One day in mid-spring, as soon as Armen figured the rainy season had ended, he quit his job and set off to find Armenia. He bought some saddlebags and a second daypack to wear on his chest, and pedaled west on Ventura Boulevard with grander ambitions. This time he continued into the mountains. He pedaled under the Golden State Freeway, and then under the Antelope Valley Freeway and into Santa Clarita Valley, and continued to follow the aqueducts up San Francisquito Canyon, and he pulled his bike off the road near the power plant to spend the night.
In the morning, Armen pressed on to the pass. As he coasted down the desert side of the mountains, he caught views of the desert. He looked down into Antelope Valley and he tried to make sense of it: all this water was flowing uphill, out of the desert? It was making less and less sense all the time. The valley displayed the slight color of desert wildflowers in bloom. Armen stopped his bike and stood with it leaning between his legs, perplexing.
He sped down the road to the San Andreas Fault then crossed the hills beyond. As he coasted down into the valley, he crossed the California Aqueduct, just where it plunged into one of its subterranean channels. He didn’t know where the LA pipelines were, but he didn’t doubt that he would find them out in the valley.
Antelope Valley was a sea of orange and pale green. Golden poppies were everywhere.
Armen came to Lancaster Road and followed it west. He came to the new aqueduct, or so said the maps. The pipeline appeared to be underground, He followed it, due north, across Antelope Valley.
He would occasionally pass a Joshua tree or a California juniper amid the sage. He admired the pale blue berries of the female junipers, and he thought that he might have named the Joshua tree the “yucca tree” had he been the first to name it. He thought on this and decided that he was happy to leave the naming to others.
He watched the Range come imperceptibly nearer and nearer as he coasted and peddled across the basin. He passed some farms in the middle of the valley, and could see there wasn’t much sign of water down the road, though the colors of distant wildflowers carpeted the valley. A man cannot drink from a wildflower. He found a spigot by a farmhouse and filled his bottles to prepare for the dry country ahead. As he began the gentle ascent, Armen came upon an orchard. It was blossoming with the desert, but was under assault by what resembled a dune on its windward side. As Armen came nearer to the orchard, he realized the dune was made of tumbleweeds.
Before Armen got to the foot of the Range, the aqueduct made a sharp right turn and from there began to flank the Range. As the afternoon wore on, the aqueduct came nearer and nearer the foot of the Range. He found himself pushing on and on to get closer to the Range itself. Because the pipeline followed a level course, the pedaling wasn’t hard. He continued to do so well after nightfall. Even had he wanted to stop, he would have felt naked lying down for the night on that expanse of naked ground. If he could reach the point where the pipes met the Range, he would at least have a wall to lie down against. And there was more to see at night. He could look down upon the lights of Mojave at night, and there’s no sunburn at night, and the drinking water lasts longer.
On the third day, the aqueduct road began to descend, as the Range encroached upon the straight line it had been following to the Owens River. Armen decided to avoid the winding path of the aqueduct, and he dropped down to the Midland Trail to try a paved highway for a change. It was a welcome change for a while, especially since it followed a moderate downward incline. By the time the highway turned up toward Redrock Canyon, he was ready for the challenge. He left the highway to get water at a campground. Instead of pushing on, he rested in a shady spot there, and then he chose to take the remains of the day off. He claimed a campsite, and gratefully accepted an invitation to dine with the campers in the adjacent spot.