It is seriously hot out. I swear that I just got a whiff of some of my nose hair melting. I have been riding well above the posted speed limit of 70 for the past few hours. With no cars in sight for the past hundred miles, I set the cruise control up another 10 miles an hour. The extra wind offers no reprieve from the heat. Cruising at 95 mph feels like an industrial hair dryer cranked up to the mega-high setting.
I stop at the Y-intersection of SR 318 and 375—about 100 miles north of Sin City—to take a snapshot of me and my bike next to the sign declaring Nevada State Route 375 as the Extraterrestrial Highway. This is Alien Country, where more UFOs are sighted each year than at any other place on the planet. The digital air temperature gauge on my White 2011 Victory Vision reads 107. Every breath I take evaporates more vital moisture from the lining of my lungs. I fear that my water and gas supply is running low. Mental note to self: always stop at every gas station to fill up on water and fuel while riding through the Nevada desert. I am in desperate need of some cooling shade.
One lonely cottonwood tree creates a mini oasis of shade in the vast desert. I battle for a shaded spot with six parked cars and lie down on the sun-bleached earth for a rest. There is nothing out here. There is no logical reason for these cars to be parked here. I quickly drift off into a deep sleep and dream about alien abductions. The Victory was able to fly. It wasn’t too odd since many people have told me that the bike looks like a spaceship. I was six years old and trying to find a hiding place from the aliens. They captured me and were arguing with each other whether they should dissect me or the motorcycle first.
I awaken to the sound of the diesel engine of a large white bus as it drops off six men who drive away in their sun faded cars. None of this makes sense to me. My mind just can’t compute in this heat. Why would there be a bus top in the middle of nowhere? I board my aerodynamic spacecraft motorcycle and ride northwest over the 5,592-foot Hancock Summit and into the Tikaboo Valley.
I find out later that I just left the so-called “Groom Lake Park ‘n’ Ride,” the spot where workers catch a shuttle bus into the high security military base next to Groom Lake that the CIA calls Area 51. Area 51 is the most famous secret military installation in the world. Conspiracy theorists believe that Area 51 stores the crashed spacecraft from Roswell and a few of its alien occupants. If you have ever seen any footage of an alien autopsy, this is where it was supposed filmed.
The Black Mailbox
Twenty minutes from the Groom Lake Park n’ Ride, between mile markers 29 and 30 is the “Black Mailbox” which has been thought by UFOoligists to be the official mailbox for Area 51. I was told that it is just the mailbox for an unlucky rancher. After years of people digging through his Victoria Secret magazines in search of US Government secrets he replaced the original Black Mail Box with a white, locked, bulletproof one.
The dirt road that intersects here with the highway leads to a ranch, and also to the mysterious Area 51. I heard that you are allowed to camp here as long as you do not block the intersection.
This has become a popular location for people to pull over at night to search the skies over Area 51, only 20 miles away. People now write messages on the mailbox to aliens in hope they get some deep probing. I stayed there for awhile and read some graffiti on the box while contemplating if I should ride down the dirt road to Area 51 or continue on towards the only town on the Extraterrestrial Highway, Rachel. On the box scrawled in black marker was “I just fucked a hot alien at behind the A’Le’Inn.”
With alien sex on my mind I continued northwest on SR 375 towards the Little A’Le’Inn in the town of Rachel climbing in elevation again to reach the top of Coyote Summit at 5,591 feet. I shared the road with a few cattle that openly graze along the side of the road. I have heard many stories about extraterrestrials’ fascination with cows. It is claimed that more than 8,000 cows were abducted by UFOs before they were mutilated and thrown back down to earth over the southern United States during the ’70s. You see the official documents recently released by the FBI about these incidents at vault.fbi.gov. The vault also has a scan of the ’50s FBI memo that alleges aliens did in fact land in New Mexico.