Ride of the Desert Otter, Part 1: San Francisco to DC

I hope Apple get's your laptop fixed quickly.
Enjoy the dry, hot weather where you are at - cause it is wet and cold in the DC area.

You and me both, Harsh. I wont be rolling into DC until Memorial Day weekend. Think you can arrange for better weather by then?

I'm counting on you...

Waiting ever so patiently for your next report. Slow down, ride safe and enjoy your ride......never know when you will get to do it again!!! Breck

Subscribed! Oh and it looks like you're going through some of the same areas that I plan to hit in June. If you're looking for ideas see here for my tentative routing details.

Good luck with that computer!

Great RR. Can't wait until you get that POS computer fixed and can continue it. Have fun, ride safe.

looks like fun

Good news! Heard from the shop in Sedona. The laptop is fixed and I should be able to intercept it in Austin 2 or 3 days from now.

I guess I should put in a plug for the computer repair shop I used. There's no Apple Store in Sedona. I think the closest one is in Phoenix. But Sedona *does* have the Mac Clinic (http://www.macclinicsedona.com/MacClinic/Home.html), which is licensed to to Mac repairs and warranty work. They busted ass to get me sorted out-- even offered to do a 24-hour rush job for me, just because I was on the road. Normally, they just offer 48-hour rushes. Nice folks (of course, I don't *have* the thing yet, so if anything is wrong when I get it, I'll curse them so hard they'll need to add a new plane to Hell).

No, seriously. Good guys. Really went out of their way to help out.


Anyway, once I get the computer back, it'll just be a matter of sorting through the photos I've taken since the Grand Canyon. Which is only several hundred...

...

... oh, man... this... this could take a while...

Nice - on the computer repair.
The weather has improved since Friday in the DC area. Short wearing weather. I guarantee beautiful weather during Memorial Day (great time to check out the memorials in DC). Sorry to say I'll be at Dewey Beach that weekend. But will still be following your ride report.

April 15, 2011
Williams, AZ
Miles: 1055

I said a silent “thank you” to Chris, as I motored eastward through the pass on the outskirts of Las Vegas. I’d just ridden through a pretty dingy part of the city-- poor, struggling, forgotten, a part that the Chamber of Commerce would rather I didn’t see, no doubt-- and I was just escaping the urban sprawl into Lake Mead National Recreation Area, a watery haven for boaters, fishermen, and anyone else who could use a break from the sun-blasted desert. Chris, one of my hosts from the previous night, had suggested I take a somewhat longer route to get out of Vegas and through Boulder City to Hoover Dam, and I was concerned that the extra time would throw a wrench in the works, since my plan was to eventually reach the Grand Canyon by nightfall.

“Trust me,” he said. “If you go through Henderson on 93 you’ll get nothing but rush-hour traffic and assholes. You’ll be lucky if someone doesn’t kill you. Don’t do that. Henderson is a hell-hole.”

He was right, of course, the locals usually are. The road through Lake Mead NRA was a joy. Long, easy curves snaking through the rugged desert mountains, eventually reaching the country’s largest man-made lake and following its shore south. The lake itself was surprisingly colorful, and the road had plenty of turnoffs for photo opportunities.





Before long I’d fallen behind my intended schedule, but I hardly noticed. There was just too much to see—almost-tropical blue water dotted with small green islands, and the hulking square-ish mass of Fortification Hill in the hazy distance. Places and things I’d never seen before. The difference between “going” and “exploring.” And I wanted to go through Henderson? Who cared if the time was passing? The dam wasn’t going anywhere. Neither was the Grand Canyon, for that matter.





By the time I got to Hoover Dam, it was bright and hot out. I’d pulled out all my liners, opened up all my vents, which helped, but my black boots slowly became little ovens, baking my feet. The covered parking structure at the dam’s visitor’s center was a godsend. Right when I pulled in, I found a 1200RT hexhead with all the hard cases and two helmets in the motorcycle parking area. It was the first boxer I’d seen on the road, and I wondered if I’d find the couple sometime during my visit (I didn’t, but it was good to know “my people” were out there).



I went for the extended tour of the dam. The one where they take you down into the bowels of the dam itself, where you can still see measurement markings scribbled on the walls from when it was constructed in the early ‘30s. If you ever stop by, I recommend you do the same, it’s worth the $30.





Hoover Dam is astounding to me. It’s a feat of construction we’d be hard-pressed to achieve even today, and a remarkably good-looking piece of architecture besides.



It’s the kind of thing I look at, and it fills me with a profound respect for, and perhaps pride in, humanity’s ability to build and create and to master its surroundings. And to do it with style. The Art-Deco movement had it knocked. Big brass doors, green marble, meticulous white tile, and mosaic floors. Style.

But touring the dam also made me a bit sad and wistful, because I doubt that the America of today could repeat such a thing. We are a different people now. Hoover Dam was completed in 5 years, 2 years ahead of schedule. In the middle of the Great Depression. It’s been nearly a decade since 9/11 and we haven’t even decided what to put on the site of the World Trade Center, let alone built something there as inspiring as Hover Dam.

It’s like somewhere along the way, we forgot how to get results like we did in the ‘30s and ‘40s. We got soft. We think small. It called to mind a recording I heard of Charles Bukowski at a poetry reading in 1980 where, in a drunken tangent, he said so simply, “People can’t do what they’re trying to do. There’s something terrible happening.”

Of course, you can also argue that Hoover, like a lot of other public works projects, was short-sighted, has done a fair amount of damage ecologically-speaking, and will have a lot of unintended consequences in the future, and maybe we shouldn’t pat ourselves on the back too much for plugging a river. But somehow I feel like the America that built Hoover Dam could deal with those consequences, make corrections, where today’s America just doesn’t have the vision and the will to take care of shit like that.



Will we ever see another Hoover Dam? Another Manhattan Project? Another Moon Landing? I doubt it. But I really hope I’m wrong. Maybe I’ll see something on my way that makes me think otherwise.

It took a while before I’d had my fill of taking pictures of the dam, even though I felt like I was hustling to stay out of the hot sun. I still had a good chunk of Arizona to cross, and it was well past noon. I got the gear back on, and pointed the bike east, across the new bridge over Black Canyon and pushed out of the Pacific Time Zone and into Arizona. A short jaunt down 93 and onto I-40, another interstate with all the plain, dull crap that comes with such things.

The desert rolled by, and I wove around the 18-wheelers at a steady 80 mph, not stopping until I reached Williams, an attractive little spot at the junction of I-40 and the road that takes you to Grand Canyon National Park. I decided to stop there on the recommendation of a friend in LA who had spent a night there with his wife, and promised it was a place of great character.

The main drag of Williams, West Railroad Ave, seemed to prove him correct. Lots of small, classy structures, old architecture that the locals had the good sense to preserve. A nice place to walk, which I did. Looking for a nice caffeine charge, I wandered into a coffee shop, and asked when I could expect it to get dark (I intended to camp near Grand Canyon NP).

“When the sun goes behind the mountains! HAW HAW!” said the resident smart-ass.
“Sheeeit!” I said, grinning and rolling my eyes. “There’s always one of you guys, isn’t there?” We all got a kick out of it.

It came out that Smartass used to ride, and he regaled me with an epic tale of the time he borrowed his buddy’s Ninja and wrecked it at 90 mph wearing jeans and sneakers, somehow escaping with no more than a scratch on his little finger. He was leathery and wild-eyed, and he waved his hands crazily, relishing the recklessness of his youth. A good storyteller, to be sure, whether he story was true or not.

I blew a lot of time talking to him and the shop owner. Ultimately, they convinced me not to continue on to the canyon, on account of the big RVs on the road and the deer and elk that dart across the highway at night. I couldn’t imagine that it was as bad as they let on, but their concern was endearing. I told them my plan was to camp, and they suggested nearby Kaibab Lake, which I checked out. The campground was closed for no reason I could determine, and I thought about stealth-camping there anyhow. But the truth was I was starting to like Williams. It had character. So I doubled back and found a room at a B&B, the Red Garter Inn.



The Red Garter was great. It’s a beautifully-restored turn-of-the-century Victorian that used to be a busy whorehouse, and who doesn’t like whorehouses, right? The night manager was a sweet lady who was kind enough to knock a big chunk of the room price off for me. It still wasn’t as cheap as I like things (which is really damn cheap), but it gave me the opportunity to wander around and soak in some of Williams and grab a plate of enchiladas and a cold beer at Pancho McGillicuddy’s. How can you resist a name like "Pancho McGillicuddy's"?

Not what I planned, but certainly good enough. It was a full day, and in the morning I’d take my time getting to the Grand Canyon. I would have two days to kill there, sleeping in the dirt, so for the time being I enjoyed the big, soft bed and looked forward to my free breakfast. I swore I was going to eat everything in that kitchen. Gotta get you money’s worth, right?

April 17, 2011
Tusayan, AZ
Miles: 1107.5

I’ve seen the Grand Canyon before. Recently, in fact. My brother and I went to that impossible hole in the Earth last year, and we did a fast lap down to the Colorado River and back to the canyon rim. That had been my first visit to the Grand Canyon, and as pretty as it was, I was only halfway paying attention to the geologic marvel we were stomping into. We had a rigid timetable that day-- down to the river, stick a toe in, high-five, and trudge back up more than 4000 vertical feet before the sun got too high overhead and fried us to death. Park rangers pleaded with us not to attempt a one-day round-trip to the river, promising that we’d succumb to the heat and croak in a matter of hours. So when the time came, stopping to absorb the natural beauty was not exactly mission-critical. We made it. But once we dragged our carcasses out of there we had to bail immediately so my brother, a father of two, could get back to his brood.

Which is just a long-winded way of saying that it was an unfortunately short visit. And now, less than a year later I was back, but with the better part of two days to burn exploring this amazing place. The ride in from Williams was quick and comfortable. I’d filled up on fruit, yogurt, coffee, toast, coffee, cinnamon rolls, coffee, cereal, and coffee, then shot up the 50 mile stretch to my next temporary home on Forest Service Rd. 302 outside Tusayan—my first moto-camp on public land.



It was right where the Forest Service ranger told me it would be, a right turn onto a dirt road right outside the town (well, “motel-colony” might be more accurate) of Tusayan and the campsites were obvious bare patches in the trees and scrub. It appeared the ground had been wet not too long ago and the meaty tires of 4WD vehicles had churned the mud into now-hard ruts. Looking for a suitable spot, I did my best to pilot the GSA over the unruly ground and got a rude reminder that once you’re off the pavement, riding gets a lot less forgiving with such a monstrous dualsport. Just the short distance to the campsite got me thinking. Oh, yeah… no convenient places for U-turns… hmmm... these ruts mean I might not be able to get a foot down when I need it... shit, will I be able to get this thing off the sidestand if I park on this incline?... who are those folks over there? They’re looking this way… I hope I look like I know what I’m doing… I really fucking need to do a week at RawHyde…

I got my tent set up (without embarrassing incident), and chatted with some nearby campers, one of whom worked in the national park and gave me some good suggestions for day-hikes that would keep me far (well, “farther”) from the hordes of tourists that were rampaging around the south rim. He also filled me in on the nighttime weather. It was getting down towards freezing, he said, and I gave myself a pat on the back for bringing the zero-degree down sleeping bag. I’d be fine.

Then I headed into the park. For some reason, they weren’t charging any fees at the main gate, another score for me, so I blew on through and parked at the lot near Yavapai Point where I shared a space with a couple touring the southwest on a white Ducati Multistrada 1000 DS. We shared the obligatory chatter about bikes. I drooled over the aesthetic lines and sexy design of the Italian bike, and Brock, the DS’s owner, looked wistfully at the GSA’s heated grips, wincing as he recalled being caught in the rain.

We wished each other well, rubber-side down, and I headed out to Yavapai Point for a look at the Canyon. And this time I just looked at it. I looked at it for a long time, until I realized you just can’t take it all in. The colors. The depth. The vastness. It has a way of looking “fake”, a filmmaker’s matte-painting, a flat illusion just beyond arm’s reach. All I could think was, “how?” HOW? How did this happen?! Particularly when you get a glimpse of the Chief Architect at the canyon’s floor— the Colorado is nothing but a tiny greenish filament, almost imperceptible in the yawning, gaping expanse.

THAT?! That carved out all of this?! How many times must it have changed course, diverting this way and that for years, eons, until it found the path of least resistance? It’s just a numbing testament to the will of the natural world. Patience on a super-human scale. An unstoppable force, and yet, you’d never know by looking at it. What appears for the most part to be a lazy river is actually a geologic laser-cutter. God’s scalpel.

On the advice of my campsite-neighbor I took a shuttle out to the Hermit Trail on the west end of the park. It was fairly sparsely populated, being the last stop on the shuttle loop, but not empty of humans by any stretch. Not a surprise, really. It was a weekend. I found the trailhead and descended away from the polyglot chatter and snapping cameras of the crowds at the fenced overlooks. The Hermit is a well-maintained trail, and I busied myself with my camera, trying to grab the astonishing views. Up until that point, I’d been relying on my DSLR’s automatic mode. Now I was experimenting with using my own settings for shutter speed and f-stop, and it seemed to be working out better than I expected. I’ve never been much of a photographer (something else I hope to correct on this trip) but with nothing to do except practice, I was seeing some improvement.











I spent a few hours descending and shooting and just soaking in all the details in the earth around, below, and above me. After a stop to slather myself with more sunscreen and scarf down a few handfuls of dried fruit, beef jerky, and trail mix, I headed back up in the hopes of getting back to my camp by dark. It took some extra time to navigate the shuttle bus system, but I got back to my tent with some sunlight to spare.

After I whipped up dinner and tea, I visited some other neighbors who’d turned up—two young guys working as surveyors in the park. Nice kids, working their guts out counting trees for next-to-no money, but traveling the country with the good weather and taking winters off to ski in Utah. It sounded like fun. The kind of thing I sometimes I wish I’d done. We talked a while, and soon it was very dark, so there wasn’t much to do but retire to the tent, kick myself for not bringing a book, and go to sleep.

The next day was much the same, except this time I took the Grand View Trail into the depths, a much steeper trail, more dramatic than the Hermit, and also far from the crowds. I spent most of the day in the hole with the camera, then hiked back out and went to the El Tovar Hotel, a gorgeous place with views of the canyon, where I found a table in the cocktail lounge and sucked down a few glasses of wine, sifting through my photos while I waited for the sunset. I had seen a cluster of 800 GS’s and a 1200 GS in the lot outside the hotel, all of them rentals from an outfit in Las Vegas. Again, I managed to not find the riders. You’d think half a dozen guys dressed in space-suits would be easy to spot, but somehow they dodged me.

















Soon the sunset was in progress, lighting up the thin cloud cover with rich purples, pinks, and yellows. I fired away with the camera, trying to develop a method for shooting in low light and hoping for the best. Sunsets never last long enough, and this one, like the others, faded into a dark desert night. I toyed with the idea of having a few more rounds or maybe dinner at the hotel, but decided against it. I’d had enough of the tourist-swarm and their often-too-loud conversation. So back to the tent, another camp-stove meal.







I was filthy—coated with a manky film of grime, dried sweat, and sunscreen, but it felt fantastic. Two days of activity had made me content and calm. I noticed that on these two nights camping out, I was drifting off with less on my mind. Fewer worries. Just a satisfaction that my days had been spent well.

And a new kind of easy confidence that there would be more days like them in the future. Guaranteed.

April 18, 2011
Sedona, AZ
Miles: 1278.8

I had spotted the museum in a little town called Valle two days before on the way into Tusayan. It was tough to miss. The hulking mass of USAF Lockheed Constellation parked outside tends to grab your attention. It just doesn’t fit. When you’ve grown addled by mile after mile of high desert and roadside shops, and suddenly this triple-tailed monster pops out of the landscape, you think you’re looking at an alien spacecraft. I did a quick loop through the parking lot and learned I’d found the Planes of Fame Air Museum and I made a mental note to stop by and see the planes when I was done with the Grand Canyon. Once I fed myself and said farewell to my humble patch of dirt, I beelined it for the museum to see what sort of machinery was on display.



The Planes of Fame museum has been collecting vintage aircraft since 1957. Between the main hangars in Chino, CA and the one in Valle, there are 150 vintage aircraft in the collection, many of them still airworthy. The museum’s president, Steve Hinton, continues to maintain and restore as many old flaying machines as he possibly can.





The hangar in Valle is small and the planes are packed in tight, but they’re the real thing. I was impressed to see an honest-to-God Me-109 among the warbirds, a sleek dart compared to so many other fighters that take on chunkier proportions. Nearly every plane had several pans beneath the undercarriage dedicated to collecting leaking oil. A shame that they were bleeding like that, I thought, but it was a sign that they’re still alive. The museum had all sorts of other stuff crammed in among the aircraft. Display cases honoring individual pilots, model airplanes, flight gear from different countries. It seemed that if anyone donated something authentic, Planes of Fame would find a place for it, no matter what it was.

Out in the back of the hangar were some old jets, slowly bleaching in the sunlight. There were also some partial-airframes and jumbles of engine parts lying around for no reason I could see. They were just rotting away. I wandered around the broken-down machinery taking pictures, feeling that sad sense of tragedy that often comes with seeing a dead or dying animal. These things used to do something. They had purpose and value. The wind was blowing in hard gusts and the decaying wrecks groaned and creaked, giving the whole setting a kind of post-apocalyptic, Mad-Max feel and I half expected a screaming nomad in football pads to leap out with a tire-iron or some radioactive mutant to slurp around from behind the hulks, hungry for human flesh.





I don’t know how long I stuck around, but it was a good visit (and only five bucks!). Back in the parking lot, a grizzled old coot in a half-dead pickup truck rolled in while I was gearing up. His skin was sun-blasted, and one eye was always open wider than the other. His teeth were blotchy and twisted, like a jumble of yellow granite pebbles. But once upon a time he used to ride, and the sight of the loaded GSA drew him. He wanted to jaw about bikes, and the good old days before his back went bad on him and he had to give up bikes. We bullshitted for a bit, and he suggested a route to get me to Sedona, which was my next stop. I’d planned to go through Flagstaff, and down highway 89A through Oak Creek Canyon, but he said I’d be better off taking a more roundabout route and going through a town called Jerome. He promised good twisties, a good lunch stop, and that I’d still get to my destination with plenty of time to spare. It was all just squiggly lines on a map to me, so I took his word for it. I could do the Sedona-to-Flagstaff section of 89A on the way to New Mexico anyway.



Which turned out to be a good move. The road was a clear two-lane winding south through the Kaibab National Forest, then into Prescott NF and eventually the township of Prescott itself where 89A ran north-east into the hills. I was almost beyond the city limits when I flashed past a sad-looking figure pushing a motorcycle on the shoulder of the road. I pulled over and walked back to meet him and his unfortunate burden—a Harley something-or-other with some of the longest ape-hanger bars I’d seen up close. Luckily for him, it wasn’t too hot out.

“Whatsa trouble?” I asked.
“No trouble,” he said with a good-humored grin. “I just thought it was a nice day for a walk.” We had a good laugh together and he told me he’d run the miniscule tank dry.



The fuel bottle for my camp stove still had a little go-juice in it (I run the stove on regular unleaded), so I offered it up and he was glad to have it. It wasn’t much, but enough to get him to the next gas station and he could call off the rescue he’d just phoned in. After a handshake and a thumbs-up, his motor thundered to life and off he went. It was a beautiful summit of good will between the Harley and BMW camps. We CAN all just get along.





I rode 89A all the way to Jerome without stopping for anything. I’d done my good deed for the day, and I was going to enjoy the curvy mountain pass ahead of me. I grinned big, and took the turns as fast as I could, passing slower traffic perhaps a bit too aggressively at times. But it was really, really, fun. The road climbed for a few miles, and then arched over into Jerome, “America’s Most Vertical City,” and when I got there, I was hit with the smell of cooking meat. It was lunch time!









Jerome is an interesting place. A former mining town turned tourist destination and artist community, Jerome is built on a steep hillside and it has a weirdly European feel. Many of the buildings are late 19th century construction. Given its location on 89A, it’s a popular spot for weekend motorcyclists and other road-trippers. It was crowded with tourists, but with good reason. There was plenty of good eats to be had, and it was fun to grab some shots of the downtown area along with the inside of some of the buildings. I also tried my hand at Jerome’s wishing well which consists of an outhouse, a wheelbarrow, and an old toilet (among other receptacles) down in the cellar of a ruined brick structure that used to be a jail (I think-- don't quote me). You have to throw coins awkwardly through a protective barrier and I almost scored a hit, but not quite.











Leaving Jerome I stopped to grab some photos from below, looking upward at the town on its high ridge. From there I descended to Cottonwood which was a shit-hole, so far as I could tell, and then onward into Sedona. I saw the high, crimson bluffs in the distance and realized instantly why many consider it to be the most beautiful city in America. The cliffs that surround the town are absolutely majestic, and the construction of the town is purposefully complimentary to the landscape. It looks like the town belongs there. I was looking forward to exploring the place.



I really wanted beer too. I wanted to make sure I knew where to find the good stuff. In a situation like that, there’s only one place to go for counsel. I stopped at the first bicycle shop I saw, marched straight back to the mechanic’s area, and spotted a pony-tailed, 40-something grease-monkey.

“Tell me something,” I said. “Where’s the best place to go drinking around here?”

Without even blinking, he rattled of half a dozen places where I could get liquored up. With that taken care of, I attended to the next order of business: Bathing. The last three days had left me in a thoroughly vile condition, and something had to be done. The fella at the visitor’s center sent me to a motel at the west edge of town that he promised was the cheapest digs I’d find, where I unloaded my gear and got cleaned up. Then I headed, per the mechanic’s recommendation, to the Oak Creek Brewing Company for dinner and beer.

I was warned that Oak Creek Brew Co. would be crowded (i.e. “touristy”), but that was hard to avoid anywhere in Sedona this time of year. But the beer was indeed good, and I savored a tall glass of Hefeweizen. As a bonus, the guy sitting next to me at the bar barely made a dent in his dinner—a massive plate of sausage, mashed potatoes, and sauerkraut. In a move worthy of my collegiate self, I waited until he was ready to surrender it to the bartender and all but grabbed it out of his hands before he could hand it over. Score! Free dinner! And all it cost me was some dignity.

Filled with grub and boozed up, I returned to my room to do some journaling and photo wrangling...

And that’s when my laptop failed to boot up. I’d had some mysterious crashes previously, but this was clearly a death rattle. It was too late to do anything about it, so I indulged in some cable TV (such luxury!) and konked out. First thing in the morning I’d see what I could do about the computer, but for now I could chalk up another great day on the road.

the computer crashed because Sedona sits on an energy vortex/bend in the space time continum. Its pretty though. You'll enjoy 89 up through Oak Creek Canyon into Flagstaff.

Good Luck, excellent RR.

great pictures. I love looking at the old airplanes!

April 19, 2011
Sedona, AZ
Miles: 1332

At first, I thought Sedona was a place in which I might like to live one day. When I saw those majestic red towers I was filled with visions of stepping out my front door, careening joyfully into the other-worldly landscape where I could indulge in world-class mountain biking, and glorious rock-climbing day after day. Beautiful desert roads to ride. I would be heaven. It would figure out a way to work part-time. I could freelance from my home, I thought, picking the jobs that would give me the most time running amok in this natural paradise. I could strike the perfect balance. It could work!

No. This will not happen. Not ever. My second day exploring Sedona built up my affection for the town, only to suddenly and savagely shatter it beyond any hope repair or reconciliation. Let me explain.

I awoke and hustled to a small Apple computer reseller to see if they could determine why my laptop had croaked on me. They took the stricken machine for troubleshooting, and I set about getting acquainted with this seemingly-idyllic town. The service representative at the computer shop gave me some good back road suggestions, so I checked out of my room at the inn, packed all my stuff onto the bike, and headed out into the hills. The pavement snaked beneath the ponderous monoliths, and I snapped photos at nearly every turn. There was just too much pretty stuff to take in.





Soon I found myself behind an obnoxiously pink jeep full of tourists (the pink jeep tours are everywhere in Sedona) and decided to follow it, hoping it would lead me to the prettiest geography. The jeep made a few turns, and then hooked off onto an unpaved road.

“Aha!” I thought. “I am equipped for this! I can go anywhere the jeep tours go. Behold the GSA in all its glory, bitches!”





I followed the jeep into the back roads, hanging back so as not to be choked to death by its dusty wake. Eventually, it pulled into a turnout, presumably so the paying guests could get some photos. I continued past, following the road wherever it would lead me. The red earth crunched under my tires, and I picked my way through ruts and gravely patches. Realizing that I’d never ridden this bike at any decent speed off road with a full load, I kept it slow at first. I got up on the pegs and squeezed the tank with my knees, trying to use the shifting of my weight to guide the bike, rather than jerking the handlebars, and trying to keep my eyes away from the obstacles I didn’t want to hit.

Trying, and failing, I should hasten to add. In the first half hour, I rammed that pig of a bike into ruts, holes, and rocks the size of cantaloupes. I skidded in gravel patches, and my sphincter would leap up through my digestive tract and fasten itself around my windpipe, so my breathing was shortened to ragged gasps. And this was not difficult terrain by any stretch. That RawHyde course was looking like a must. Again.

But it got better. With some time, my lines began to smooth out. I got the speed up to the 30-40 mph range. I improved at picking a path that involved fewer curves to thread my way around things, and I noticed that my shocks were taking less of a beating. I began to trust that the bike would stay upright even if the tires released their grip momentarily. I suppose it would have helped if I’d let some air out of the tires, but I didn’t want to bother. I just wanted to ride.

Before long, I was able to pay attention to the distant landscape again. Few other vehicles were out there, and with a little imagination I could almost convince myself I was somewhere in Africa, or riding on the surface of Mars. This was… fun! I also spotted some primitive campsites, as I had wandered onto a Forest Service road, and picked a spot that I would return to later in the day. The road arced around and met up with the main highway west of town, so I turned around and road the whole stretch again at a nice fast clip. Getting off the pavement was good.





By the time I got back to town, I had a message from the computer shop. They could fix it, but they’d need to order a part. It would delay my departure from Sedona by half a day, but I figured there were worse places to be stuck. That was when I decided I’d go find a book to read. I hadn’t packed a paperback, and there were some nights when I really would have liked to have one. Now seemed like a decent time to fix that. I tooled around town looking for a bookstore. It didn’t take long. In I went.





But something was wrong. Something about the place didn’t fit with my usual experience of a bookstore, but I couldn’t say what. All the book covers were done in soft blurs of pastel colors. I took a closer look at the titles. Access Your Brain’s Joy Center: The Free Soul Method. And, What Is A Vortex? A Practical Guide to Sedona’s Vortex Sites. Every shelf, row after row of fluffy New-Age bullshit. Crystal healing guides. Watered-down Native-American spirituality for the modern hippy. CDs with recordings of wind-chimes and animal noises. I had clearly come to the wrong place.

So I went to another store. It was much like the first. And another—same deal. I asked a theatrically-serene woman at one of the shops if she could point me to a place that sold (I tried to find a word other than “real”) books. Not only didn’t she know, but she looked at me with a puzzled expression, almost as if she didn’t realize there were any other kind of books. A newsstand where I might by magazines, maybe? All that got me was a blank stare.

It took me the better part of two hours to find the place. I think it was the woman at the Java Love coffee shop who pointed me to a building on the very edge of town. Outside a tiny corner office space behind a cheap pizza restaurant, I found a small sign that read “BOOK STORE.” The shop was maybe the size of a small studio apartment, including the bathroom and closet. But it had familiar categories. “Fiction”. “Biography”. “Travel”. He didn’t have the book I was looking for (one of John McPhee’s), and I asked if there was someplace else that might.

He shook his head sadly. “Mmm… no. This is the only standard bookstore in Sedona. If you want mainstream stuff, you’ll have to go to Flagstaff.”

And that was the moment. That was when I knew this place was not for me, and never would be. Despite the day’s joyous ride. Despite the veritable cornucopia of outdoor adventure around every corner. I can NOT live in a place where New-Age hippy bookstores outnumber real bookstores four-to-one.

Don’t get me wrong. I believe there’s a place for things cosmic and mysterious. The mind-body connection is a very real thing, and that it can affect one’s health, mindset, etc. I’m all for respecting the ancient traditions of indigenous people, and I think their teachings have value and relevance. I myself have benefited from many practices that don’t have full approval from the world of medical and natural science—yoga, acupuncture, and such.

But I also think that much of this stuff, too much of this stuff, has been dumbed-down, removed from cultural or historical contexts, and marketed to people who are so desperate to find comfort in this imperfect world that they’re willing to believe anything. And they’ll pay real money for it, too. Healing crystals? That’ll be $10. Want to do a computer scan of your aura? That’s $35. Tours of the local energy vortices-- $165 for 90 minutes. It’s quite a racket, and Sedona’s economy practically depends on it. That’s just a concentration of nutjobs far too intense for my taste.

Okay. I digress. I don’t want to step on anyone’s toes here. My point is, that was a deal-breaker. Right.

I bought a book anyway, and headed up to an overlook that afforded some great photo ops. As the afternoon wore on, more people collected at the spot to watch the sunset. The Camera Geek Brigade showed up to record the day’s end for posterity (myself included, I guess) and the hillside tuned into a mire of idle chatter and snapping shutters.











The sun shuffled over the horizon, lighting up the wispy clouds, and I shot a zillion pictures, most of which were… meh… but a few seemed respectable. With darkness fast-approaching, I went back to the Forest Service road and pitched my tent by headlamp, shoved some food in my face and curled up for the night with my book. My mainstream book. With any luck, the next day I’d get the laptop back shortly after the new part arrived via FedEx, and then hit the road for the Arizona/New Mexico border.

As it would turn out, I didn’t have any luck.

April 20, 2011
NFS Road 118, AZ
Miles: 1627

The voice on the phone sounded apologetic and a little nervous. “Errrmmm… it looks like Apple didn’t… uh… didn’t ship the part,” it said.

I sat up and looked at the clock. It was a little after 2:00PM. I’d been killing time reading at Java Love because it has the softest couch in the world and it’s very close to the shop where my computer was being fixed. I wanted to be close so I could snatch it up the minute it was ready.

“Didn’t ship the part…?” I repeated.
“Yeah. They say they’re back ordered. There’s no telling how long it will take to get it.”
“Uh-huh… so…”
“So we’ll have to wait for it and ship the computer to you... um…somewhere.”

And so the day’s plan lay in smoking ruins, but it wasn’t all so bad. The morning had been pretty full before I stationed myself on repair-watch at Java Love. I’d woken up with the sun and climbed out of my tent to see three green and yellow hot-air balloons floating lazily in the morning sky. I watched them while they slowly descended until they were hidden by the surrounding trees. It reminded me of a balloon ride I myself took in Alaska as a kid. It was a great experience, particularly the heart-pounding landing in high wind. I remember hitting the ground hard and fast, the basket tipping sickeningly on its side, as we were dragged a few hundred yards over the lumpy tundra. The adults around me were scared shitless. I thought it was great.



I had time to kill in the morning, since FedEx was supposed to deliver my new logic board by early afternoon, so I decided to use that time to ride up to Flagstaff for breakfast then come back to Sedona. I packed up everything and crunched down the now-somewhat-familiar dirt road toward town. On the way I was happy to find yet another hot-air balloon, this one on the ground just beside the road. The support truck had arrived, and the crew was working to disentangle the fabric from some bushes while the former passengers milled around in the early morning light. They all looked like they’d had a good time, but seemed unsure what to do with themselves while the crew carefully picked at the nylon envelope.





As soon as I got out of town on 89A, I knew I had a problem. This trip up Oak Creek Canyon was clearly going to be a tug-of-war between riding the twisties as fast as I could and stopping every 50 yards for nice photos. Several people had warned me of Oak Creek’s grandeur, and none of them had exaggerated. It’s a short ride, but the scenery is top-notch and the road is curvy in all the right ways and in all the right places. It’s a fight to keep your attention on one or the other. But it then occurred to me that I still had to come back down. I was going to do all this again! So it could be photos on the way up, and twisties on the way back. Being a Wednesday, traffic was light and I wouldn’t have trouble doing either.







When I got to Flagstaff, filled with good vibes from the ride, I stopped at a Barnes & Noble to browse the magazine racks. I also picked up a good recommendation for a meaty breakfast/brunch—a place called La Bellavia. It turned out to be a good joint. It was a banged-up wooden place, earthy and comfortable and clearly a favorite spot for the college kids. Half a dozen bicycles were chained up outside, and the walls were decorated with paintings and photographs, most of which were unusually good for such a place.





I fired down some sort of egg scramble with Italian sausage and potatoes, watching the foot/bicycle traffic outside. A fella on an R1100S pulled into the parking lot across the street, and went into a neighboring building. Never did get to jaw with him, but it was good to see another boxer again. So far Arizona was proving to be a Harley sanctuary.





On the way back to Sedona, I zoomed down the canyon road unhindered. It was sunny. It was cool. It was heaven. A shame it was just 20 miles. Once I got to hippie-town, I took myself over to Java Love where I sank into the couch on the planet and busied myself reading Bill Bryson’s The Forgotten Continent, a damning (but very funny) commentary on suburban development and cultural decay in America. I read, and I waited.

And I waited some more. Eventually, I called the computer shop for an update, and that’s when I got the inconvenient news.

I pulled out my Arizona atlas, and it looked like I could get pretty close to New Mexico by the time it got dark, but I would have to haul ass. Did I want to take I-40 to speed things up? No. I still wasn’t going to compromise the quality of the ride. It had to be the back roads, but I had to move right away. The minutes counted. I burst out the door, threw a leg over the bike and flew south out of town on highway 179, a short leg on I-17, then eastward on 260 through the Tonto National Forest.

My only regret is that I had to move so fast I didn’t get any photos of 260. I thought it was a fantastic ride. The road wound through densely-forested hills that rolled off in all directions. I hadn’t known that Arizona had mountains like these. Somehow, I envisioned the whole state as red and yellow desert, but these mountains reminded me somewhat of the Sierras in California and I delighted at the small discovery. Time pressure aside, I was having a fantastic time. If you haven’t ridden 260, you might want to put it on your bucket-list. As I worked my way eastward, the green trees gave way to yellow brush on gently rolling hills and hard gusty winds that shoved me around on the road. The light was fading and it was looking almost certain I’d be finding my camp in the dark.

The destination was a National Forest road about 10 miles west of a janky little town called Eagar. I found the spot with maybe fifteen minutes of sunlight to spare and hurried to set up my tent, taking care to avoid the shattered carcasses of what used to be bottles of beer and Jack Daniel's that littered the campsite. I imagined (none too happily) lying down to sleep and having an unnoticed shard of glass jab up through the floor of my tent, puncturing my Thermarest and my road-beaten ass. By the time I was cooking dinner, it was dark and I was operating by headlamp. The wind picked up, hissing and moaning loudly through the tree branches, and sending dried leaves skittering along the ground. Once sealed up in my tent, I screwed earplugs into my skull to blot out the racket, and cracked my book.

I didn’t last long. Looking back, it was a pretty long day, and despite the inconvenience with the electronics, a really good one. I got to ride Oak Creek Canyon not once, but twice. I discovered an Arizona I didn’t know existed. I had hoped to be closer to my next stop, Santa Fe, but I was close enough.

I might have flipped through a page or two before I couldn’t see straight and put the light out. Tomorrow was going to be a very important day, because on my way to Santa Fe I would be visiting a place I’d long wanted to see with my own eyes.

April 21, 2011
Santa Fe, NM
Miles: 1938.4

The wind was pissing me off. I was trying to get a move on, trying to get out of Arizona and into New Mexico, and the wind was scattering my shit all over the meadow beside my campsite. While I folded up the tent and rainfly, the stuff-sack for my tent-poles and stakes were carried off by the persistent breeze. I chased them down, and returned to find the rainfly was relocated to the firepit, and the tent was wrapped around my shock forks, which I’m sure would have been very funny if it was happening to someone else.







Soon enough I was on the road and punching through the Arizona/New Mexico border. Highway 60 was a mostly-straight line slicing through a whole lot of nothing. I passed through a few run-down towns, Quemado, Omega, Pie Town. Yes, there’s a place called “Pie Town.” And, yes, there are places there that sell pie. I don’t know if it’s good pie—I didn’t stop. This morning I was too focused on reaching a place high up on the Plains of San Agustin, a place I’d wanted to visit for a long time.

Fifty miles west of Socorro, NM, in a ring of mountains at nearly 7,000 ft. the National Radio Astronomy Observatory runs one of humanity’s most impressive scientific facilities. The Very Large Array (VLA) is a collection of sensitive radio dish antennas, arranged to work in concert as a large-diameter interferometer. Astronomers all over the world use the VLA to observe ethereal objects, some nearby, and some at the edge of the known universe. The enormous dishes are mounted on 13-mile railroad tracks which allow them to be positioned in a variety of configurations. It can be seen from orbit.







I was an astronomy student in college. Well, for a while, anyway, until it became painfully clear that I didn’t have the mathematical acumen to keep up with the higher-level stuff. But during my short time in the hard sciences, I learned about the VLA and became quite charmed by the thing. Something about the huge antennas, so elegantly arranged for the noble purpose of learning, knowledge, understanding. Like Hoover Dam, I suppose, it represents the best of what humanity can do.





I also like the name, because it’s kind of silly. The Very Large Array. Just imagine the conversation that gained congressional approval for the funding.

Congressman: “Thank you for joining us, Dr. Scientist. What do you have for us?”
Dr. Scientist: “Well, sir, I believe we have the opportunity to make great strides with radio astronomy. But we’ll need some equipment.”
C: “Is that so? What exactly is it you're thinking of?”
DS: Well, sir, it would be very helpful if we had... an array.
C: “An array. Spectacular. What kind of array?”
DS: “Well, a very… large array.”
C: “A very large array, eh? Sounds expensive. Large things usually are. A small one won’t do?”
DS: “No, sir, I’m afraid not.”
C: “Perhaps just a very pretty array?”
DS: “Well, sir, a large one would also be very pretty.”
C: “Would it, now?”
DS: “Yes, sir. In fact, we can promise it will be prettier than the ones the Soviets are working on.”
C: “The Soviets?! Sweet Jesus, we can’t have a very large array gap! APPROVED!”

Anyhow, I’d always wanted to see those magnificent dishes up close, and I now I knew they were somewhere in the desert ahead of me. I stayed on the throttle, not stopping until I saw the gigantic dishes, like huge white flowers on the plains ahead. One of the antenna tracks actually crosses the highway, and I stopped at the intersection more excited than I’d been in a long while. Listening to the wind on the high plain, I went to work with the camera.

As I snapped away, I saw a man on the road walking towards me from the east. I could see he was wearing a bright orange vest, and I figured him for a road maintenance worker or some such. But something didn’t fit. I didn’t see a car or truck anywhere on the roadside. As he got closer, I could see he was pushing something in front of him. He waved as he approached. I was about to meet Chuck LaRue.

Chuck is walking across the United States. Yes, walking. He started in May of 2010 to raise awareness of Lou Gehrig’s Disease and to raise money for the ALS Association’s Rocky Mountain Chapter. He undertook the project to support his brother, who was stricken by ALS and has since died. LaRue gave up a job as a chef to complete his walk which started in Washington DC and will end, he estimates, in San Diego. He pushes all his gear in a jogging stroller, making somewhere between ten and fifteen miles a day.





And somehow, here in this surreal technological setting, our paths had crossed. Like most people on the road who spend a lot of time alone, he was eager to chat. We spent an hour or so talking. He told me about his trip, and I told him about mine. He had some wisdom on how to find free places to stay in small towns (find the mayor or the sheriff and ask permission to camp in a park, he says). Despite the loss of his brother, he was a vibrant and enthusiastic soul, and very positive about the future.

It was mighty humbling, too. People tend to be impressed when you tell them you’re motorcycling cross-country. It might fool you into thinking you’re pretty hard. But not when you meet a guy like Chuck. He’s walking. WALKING. And he’s pushing 60 years old, if I remember right. One tough guy.

I gave him a $20 bill as he got back on his way. I’ll also give him a plug here: he’s got a Facebook group (http://www.facebook.com/home.php?sk=group_120883384593963), and his own fundraising site (http://www.firstgiving.com/fundraiser/chuck-larue/charleslarue). If contributing to ALS is something you might be interested, check it out. Chuck is doing good work.



I popped by the VLA’s modest visitor’s center, grabbed a few more photos, and reluctantly got on my way. I wanted to stay longer. I’d seen the dishes re-align themselves a few times in the last few hours, rows of the giant white structures moving in slow unison. When I left, they were pointing straight up. I wanted them to take a more photogenic angle before I left, but they weren’t budging and I was getting hungry. Plus I had an old roommate waiting to meet me in Santa Fe, and I still had a lot of mileage to make.

I motored back to Highway 60, took one last look at the magnificent dishes, and tuned eastward. Sad to leave, but filled with the satisfaction of keeping a promise to myself.



I buzzed through 50 miles of nothing to I-15, and headed north to Santa Fe. There wasn’t much of interest on that leg—an interstate wasteland like any other. I got hung up in Albequerque traffic, which didn’t make me think much of Albequerque, and pushed north into Santa Fe proper where I got lost. Eventually, I found my way to my old roommate’s doorstep by stabbing at my smart-phone and interrogating some locals.

I was excited to visit with Erik. I hadn’t seen him in damn near 10 years. He moved to New Mexico to iron out some family difficulties and, like many people do, he got stuck there. But I was apprehensive, too. What little I heard from him indicated it had been a tough time, and I wasn’t sure if I would find a fundamentally different person waiting for me.

But it was him, alright. Same sharp wit. Same encyclopedic knowledge of literature, pop culture, and history. Wonderfully cynical. He was still my old friend. We headed out to Santa Fe’s famous downtown Plaza where we caught up over food and beers, each of us revealing our most recent perspectives on life, the universe, and everything, for what they were worth. Which probably wasn’t much.

We also called it quits early, so as to avoid the copious vomiting that followed our last night out drinking a decade ago. I flopped down on his living room couch, looking forward to the next day when I’d head for the high mountains to Los Alamos where the atom bomb was born.

Excellent report! I greatly enjoy your writing and photos. Looking forward to more.

fantastic !! loving your trip! you have already been thru my city( san luis obispo) and you are doing the trip that I plan on doing this year..great job ,great photos !

Cool pictures of the dishes.