No cycling miles today.
I slept well and was up fairly early. We had watched ‘Meru’ last night, which is a climbing documentary about the first ascent of Meru in the Himalayas, which by unanimous agreement in the climbing community is the toughest climb in the world. It had been tried numerous times but had never been completed. I’ve seen this movie before, but my friends had not, and I’m glad I was able to watch it again. It’s without a doubt my favorite outdoor adventure movie. It’s inspiring and at times unbelievable what the human body is able to do when pushed to the outer limits. I like these kind of stories. It puts my outdoors and physical accomplishments into perspective and makes me reflect on them, mostly about how there will always be somebody doing bigger, bolder, scarier, and faster things, accomplished purely by human drive and ambition, for the continued pursuit of something always greater than the self and of the unknown.
Today we took a drive up to a cool little town called Jerome. It is a few hours north from Phoenix in the midst of the Kaibab National Forest. It was a small but incredibly profitable mining town in the late 1800s and early 1900s, which has now been restored to a tourist destination known most famously for its great mountain views, haunted hotel and local arts culture.
The whole town is built into the side of a mountain. The one road that leads there winds and curls around the countours of the hills. It’s a steep road up and as we ascended all I could think about was how awful it would be to ride a bycicle up to the town. And dangerous too. There were a lot of blind turns that careless and distracted drivers could zip around too fast to create unwelcome situations.
The view from the town once we reached it was impressive. Red and orange montains spanned the entirety of the world and a few larger mountains with snowy peaks could be seen right behind them. It was an expansive view. One in which you can’t help but feel small and insignificant in its presence.
We walked our way to the top of the town to see the Jerome Hotel, which is the uppermost building. At one point it had been a tuberculosis sanitarium and is said to be haunted. People come from all over the world to stay in the hotel in hopes of seeing some kind of paranormal activity. The hotel is big and old and sturdy. It is tan and red and looks out into the mountain desert with commanding presence. We were allowed to walk up to the first and second floors. They had an old call elevator that guests could use. It was something that you would see in old haunted hotel movies, with a creepy looking butler named Victor that manned it, with a greasy haircut and a monocle over his left eye, where the elevator would get stuck often and the lights would flicker as it slowly climbed to the 13th floor.
The hotel was neat and we didn’t see any ghosts. Room 32 is supposed to be the most haunted location in the building, anyway, which was off limits to us. There was an old clock on the half floor up, and a strange picture of a woman in a green dress, displaying a fanned out deck of cards, with a sly smile strung about her lips, as if she held some kind of secret we didn’t know about or would ever understand.
We walked through the town looking at things after the hotel. Legal prostitution was a thing there during the mining years, and there were several pictures of the women who called it there profession hung around in some of the stores, complete with a copy of thier official prostitution liscence. You could buy a three month liscence for 2 dollars and fifty cents. Most visits would cost a man anywhere between 10 cents to 20 dollars, depending on the services offered and the particular lady administering them. The photos showed the woman, usually topless, in some sort of tantalizing pose to attract costumers to thier bedrooms.
We walked through some art galleries and looked at blown glass and paintings and sculptures. One shop we went to was the worlds largest keleidoscope store. Hundreds of kaleidoscopes laid about of varying sizes, shapes and functions. One was called ‘The Matrix’ and you used a flashlight to create somewhat of a glistening disco affect, with bright pink and orange neon colors dancing and rotating before your eyes, shifting and realigning into sporadic but precise geometric patterns of irredescent triangles and squares and circles.
We look through the keleidoscope to see something different; to play a trick on our perceptions and view the world in strange and unusual ways. I suppose that’s why we travel, too. To experience something new. To see the world at different angles and colors and volumes. To challenge ourselves to the realities we know and the fictions of our trapped imaginations.
