I’ll get you my pretties…what, huh, what’s that voice, did you hear that Pandemic? Is the desert wind playing tricks on me? Perhaps I have finally done my head in, does looking at too much sand affect mental stability?
What do you think Pandemic? Is talking to a bicycle a bad sign? Pandemic, got any thoughts on this one? What do bicycles actually think about? It has been over half a day without water, the wind is over powering me, desert insects are forming a colorful collage of itch on my drying skin. The sky is blackening as a dust, wind, rain storm sets in, a triple dose of doom for a bicycle, even a magic one. The wind will surely tear my tent. That is, if I actually succeed in putting it up in these blustery conditions.
My stinging sandpaper eyeballs are blinded by sand. I am standing on the historic southern silk road sideways with my body plunged downward over the back of a loaded bicycle into the throbbing gritty wind. Pandemic The Magic Bicycle is being blasted by the gales into my feathery insubstantial body. I am frozen in the wind and sand, frontward is no longer an option. Shelter, I must take shelter now…
As the tempest growls deep throughout the unfathomable Taklamakan desert, I take cover under the only thing available in the vastness of the uninhabited barren landscape. Since an insane asylum isn’t available, I chose the only thing around. I am under the road in a cement drainage tunnel. The stinging callous sand twists throughout with a shuddering howl, sand mixed with the occasional cold raindrop whizzes by as I cover my head and eyes in the hood of my black, now dirt brown shirt. I sit inside a projectile ridden sand vacuum in need of a valium and wait.
Is that Toto? No, it is just another sadistic stinging sand orb swirling with projectile plastic bottles, flying food wrappers and cascading cardboard chunks ignoring me as the ricocheting recyclables bounces off the not padded concrete walls and then my ‘in need of a straight jacket’ head. I wish I could fly like that, I would go get a pizza, umm, pizza. Click, click, click of the cycling sandals, there is no place like a pizza home.
A sand storm fit for the ‘National Geographic Edition of Morons On Bicycles Crossing The Words Biggest Deserts’ is chasing me, am I in some Jack Nicholson REDRUM remake of the Wizard of OZ? No, but I have been discovered in my stealth under the street not so clever hideout. Extreme paragliding combat desert vampire bugs hover all around me forming a thunder buzz of sorts. I need the Tin Mans outfit to ward off these militant insect extremist. Where are their little helmets? Reckless dive bombing activities in such conditions looks pretty dangerous.
Will this inexhaustible weather situation bring another windfall sandstorm, dagger sideways rain or the wicked witch of the west? If I am lucky all three, actually meeting the wicked witch of the west would be sanity right about now. I wonder what her favorite food is, something western I suppose, maybe steak? And, I would definitely not tell her about my magic bicycle or my cycling sandals. After all, she has that issue with shoes.
However, regardless of my frightening mental condition brought on by too much blinding sand, I am grateful to be under the road, and done for the moment holding onto a bicycle like a moron in the middle of sadistic projectile launching sand storm.
Embraced by the mountains to the south and the impending sand storms of the seemingly every direction, a few hours later I emerge from the tremulous storm tunnel covered in sand, blind and madly in love with thoughts of the lion from the Wizard Of OZ devouring a steak pizza. I continue forward at a slow crawl, pushing in a swirly OZ direction into the windy, sandy madness that the Int’l Psychiatric Association calls crossing The Taklamakan desert, NW China.
