An amateur astronomer's convention was taking over the area that night, and no rooms were available close by. Michael made some calls and reserved a room for us at the Motel 6 in Van Horn. I wasn't ready to say goodbye to everyone yet, so I invited a few of the riders that didn't have plans, to join us for dinner in Van Horn. Then I waffled as to what route I'd like to take. John, my riding partner from the rally, wanted to go to Van Horn by way of Marfa and Valentine, out over those straight fast roads. I wanted to have a riding companion, so I thought I might ride with him. On the other hand, I knew John would like to ride faster than I would, and I didn't want to feel pressured to keep up. Also, those straight roads would be hard for me to stay awake on, in my exhausted state. In the end, I decided to ride back over Route 118 with the other three riders, Conrad, Aaron, and Mark.
One of them needed to get gas, so we made a short detour to Fort Davis. Then we headed back out Route 118 in a caravan. I led, and Michael brought up the rear in his rental car. I kept a careful count of the headlights in my rear view mirror. One of the motorcycle headlights disappeared almost immediately, so when I came to the first rest area, I stopped. Michael explained that Conrad had complained of sleepiness and had stopped at the Prude Ranch when we went back past it, to rest a bit there before continuing. He would meet us in Van Horn. The rest of us took a little break and then kept going.
As we went over the mountain roads, first one, then the other of my two remaining biker companions passed me. By the time we got to the flats, they were specks on the horizon. Michael stayed behind me. When we arrived at the Motel 6, Mark and Aaron were waiting out front. The Motel 6 had rooms, but didn't have rollaways. Mark was about to go off in search of another motel that could provide a rollaway when Conrad arrived, then John arrived. John had already checked in to another motel that was cheaper. Aaron, Conrad, and Mark ended up in a third motel. We made plans to meet for dinner at a place called The Smokehouse.
At that Motel 6, I had the best long hot shower I have ever had, ever! It's amazing how good wet hair feels after thousands of miles on a motorcycle. Michael drove me to dinner in his rental car. The Smokehouse didn't look like much from the outside, but it turned out to be a great choice. The food was good, cheap and plentiful, and the restaurant building also housed an automobile museum with a dozen immaculately preserved antique cars, and walls covered with auto memorabilia. I asked the fellow in charge of the place about the cars, did they ever drive any of them? His answer: "Oh yes, every other Tuesday we drive them all out of here and put in different ones." Cool!
Dinner was a noisy affair. Everyone had rally stories. Aaron and Conrad kept us all in stitches with their tale of eating corn in a Wal-Mart parking lot, and their interesting experiences with their other riding companions.
After dinner, Michael drove me back to the room, and I was asleep before my head hit the pillow.
I didn't set an alarm; it seemed to me that I should sleep myself out. But I did resolve to get up the first time I woke up in the morning, instead of rolling over and going back to sleep. I don't know what time it was when I woke up, but it was full daylight, so I got up. We hadn't made plans to meet at any certain time, but we had agreed to breakfast at The Smokehouse, and I had promised (threatened?) to rev my engine outside the beemer trio's hotel room. So I did. I pulled into their motel parking lot, pulled up next to their bikes, and blipped the throttle a couple times. Then I rode off without looking back. They showed up at the restaurant not long after I did. John made his appearance somewhat later. Michael had a plane to catch so he had to eat and run. The rest of us lingered for a little longer, then said our goodbyes.
Soon I was riding down the same stretch of I-10 for the third time in 36 hours. At least it was daylight this time. As I passed through El Paso, I easily picked out the Masonic Temple; one corner of it was actually visible from the freeway, now that I knew where to look. I passed the Sunland Park exit without taking it. Las Cruces didn't seem as far away in daylight as it had at night; I passed the rest area and kept going.
As I approached the outskirts of Deming, NM, I decided I was hungry and that I would stop for lunch. I exited I-10, and found that Deming, like Van Horn, was spread out along one long main street that paralleled the freeway. I drove the length of it in an attempt to decide what the best possible lunch stop would be. The decision was made for me, when I spied an unusual vehicle in the parking lot of an Arby's restaurant. I pulled into the lot and parked next to it.
This vehicle had two front ends. The leading front end was from a motorcycle, and the following front end was from a car. A very unusual tricycle. It had huge running boards, like wings. There were dual brake disks on the front wheel, but only one caliper. The bike engine didn't appear to have enough parts to function, so I suspect it was powered by the car engine; after all it did have the car's engine compartment right behind the seat. The paint job would make any paint specialist cringe, but it did have a Corbin saddle!
I could feel the owner of this vehicle watching me from inside the restaurant. Somehow I knew that when I walked inside, this person would speak to me. And I was right; before I even had my food ordered, I had met the elderly gent that built it. He was there with two other older guys, nursing cups of coffee. All three were willing to chat. I sat with them and they told me about the tricycle, and other tales as well. The one with the tricycle was friendly but very deaf, and didn't answer my questions very well, but he did inform me that he'd built several of these vehicles, and that this one couldn't go very fast because the floorboards developed too much lift and the front end would come off the ground. The most articulate of the three had actually worked in my home town, Ypsilanti, Michigan, during the second world war. He told me that I should never move to New Mexico for my health, because before long I'd run out of money and be trapped there forever.
Wow, there is a lot of desert out there! I always thought of the desert as being full of sand, sort of like the sand in a Lake Michigan sand dune, only lots of it, and no lake. The reality is actually worse. It's not nice even clean white sand like that; it's more like the gravel that Michigan natives only see when the construction guys pull off the topsoil. It's dry, cracked clay, and dust, and small rocks, for as far as the eye can see. Every ten or eleven feet, there's some kind of spiky round plant, like a little tiny bush, and the effect of this particular plant life is to call attention to just how wretched the soil around it is, and the fact that there's no water anywhere. I was sick of looking at it; it was horrible and vast, and I still had an awful lot of it to traverse.
The plant life changed a bit as I got farther west. I started to see plants that looked like palm trees. I didn't think palm trees could grow with no water, but either they can, or people are watering them, or there's something else out there that looks like them. I also started to see cacti that looked like the ones in a Looney Toons cartoon, the ones that look like poles with arms. I still thought the landscape was ugly. I thought of home, where the crabapple trees would be in full flower. I wondered how the early European settlers felt, looking at this land, having come from places where there are green trees, green grass, flowers, etc, and realizing that they would never see that cool green leafy world again, that this was now their home? I was enjoying my road trip, but I was very glad I wouldn't be staying here forever. In fact, I decided I was so tired of this terrain, that I didn't want to come home this way. I decided I would take a more northerly route home. If there were temps in the triple digits here, surely I could cross the Rockies a little bit farther north without getting stuck in the snow.
I followed Ye Wilde Ryder's directions without too much trouble. YTE (Ye TOWMBO Estates) is in a neighborhood of large new homes. The subdivisions were walled enclaves; this was something I was to see again and again over the next several days, and it seemed very odd to me. Where I live, you don't usually see fences around entire neighborhoods, or around front yards. Generally, the only time there is one fence around multiple homes, is when those homes are a large apartment complex. A single house on a block with a fenced front yard is the home of someone just a little odd, and a block that has many houses with fenced front yards is a sign of a bad neighborhood. Out west, though, they didn't just have fences, they had walls! And lots of them. Very odd. I guess it's not like they can grow hedges to block the view between their windows and the neighbor's driveway.
I was just about to park the bike and knock on the door, when the garage door opened as if the sound of a V4 had triggered the garage door opener.
It was good to finally meet Ye (Wallace) and TOWMBO (Lynn). I was startled to learn that their household also included children; I don't recall ever hearing it mentioned before. It turns out that Lynn has two children. (And Wallace has at least one himself; I met his son the next morning.) They were inside eating dinner, and they found a piece of pizza for me, for which I was very grateful. It was odd, trying to remember to say "Wallace" instead of "Ye", but I noticed that everyone else did call him "Wallace" so I tried to follow suit.
Wallace is almost as hyper as Tony Donisi, and a talker besides. Between the two of us, we could probably yack all day and not run out of conversation. But I did need to change my oil, so we were soon suiting up to go for a ride to the auto parts store and buy some Mobil 1. Now, Wallace has been telling the SabMag list that he's much less wild on the street now that he races on the track, but I have to say I would be very afraid to see how he used to ride in his wilder days, since on this ride to the store he was almost completely incapable of keeping the front wheel on the pavement. I bet his front tires last a long, long time.
In the morning I managed to drag myself out of bed in time to join Wallace and Lynn for Lynn's commute to work. They were difficult for me to follow, and I suspect they may have found me maddeningly slow at times. But they were polite about it; we've all seen the bad things that happen when someone fails to ride their own ride. Their ride is a lot more aggressive than my ride, and they had the advantage of knowing where they were going, while I was completely disoriented. Eventually we pulled into an office park where we said goodbye to Lynn.
From there, Wallace led me to an apartment complex where we would meet his son, who rides a 650 Nighthawk. Wallace led me through the complex until we found a car that he said belonged to the son, which we parked next to. I stayed with the bikes while he walked off to find his son. I watched him walk down to the far end of the building and disappear. A few minutes later, I swear I saw him push starting a bike in the far parking lot. Soon, he appeared with a younger, smaller companion, who was riding a beat-up looking Nighthawk.
We weren't really introduced, but I was assigned to ride in the middle. Wallace would lead and his son would bring up the rear. We set out. At the very first corner, I watched in my mirrors as the bike behind me turned in to a gas station. Wallace was disappearing up ahead so I did my best to follow. Finally he stopped at a light right before getting on the freeway, and asked where his son went? I said he turned back there and pointed. He was just about to go back and look, when the Nighthawk reappeared. The son shouted that he had been low on gas.
We all got on the freeway and Wallace resumed his strafing routine. I struggled to follow, and the Nighthawk disappeared from my mirrors again. Eventually Wallace pulled over to the shoulder. As the cars whizzed by inches from us, he asked where the Nighthawk had gone? I gave him the best description I could of where I'd last seen him. I was then assigned to wait on the shoulder in case he came along, while Wallace went back to look for him. I rolled forward ten or twenty yards into the shade of a bridge, and waited. And waited. Eventually Wallace came back alone. He hadn't been able to find him. He grumbled a bit; apparently his son had been instructed to be ready, and yet we had arrived to find him doing nothing, smoking a cigarette, and then his bike wouldn't start and didn't have gas. He got out his phone and checked, and sure enough, there was a message. The Nighthawk had run out of gas (didn't he get some when he stopped at the first gas station?). The message included the location, so once again I sat by the freeway and waited while Wallace went back to look.
I waited, and moved my bike to stay in the shade, and waited some more, and moved the bike again to keep up with the shade. A cop stopped and asked me if I was all right? When I said I was, he asked me to move along, that it was too dangerous to sit here on the roadside. I explained the situation, pointed at my Michigan plates, told him that I had no idea where I was, and if I left the spot, how would my friends find me again? The officer relented and said I could stay, but that I had to move the bike forward to a wider spot on the shoulder, and sit up above on the embankment where I wouldn't be killed if someone swerved onto the shoulder and hit the bike. I complied, and the officer left. I started feeling the initial effects of a blood sugar crash; I hoped Wallace would return soon, because if I didn't get something to eat I'd have an all-day headache. I had polished off most of a liter of water, and was contemplating whether to take my boots off when Wallace returned. They'd put gas in, and had some trouble starting the bike. He'd finally left his son to cope on his own. The son must have coped, because before I was even finished explaining that I must eat, the Nighthawk pulled up.
Wallace led the way off the freeway, through some neighborhoods, and into the driveway of a Burger King. Thank you, thank you! We ate some food, and I finally learned the son's name, Chad. Wallace and Chad regaled me of tales of ex-wives and ex-girlfriends, and we discussed what to do next. Wallace wanted me to see South Mountain, but he needed to go home and do some work. He offered to send me there with Chad as my guide. I would have been happy to see South Mountain, but it wasn't a priority with me, and as I told him, I'd been riding a lot in the last few days, would ride more before I was done, and I would just as soon come back to his house, and get an earlier start, since I was supposed to be in San Diego that night. So after lunch, we said goodbye to Chad, who went back to do whatever he had originally planned before his dad got him out, and we started back to YTE.
The road was straight as an arrow, and had many stoplights. Wallace traveled at a brisk pace, with his front wheel in the air as often as not. My throttle and my brakes were both getting quite a workout. At one point we came to a light that I was sure he'd go through, so I gunned it to keep up, and then Wallace stopped. Just like that. I hauled on the brakes as hard as I dared; I could feel the back tire losing traction under me; the bike was fighting me. I was afraid I'd lowside right into him. He'd stopped on the left side of the lane and I aimed at the right, and managed to stop about two bike lengths past him, almost out in the intersection. I dogpaddled it back to stand next to him. How embarrassing. No wonder he never let me ride any of his sport bikes.
Back at the house, I got to meet the ferrets, and we chattered on about all kinds of things, careers, families, riding. We looked at the maps and he started exhibiting the Dilbert behavior of "listing things because you can." He had actually memorized which states were the largest in area; he knew them all in order. So I offered up a trivia question straight out of Moxy Fruvous: "Which state has the lowest highest point?" He didn't know, and he wanted me to tell him. Instead I put the CD on and played the track for him. (the answer is "Delaware") He loved it. So then he put on some of his favorite music, I played more of mine, then he played more of his. I danced in his kitchen. We worked on the bikes a bit; I'd done the Michael Walt (tm) peg mod on Cordelia but hadn't yet done it to Spring Wind, so we made the change right there in his garage. (That peg position is definitely an improvement.) Finally I realized that while I would love to stay longer, I really did need to get going.
It was really hot out in the desert. I stopped for gas in Gila Bend, and drank as much water as I could stand. I was getting ready to leave the gas station, when I remembered something I'd heard once, as a coping technique for extreme heat. I went back inside and bought enough ice to fill all the pockets of my 'stich. I got some strange looks as I stuffed handfuls of ice into my pockets, but it worked like a charm. For the next hour I was quite comfortable. The ice melted into a stream that flowed out of my pockets and evaporated, and the result was very refreshing. All too soon it was gone.
The sun was very low in the sky ahead, but it was still hot. I wondered how often the highway patrol had to pick people up after they collapsed of heat stroke out here? On the other hand, if someone were to collapse out here, how long would it be before they were found? I hadn't seen any police of any sort except the ubiquitous border patrol. Just as I was thinking this I spotted a police car in the median! How fast was I going? I rolled off the throttle. Would this cop come after me? What was their threshold? I hadn't been going _that_ fast. His target did seem to be the eastbound lane. I passed him, hoping, hoping, he wouldn't give chase. But I very soon saw those telltale winking lights in my rearview mirrors. Darn! I carefully pulled over onto the shoulder and stopped the bike. The police car stopped behind me.
I heard him call, "Step away from the bike!" I stepped away from the
bike.
He stepped up next to me. "Do you know how fast you were going?"
I gave him a wry smile. "Furthest thing from my mind, I'm afraid. I was
busy wondering if I would get heat stroke out here. Besides, the angle of
the sun makes it hard to see the speedo." I gestured at the bike.
"May I see your license and registration please?"
"Certainly, if I can just figure out where I put them...." I dug my
wallet out of my tank bag and handed him my license.
"Honda Sabre, isn't it?"
"Yes."
"What year is it?"
"1984."
"My brother had one of those once. Did you ride it here all the way from
Michigan?"
"Sure did, and it's been an adventure, that's for sure."
"Vacation?"
"Yup." I finally found the plastic bag with my insurance and registration
in one of the side cases and handed it to him.
"What do you do when you're not on vacation?"
"I answer the tech support hotline at a small software company in Ann
Arbor."
"Chauffeurs license, huh? Where's the cycle endorsement?"
I peered at my drivers license and pointed. "See where it says CY right
there?"
He turned it over and looked at the back. "There's no chart here to tell
me what the endorsement codes are. Guess I'll just have to take your word
for it."
"Don't worry, that really is the cycle endorsement."
He started writing. Darn. Oh well, at least I'd have the story to tell.
I waited as he scribbled. He turned the clipboard around and handed me a
pen, and said, "Sign here." I signed.
He said, "Now, this is a written warning. I'd like you to control your
speed a little better out here, OK?"
A warning! Yay! "Oh yes, thank you!"
"Now that that's out of the way, I have a computer question for you..."
By this time, the sun had gone down to the point where it wasn't too bad out there, and this officer and I proceeded to chat for at least an hour, about computers, jobs, motorcycles, his daughters, my motorcycle trips, etc. I guess it must be dull being a highway patrolman in the desert. At one point a border patrol truck stopped to make sure he was OK. He told them, "Don't worry, this one speaks English!" and waved them on. Finally I said I really had to get going, that my parents were expecting me in San Diego that night. The patrolman (I never did get his name) told me I was the best traffic stop he'd had all year. I laughed. I thought about asking him if I could take his picture, but in the end I decided I'd better not push my luck.
Onward. As the road climbed the mountain range east of San Diego, I struggled in an incredible crosswind; it was a tough ride for ten or fifteen miles. Finally I entered some sort of canyon and the crosswinds died down. I hoped I wouldn't ride into crosswinds on the other side, and I was lucky, it was calm when I got there. I wonder if the winds are less strong at different times of day?
I only got a little lost trying to find my parent's place. The nice guard at Camp Pendleton helped me get straightened around and I found my way into Carlsbad. I rode along the ocean until I came to a familiar shoreline, and despite the construction that had changed the configuration of the driveway, I was able to locate their trailer park. I noticed that the "No Motorcycles" sign was gone; had they somehow managed to have it removed for me? I had some trouble finding their trailer, and rather than wake their neighbors I finally rode back out to the gates, whipped out my cell phone, and called. My mother gave me directions, and walked out into the drive to wave me in. It was well past midnight and my father had gone to bed. I sat up and chattered brightly to my mother for a while; I know she worries about me and I wanted her to see how happy I was to be taking this trip. But she was tired too, and she soon shooed me into bed.
In the morning, my parents took me out to breakfast, and I told them about the rally, and about my visit with Ye. I didn't tell them about the speeding warning; they would have worried. After breakfast my dad went to his office and my mom and I drove back to the trailer park, planning to take a walk on the beach. My mom said she didn't know anything about the "No Motorcycles" sign, had there been one there last time I visited?
As we walked up onto the porch, my mother said, "That's my phone!" She quickly unlocked the door and ran in to answer it. The caller turned out to be Pete Springer, looking for me. He'd see a post from Ye saying I'd been en route to my parent's place in Carlsbad, and he lives in Carlsbad himself, so he'd done a phone number search and found fifteen Beckers listed. My parents were the eleventh ones he had called. We made arrangements to meet for coffee once my mother and I had finished our walk on the beach.
So it was that my mother and I met Pete Springer. We had arranged to meet at a coffee shop which turned out to be closed, so we sat in a nearby Taco Bell and Pete entertained my mother with tales of how he raises rats and fabricates rat condos. He was utterly charming and even though his business is a little odd, I think my mother felt a lot better about her daughter belonging to a motorcycle club. While we were there, Pete's cell phone rang, and I got to speak to Don Young, who was just a bit too far away to join us before I needed to leave. I hope to get the chance to meet him at the big SabMag gathering in Colorado.
It was time for me to take the road north, if I was to reach Kate's at any sort of reasonable hour. I said goodbye to my mother and set out. It was getting late, so I decided I would have to take I-5 instead of the coast highway, simply to make up time. At least I would get to see a little bit of the Pacific Ocean from I-5 before it turned inland. I made as much of those glimpses as I could, but I was very distracted by the grooves in the pavement. Mile after mile, I-5 was filled with these rain grooves, and my bike wove back and forth under their influence. Following my father's advice, when I-405 branched off, I took it. It had intermittent stretches of these rain grooves as well. By the time I got to Long Beach I was completely fed up with riding on the stupid grooves, and I decided to take the coast highway even though it would make me late, just in the hopes it wouldn't be grooved. I stopped for gas and examined my maps; the coast highway intersected I-405 even sooner than I-5 did.
I was still wishing I had some music, so I picked an exit that looked like it had malls, and went looking for Koss Plugs again. I found a Target. This Target did not carry Koss Plugs, but they did have some other Koss earbud speakers. I bought them, and sat in the store restaurant to dissect them. I was able to pull them apart and put their speakers into the shells from my original set of Plugs. Hooray! I got back on the freeway and cranked up the tunes.
As I rode along, I thought about California and Californians. One of the things I had noticed was that other bikers simply did not wave. I wonder if this is why the topic comes up with such regularity on the internet? I could never understand that before, because everywhere else I've been, most bikers will wave. The only time the majority of riders don't wave, is when there is some kind of event happening that puts hundreds of them on the road at once, which would make such waving continuous. There weren't that many riders on the road here. Come to think of it, the Californians I'd dealt with in the stores and gas stations I'd stopped in all seemed rather preoccupied. It wasn't so much that they were unfriendly, as it was a matter of them being distant; they didn't ask me about my Michigan plates, or comment that I must be hot wearing that suit in this weather. They didn't seem to see me. Yet Pete Springer had been so interested in me that he'd made all those phone calls, and Kate had always been very friendly. Had I been closed up during my time in California? I didn't think I had, but random strangers had certainly not talked to me the way I'm used to.
Soon US 101 came back out to the ocean, and I got to see some spectacular views. Some sections of the road were grooved, but not all. I enjoyed the ride along the coast. After a while, the road turned away from the ocean and went into a canyon, where I stopped at a rest area and called Kate to let her know where I was. I was surprised and pleased when she said she would ride out to meet me. We made plans to meet at a Taco Bell in King City. Looking at the map now, I think I see why it took me so much longer than expected to get to King City. The road I was on cuts inland twice, once at Gaviota, and again about sixty miles north, at Avila Beach. It shows the rest areas just north of Gaviota, but I bet I looked at the map and thought I was in Avila Beach. No wonder I was so late meeting Kate. I did stop twice to rest, but I didn't think I'd stopped for more than five or ten minutes each time.
I got to King City, and spotted the Taco Bell, which was closed. Before I could even begin to worry, though, I spotted a bike across the street in a brightly lit gas station parking lot. Standing next to the bike, talking on a cell phone, was a woman who had to be Kate. I was so glad to see her! We introduced ourselves, and I filled my gas tank, then she led me back to her house. She fed me some fantastic chili, and let me use her laundry facilities. We talked about everything. I took a look at the hot tub, and it looked fabulous, but I was just too tired to avail myself of it.
In the morning we got up and sat around visiting for a while, and looked at maps. She's also doing the IBET, and she'd set up a big map on a bulletin board in her living room; she was marking the locations with pins. It was tremendous fun visiting with her and I could have stayed all day, but eventually I had to get going. After a few minutes spent adjusting my windshield and reconnecting the wiring harness for my electric jacket, that I had disconnected so long ago in Texas, it was time to leave this oasis.
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