A Reno Weekend, Part I: Camels

Early Saturday morning, Andrew and I packed up the car and drove two hours east to Virginia City, Nevada, thirty miles or so south of Reno, where the desolate desert landscape convinced us we’d fallen off the edge of the earth. We were headed to this unlikely destination to witness Virginia City’s 50th Annual International Camel Races, an event Andrew had stumbled upon while perusing Reno websites last week. Once he discovered it, we both agreed it was something we had to see. We had so many questions—the largest being, can camels run? So we set out to see for ourselves.

The day kicked off with a parade through the center of Virginia City, which is set at the end of an extraordinarily winding road where you see nothing but scrub and sand for many, many miles. The town itself is straight out of the Old West, with covered wooden sidewalks, old-timey signage, and the feeling that not much has changed in about two hundred years. In the parade were camels, some police cars and fire trucks, a few people playing brass instruments in the back of pickup trucks, and many people dressed up in period garb, including large groups of cleavage-blessed, cleavage-proud women dressed as “boarding house” ladies of the night. The parade lasted for about ten minutes, and then we had lunch. Inexplicably, the table next to ours was filled with Australians—apparently part of the camel race’s “international” component.





We were tempted by, but did not follow through with, this contest:



It took about two hundred years to get our food, which we then wolfed down in order to make it to the camel races on time. I don’t know what I’d been expecting—something professional, I think, akin to horse racing; Andrew had wondered if there’d be betting. I think we both imagined some sort of arena setting. This was not the case. The camel race track was set at the bottom of a hill in a dusty outdoor bowl-like space, with a few bleachers arranged around it; most people simply stood at the white picket fence surrounding the “track.”





But sure enough, those camels were running. Three at a time—and I think it was the same three again and again—ran around the track as best they could, spurred on by camel jockeys. Often the camels had trouble making the turns; it took some maneuvering to steer them in the proper direction.



This was fully entertaining, but the best was yet to come, with the ostrich races. In the starting area, we could see the tiny ostrich heads bobbing and weaving, waiting to sprint out of the gate. The ostriches, too, were ridden by ostrich jockeys, and the birds were, if it’s possible, even more ungainly runners than the camels; one flapped its large wings so forcefully that the jockey could barely stay on.



And then the strangeness was taken to yet another level, with ostrich chariot races. In these, the ostriches pulled their riders in wheeled “chariots,” which were little more than plastic garbage cans with wheels, while the riders did their best to direct the ostriches’ movement by using brooms. One rider—a sixty-seven-year-old woman who had been ostrich-chariot racing for many years—took a spill. Whether these races actually had winners I cannot tell you.



After an hour or so, a strong wind picked up, and clouds of dust gusted everywhere; Andrew and I decided we’d gotten our full money’s worth, and headed to the car. Unfortunately, we never got to see what was in store for the zebra we spotted loitering with the non-racing camels. But we had seen enough. It was the perfect start to our Reno weekend of highbrow/lowbrow extremes.