“If we fly you out to Phoenix,
and rent a motorcycle, would you be
willing to spend the week running for us?”
It was Mark, my friend from Monmouth Entertainment,
ticket brokers extraordinaire. Because of my efficiency
in urban environments, I do some motorcycle courier work for
them, usually between New York and Atlantic City.
“Sure, but don’t fly me out there. I’ll ride
the bike out, just pay the expenses and a salary for
the week. By the time you buy a plane ticket, and
rent a bike, it will be cheaper, and better this way.
Besides, I’d probably end up on some fatass Harley that wouldn’t
be any faster getting through traffic than a car.”
The FJR couldn’t take this trip without a new set of
tires. The K75’s appeared to have a fair chance
of making it both ways, so this would be a BMW ride.
After checking the weather radar maps, it looked safe
to take I-81 and I-40 southwest into Texas. At a leisurely pace,
I estimated the ride to Phoenix would take about 48
hours using that route. It was almost exactly that,
including 11 hours of sleep in two nights, and a conversation with
a state trooper in Virginia.
Virginia is one of the top states for traffic
enforcement greed, rivaling even New Jersey. The speed limit
drops to 60 on the interstate for every town that has more than
one building. Traffic law and enforcement, in the
vast majority of cases, has lost sight of safety as its
primary purpose. The state’s best reason for stopping a
lone vehicle on a wide open, well-lit interstate for
traveling at 78mph in the middle of the night is to steal some
of the operator’s money. With this in mind, I was
shocked to receive a warning, and shook the trooper’s hand.
It’s nice to know that there’s still some reason
behind a few badges out there.
I arrived at a three star hotel in Scottsdale Sunday
night, settling into luxurious accommodations that were about
three stars above my usual. The Phoenix metropolitan
area may not have east coast density, but makes up for in it area,
and I would put on more than 1100 miles by gametime on
Sunday.
Payments, collections, pickups, and deliveries would
usually start between 8 and 9AM, and, on one night,
continued until 3AM. I would take orders on the
phone from Bruce and Bob, who sat at computers in their hotel,
barking feverishly at each other like commodities brokers, which is
essentially what they were.
The highlight of the week was a delivery to the
stadium just before kickoff. A gentleman from New Jersey
had paid more than several years of my gross annual income for
two tickets in the fifth row, on the forty yard line,
behind the Giants bench.
He had made an early arrival, and began drinking
heavily several hours before the game. “I’m right near
the Cabela’s in the stadium parking lot, southwest
corner of the lot.”
After walking the stadium perimeter one and a half
times in one and a half hours, I concluded that there was no
Cabela’s nearby.
“There’s no Cabela’s anywhere near here. I
need you to go to the nearest lightpost, and tell me
what number is on the top of it.”
“G6.”
“You’re in the wrong parking lot. The stadium
parking lot sections are numbered twenty through
ninety. There’s no G6. I know this, because I’ve seen
them all in the last hour and a half, trying to find you.”
“John, I’m getting kinda worried. I’m an
alcoholic, I’m all f(oul)ed up, and I don’t wanna
miss the game.”
At Monmouth Entertainment, we specialize in customer service.
“If you don’t want to miss the game, you’re
going to have to help me out. If you can’t do
that, I’m going to find the cutest girl in the parking lot,
and you’re treating us to some very nice seats at the
Super Bowl. The first thing that I need you to
do is to stop drinking.”
“Okay, I can do that.” I hear the sound of a
beer can hitting the pavement.
“Don’t litter, you’ll get arrested. Put that
in recycling.”
“Sorry….”
“Can you see the stadium?”
“No.”
“That’s a great start. Now, keep moving until you
can see the stadium.”
Ten minutes later, another phone call. “I can
see the stadium!”
“Fantastic. Walk towards it until you see a red fence
with the Super Bowl XLII logo, and call me when you
get there.”
Forty two minutes from kickoff, forty two minutes
from taking the cutest girl in the parking lot to the
game. All I really wanted to do was ride to the Grand Canyon,
but I found myself unable to waste those tickets with a
clear conscience.
Another twenty minutes passes. “I can see the
red fence!”
“Look at the nearest lightpost, and tell me what number is on top of it.”
“Seventy four.”
“Congratulations. Now wrap your arms around
that light post, and do not let go until further notice.”
He was about a quarter mile and 20,000 people away,
and I managed to run through the throngs without knocking
anyone down.
The customer and his equally drunk friend were able
to remain standing by using lightpost number seventy four
as support. They nearly collapsed and started
sobbing when I showed up.
“Here ya go”, I said, handing him the tickets
with a pat on the back. “Now, pull your (self)
together, and enjoy the game.”
I watched the first half of the Super Bowl at a
“biker” bar called the Hideaway, north of town.
There were about a dozen Harleys parked out front, and
a few of the owners snapped pictures of the BMW and
asked a some questions. A bike built with a purpose
other than fashion accessory struck them as odd, and every one of
them left promptly when the rain began right around kickoff.
After the game (great job, Giants!), I proceeded to
the parking lot of my favorite on-the-road bike
maintenance facility, Walmart. Many Walmarts across the
country are open 24 hours, and they have a good quality oil filter
that fits the longitudinal engine K-bikes, and most
Oilheads, for $2.07 . They also have big aluminum roasting
pans for draining the oil, and, if the Tire and Lube Express
is open, they’ll gladly recycle it for you. Add in
a 5 quart jug of Mobil 1, and you’re ready to roll around
on the parking lot pavement, hopefully, with a good
flashlight.
My work in Phoenix was finished, and that entire
fiasco was little more than an excuse to see the Grand
Canyon. I had ridden past it perhaps half a dozen times, but had
never stopped. Since I was also working on an IBA
National Parks Tour Gold, and had just gotten paid, it was time to do
some touring.
The Iron Butt Association’s National Parks Tours are
the best way for people who don’t enjoy 1,000 or
1,500 mile days to earn an IBA membership, and are probably
the best way to earn that membership overall. One
buys a National Parks passport, available in any visitor
center giftshop, and gets it stamped with each visit to a
National Park, Monument, Historic Site, Battlefield, et
cetera. The objective for the basic Tour is to collect a minimum
of 50 stamps, in twenty five states, in one year. The
NPT Silver requires that you visit each of the four corner states
of the lower 48, while the Gold means that you have done
all of that, plus Alaska, north of the 60th parallel.
No planes, trains, or automobiles are allowed, the
applicant must ride there, until the Platinum level.
Recently, the National Parks Tour Platinum was added,
asking that the rider fulfill all of the criteria for
the National Parks Tour Gold, and then rent, beg, borrow, or steal
a motorcycle after flying to Hawaii, and visit at least
one park there. This may also require the
additional documentation of a bike rental receipt, or a picture
of you with the begged, borrowed, or stolen motorcycle in
front of a clearly identifiable Hawaiian National Parks
sign. A copy of the police and/or arrest report from any theft
or pursuit involved may also suffice.
I left Phoenix Monday morning, confident that I could
reach the Grand Canyon and ride around the south rim by
nightfall. The weather disagreed. About fifty miles
later, I switched on the electric jacket liner, followed by the heated grips shortly thereafter. Another fifty miles, and I rode
through a brief snowshower. Just a shower, nothing to
worry about. The bike squirmed around on the road a bit, as it
might on gravel.
There was a clearing, and everything was fine, until
I crossed the next ridge, where I was greeted by a
whiteout blizzard. It was only thirty miles to Flagstaff,
so I chugged along, hoping for another clearing, deciding
that it couldn’t snow this hard for very long. This
proved a hopelessly poor decision. Within a few
miles, a foot of snow had accumulated on the interstate, and I
was surrounded by eighteen wheelers who were either
horrified or amused by the motorcyclist in their midst.
The five miles to the next U-turn were some of the
longest I have ever ridden. At the exit, there was
enough snow to stop the bike before the end of the ramp by simply
pulling in the clutch and coasting to a halt. Any use of
the brakes would have put the bike on its side, anyway.
After another half hour on the southbound side, the
snow stopped, and the road was clear a few miles
later. I had passed signs for two National Monuments on the way
north, so I decided to visit those, and perhaps look for a
place to stay in Sedona.
The red rocks of Sedona are spectacular, as are the
prices for everything and anything nearby. Rooms
started at $90 in the dead of winter, but a very kind motel owner
and Baltimore transplant directed me to a beautiful
place, seven miles east of town, for less than half that
price. With its new terra cotta tile floors and large area
rug, ten foot ceilings, refrigerator, microwave, king size
bed, lots of space, and the same views of the red rocks as
the places in town, this was easily the best deal of the trip.
The next morning, the Weather Channel reported a
temperature of -16F at the Grand Canyon, providing a
rare opportunity to improve on my personal best riding
temperature. However, by the time I slithered my
way through a beautiful, but icy, winding road and north
to the Canyon, it was well above zero. At the entrance,
the ranger was not pleased to see me. “We have three
cars off the road, it’s all ice up ahead. I ride a
motorcycle, too, and I wouldn’t try it.”
“I rode 3,000 miles to get here, I have to try it.”
About a mile later, the ranger’s advice began to make
sense. The road had about six inches of frozen,
packed snow, without visible pavement. I turned around,
deciding to give it one more day, and one more attempt to reach
the Grand Canyon. I spent the afternoon visiting
three more National Monuments, two of which were ancient pueblo
ruins. The third, Sunset Crater, was a volcano that
erupted about a thousand years ago. Hiking to the crater was
outlawed in the 1970s, so there wasn’t much to look at, other
than pictures and literature in the visitor center. A
nice road through the landscape offered a distant view of the
huge pile of volcanic ash, but that was as close as you
could get.
Finally, on Wednesday, I made it all the way to the
Canyon, nearly without incident. A few snowdrifts that
had blown across a windy, open stretch of road from Flagstaff
kept the ride entertaining, but the pavement in the
National Park was nearly clear, thanks to the bright sunshine
and hard work by the road crews.
As the quintessential tourist destination, everyone
has heard too much about the Grand Canyon. I will
tell you a little more anyway. You’ve probably heard that
it is a mile deep, and eighteen miles across, but exactly what
that means is lost until one stands beside this ineffably
immense beauty, watching snow drift to the edge and
over it. The incredible hype and overexposure of the
Grand Canyon is met and exceeded by the view. If you
ever have the chance to ride there, go. The winter is even
better, when the crowds are thinner and the Canyon is framed
in white. It was well worth riding through three
days of wind, cold, and snow.
I began to make my way south, hoping to score a cheap
motel near Tucson and Saguaro National Park, but a gem and
mineral show in town had tripled lodging prices in the
area. I cursed the gem and mineralogists, just for fun.
The extra hundred miles ride to cheap accommodations made for a
gorgeous dawn from the seat of a motorcycle on my return the next morning.
Saguaro National Park features a smoothly paved one way loop
road with blind curves that are marked for speeds as low as
5 mph. It would be a lot of fun to ride this with
sparks flying from the undercarriage, but it may be even
more worthwhile to slow down and appreciate the giant cacti
just off the shoulder, many of which are 200 years old. An
hour spent in Saguaro will give you the very best of the
desert’s magnificence, combined with a nice ride. I
took two laps, one for the scenery, and another for a little
moto-fun.
The next day would find me in White Sands National
Monument, Alamogordo, New Mexico. After a few
miles of gradually diminishing desert vegetation, there is a
sign that reads “Pavement Ends”, as do all other
visible signs of life. I pull alongside a large earth
mover that is clearing drifting sand from the path
ahead. “Will this thing make it through there?”
The operator gave me and the bike a quick once over.
“Yeah, you’ll be alright.” The surface was
loosely packed, but manageable, and I soon found
myself in the midst of pure white dunes that were high enough to
make nothing else but the sky visible. This sea of
sand could be a bit disorienting, and I was careful to keep the
bike pointed in the same direction for the entire trip
through Dunes Drive, to avoid getting lost. The tires
sank in deep enough that he centerstand would only go halfway down,
but that was enough to keep the bike upright for a photograph.
I had hoped to leave White Sands with a piece of
trinitite, the molten quartz mixture left by the first atomic
bomb test, but found that the test site is only open to
the public two days a year, and that collecting trinitite
is now illegal. I know a guy who once had some sort
of nebulous “government job”, and has a thirty pound
chunk of it sitting around. On my next visit,
I’ll bring a small hammer….
Carlsbad Caverns is a great place for the claustrophobic
who might be curious about the inside of a cave, and
was my destination for the afternoon. The main cavern
has high ceilings, an easily hiked path a mile and a quarter
long, will give one a view of everything that they may have
wanted to see or know about a cave, and is spacious
enough to avoid feeling buried alive. There is the
choice of an elevator, or a natural entrance, where there are
seatings to watch the daily bat migrations in the morning and
evening. To the astonishment of at least one teenage
bimbo, there is no cell phone reception 750 feet below
the earth’s surface.
I am fortunate to have an open invitation to Voni and
Paul Glaves’ new house in the Big Bend region of Texas,
and took them up on it that evening. They have been
two of the biggest supporters in my riding, serving as pit crew
and logistical managers, and they always add something positive
to the evil disposition I have been known to embrace
when riding with some sort of competitive goal.
Their house is the first place on the right, just
outside the city limits of Alpine, Texas. In Texan, that
means that they live 53 miles from town. During the
day, Route 118 south from Alpine is a good place to take your
bike for a top speed run, with five mile straightaways
separated by short stints of sweepers through the hills. You
may see one or two other vehicles in the 53 miles to the
Glaves’, if you are in the middle of rush hour.
There is all the visibility someone prone to such things
would hope for at WFO, not much vegetation on the sides of
the road, and the only enforcement is a Border Patrol
checkpoint on the northbound side. They don’t seem
much concerned with Americans sneaking into Mexico
illegally. At night, however, slow down. There are large
deer, and small wild boars called javelina. At 40-70 lbs.,
the javelina wouldn’t be much of a problem if you hit
them in something like the Glaves’ Ford Exploder, but
would be a disaster for a motorcyclist.
I arrive at Voni and Paul’s at sunset, with their
landmark rusty old windmill silhouetted against a
fading sky of tangerine, magenta, and other color names that
I’m not creative enough to look up in the dictionary.
There is no cell phone service. Once in a while,
Paul gets a truckload of drinking water from a well a few miles
away. Rainwater is collected from the roof into a pair of
large cisterns, and used for everything else. Located
at the very edge of the electric company’s power grid, the
house is a spacious adobe structure, with high speed
internet and a land-line phone. It is a quiet
and desolately beautiful place, with surreally bright
starlight as the night’s only illumination.
Despite the distance to anything resembling
civilization, the Glaves get plenty of people passing through.
They keep a Sharpie handy, so that everyone can sign the
visitors’ log, which doubles as a refrigerator. A visit
with them makes one proud to scribble a John Hancock and a few
words on the front door or side. There is a van and
trailer in the gravel circular drive, left by a few Adventure
Riders who are riding their dualsports into Mexico’s Copper
Canyon. After a few hours out on the bike, it is not
unusual to find a note left on the front door by
BMWMOA members. “We’re having dinner in Terlingua
about 7 o’clock. Please join us.”
It is Paul’s birthday, and one of the group happens
to have a guitar handy, so the entire restaurant is
subjected to a roughly strummed and badly sung version of
“Happy Birthday”, by fifteen veteran BMW riders whose eight-figure
accumulated mileage can be heard in their
rendition. If any of the earplug companies wanted to run a Super
Bowl ad, this would be it.
The next day, we head for Big Bend National Park,
about thirty miles south, and spend the day riding through
Chisos Basin, to the edge of the Rio Grande, and along the
winding River Road, a deceptively technical ride with sudden
sharp curves and elevation changes. Motorcycle crashes
here are not uncommon, and sometimes include experienced rider
fatalities.
On the way out of the park, I decide to try Old Maverick
Road, a 15 mile dirt and gravel stretch that turns out
to be 95% washboard. Voni and Paul stay on the
pavement and meet me at the other end. Fortunately, Paul is a
great mechanic and has a substantial shop already set up
here, so we return to the house to replace all of the broken
bolts and electrical connections. The fuel cell is
strapped back near its proper place, the aluminum mounts having
given up somewhere on Old Maverick Road.
With these refreshments, the K75 was ready for the
next day’s ride to McComb, Mississippi, with a few stops
to visit more National Monuments and Historic Sites along
the way. I arrive at the home of Karen and Shane
Smith about 130 AM. Per standard IBA protocol, which is to
call anytime, I reach for my phone to give Shane a wake up
call so he can let me in the house. My pocket is
empty, and Shane stumbles sleepily out of the house to greet
me. I suddenly realize that the phone is 350 miles west of
McComb, probably being used to make drug deals by now.
“Mornin’, John. Nice girl called from the gas
station outside of Houston. They have your phone. She figured
she’d try to call the last number dialed.”
I ride to New Orleans in the morning, and find the
Air Force, the jazz band of the armed forces branch,
warming up for a concert at the New Orleans Jazz National
Monument on Bourbon Street. It is very tempting to stay, but
it will be 800 more miles by the time I retrieve my telephone
and return to the Smiths’ place. One of the band
members warns, “Be careful. There’s a line of tornadoes
headed east from Houston.” I set out gleefully,
hoping for a bike/tornado photo op, but am met by
nothing more than hundreds of miles of heavy rain. Tara,
the savior of my phone, refuses any reward when I
return to the scene of the previous night’s blunder.
People like this make some of the on-the-road horror stories one
hears hard to believe, and I will never cease to be amazed by
how many truly good people are still out there. I
arrive back at Karen and Shane’s near midnight. This may
sound like a lot of work, but a day on the bike is still
better than a day of anything else.
After a few days, I begin to wind my way north and
east, visiting Vicksburg, the Natchez Trace Parkway, a
small canyon in Alabama, and Harper’s Ferry, West Virginia,
among other places.
On the last night, I ride east through Pennsylvania,
reflecting on the journey that is nearly, finally,
finished. The temperature is in the teens, but I
am more comfortable than I would ever be with a fireplace, big
leather recliner, and bearskin rug. As a bit of
melancholy sets in, I begin to wonder about who ever came up with the
saying, “There’s no place like home.” Clearly, they
never spent enough time on the road.
Dozens of people contributed everything from time, effort, money, infinite patience, and hospitality, enabling me to do this ride. If any congratulations are in order, they belong to all of them. I had the easy part, just riding the bike, and anyone who spends much time on a motorcycle knows that is an easy infatuation.
