Excerpt: Dragon Horse Bicycle Women (pinch hit title)

Death Valley.
One could interpret the place in as many ways as there were mindsets to interpret it. As in, as many minds that could filter what they saw and heard, or not see and hear. It was for some the hottest place in the Western Hemisphere. A beautiful land. Stark, and yet so full of life. A spiritual reawakening and cleansing place. A place to party. A place to get your picture taken so you can show your hapless audience pictures of you, during your slide show of your whirlwind tour of the great southwest, as you squint in the white sunlight reflected off the salt flats, and lean against a weathered wooden sign that said Badwater Basin, two hundred eighty two feet below sea level. A place to be miserable because it was exceedingly boring and your family dragged you here because ‘we are going to have a fun weekend together so get over yourself, missy‘.
I seemed to see variations of this reflected in peoples’ faces at most of the points of interest. Some were more interested in looking at us, dust crusted, sun scorched and rather damp in places, and probably wonder where we’d come from and where we were going. Nobody seemed to have the nerve to talk to us, for some reason. I wondered what would happen if I looked in a mirror.
One couple descended slowly, albeit reluctantly, from their brand new, gargantuan-yet-acceptably-hybrid-powered RV. The woman was in new clothing, her hair perfectly in place, just before a gust of wind blew it into elegant disarray. The man was also in new clothing, a golf hat, and held a video camera. He stood around filming things, then settled his gaze on us. “Look at those two crazy women,” he said to his companion. “Riding bicycles right out in the middle of nowhere.”
“Ohmigod, is that a cat in there? It’s a cat. In a tiny little trailer. How can they do that to the poor animal?”
The man had his camera trained on us. I could see the lens moving to focus in on us. I smiled and waved.
“How can you do that to your cat?” the woman said.
“He’s fine,” Cassandra said after taking a swig from her water bottle. “He’s bored, though.”
“How do you know that? Listen to his pitiful howling.”
“Oh, he’s not howling, he’s singing.”
Sputnik was singing. But for a person who didn’t know this cat, it did sound like howling.
“Sputnik,” I said. “Can you do that when there aren’t people around? They think you’re in pain.”
“Will they feed me?”
“No, they will call the police and then have us arrested for animal cruelty. Then they will take you away to a place and put you in a cage along with a lot of other unhappy animals. And there will be dogs. Unhappy, crabby dogs. Noisy dogs.”
Sputnik tried to follow what I was saying, one eye squinted in concentration, but at the last two sentences, both of his eyes went round with alarm. He understood the part about the dogs.
“I get your point,” he said, and he flopped down on his side with a sigh.
“See?” I said and pointed to Sputnik. “He’s perfectly fine.”
The woman turned her head away and ignored us after that. The man wasn’t done with us, though.
“You guys are nuts, riding around out here. What if you have a break down?”
“Well,” I said, patting my bike seat. “I can either fix it myself, or we hitch a ride. What will you do if you break down?”
“We won’t. This rig will never break down.”
“Ha. Never say never. You can‘t push that 3 ton, air conditioned box all by yourself now, can you?”
He shook his head as though I were a hopeless case, and then they both climbed back into the RV and roared away, leaving everyone in a cloud of dust.
"They seem to be enjoying their vacation every bit as much as we are," Cassandra said.
"Which means?"
"We sometimes deal with physical discomforts, but they have more complicated issues, it seems. Maybe guilt, for one, or just suspicion. They didn't seem like bad sorts."
"No, but it isn't right to to call people names, either."
"Maybe we are nuts."
"Better this than that. To each their own.
Yep, we could very well be crazy. But I think it all depended on how you looked at it. I think as long as your doctor said you didn’t need medication, you were good to go in the sanity department.