R and J in the USA

Driving from Salt Lake City to Bryce Canyon, we got off Interstate 15 to stop for gas in Fillmore, Utah, at a place called Terrible’s. It wasn’t so bad.

At the pump next to us was a khaki Sprinter van with heavy duty tires and two dirt bikes on the back. The driver of the van, a middle-aged man with bushy white hair, was pumping gas at the next pump on the opposite side of the fuel island.

“How’s the van treating you?” Ryan asked.

The common ground of shared experience makes it easy to start conversations with other camper van people.

“Great,” he replied. “It’s the only way to travel.”

Ryan and the driver then engaged in the ‘where ya from’ ‘where ya headed’ back and forth typical of such exchanges.

“We’re motorcycle racers,” the driver said as a slender man in his late 30s/early 40s and a blond boy of around eleven spilled out of the van. “We’re from Idaho. Straight up I-15. We’re on our way to southern California for a desert race.”

“How does a desert race work?” Ryan asked.

“The little guy has one race that’s 45 minutes and another that’s an hour. They go around a circuit in the desert. We do a longer circuit.”

“And whoever does the most laps in that time wins?” Ryan asked.

“Yep.”

Our gas pumps clicked off at about the same time. We both seated the nozzles in the pumps.

“Good luck in your races.”

“Have fun on your trip.”

We got back in our vans and steered back onto I-15 South, one van headed toward desert racing, the other toward canyon country hiking.