observations

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356 miles today, Kayenta, AZ to Taos, NM. Stel­lar weather the whole way, 60s and 70s and no clouds. Much of the morn­ing was spent cross­ing the east­ern hald of the Navajo nation. It’s fairly obvi­ous that, at least in this area, the Navajo are not get­ting rich off of gam­bling, maybe a few, but many of the rural Navajo still appear quite poor. Some­where in east­ern AZ, (I think), I crossed the Con­ti­nen­tal Divide.

Then I headed for Dulce and Charma, to get to high­way 64. Phil rec­om­mended that road, OMG was he right! miles and miles of long, flow­ing switch­backs climb­ing up the moun­tain side like a home­sick angel. from 7000ft in Tierra Amar­illo to 10,586 at the top. And it was chilly up there. Still, if you get a chance to ride this road, take it. You will not be sorry you did. Well, maybe if you’re on a DRZ-400, I’d guess it’d get seri­ously wheezy and down on grunt at 10,500ft!

Taos is a cute lit­tle town, old time ranch­ing town, now made artsy by the influx of artists and $$$. Still, not a bad lit­tle town. And the nice RV park on the south end of town has WiFi!

rub­ber side down, every­one!
black­dog

385 miles today, King­man to Kayenta, AZ. An absolutely beau­ti­ful day. Temps from 65 to about 80, clear skies with the occa­sional cloud. Rode to Grand Canyon National Park, took a bunch of pic­tures, bought the req­ui­site lapel pins. Had ‘a moment’ on the way there though: about 15 miles west of Williams a 2 ton dualie flatbed in front of me blew it’s out­side right tire at about 70mph. for­tu­nately, I was rid­ing in the left 1/3 of the lane, like we were all taught, and dodged all of the debris and the rapidly slow­ing Ford. Whew! Got my heart going for a moment there!
Not too long after that, a guy on an orange Moto Guzzi, with a Pump­kin for a hel­met passed me on I-40. I caught up with him at a gas sta­tion later. His name is Jim, and his hel­met was made by a com­pany called Head Trip. Wow.

Need­less to say, Grand Canyon was stun­ning:

The absolute hi-zoot way to see the Grand Canyon would be to book a room at one of the lodges on the rim, leave the car in Williams, and ride the train up. Looks really cool!
Left the main lodge area and headed east, stop­ping at Desert View, where they built a really cool obser­va­tion tower in the 30’s.

It was then across the Navajo nation to Kayenta, where I paid through the nose for a hotel room. Tourist sea­son, dontcha­know. There’s a bus of Asian tourists that checked in right behind me. After show­er­ing and grab­bing a bite, I decided to run up to Mon­u­ment Val­ley to catch it in the late light of the day. Glad I did:

Today’s cul­tural note: I go into a Sub­way here in kayenta, which is deep in the Navajo nation. When I open the door, there’s a very loud, very clear DING! from the door. Every head in the place swivels towards me, most swivel away, but there’s a cou­ple of folks obvi­ously won­der­ing if I’m lost. Felt very much the out­sider, I did. I sat down and had my din­ner, and watched the scene replay itself every­time some­one came in. In most cases, the entry drew no more notice. I won­der why they have such a loud and attention-getting door bell there?

Left­over mus­ing from yes­ter­day: enter­ing King­man, passed an absolutely Ginor­mous fac­tory; sign said Nucor. Turns out it’s an old steel mill, shut­down decades ago when it was North Star steel. Nucor bought it in 2007 and restarted it as a rebar plant last year. Good to see at least a few basic indus­tries still in this country.

Had a leisurely after­noon yes­ter­day with mark and the dogs. Got a pair of tires ordered, and it looks like they are going to the right place in texas, and will beat me there. yay!

Got a fairly early start this morn­ing, leav­ing Sun­Fire at about 7:30. Headed up to Warner Springs, then over the hills into the Coachella Val­ley (Palm springs, etc.)

Sat through a few stop­lights in Palm Desert and stopped for gas in Indio, and it felt way hot­ter than I was expect­ing. Started cool­ing off as I gained alti­tude going east, but upon drop­ping into Blythe, it got warmer. Stopped for lunch in Blythe, my ther­mome­ter read 93. Stopped just north of town to take a gan­der at the Intaglios there. It was a short gan­der, as wan­der­ing around on that exposed butte at 2:30 in the after­noon was a blaz­ing experience.

Even my GPS was ready to go

After that, it was pretty much a hot grind north­ward to King­man. I saw a bank ther­mome­ter in Parker, AZ that said 97. My tankbag ther­mome­ter never read higher than 95.8. That was hot enough, thanky­ou­very­much! It was cool to watch the scenery change from com­plete flat low desert to craggy, high desert here in king­man. I feel bet­ter now that i’ve had din­ner and a shower, and i now know that i can sur­vive, pretty com­fort­ably, a day of rid­ing in near 100 degree temps, on this bike, in this gear. That is confidence-inspiring. I think in a few days, I’ll be ready to tackle Tejas!

Woke up early this morn­ing, but not in any par­tic­u­lar hurry, as my des­ti­na­tion for the evening was my friends Mark and Ln’s place, Sun­fire, in Escon­dido. GPS says 202 miles. I get a road rec­om­men­da­tion from Mark (Fort Tejon road up into the Ange­les for­est, highly rec­om­mended), and head out. I avoid the free­way and wind up rid­ing through the wind farm:

Then it’s up into the moun­tains, where I spot one of the most beau­ti­ful rain­bows I’ve ever seen, just a line of color in the clouds. The pic­ture doesn’t really do it jus­tice, though.

Then on over the moun­tains, through beau­ti­ful for­est, on one of the nicest roads I’ve rid­den so far. Flow­ing turns, sur­pris­ing switch­backs, it had every­thing… except for a vis­i­ble LEO pres­ence: per­fect!

After an awe­some ride through the moun­tains, it was a very unevent­ful cou­ple of hour ride through the east end of LA basin, down through Temec­ula, and on into Escon­dido. Arrived early in the after­noon, hav­ing plenty of time to get tires ordered, check the bike over thor­oughly, and relax with Mark over a beer, and later with Mark and Ln over a good ital­ian din­ner. Life doesn’t suck.
Tomor­row, the Blythe intaglios, and on to King­man, Ari­zona. Sat­ur­day, the Grand Canyon!

Arose this morn­ing at Chez Grrrl­dogs in Galt to a beau­ti­ful morn­ing, at least out­side. Inside my head was a dif­fer­ent story, I was a bit blue and home­sick. This usu­ally hap­pens to me on a trip, about day 5 or 6; I wake up in the morn­ing, and won­der why the heck I didn’t just stay home in my nice comfy rut! But cof­fee helped, and the first 200 miles of the day were spec­tac­u­lar scenery and won­der­ful roads. Joined CA-49 at San Andreas and rode it, and a few of it’s cousins all the way into Fresno. This part of Cal­i­for­nia is nice! You can keep LA, but the Sierra Nevada rocks. Here are some exam­ples of the roads and the scenery:

After hit­ting Fresno, it was a cou­ple of bor­ing hours to Bak­ers­field (today’s trivia: obvi­ously there is a Buck Owens Boule­vard in Bak­ers­field, but did you also know that there is a Merle Hag­gard Drive?). At Bak­ers field, I hung a left into the Tehachapi maoun­tains, and ended up in, oddly enough, Tehachapi. Cool old rail­road town, a bit down on its luck, and windy! The entire east­ern hori­zon is wind tur­bines, and there here for a rea­son!
(yeah, it’s a crummy pic­ture and hard to see. i was tired…)

walk­a­bout day 4. today was vis­it­ing day. lunch with an old high school friend, tea with an author/teacher friend in oak­land, cof­fee with another old high school friend, and then din­ner with motor­cy­cle friends in Galt. not much rid­ing, only about 185 miles, but a busy day non­the­less.
spent some time check­ing out road con­di­tions in the Sierra Nevada, doesn’t look pur­dent to try to make it to Mono Lake tomor­row. So i’ll head south, skirt­ing the foothills on the Sier­ras, prob­a­bly end­ing some­where around bak­ers­field of so, giv­ing me all sort of options for thurs­day, depend­ing on whether of not i can con­nect with my friends in Escondido.

307 miles today, but it felt a lot longer, mostly due to toren­tial rain, cold, and even a lit­tle snow just north of Lay­tonville, CA. Yikes. Wait­ing this morn­ing in the hotel in Eureka, I real­ized that I hate doing noth­ing. I could have spent the day in Eureka and avoided all the unpleas­ant­ness, but I was already rest­less in the 20 min­utes I waited, and felt ener­gized when i got on the road. Every­thing went fine except that my gloves were soaked by 60 min­utes in, and get­ting cold. I stopped in Gar­berville for gas, and bought a pair of cot­ton gloves and ‘Marigolds’, you know, big rub­ber kitchen gloves. used those for the next 40 miles, but it was the cold­est 40 miles of the day. up to 1800ft. above sea level, and I actu­ally saw a few snowflakes going over Rat­tlesnake Sum­mit. Got to Lay­tonville, had cof­fee and lunch and thawed my hands out: they never got numb, just painful.

Two cold and weary bik­ers are inside get­ting warm

I also used the lit­tle local ‘free ads’ paper to help dry my gloves out, by rip­ping up the pages and stuff­ing the gloves full, wait­ing 15 min­utes, rinse repeat. Got them somwwhat dry. Got back on the road and felt good. but soon it became obvi­ous that the gloves are get­ting colder faster than the heated grips can heat them. So I stop in Ukiah and pull into a Honda dealer; not open. there’s another gent there com­plain­ing of the same thing. Turns out he’s a cop from eureka, and a big fan of the Fly­ing Spaghetti Mon­ster!  yay for ran­domly met friends! but no gloves will be had  there today. Down the road I find a sur­plus store, where I score a pair of ladies ski gloves, size large, gore­tex, for $35. I call them my Tom Rob­bins sig­na­ture mod­els, as the thumbs are longer than any I’ve ever seen. In any case, the offer­ing of $35 must have been big enough for the gods as I only had about 35 min­utes of rain the rest of the day.

gor­geous views like this were everywhere…

The rest of the trip was grey and blus­tery, some blue sky, and gusty winds.

your obe­di­ent scribe, at some famous bridge

Espe­cially on the point above the Golden Gate bridge. just about blew the hel­met over, sit­ting on the ground! yikes. And I had to get back in the groove of CA free­way rid­ing: leave no space and go 80mph! riiight!

another 30 miles of really pretty light Bay Area traf­fic, and I’m safely landed with my friend Mark in San Car­los. A hot shower and some chill time, and now it’s time for din­ner. see ya tomorrow!

black­dog

447 miles today, a lit­tle longer than I usu­ally like, but there were Issues. It appears that rain is headed for the north­ern cal­i­for­nia coast tomor­row. In con­sid­er­a­tion, today’s plan was to get far enough south that cut­ting inland could be done fairly early tomor­row, in an attempt to stay dry. Look­ing at the weather for­cast for north­ern cal­i­for­nia tomor­row, it appears that it was futile.

any­way, today’s ride went from port­land to eugene on I5, the south to ore­gon 38, on which I found the drain:

drain, ore­gon, we’re going there.

 being in the neigh­bor­hood, I stopped in to see my friends michael and judy. they are camp hosts at Tug­man State Park, and they keep a big dog in the front win­dow of their motorhome:

a big dog, he needs a big window

 from, there it was a quick blast down the coast, where I found this great veteran’s memo­r­ial and accom­pa­ny­ing view of Coos Bay’s bridge:

vet­er­ans memo­r­ial at Coos Bay

At this point, I decided that my best bet to beat the weather would be to get to Eureka today, so that I could head inland first thing in the morn­ing. So I rode south. There is some awe­some coast­line in south­ern ore­gon and north­ern california.

dra­matic coast and clouds in south­ern oregon

such scenery!

 So that was my sun­day in a nut­shell. It was sunny and warm north of eugene, and cloudy and cool, with a few rain­drops, on the coast. Not bad rid­ing, once I put the heated liner on; cool­ing off, going fast? turn the heat up a bit. slow­ing down, or the sun has come out? turn the heat down a bit. Bike never missed a beat, and seems to be a pro­foundly com­pe­tent trav­el­ling com­pan­ion. Arrived in eureka around 5:30, found a hotel (I hate camp­ing in the rain) and then found a place called Lost Coast Brew­ery and cafe for din­ner. good beer, decent food, and only 5 blocks from the hotel.

And now I sit here pon­der­ing tomor­row: do I pack up ride south in what appears to be cer­tain rain (NOAA says 90% chance of pre­cip­i­ta­tion from here to Santa Rosa– that means it’s gonna rain, folks!) or do I cool my heels here in Eureka and ride south on tues­day, when it is sup­posed to be sunny? I hate rid­ing with wet hands and feet; will my gloves stay dry? will my boots leak? grrr.… On the other hand, a rainy day in eureka is not likely to packed with excite­ment.

 I think i’ll have a snack, get some sleep and make the call in the morn­ing, depend­ing on how hard it’s raining.

black­dog

well, day 1 went pretty well. I sit here in the pala­cial liv­ing room of my friends Joce­lyn and Steve, after a nice din­ner, steal­ing their inter-tubes.

two tech­ni­cal dif­fi­cul­ties reared their ugly head: the GPS antenna can­not live on top of the radar detec­tor: the radios inter­fere with each other. so, att the first stop, i moved the GPS antenna. prob­lem 1 solved.

sec­ond tech­ni­cal issue was that my fancy 12volt/120volt usb-charges-everything wid­get doesn’t. specif­i­cally, it won’t charge the cell phone. appar­ently, not enough cojones to charge this new-fangled moto cliq xt. for­tu­nately, i have awe­some friends, they took me to radio shack, and i now have a charger that works.

tomor­row, the ore­gon coast to see Michael and Judy, then shoot­ing for the oregon/california bor­der or there­abouts. let’s hope for good weather.

more later, folks

black­dog

The bear is on the road.

The Turbo Giraffe prepped and wait­ing in the sunshine.

sun­shine! a good omen for the first day out.

The man him­self, suit­ing up.

where’d that buckle go?

Every­thing is good to go.

all sys­tems go

And away he goes…

bye-bye