeling disappointed.

We skip dinner, head straight back up the hill above the transfer station. We giggle over more tailgate tapas, resigned to our fate. We were always destined for this trash pit. A beautiful view of BRC and the surrounding desert up here. The wind whispers a multitude of stories and spells, comedies and tragedies. At this proximity, I can hear the whispers of fate and the sands of time, the ghosts of highways and railroads sing of the water that dissolves all hardship, the fires that bring all turmoil.

Next morning we rise early. I sit for an hour to contemplate while Dave assesses the truck. Turns out it's a wheel bearing. We walk the mile and a half to the coffee shop in Gerlach to use their wifi. Dave watches youtube repair videos while I message family and friends in nearby Reno and make social media help-requests.

We need new wheel bearings and a bearing extractor. The nearest auto parts store is an O'Reillys in Fernley, seventy miles away on a straight shot. Kendra volunteers,

"A single female hitchhiking is always going to be fastest." She reminds us. She just made Alaska to Washington through Canada in four days, what's a couple of seventy-mile shots?

We head back to the truck, line up the parts and Kendra takes off, catching a ride in a passing art car.

Back at the truck, Dave pulls the axle and wheel hub out from the rear differential.

"I'm gonna hike this down to the service center in Gerlach." He tells me.

"Sure ya don't want me to call them first?"

"No, I think we should bring it to town and somebody might see it and help. We need a shop to do this anyway. This is no easy bearing swap. A lot of ways to fuck this particular job up. This is kind of the worst-case scenario for breakdowns. Almost."

I let out a sigh. If I didn't have to be back in Oregon for traffic court, this would be easy. We could stay awhile. Plunder the leftovers of BRC.

We take turns hauling the rear axle down to Gerlach town. We pass a nice home with large "no parking" and "no trespassing" signs. An old man sits atop a rocking chair on a small painted porch. He's got the bay door open on a large machine shop with what looks like a plethora of tools inside.

"Ay dawg, you got a bearing press?" Dave yells to him.

He shakes his head.

                                    Walk on.

We approach the service center and see a barrel-chested, pug-faced mechanic in the bay giving us a reluctant glare.

"Hey bud, you got a bearing press or anything that can assist with this wheel bearing job?" We ask.

"Nope." He says firmly and disappears into the shop.

Dave doesn't say anything. Just walks down the road with the axle and sits down in the shade.

"We're fucked." He says.

I start calling shops in Fernley, Sparks, Reno, Carson City.

I get wildly different rates for a bearing job. Anywhere from one forty to five hundred plus. It's Saturday. Monday is labor day. I need to be back in Oregon by Wednesday.

I post in all the Burning Man facebook groups looking for a bearing press or a nearby shop. I recieve many comments repeating the same intel:

"Just use a hammer and a socket!"

"A piece of wood and a socket!"

"Hammer and a socket set!"

"All I got is a sock and some ham." I reply.

This job is beyond the hammer and socket trick.

I make a sign that says "Need Mechanic", flying it in hopes of accessing someone's shop. Dave's gathering railroad ties, applying leverage in an attempt to separate the hub from the axle.

A Burner stops!

"What do ya need? What's the job?" He asks.

"Rear wheel bearing. Need a bearing press. Or a shop to do it in. Got parts on the way."

"Ah shit. I wish it were something else so I could help you." He shakes his head sadly and walks away. At least he stopped.

We make back up the hill and Dave cracks a beer. He loads up his pack and decides to start hitch-hiking toward Carson City. While I was attempting to hail a mechanic, Dave called all the regional parts yards, locating a Pick 'n Pull with parts to match our specs.

Gerlach to Carson City at 3pm. Fuckin' send it.

Dave and Kendra return before dark. Kendra, with wheel bearings and tools to remove the bad bearings. Dave, empty-handed, never caught a ride.

"I stood there for four hours. Not a single one of those hippies stopped. The fuckin' Burner rangers kept mansplaining me on how to hitchhike."

"Well, were you just scowling at everyone?"

He gives me the same stink-eye I imagine he was giving the drivers.

"We're fucked." He says.

Kendra tells us that during her earlier ride, the art car ride blew a fuse, broke down, and devolved into manic yelling between husband and wife. Apparently, there were bite marks on the husband's hands after their argument.

Some people really lose their shit over a simple fix.

Kendra offers up her AAA card. Dave's never surrendered to AAA before. We make a plan to call in a tow the next morning. We fall asleep watching them burn the man far off in the distance, fireworks poping like antique Bacchanal Christmas lights.

A little past sunrise, we dispatch the tow.

An hour later, the driver calls to cancel. It's Sunday. The Black Rock City exodus has begun. Apparently, tow drivers in the area are reluctant to join the throngs of RV's and buses. Best they can do is Tuesday.

Wait 'til Tuesday for AAA to drag us to one of their approved mechanics within the hundred mile tow range, making sure it's near an auto parts store or at least a Harbor Freight so we can work on it.

Then we'd have to get to the scrap yard.

I have to be home by Wednesday. Probably not gonna work.

"We're fucked." Dave groans matter-of-factly, shouldering his pack and tools to try his hand at hitching again. I call and arrange pickup and shuttle for him from a friend in Reno. Dave trudges off while I tag along a quarter mile behind with a sign and a pleasant demeanor to assist however I can.

A local cowboy stops for Dave.

”Yer buddy better hurry up." He says to Dave.

"Oh, he's just helping me hitch."

"Well that's fuckin’ stupid." The cowboy spats.

A straight shot to Sparks, a shuttle to the Carson City Pick 'n Pull, and a ride back to the outskirts with an eighty pound hub and axle slung over his shoulder, Dave begins thumbing his way back to Gerlach sometime in the early evening.

Kendra and I sip coffee and cold beverages at Bruno's, idling comfortably.

Random burners walk by, ask how our burn was.

"Aw man, it was rusty. So trashy bro." I say.

"Any highlights?" They ask.

"DJ Lug Nutz and the Rusty Bolts, three day set, deep deep playa. It was pure tetanus. So fuckin' dirty." I reply.

"What do ya think DJ Lug Nutz is doin' right now?" I ask Kendra.

"He's probably grumpy and standing in the sun with no water, red-eyed and scratching his balls, watching cars go by. A few empty cans in the bushes." She says with a subtle, loving look on her face.

I nod and chuckle. It's not long before Dave calls us and we're walking back up that hill from Gerlach town to the transfer station, hopefully for the last time.

The locals have gotten to know us around here. Nice folk. Easy going.

"We've seen you guys walking all over!" Some of them exclaim.

Nobody mentions the cardboard signs and large auto parts we're often wielding.

On the hill, we make our final art installation.

That last deep playa set at Camp Transfer Station was trash. You shoulda been there.

Swapping hubs and axles, leaving a lone hub standing erect like a memorial, we fire up and get rolling.

We hold our breaths 'til we hit highway. She's runnin' mint.

"Like a brand new truck. Holy shit."

Three roadside surgeries later, we make it to our entry point to Black Rock City. We stop at the hot springs to get some soaking in and wash the grease from out dusty bones. Sitting in those springs, we realize,

"There's nobody here. This is perfect."

We stay put with techno sounds bumping in the distance, crazy displays of fire and lights, and we sleep like babies 'til six am when a cop wakes us up.

Apparently, we aren't allowed to camp within three hundred feet of the hot springs. We're a good two-fifty. He checks us for warrants. I ask him if he's got any extra coffee.

Hard no.

Listening to the BRC radio on the way out, an announcer says,

"You know, let's all try to practice what we learned at the temple burn last night, you know? Coming together in community, let's take some of that out into the world. If you have any extra room in your car on your way home and see someone in need, just help 'em get on their way, too."

Dave interjects,

"Y'know, seems like Burners these days are mostly made up of rich Californians who wanna play tweaker for a week in the desert." Dave observes. The RV's. The bikes. The drugs. The constant horniness an fixation on valuable items.

Everyone combing the playa for loot and MOOP, painstakingly picking every piece of debris to have it sorted and moved elsewhere.

Meanwhile, the highways in all directions are littered with debris. Bikes, wagons, art supplies, recycling, fishnet stockings, food wrappers. Rickety RV's and SUV's shuttling halphazardly home, lazily and frantically overloaded with all matter of sparkly, shiny, and strange items, unprofessionally tied down. Dumpsters in nearby counties auspiciously loaded with colorful and potentially valuable trash.

They say ya don't get the Burn ya want but ya get the Burn ya need.

Jon D Rapp is a part-time vagabond, part-time troubadour, full-time vagrant. Co-founder of the Rogue Writer's Guild, he spends his time braiding the wild hairs of strangers and telling their fortunes (for a fee).

When he's not in the woods hosting neo-primitive mammalian swinger parties, you can find him in the French Quarter writing sigils in the form of words onto Rouse's paper bags while looking like a brand new prescripition bottle.

He's written thousands of poems and is working on a few novels.