Travels I

Originally posted Dec. 28, 2005

Well, I said I'd blog more on some of my travels, so here's a write-up I did this summer of my desert motorcycle adventure:

I'm back from a week's vacation biking through the tri-state area with Ryan. :0) It's amazing we're not part of the death toll in the Arizona heat wave (although Ryan's shoes did threaten to melt to the pavement at the Hoover Dam). Keep in mind that we did this whole trip with full face helmets, leather gloves, long-sleeve textile jackets (complete with protective armor), jeans and special sweat-soaking shirts. Word to the wise: If you don't wear long socks on an open-air drive through the desert, the hot wind can cut your ankles like a knife. Don't ask me how I know this. Anyway, we skirted death somehow....probably by drinking more water than a whale imbibes in its whole lifetime. Props go out to the Camelbak company for making an essential piece of gear! Here's a rundown of our itinerary:

DAY 1 (July 13): Fremont to Santa Barbara. Stopped in Carmel for coffee. Had lunch in Cambria. Met lots of people who wanted to talk about our bike but appeared not to know anything about bikes. Stopped at Los Padres, stopped at Ragged Point, did the "poor man's tour" of Hearst Castle (looked at it from the ground). Dinner in Santa Barbara.

DAY 2: Santa Barbara to El Cajon. Continued on Pacific Coast Highway (cold, foggy), lunch at San Juan Capistrano, toured the mission. Malibu is BIG....and people surf at 9 a.m. even if the water has ice chunks in it. Had to split lanes when we hit San Diego traffic...EEK! That is one scary experience. I also nodded off at a stoplight and hit Ryan's helmet, freaking myself out. You can be sure I never did that again! I bought a box of jawbreakers at the next gas station, figuring a sugar rush and the "work" involved in eating them would keep me from getting drowsy again. El Cajon: Met Ryan's dad and stepmom. They rock.

DAY 3: El Cajon. Went to the Comic-Con (comic book) convention. We all had a great time and saw some B-list celebrities (Margot Kidder from Superman, Priscilla Barnes -- "Terri" from Three's Company -- and the guy who played R2D2....alas, Elvira was there, but I didn't get to see her). Dinner in town.

DAY 4: El Cajon. Went to the San Diego Zoo. Despite Ryan's account, I have been to San Diego before. Just haven't been to the zoo. We spent all day there and got a lot of walking out of our system. Dinner at a '50s diner.

DAY 5: El Cajon to Grand Canyon. This was our longest day, and the only day we got to see the sun both rise and set....and in two different states. Left Ryan's parents' at 5 a.m. to beat some heat, stopped in El Centro for gas, stopped in Blythe and Parker for food/gas, then continued on to Lake Havasu City, home of the London Bridge. It wasn't strong enough to handle traffic in London, so some guy bought it and they shipped it brick by brick to Lake Havasu. There's a little "English village" underneath, where we found Polynesian shave ice that we devoured like we never knew it existed. Things heated up, so we pushed on to Kingman, AZ, where 118-degree heat sidelined us at a Denny's for a while. They're allowed to smoke indoors there, and we also saw a guy packing heat in plain view. Guess that's allowed there too. Pushed on to Seligman (birthplace of Route 66), nearly collapsed next to a gas pump, then forced ourselves to get to Williams, where it finally cooled down. Anxious to be done with riding for the day, we zipped off the last 60 miles to Grand Canyon National Forest and waited in line to get in. Finally arrived at Mather Point and took photos. Got our room and praised the invention of air conditioning. Dinner in the cafeteria...if you need details, just know that Ryan basically was given a plate of gravy with roast beef and potatoes floating on it. Walked to the rim to get sunset pics, then heard a talk from what sounded like a liquored-up park ranger about Phantom Ranch, a "resort" down in the canyon. Crashed hard, but was awakened several times by rude people tromping on the floor above our heads.

DAY 6: Grand Canyon to Las Vegas. While the Grand Canyon day was toughest for Ryan, this day was the toughest for me. We rode west for a while, having to backtrack to Kingman to catch the highway north to Nevada...but riding west means the eastern-rising sun is at my back for a good clip, and it's an unforgiving sun out there. Stopped at the Hoover Dam, where the asphalt threatened to melt Ryan's shoes. Met some Belgians who were biking seven states in 22 days. They were wearing half-shell helmets, bandanas, tank tops and ripped jeans. The guy's lips were so chapped and cracked, Ryan said it looked like he had kissed a frying pan. They're crazy for biking that long and far without wearing any gear. Sure hope they make it. Anyway, by the time we hit Vegas, it was 113 degrees and we both were ready to fall over. We had to wait in line in the Luxor lobby for 30-45 minutes, and everything I was wearing was soaking wet. I'm sure that looked really sophisticated. ;0) We finally got to go swimming, then walked about 2 miles down the strip and eventually treated ourselves to expensive jumbo shrimp and drinks (hey, it's vacation, right?), and a session at the oxygen bar with a water massage. Ahhh. At 10 p.m., it was still more than 100 degrees out, making us regret having strayed 2 miles. Saw some idiots on scooters get pulled over. That made everything better.

DAY 7: Las Vegas to Mammoth Lakes. Decided to sleep in a little and left around 8:45....again, the disgusting heat found us. This time we had a new worry, though. After deciding Mercury would be our gas stop, we finally reached the place and discovered it was nothing more than three industrial buildings. By now the odometer was blinking, telling us the bike was thirsty for gas. From the back, Ryan seemed calm and collected. But I could see the blinking light over his shoulder and started thinking: "Hmm, we might run out of gas. In the desert. One of us will have to stay with the bike and our stuff while the other hitchhikes to get gas. How far is it to gas??" Not to mention that oftentimes we were the only vehicle on the road. I stopped drinking my Camelbak, thinking I might need it more later. Things got REALLY dodgy around 205 miles on the odometer, as we had always refilled around 180 or sooner. Now I was thinking: "Yup, we're going to run out of gas. Now what?" Finally, we saw a sign for Amargosa and Ryan did a weird little dance of relief that caused me to think he was either having a seizure or falling asleep. Later we both admitted we had been praying inside our helmets to find a gas station. Thank goodness for Nevada Joe's, an oddly placed brothel/convenience store/gas station 50 miles outside Area 51. It was full of alien posters and paraphenalia, and the attendant seemed like someone straight out of X-Files. There was .8 gallons of gas left in the tank....which would have been BARELY enough to get us the 29.5 miles it would have taken to get to Beatty, if Amargosa hadn't delivered. Mind you, we got about 30 miles to the gallon and it's a 6-gallon tank. Had lunch at a weird trucker diner thing in some random town off some random freeway, then made it to Mammoth Lakes. Since it's a ski town, and it's obviously not winter (we were mostly using it as an overnight rest stop), we walked to the movie theater and saw Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. It was good...although Johnny Depp's Willy Wonka is vastly different from Gene Wilder's. In fact, I wonder now if Tim Burton is on drugs.

DAY 8 (July 20): Mammoth Lakes to Fremont. Biked it through Yosemite, from the Inyo side to the Stanislaus side. The scenery was SUCH a nice change from the dying palm trees and yucca trees we were forcefed in the desert. Water! Actual water! And grass!! Had lunch in Groveland, which is home of the only restaurant this day and age that doesn't take credit cards. Pushed on and were never so happy to see Manteca. The Altamont was windy, but we were excited to get home to our kitty we missed so much :0) so we zipped through down into Livermore, over 84 and finally onto 680. Got home around 4:30 p.m. and hugged our couch. Home sweet home!

All in all, it was an amazing, awesome, adventurous (I like alliteration) trip, with a wonderful person who is the perfect traveling companion and shares the same zest for life that I have. Next year we plan to bike up to Vancouver, British Columbia, and even though we each have our own little physical ailments from this trip, we're ready to get back on the trusty Honda VFR800 again and find new corners of the world!

Thanks for reading....

Here are photos of our trip (plus Ryan's account):

http://www.bayarearidersforum.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=128871