Freebies

“You’re the biker!” she said. “Come on in. Have dinner on us.”

She had passed me in her car earlier on her way to the last bowling night of her bowling league. The fun league, not the one with the really serious (ultra-competitive) bowlers. They had a large pot-luck buffet; everyone brought a dish to it, and all had finished eating, with much left over. Shrimp cocktails, cocktail frankfurters and sausages, chicken, barbecue, the usual array of salads, Mexican dipping things, and a great variety of cookies and cakes, and more.

She recognized my orange shirt, and I was still in the biker pants and shoes. I had walked through one of the two doors to what I thought was a bar-lounge only, after checking in at a small motel a hundred feet away.

Not much of a town (but it had a bowling alley with 12 lanes). Two tracks of the railroad ran through town, parallel to the highway … or was the highway parallel to the railroad? Well, it wasn’t really a highway, but the road surface was pretty good, the road straight and the terrain wonderfully flat.

I thought I was lucky just to find a motel. Now I found a welcoming crowd anxious to talk to me about the trip, and offering me a full free dinner. I could feature this every night. Even the men were curious, but not as much as the women.

That makes me think of a question a friend asked me after my ride: "Did anyone hit on you during the trip?" None of these women did; in fact, I began to wonder why no women did! Then I remembered one, in retrospect, who probably did.

I wound up climbing 2,700 feet in all shortly after entering the Mojave Desert from western Arizona, where it is also desert-like, but doesn’t carry that fearsome name. I was thus introduced to the "high desert" just into California, at the town of Needles. I don’t do well on hills, but this very gradual stretch turned into a 6-mile long rise, then a short straightaway, then an 8-mile long rise. In neither case did I see the road as a hill because the terrain to either side rises with it, but oh so gradually. The only clue, at first, was that I was struggling to achieve a not very fast pace.

I had to walk the last quarter or half mile to the top of those two upgrades, and over the top, the Interstate descended only slightly. An ancient motor home was parked off the roadway. It had a trailer-with-car in tow. I stopped beside it but it was curtained all around, inside, and I had to go to the far side to find the door, which was midships between the front and back (they don’t make them that way any more).

When I knocked, to see if everything was okay, after a little shuffling, a woman pulled back the curtain to my right and motioned for me to open the door. There was a stairwell and she wasn’t getting down into it. She was wearing a nightgown and leaning over to talk to me, unavoidably exhibiting her attractions. "The motor home overheated on the long climbs, and I decided to park it till the cool of the evening." I asked for cold water and she readily gave me a bottle. I was distracted by her dress (or rather, her undress) and moved to beside the front of her motor home to drink the water, which went down in maybe two gulps. When I walked back to return the empty (I’m a good boy and don’t litter, most of the time), she asked if I wanted something to eat. When I declined, she then described her wonderful muffins (!). The thought did fleetingly pass my mind that I was being invited in and maybe it wasn’t entirely about food … but I had miles to go and places to see … yadda, yadda, yadda.

Yeah, she was hitting on me. And she was not in bad shape either for a woman in her late forties. But that was a precedent best left unset.
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I often ate breakfast at Denny’s. They have two features hard to duplicate, it seems. First, everything they serve looks exactly the way it is pictured on the menu. Second, the portions are copious, and, away from the big cities, inexpensive. (That makes 3 features.) They even allowed substitutions! What’s not to like? And some of the restaurants were next door to Motel 6 and earned me a 10% discount.

Even the dinners were good. (Remember, I was into eating everything full-fat and highly caloric.)

The waitress said “You can have anything you want for dinner. A customer paid for your dinner. He just left. He said he was a biker too, from Arizona.” I ran to the register and the guy truly had gone. No one to thank. The whole dinner was paid for, except for the outlandish ice cream concoction I ordered for dessert. Nice!

On another occasion, I stopped for a cold soda at an Indian handicrafts place. I was the only one there, except for the owner and an employee. They asked about my ride, by now a common occurrence, which I always looked forward to, and the owner did not charge for my soda. Those “types” have a reputation for being hard bargainers and cool to customers. Not this one!

Another time: the town was 2 miles off the Interstate, but there was a truck stop/eatery at the highway exit, and I eagerly ordered my usual late afternoon root beer float. I hadn’t had a root beer float since maybe my teens, having turned off root beer and preferring almost any other flavor ice cream than vanilla, but on this trip, I quickly made an afternoon buy mandatory. It is surprising how much variation there can be in those things, mostly having to do with the quality of the ice cream. I came to prefer frozen custard (or was it soft ice cream?) best of all.

The woman at this truck stop had a stern visage as she went about closing up the place and was all business-like in serving me, so I was startled when she said: “No charge” as I prepared to leave. There had been conversation about my ride with another customer which she clearly overheard. Then she asked me where I was staying and I asked which of the motels in town was the least expensive (but clean, etc.). She endorsed what the gas pump guy said, and there I went, and was pleased. The owner was in his 30’s and had bought the place 6 months before, fixing it over as he got the cash flow. It had very interesting features. Example: the bathroom included a bar of Dove soap fully half the size of a regular bar, vs the almost useless mini-soaps you get in even the best hotels. (Has anyone mastered getting the paper wrapping off those wee things?)

The owner had an automatic pistol on his hip. I asked if he was auxiliary police or some such and he said it is legal to carry a weapon in Arizona, as long as it is not concealed. To carry concealed, you need a permit. He liked giving the message that a stranger was not to mess with him.

The next morning I went to stern-face to have breakfast. No, it wasn’t free. But you should have seen her face melt when I told her it was the best bacon I’d had anywhere, and the coffee was outstanding. I think I made her whole week.

Many other places gave me a drink or a sandwich on the house. One notable place was a Mexican Restaurant I stopped at, where I was changing highways. It was later in the day and I was parched. I had to have a Dos Equis. I had two! An older couple sat across from me having drinks and was waiting for another to join them. We talked and I got recommendations regarding local routes. I always asked locals if there were alternative roads that were flatter or more direct than what I had planned. (And I always got good advice, with one exception. I covered that in another essay, where I describe staying at a young pregnant girl’s place after failing to be informed that the motel that was only 8 miles further required me to turn right onto another route. The mother-to-be lived in Richford, NY, the birthplace of John D. Rockefeller. He clearly never looked back. It is an extremely depressed ((poor)) area.)

The waitress in the Mexican restaurant told me that the owner would give me a dinner on the house, if I liked. I had to decline or I would never have made the planned distance that day.

Almost every café and restaurant I stopped at was run by or owned by a woman. And they all wanted to nurture me, as is woman’s nature, no? One even offered me a ham sandwich to take with me, to eat on the road. God bless them.