Bike ride yesterday. Clear skies, open road, Monday and not many people cluttering the byways in this neck of the woods.
Lunchtime. Mile marker 20. King Torta taco shop, a past favorite and the real deal in North Plains, is far too busy. Hunger bites and gnaws at the guts like a pack of wolverines tangling with a den of pit vipers as I continue on westward down Pacific Street in a taco-less angst ridden melancholy. Spirits decline and dark thoughts enter my mind: will I make it home? should I request an extraction?
Push through town, back out onto the landscape of cultivation growth harvest, rinse repeat. Quiet two lane, getting hotter, puff of breeze, the hunger grows and saps the waning motivation, sweat dripping into eyes, starting to whimper, occasional moan, clif bar in the bag as a last resort when…a mirage! NO! a taco truck passes and pulls into the Campo Casa Blanca farmstead half mile up ahead.
Spurred on by the heady and titillating trail mix of exhaust and grilled pork I follow, picking up the pace a bit and turn into the driveway, ignoring the warning signs regaling potential offenders on the value of private property and the repercussions of trespass, whoring, spitting, smoking, cock fighting, gambling and general licentiousness.
Big clean gravel lot the kind you dream about, shade trees, the farmhouse, orderly rows of farm-worker housing. He’s parked at the edge of the lot under a heritage looking oak and has the sides up and open for business by the time I lean the bike against the bumper.
Says What can I get you boss? I am a supplicant to my saviors with the mobile grill and excitedly blurt wholeheartedly and without hesitation: Two carnitas and a jarritos por favor. You got it he says. The kid admires the bike as we wait and I try some idle chit chat but the well of speech is near dry fogged by the heat and hunger and he’s got work to do so we leave off.
These seasoned pros know their business and in no time I cradle tacos in a paper tray. My hand begins to scorch as I try to balance the tacos, soda, wallet, the mental fatigue and emotional elation confuse my ability to juggle but the pain is short lived and the tray is empty too soon wolfed down with a sprinkling of tomatillo sauce. Licking fingers clean the napkins forgotten in the excitement but that is what sleeves are for as we all know. The tacos are delicious, nearly the best, onion, cilantro, and in this moment they are nirvana, the pinnacle of my affection for the time being.
No one has questioned my daring infiltration of this agrarian commune and I decide to move along before my trespass is questioned and the spell broken by the overseer looking guy in the sombrero over by the big house who I notice is shooting glances my way over his shoulder. Chesty words and elevated hackles are no kind of digestif so I reluctantly roll out of the yard crunching gravel under wheels, past the sentry shack that I failed to check in at, back onto the public blacktop for a clean getaway.
The Groove has delivered.