I have survived the holiday gauntlet. Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year's are the enemies. They run your immune system into the ground, make you gain weight and force you to drink like a fish all the while maxing out your credit cards. More people collectively lose their minds in the holiday season than at any other time. This year I fought back like a man. I ran.
I have escaped spending a holiday with my girlfriends' parents for nearly a decade. Many years of skillful evasion finally caught up to me, and there was no hiding.
"No, honey, I don't hate your family," I told my girlfriend. "Of course, I would rather spend time with your family instead of going out to Glamis for Thanksgiving. It's for work. You know I need the money to buy your Christmas presents." (Pluralizing that seasonal noun must have done the trick.)
Wednesday
But I was still very nervous when she drove me to the airport that I'd be without a ride home on the return trip. Now I understand why no one at ATV Rider wanted to take this job-not because Glamis' reputation of wild abandonment but rather none of the daredevils would risk skipping the fruitcake.
Billy Bartels met me at the airport in his black Suburban, which would become my home for the rest of the weekend. He took me to his house and hooked up a trailer with a sparkling new Yamaha, tossed a few amenities in the back (cooler, beer and a worthless tent) and sent me on my way. Driving in Los Angeles with a trailer sucks. Doing it during the most traveled day of the year really sucks. Luckily, I had my trusty GPS and hoped it would get me to Glamis. After eight hours on the road, the GPS indicated I needed to take a left. A left turn into what? I could see nothing but desert, so I curled up in the cold backseat and drifted off to sleep.
Thursday (Thanksgiving Day)
I woke up and saw a caravan of colossal mobile mansions pulling quads. I climbed into the front seat and followed them. As the procession of weekend warriors approached the dunes, the traffic thickened. There had to be a billion people heading to Glamis-suddenly, I was seeing the set of a Mad Max movie. But, to my surprise, it was pretty mellow this year-well, as mellow as a place that warrants a pepper spray patrol can be.
Glamis, officially titled the Imperial Sand Dunes Recreation Area, is the country's biggest collection of giant hills of sand. My only experiences with dunes are with the Indiana Dunes, where, as a kid, I couldn't wait until we got to climb Mount Baldy-a pile of sand that was the Everest for every kid in my fourth grade class. Well, Mount Baldy would just be a pimple on any of the dunes at Glamis.
This place was huge. All Bartels told me was to go to Wash 13 and look for an old Ford F250 dually. I spent the morning looking for this imaginary vehicle for hours. I must have looked lost because everyone was staring at me as I slowly crept through the campsites. Some guy with a glamisdunes.com shirt came up to me and mentioned that I look like I need a few friends. I admitted that I was lost and was immediately welcomed into the tribe, whose members all met through the web site. I introduced myself, and the next thing I knew I was sucking on a Jell-O shot in a tube as someone blew on the other end. The only thing this group likes more than gelatinous alcohol is drinking it here, in their collective adopted homeland. A few members of the group are such Glamis fans they actually got married at the dunes.