Friday April 18th and all is not well. It's 2:30pm and I am STILL mincing about in El Paso Texas. My "new" laptop broke on the first night of my trip so I stayed from Wed night until Friday morning awaiting Fedex to deliver my old faithful laptop to me at some Travelodge. Communication to the outside world is going to be a challenge I can see. I have no idea what's up with hotels and motels but their internet connections always suck. And the more expensive the hotel the worse it is. 5 star? Forget it! Does me flippin' 'ead in it does! Ding! Rant over. Anyway, here I am in Starbucks trying to catch up. Last night I sorted my on-board DVR cameras. It worked. With the emphasis on -ed. I spent an hour getting all the flaming cables into a zip-lock bag and velcro stuck to my petrol tank and IT DOESN'T WORK NOW!!! Aaaarrggggghhhhhh. I'll back up a bit and bring you up to date. Monday night I'm still lying on my back doing an oil change on the R1 and then packing the panniers, my bum-bag and backpack until 2:30am. Up at 6:30 to tidy the desk and off to Sage HQ in Scottsdale for an 8:30 appointment with Jean-Louis Husson the photographer and Jane Larson of the Arizona Republic newspaper for an interview. I kept calling Jean-Louis Pierre because of his uber-cool french accent. He snapped a load of pics of me in my leathers and all the staff from the ACT! corporate sales team and DesignR1. CEO Rainer is still in London England so he missed the send off. Rusty Pierce brought his lovely 998 Ducati all the way from LA to ride with me. I was blown away with his support. He let me try the Duc out too. Now THAT baby is taught! He says my R1 is a Cadillac. We rode the US 87 north towards Payson through wonderful sweeping bends past wierd rock formations. Then we turned SW past Roosevelt Lake and tanked up the bikes and our bellies at Butcher Hook restaurant. Rusty headed back to Phoenix when we hit US60 and I FLEW to Mammoth. The road to Winkelman was fantastic. Empty, winding, scenic and smooth as a baby's butt. I saw the dawn of three-figure sweepers. I met Glenn Hamburger on his BMW1100GS and we rode FOREVER to his house way down near the Mexican border. Man can that nutter ride! He is SOOOOO fast on that Beemer! Glenn's wife spoiled me with huge pork steaks, delicious spuds and asparagus with lemon merangue pie for a sweet. Bloated and happy I hit I10 to Tombstone and was in my room at the Larian by 9:15pm. Pooter busted I crashed at 11:30pm to complete a 17 hour day 1.
Next morning I took some snaps of Tombstone and noted that all the accounts of the Gunfight at the OK Corral contradicted themselves. One plaque on Fremont Street says Billy Clanton died on the spot instantly and the plaque round the corner says he was taken into that house and given morphine and died in agony hours later! I think I read 4 differing versions of this 30 second fight! Only Americans can milk that much marketing hype from a few yobs shooting each other! I liked it in Tombstone and as I walked the streets I was stopped by 2 prisoners in orange suits recycling boxes. They were very friendly and asked for my card to follow the trip. I told them to go straight in future or I'd come back and spank them both. They laughed and swore they would go straight. The boss sat in the truck looking like Wyatt Earp. He normally plays in the Tombstone re-enactments and in conversation I discovered he grew up a few blocks from me in Scarborough Ontario Canada and was probably riding his bike around the same streets as me at the same time! Small world...
I headed out of Tombstone for El Paso along US 80 and then US9, a dead straight, dead flat, hot strip of single lane tarmac that cuts across New Mexico. Millions of Border Guards play hide-and-seek with illegal Mexican immigrants trying to sneak into the US. After getting a photo of a rock column with plaque to commemorate the capture of Geronimo I decided to scream "Geronimo" and try out my R1 on a very desolate strip of straight road...um it's fast. I mean FAST. As in eyeball-flattening. Another 11mph and I'd have seen an indicated double ton. And that's with a backpack and panniers without a tight tuck! Must be a faulty speedo officer.
I rode to east El Paso and killed a day waiting for my pooter and messing with the video camera that won't be nice to me. I hate modern digital junk. I KNOW it hates me! My mate Andy Hill called me on my mobile from his home near Barcelona Spain. I wish that old perv was riding with me...the duffer. I'll write more about all the characters I've met in the past 2 weeks and I'll post some photos too. Right now I need to get some miles under those wheels. I am supposed to be in NE Dallas by Sunday afternoon! About 800 miles from here. Wish me luck.
3 comments:
James - Hope all is well. I do have one question... Are the bugs getting smaller as you travel east? I caught what felt like a small horse in the chest at about 120mph on the US60. It was okay though, I could cry in my helmet and no one could see me. Working on having it shipped to Seattle to do the last leg of the west with you. Keep the rubber side down my friend, Be Well.
Rusty my man! The bugs are getting smaller but the cops are getting bigger! First ticket of the journey. Lord help me...
It was bound to happen, thats a lot of open road in that area of the US. I think you need the police as a trip sponser, maybe they will give you lights and a siren for the R1. Just more electronics to attach to the fuel tank. I am going to try to hunt down the Duc boys on Wednesday evening. I'll let you know if it happens. Be Well.
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