Cross country trip, part 2
Apr. 21st, 2000 10:29 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
elizillaOn the road outside the ranch, I saw several other riders ahead of me and behind. There was a BMW right behind me, crowding me in the curves. I came to a short straight stretch, whacked the throttle, and watched the beemer disappear in my mirrors. I looked up and saw a grinning Alan Dye standing by the roadside pointing a radar gun at me. I looked at my speedo. I was only going 60mph. No big deal. I rode through Fort Davis and headed south to Marfa.
In Marfa I got gas, and located my first bonus, the Paesano Hotel. The Paesano had a historical marker on the front. Ten points each for historical markers that were attached to buildings or set in stone (no little metal signs allowed). I snapped two pictures, one for the hotel bonus, the second for the historical marker bonus. I got gas and continued south.
Just south of Marfa, I saw an unusual cloud up ahead, a few feet above the road surface. Before I had time to think or react, I was riding through a swarm of bees. Plink plink tap tap tap, they were all over my 'Stich, my helmet face shield, my windshield. Eek! Fortunately none of them got inside my gear, and I didn't get stung.
I kept going over rolling hills of sand and gravel. The roadside vegetation was sparse and weird. Lots of cacti. I saw a few critters here and there, browsing for sustenance in these parched fields; antelope, maybe?
Eventually I arrived in Presidio. The Presidio bonus required me to have my picture taken with the US Customs Service guard at the border station. I was the first rider to arrive. I found the closest parking place I could, without actually having to cross the border, and walked in to where three guards were staring at me as if I just stepped out of a space ship. I explained to them about the rally and asked if any of them were willing to be photographed. They told me that, as federal employees, they were not allowed to have their pictures taken. There was a contract security guard on the premises who was not a federal employee, and maybe he could have his picture taken. (Hmm, the bonus sheet did have "US Custom Service" capitalized, and "guard" with a lower case G. Those devious rallymasters...) They directed me inside to look for this security guard.
I found the security guard, explained the rally, and asked him to pose for a picture. He wasn't sure if he was allowed, and referred me to a Mr. Aguirre to ask permission. I went inside and found Mr. Aguirre, and he granted permission for the guard to be photographed. A woman who was washing the windows agreed to snap the photo. I was heading back to my bike when I saw a couple of other riders rolling up. Looked like that guard was about to have a busy day.
I passed a couple of other riders as I rode back down Presidio's main street to a little store I'd spotted on my way to the border post. At the store, I bought a bottle of orange pop, a bottle of water (the only one they had!) and a bag of chips. My next bonus was the teepee rest area, and I thought that would be a good place to take a break.
Between Presidio and the teepee rest area, I must have passed twenty riders that were going the other way. The layout of this road reminded me of the roads in southeast Ohio, where they are economical with their apexes, i.e.: the top or bottom of a hill was often the apex of a curve as well. The road wound and rose and dipped. The pavement was nowhere near as good as Ohio, and the scenery was very different. Every mile or two, I would pass a sign warning me of loose livestock, and I crossed over a lot of cattle grates. Signs warned me not to drive through water in the road, and in each low spot there was a pole marked with heights off the ground, one foot, two feet, three feet, etc. The land was so dry I found it hard to imagine water over the road. Everything was grey or brown, and the buildings I passed were faded from the hostile sun. I crossed bridges that had no water under them, just gravel and rocks. I didn't see much livestock, and none was near the road. There were steep hills all around, with almost no vegetation on them; they were crisscrossed with channels that appeared to have been scoured by the absent water. Occasionally I would catch sight of the Rio Grande; it was a small stream with green plants growing along it, the only water and the only color in this landscape. I would hate to live in this forsaken place.
I entered a canyon, and in this canyon I found the teepee rest area. There were three metal teepees, each sheltering a picnic table. From the teepees I could look down a gully that I think might have had water in it, somewhere far below. I pulled in and parked. There were several other riders there, and I got one to take a picture while I held my towel. I took off my helmet, stich and boots, and staked out a teepee to sit in for a little while. I watched other riders come and go, and took pictures of several rider's towels. I saw half a dozen riders roar past the rest area without stopping, which seemed kind of odd; I could understand skipping boni that required one to deviate from a planned course, but if they were riding by outside, this bonus was practically in their lap, why not take it? Almost all the riders were heading the other direction, but a few came in from the direction I had. I drank all of my orange soda and was about to start on the water, when I noticed that the bottle I'd bought had "No No" written on it in indelible marker, and a broken seal. Scary. I decided not to drink this water.
On the way into Lajitas, I found some of that livestock in the road. Three donkeys were milling around in the road, impervious to oncoming traffic. I stopped, honked my horn, and waited while they unconcernedly sauntered across.
I found the Lajitas Trading Post without much trouble, and the goats were in a pen out front. Next to the goat pen there were a couple of picnic tables, and all were shaded by a thatch awning. A couple of men were sitting at the picnic tables; they turned out to be GoldWing riders, but not in the rally. We chatted about the rally as I waited for my Polaroid to come up. One of the riders I'd already met at the teepee rest area, John, was heading the same direction I was, and we decided to ride together. John filled his FJ's tank at the Trading Post, but I chose not to, because we needed a computerized receipt for each gas stop, and I was unsure whether they could provide one there; the pumps were the old fashioned kind, and the GoldWing riders said there was a more modern gas station just up the road in Study Butte (which, btw, was pronounced "stoody byoot" not "study butt").
I led John along the road east towards Terlingua. (I don't know much Spanish, but I wondered, did Terlingua translate to "earth language"? Probably not, just a stray thought.) I passed a little souvenir shop, and out front there was a wooden indian. Hey, that's on the list! I pulled over and turned around, and led John back to this shop, where we photographed each other with the wooden indian. Jack had suggested making our rally pics entertaining, so I held two fingers up behind the indian's head.
On the way into Terlingua we passed a driveway that was marked by two animal shaped cutouts on poles. One of them looked to me like it was a bear with a red bandanna around its neck! (another of the bonus items) I looked for another place to turn around, but the next place I found was actually the drive to the When Pigs Fly BBQ, our next bonus. John and I took pictures of the pink pig faces, and bought some water and drank it. I mentioned seeing this bear, and John told me there was a bear with a red bandanna back at the Prude Ranch, plus there was a two headed calf, another bonus item. I decided it would be more efficient to get those photos there, instead of going back, so we continued on.
Soon we came to the more modern looking gas station, and we stopped so I could fill my gas tank. Here we thought we'd part ways. John was planning to go to Lubbock, and I wasn't. The next bonus was 22 miles from the base route, and he didn't think he had time for the detour. But he was waffling, he thought he might go with me, we could hurry and still be in time for him to get to Lubbock. I was also waffling, because the heat was making me very sleepy, and every time I stopped I felt hotter and more tired. In the end, I decided to skip the Study Butte bonus, and make tracks for El Paso with John.
Together we took the road north towards Alpine. We would not see another rally rider until the next morning.
The road from Terlingua to Alpine was straight, smooth, and completely empty. We literally could have gone as fast as we wanted to, and John wanted to go faster than I did. At a certain elevated speed, my bike developed an oscillation that I attributed to the large fork-mounted Rifle fairing, and while the it wasn't unmanageable, I decided I preferred to keep my speed below it. John disappeared up ahead. I mentally waved goodbye, but ten or twenty miles later, he was waiting for me at the roadside, under the roof of an unused border patrol checkpoint. I pulled in and stopped as well, and we stood in the shade drinking water and kicking tires. There was a bit of breeze and it was actually quite pleasant now that we were out of the sun. We discussed the boni. John had not managed to find the Paesano Hotel in Marfa, so I agreed to visit it again with him on the way back through Marfa, and show him where it was.
In Alpine, John was leading, and he suddenly pulled over. He had spotted the Alpine Fire Station. Cool! Fire stations were boni. We took the requisite photos, drank more water, and continued west towards Marfa. We found several historical markers along the way, and got photos of them. Outside Marfa, I took the lead so I could show the way to the hotel. I knew the hotel was two blocks north of the street we were on, on the west side of the street. So I turned a few streets early, planning to approach the hotel from the north so it would be on our right, avoid making a U-turn. On the side street, I spotted a yellow sign with a picture of a fire engine. There must be a fire station around here somewhere! I slowed, and peered this way and that. John pulled up next to me at a stop sign and I told him what I was looking for. He was the one that spotted the fire station. It was right around the corner from the hotel. Not only that, it would have been directly in front of me as I rode in from Ft Davis, and I had totally missed seeing it. We collected our pictures of this fire station, plus some pictures of some historical markers mounted on stones in the town square. I pointed out the hotel to John, and he got his pictures of it, and the historical marker on the wall.
We stopped for gas and water at the same station I'd visited that morning. It was now mid-afternoon. The next place to visit was Valentine, TX; it was directly on our route to El Paso. This bonus was worth extra points if you had a picture of a store-bought valentine card in the picture with you. I told John that we should ride through Valentine, and look for any open store, just in case they have Valentine post cards. We could take the photos at the city limit sign on the west side of town; the sun was at a better angle for west side photos, even if we didn't find a card in town. (It occurred to me later, that there had been a valentine attached to that rose. I should have brought it with me!)
Valentine, TX, straggled out along a half mile or so of roadway. The buildings were all run down and used up looking, and at least half of them were abandoned. There were no open businesses of any kind. We stopped on the west side for our pictures, and continued on.
The next bonus stop was in Van Horn TX, at Chuy's Mexican Restaurant. John and I took the photos, and while we were there we ate dinner. The food was good. I'm a slow eater but I did my best, and hoped that I wasn't slowing John down too much.
Time to make tracks to El Paso. We examined my Texas Gazetteer and found the Masonic Temple; it was right downtown, a block north of I-10. A straight shot from Van Horn. Onward. Full dark arrived as we approached the outskirts of El Paso. John led the way as traffic got thicker and thicker. Where on earth were all these people going on a Saturday night? John darted into a break in traffic and I couldn't follow, a cage blocked my path. Well, we both knew where we were going. I followed I-10, looking for exit 19, the exit we'd chosen from the Gazetteer. Soon I spotted a sign that named streets and exit numbers. It named a 19B and a 19A. Uh oh! Time for a split second decision. I decided 19A would be the better choice. 19A dumped me out on a dark street that went up a steep hill. I rode up the hill looking for the temple. This street seemed to be more residential, though. John appeared as if by magic; he was lost too. I saw some women walking along the sidewalk, and pulled over to ask them for directions. They knew where the temple was, we were on the right street, but it was on the other side of the freeway. We rode back down the hill and over the bridge.
Alan Dye and Cissie Myrick waved us in; they had their bikes parked on the sidewalk in front of the temple. They signed us in, and signed our paperwork. I told them I was not going to Lubbock. John had one more try at persuading me to go, and Alan and Cissie were encouraging, but I was firm. I encouraged John to scamper along without me; if he was going to Lubbock he needed to make track pronto. He looked indecisive, waffled this way and that, and finally decided he'd skip Lubbock too.
While we were there, John looked at his photos and found a problem. In his photo of the wooden indian, the wind had flipped his rally towel so the number wasn't visible. Oh no! No help for it now.
With Alan and Cissie, we discussed how the scoring was likely to be done, how we might turn in the best scores without actually going to Lubbock. None of us knew if boni collected between El Paso and Fort Davis counted, if the rider didn't go to Lubbock. If they didn't count, then collecting them would be a waste of time. But John was so gung ho, I let myself be persuaded to collect them regardless. We mapped out a route for the night.
First on the list was Rosa's Cantina; this was only a few miles away. Cissie was able to give us directions to the neighborhood, though not to the specific building. John led the way back onto the freeway, heading west to the exit Cissie had named, Sunland Park Road. We found it without difficulty, and turned south. When we came to Doniphan Street, John led me to the right. I hadn't really looked at the bonus description, so I simply followed. At the next light, John told me the address was in the 8000 block, so I started watching the street numbers. We were in the 3000 block. We ended up riding about ten or fifteen miles, and the numbers went up, and up, and up, but very slowly. Not only that, we kept passing signs with new city names. Very odd, that the numbers went up, instead of going down again once we entered a new town. Maybe the post office didn't actually consider these small towns to be separate entities? I could see that our route was paralleling I-10, and I wondered why Cissie hadn't given us an exit that was closer to the block we needed. Finally John pulled over and checked the instructions. Rosa's was in the 3000 block. Sigh. Well, we were already part way there, so we decided to go on to the Las Cruces bonus, and pick up Rosa's on the way back. We took the next road towards I-10, and got back on the freeway.
Las Cruces turned out to be farther away than I expected, but we did eventually get there, and we found our way to the rest area described in the bonus listing. It had a fabulous view of the lights in the valley below, but it was crammed full of cars, trucks and RVs, all parked for the night. We managed to find a place to put the bikes, and we found the pet restroom facility described in the bonus description, it was a red fire hydrant. We took the requisite pictures. We also spotted a historical marker mounted on a stone right between the parking lot and the fire hydrant, and two more mounted on the side of the building the human restrooms were in. So this bonus proved 30 points more lucrative than we had expected! I heard later that no one else had found all three historical markers at this rest stop.
Back to El Paso we went, to look for Rosa's. We stopped on the way to get gas. I checked my oil and it was off the stick, oh no! John checked his and it was low as well. He had oil to add, but I did not; my bottle of extra oil was back at the Prude Ranch. Sigh. I went inside to see what I could buy at the gas station. Now, I was running Mobil 1 synthetic oil in my bike. Could Mobil 1 be mixed with dead dino oil? I didn't know. What if it turned to sludge when mixed together? (No, it's not necessary to email me about this, I have since read the Mobil 1 bottle, and it says it is compatible with conventional oils. I just didn't know this then.) I hesitated to add dead dino, but the gas station we were at did not have any synthetic oil. John didn't have any more oil with him; he'd used all his oil in his bike. I decided we'd better look for a Mobil or Exxon station and see if we could find some Mobil 1. We got back on the freeway, and I kept my eyes open. We stopped at two more gas stations in the next hour, and neither had anything but dead dino oil. Finally I gave in and bought the dead dino. It turned out to be less than a half quart low.
Back to Sunland Park drive, and south to Doniphan. This time we turned left. Rosa's wasn't that hard to find. I couldn't tell if Rosa's was still an operating business and just closed for the night, or permanently closed. We got our pictures and went back to I-10.
On the east side of El Paso, we turned south to pick up the casino bonus. At 3am, this neighborhood was hopping! The streets were filled with cars blasting the street with their loud stereos. We came upon the scene of an accident; a car was upside down in someone's front yard, and there were many emergency vehicles on the scene. Once past the accident scene, we pulled up at a light where a pickup truck passed us on the left doing an incredible smoky burnout, and squealed by right in front of us to turn right. The smell of the burning rubber made me want to gag.
At the casino, there were drunken pedestrians wandering the street. John tried to persuade the doorman to let us park the bikes under the overhang by the front door, but he refused. We went into the parking lot and found the motorcycle parking. I stayed with the bikes while John went inside and got the gaming chips we needed. We took the photos. We stopped at the convenience store next to the casino to see if we could find beer and ice to keep it cold on the trip back to the Ranch, but we had no luck. On the way back to the freeway, I kept an eye out for larger stores where we might find beer, or children's toothbrushes, or pet food (all were boni). I didn't spot any.
Outside of El Paso, the border patrol checkpoint was open, and all the traffic was being diverted into it. We were right behind a semi, and couldn't see what was happening at first. Then they waved the semi on, and we got a full view of the drama in progress. Three people were laying on their stomachs with their hands on their heads, and a couple of officers were handcuffing them. A police dog was going nuts, barking up a storm and raging at the bars holding it in the back of a truck. The border patrol officers were stirred up like ants whose nest has just been kicked; they were racing out into the field by the road, running this way and that with flashlights. Someone must have made a break for it, out into the dark. They were all so distracted they could hardly focus on the queued-up traffic or what to do with the rest of us. Finally one of the officers waved us on, in a distracted fashion.
The civil libertarian in me raged at this scene. We have constitutional protection against search and seizure without due process, yet they're allowed to do this stuff because somehow people think it'll stop drugs. Idiots. The so-called "War On Drugs" is not just a threat to all of our civil liberties, it's also ineffective, a waste of tax dollars, and it promotes organized crime. But I digress...
Back out on I-10, traffic thinned to the point where we had the road to ourselves. I rode in the left lane, John rode in the right, and we both ran our brights. It was nice to be able to see so well. Unfortunately I was fading fast. Finally I just had to stop. I saw an exit with a store and pulled ahead, leading us off the freeway. We discovered that we'd just pulled in to "See Live Tigers!" This store was odd to begin with; and my sleep deprived state made it seem even more surreal. It was like a truck stop; there was truck parking and they had places for the diesel pumps, but they didn't actually have any diesel. They had one ancient gas pump out front to fill cars from, and a guy to pump the gas. Inside they had all kinds of souvenirs, mexican blankets, dream catchers, black velvet paintings, lawn art. They also had some grocery items, all wearing a thick blanket of dust and looking like they'd been there for twenty years. Yet the place was still under construction. We looked for pet food and toothbrushes. The toothbrushes were in a locked case; they only had adult sizes, and we needed kid size, so we didn't buy them. I found some cat food, but we needed five pound bags; these were three pound bags and they were all torn, so we didn't buy them either. Looking around, I wondered if all the grocery items hadn't been pulled from shelves of better stores due to being damaged in some way; it was like this shop had been raiding the dumpster behind a grocery wholesaler's warehouse.
I didn't see the tigers. But there were two more wooden indians outside, hooray! I took a picture of John with his rally towel and this second set of wooden indians.
John and I had turned off I-10 and were on Route 118 when the sun came up. We roared across the flat desert land and into the mountains. In the mountains, I had to slow down; I was just too tired to negotiate the winding roads with any speed. Also, we had passed signs warning us of loose livestock, and I didn't want to come around a curve and hit a cow. My fears were justified; during a five mile stretch I maneuvered to avoid cows, deer, and pigs in the road. It was 7:45 when we came to the observatory, which was a bonus. John had told me he'd already gotten the observatory bonus in the morning. I was tired and wasn't sure how long it would take me to negotiate the ten miles of twisties and sweepers between observatory and ranch, so I was going to pass it by. John flagged me down and persuaded me to stop. I collected the bonus with his instructions; I honestly never even read the description myself. We were surrounded by other riders who had also waited to collect this bonus until last.
I pulled into the Ranch a little after 8am, with twenty minutes to spare. John had disappeared someplace; he'd been ahead of me coming down the mountain but I didn't see him at the finish. I collected my photos of the bear and the two headed calf. Later I saw John again. He had stopped at the campground by the Ranch gates, and found some people awake who were willing to give him two cold beers. He looked everywhere for me to give me one of them for the beer bonus, but he couldn't find me, so he sold the beer to another rider for $20, which he donated to the hospital.
Back in the big meeting room, they gave us numbers as we came in the door; they took people's packets and scored them in the order of these numbers. I staked out some floor space in a corner and organizeded out my photos and paperwork. At one point Michael came in hunting for me; he'd heard a third-hand rumor that I had decided to DNF and he wanted to make sure I was OK. I don't know where that rumor came from, unless perhaps one of the riders I'd met on the road and told I wasn't going to Lubbock had exaggerated that statement to mean I planned to DNF.
It's odd, the rumors that go around. At the Crawfish Boil, I heard a rumor from several people, that I had crashed en route. Totally untrue. Where do these rumors come from? Who thinks these things up?
After I finished sorting my paperwork, I sat on a folding chair and listened to the chatter around me. One rider said he just got carried away once he felt the road under his tires; he hadn't stopped for many boni but he had done over 1400 miles. Other riders told tales of the speeds they had traveled. Everyone seemed to be in an odd emotional state, half punchy and half euphoric. Many of the riders weren't making a lot of sense.
Finally my number was called and I turned in my paperwork. I don't even know how I got to the room, but I went to bed and slept like a log. Lunch time arrived far too soon, and we gathered in the dining hall to eat and hear the results. A spokesman for the hospital thanked us for the money raised. The top finishers and the top fundraisers were announced; I didn't know any of them. I finally managed to show Doug Grosjean's vest to some folks. I was still too sleep deprived to have a good recollection of who I talked to or who did what, but the general good cheer of the group sticks in my mind. Nice people.
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.
After I finished eating, we all went out to the parking lot for some bike sniffing, tire kicking, and photo ops. Then we went our separate ways. Before they left, though, they told me to stop and see them if I ever came through town again, that they were at this Arby's almost every afternoon, around 2pm, for coffee.
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.
In Marfa I got gas, and located my first bonus, the Paesano Hotel. The Paesano had a historical marker on the front. Ten points each for historical markers that were attached to buildings or set in stone (no little metal signs allowed). I snapped two pictures, one for the hotel bonus, the second for the historical marker bonus. I got gas and continued south.
Just south of Marfa, I saw an unusual cloud up ahead, a few feet above the road surface. Before I had time to think or react, I was riding through a swarm of bees. Plink plink tap tap tap, they were all over my 'Stich, my helmet face shield, my windshield. Eek! Fortunately none of them got inside my gear, and I didn't get stung.
I kept going over rolling hills of sand and gravel. The roadside vegetation was sparse and weird. Lots of cacti. I saw a few critters here and there, browsing for sustenance in these parched fields; antelope, maybe?
Eventually I arrived in Presidio. The Presidio bonus required me to have my picture taken with the US Customs Service guard at the border station. I was the first rider to arrive. I found the closest parking place I could, without actually having to cross the border, and walked in to where three guards were staring at me as if I just stepped out of a space ship. I explained to them about the rally and asked if any of them were willing to be photographed. They told me that, as federal employees, they were not allowed to have their pictures taken. There was a contract security guard on the premises who was not a federal employee, and maybe he could have his picture taken. (Hmm, the bonus sheet did have "US Custom Service" capitalized, and "guard" with a lower case G. Those devious rallymasters...) They directed me inside to look for this security guard.
I found the security guard, explained the rally, and asked him to pose for a picture. He wasn't sure if he was allowed, and referred me to a Mr. Aguirre to ask permission. I went inside and found Mr. Aguirre, and he granted permission for the guard to be photographed. A woman who was washing the windows agreed to snap the photo. I was heading back to my bike when I saw a couple of other riders rolling up. Looked like that guard was about to have a busy day.
I passed a couple of other riders as I rode back down Presidio's main street to a little store I'd spotted on my way to the border post. At the store, I bought a bottle of orange pop, a bottle of water (the only one they had!) and a bag of chips. My next bonus was the teepee rest area, and I thought that would be a good place to take a break.
Between Presidio and the teepee rest area, I must have passed twenty riders that were going the other way. The layout of this road reminded me of the roads in southeast Ohio, where they are economical with their apexes, i.e.: the top or bottom of a hill was often the apex of a curve as well. The road wound and rose and dipped. The pavement was nowhere near as good as Ohio, and the scenery was very different. Every mile or two, I would pass a sign warning me of loose livestock, and I crossed over a lot of cattle grates. Signs warned me not to drive through water in the road, and in each low spot there was a pole marked with heights off the ground, one foot, two feet, three feet, etc. The land was so dry I found it hard to imagine water over the road. Everything was grey or brown, and the buildings I passed were faded from the hostile sun. I crossed bridges that had no water under them, just gravel and rocks. I didn't see much livestock, and none was near the road. There were steep hills all around, with almost no vegetation on them; they were crisscrossed with channels that appeared to have been scoured by the absent water. Occasionally I would catch sight of the Rio Grande; it was a small stream with green plants growing along it, the only water and the only color in this landscape. I would hate to live in this forsaken place.
I entered a canyon, and in this canyon I found the teepee rest area. There were three metal teepees, each sheltering a picnic table. From the teepees I could look down a gully that I think might have had water in it, somewhere far below. I pulled in and parked. There were several other riders there, and I got one to take a picture while I held my towel. I took off my helmet, stich and boots, and staked out a teepee to sit in for a little while. I watched other riders come and go, and took pictures of several rider's towels. I saw half a dozen riders roar past the rest area without stopping, which seemed kind of odd; I could understand skipping boni that required one to deviate from a planned course, but if they were riding by outside, this bonus was practically in their lap, why not take it? Almost all the riders were heading the other direction, but a few came in from the direction I had. I drank all of my orange soda and was about to start on the water, when I noticed that the bottle I'd bought had "No No" written on it in indelible marker, and a broken seal. Scary. I decided not to drink this water.
On the way into Lajitas, I found some of that livestock in the road. Three donkeys were milling around in the road, impervious to oncoming traffic. I stopped, honked my horn, and waited while they unconcernedly sauntered across.
I found the Lajitas Trading Post without much trouble, and the goats were in a pen out front. Next to the goat pen there were a couple of picnic tables, and all were shaded by a thatch awning. A couple of men were sitting at the picnic tables; they turned out to be GoldWing riders, but not in the rally. We chatted about the rally as I waited for my Polaroid to come up. One of the riders I'd already met at the teepee rest area, John, was heading the same direction I was, and we decided to ride together. John filled his FJ's tank at the Trading Post, but I chose not to, because we needed a computerized receipt for each gas stop, and I was unsure whether they could provide one there; the pumps were the old fashioned kind, and the GoldWing riders said there was a more modern gas station just up the road in Study Butte (which, btw, was pronounced "stoody byoot" not "study butt").
I led John along the road east towards Terlingua. (I don't know much Spanish, but I wondered, did Terlingua translate to "earth language"? Probably not, just a stray thought.) I passed a little souvenir shop, and out front there was a wooden indian. Hey, that's on the list! I pulled over and turned around, and led John back to this shop, where we photographed each other with the wooden indian. Jack had suggested making our rally pics entertaining, so I held two fingers up behind the indian's head.
On the way into Terlingua we passed a driveway that was marked by two animal shaped cutouts on poles. One of them looked to me like it was a bear with a red bandanna around its neck! (another of the bonus items) I looked for another place to turn around, but the next place I found was actually the drive to the When Pigs Fly BBQ, our next bonus. John and I took pictures of the pink pig faces, and bought some water and drank it. I mentioned seeing this bear, and John told me there was a bear with a red bandanna back at the Prude Ranch, plus there was a two headed calf, another bonus item. I decided it would be more efficient to get those photos there, instead of going back, so we continued on.
Soon we came to the more modern looking gas station, and we stopped so I could fill my gas tank. Here we thought we'd part ways. John was planning to go to Lubbock, and I wasn't. The next bonus was 22 miles from the base route, and he didn't think he had time for the detour. But he was waffling, he thought he might go with me, we could hurry and still be in time for him to get to Lubbock. I was also waffling, because the heat was making me very sleepy, and every time I stopped I felt hotter and more tired. In the end, I decided to skip the Study Butte bonus, and make tracks for El Paso with John.
Together we took the road north towards Alpine. We would not see another rally rider until the next morning.
The road from Terlingua to Alpine was straight, smooth, and completely empty. We literally could have gone as fast as we wanted to, and John wanted to go faster than I did. At a certain elevated speed, my bike developed an oscillation that I attributed to the large fork-mounted Rifle fairing, and while the it wasn't unmanageable, I decided I preferred to keep my speed below it. John disappeared up ahead. I mentally waved goodbye, but ten or twenty miles later, he was waiting for me at the roadside, under the roof of an unused border patrol checkpoint. I pulled in and stopped as well, and we stood in the shade drinking water and kicking tires. There was a bit of breeze and it was actually quite pleasant now that we were out of the sun. We discussed the boni. John had not managed to find the Paesano Hotel in Marfa, so I agreed to visit it again with him on the way back through Marfa, and show him where it was.
In Alpine, John was leading, and he suddenly pulled over. He had spotted the Alpine Fire Station. Cool! Fire stations were boni. We took the requisite photos, drank more water, and continued west towards Marfa. We found several historical markers along the way, and got photos of them. Outside Marfa, I took the lead so I could show the way to the hotel. I knew the hotel was two blocks north of the street we were on, on the west side of the street. So I turned a few streets early, planning to approach the hotel from the north so it would be on our right, avoid making a U-turn. On the side street, I spotted a yellow sign with a picture of a fire engine. There must be a fire station around here somewhere! I slowed, and peered this way and that. John pulled up next to me at a stop sign and I told him what I was looking for. He was the one that spotted the fire station. It was right around the corner from the hotel. Not only that, it would have been directly in front of me as I rode in from Ft Davis, and I had totally missed seeing it. We collected our pictures of this fire station, plus some pictures of some historical markers mounted on stones in the town square. I pointed out the hotel to John, and he got his pictures of it, and the historical marker on the wall.
We stopped for gas and water at the same station I'd visited that morning. It was now mid-afternoon. The next place to visit was Valentine, TX; it was directly on our route to El Paso. This bonus was worth extra points if you had a picture of a store-bought valentine card in the picture with you. I told John that we should ride through Valentine, and look for any open store, just in case they have Valentine post cards. We could take the photos at the city limit sign on the west side of town; the sun was at a better angle for west side photos, even if we didn't find a card in town. (It occurred to me later, that there had been a valentine attached to that rose. I should have brought it with me!)
Valentine, TX, straggled out along a half mile or so of roadway. The buildings were all run down and used up looking, and at least half of them were abandoned. There were no open businesses of any kind. We stopped on the west side for our pictures, and continued on.
The next bonus stop was in Van Horn TX, at Chuy's Mexican Restaurant. John and I took the photos, and while we were there we ate dinner. The food was good. I'm a slow eater but I did my best, and hoped that I wasn't slowing John down too much.
Time to make tracks to El Paso. We examined my Texas Gazetteer and found the Masonic Temple; it was right downtown, a block north of I-10. A straight shot from Van Horn. Onward. Full dark arrived as we approached the outskirts of El Paso. John led the way as traffic got thicker and thicker. Where on earth were all these people going on a Saturday night? John darted into a break in traffic and I couldn't follow, a cage blocked my path. Well, we both knew where we were going. I followed I-10, looking for exit 19, the exit we'd chosen from the Gazetteer. Soon I spotted a sign that named streets and exit numbers. It named a 19B and a 19A. Uh oh! Time for a split second decision. I decided 19A would be the better choice. 19A dumped me out on a dark street that went up a steep hill. I rode up the hill looking for the temple. This street seemed to be more residential, though. John appeared as if by magic; he was lost too. I saw some women walking along the sidewalk, and pulled over to ask them for directions. They knew where the temple was, we were on the right street, but it was on the other side of the freeway. We rode back down the hill and over the bridge.
Alan Dye and Cissie Myrick waved us in; they had their bikes parked on the sidewalk in front of the temple. They signed us in, and signed our paperwork. I told them I was not going to Lubbock. John had one more try at persuading me to go, and Alan and Cissie were encouraging, but I was firm. I encouraged John to scamper along without me; if he was going to Lubbock he needed to make track pronto. He looked indecisive, waffled this way and that, and finally decided he'd skip Lubbock too.
While we were there, John looked at his photos and found a problem. In his photo of the wooden indian, the wind had flipped his rally towel so the number wasn't visible. Oh no! No help for it now.
With Alan and Cissie, we discussed how the scoring was likely to be done, how we might turn in the best scores without actually going to Lubbock. None of us knew if boni collected between El Paso and Fort Davis counted, if the rider didn't go to Lubbock. If they didn't count, then collecting them would be a waste of time. But John was so gung ho, I let myself be persuaded to collect them regardless. We mapped out a route for the night.
First on the list was Rosa's Cantina; this was only a few miles away. Cissie was able to give us directions to the neighborhood, though not to the specific building. John led the way back onto the freeway, heading west to the exit Cissie had named, Sunland Park Road. We found it without difficulty, and turned south. When we came to Doniphan Street, John led me to the right. I hadn't really looked at the bonus description, so I simply followed. At the next light, John told me the address was in the 8000 block, so I started watching the street numbers. We were in the 3000 block. We ended up riding about ten or fifteen miles, and the numbers went up, and up, and up, but very slowly. Not only that, we kept passing signs with new city names. Very odd, that the numbers went up, instead of going down again once we entered a new town. Maybe the post office didn't actually consider these small towns to be separate entities? I could see that our route was paralleling I-10, and I wondered why Cissie hadn't given us an exit that was closer to the block we needed. Finally John pulled over and checked the instructions. Rosa's was in the 3000 block. Sigh. Well, we were already part way there, so we decided to go on to the Las Cruces bonus, and pick up Rosa's on the way back. We took the next road towards I-10, and got back on the freeway.
Las Cruces turned out to be farther away than I expected, but we did eventually get there, and we found our way to the rest area described in the bonus listing. It had a fabulous view of the lights in the valley below, but it was crammed full of cars, trucks and RVs, all parked for the night. We managed to find a place to put the bikes, and we found the pet restroom facility described in the bonus description, it was a red fire hydrant. We took the requisite pictures. We also spotted a historical marker mounted on a stone right between the parking lot and the fire hydrant, and two more mounted on the side of the building the human restrooms were in. So this bonus proved 30 points more lucrative than we had expected! I heard later that no one else had found all three historical markers at this rest stop.
Back to El Paso we went, to look for Rosa's. We stopped on the way to get gas. I checked my oil and it was off the stick, oh no! John checked his and it was low as well. He had oil to add, but I did not; my bottle of extra oil was back at the Prude Ranch. Sigh. I went inside to see what I could buy at the gas station. Now, I was running Mobil 1 synthetic oil in my bike. Could Mobil 1 be mixed with dead dino oil? I didn't know. What if it turned to sludge when mixed together? (No, it's not necessary to email me about this, I have since read the Mobil 1 bottle, and it says it is compatible with conventional oils. I just didn't know this then.) I hesitated to add dead dino, but the gas station we were at did not have any synthetic oil. John didn't have any more oil with him; he'd used all his oil in his bike. I decided we'd better look for a Mobil or Exxon station and see if we could find some Mobil 1. We got back on the freeway, and I kept my eyes open. We stopped at two more gas stations in the next hour, and neither had anything but dead dino oil. Finally I gave in and bought the dead dino. It turned out to be less than a half quart low.
Back to Sunland Park drive, and south to Doniphan. This time we turned left. Rosa's wasn't that hard to find. I couldn't tell if Rosa's was still an operating business and just closed for the night, or permanently closed. We got our pictures and went back to I-10.
On the east side of El Paso, we turned south to pick up the casino bonus. At 3am, this neighborhood was hopping! The streets were filled with cars blasting the street with their loud stereos. We came upon the scene of an accident; a car was upside down in someone's front yard, and there were many emergency vehicles on the scene. Once past the accident scene, we pulled up at a light where a pickup truck passed us on the left doing an incredible smoky burnout, and squealed by right in front of us to turn right. The smell of the burning rubber made me want to gag.
At the casino, there were drunken pedestrians wandering the street. John tried to persuade the doorman to let us park the bikes under the overhang by the front door, but he refused. We went into the parking lot and found the motorcycle parking. I stayed with the bikes while John went inside and got the gaming chips we needed. We took the photos. We stopped at the convenience store next to the casino to see if we could find beer and ice to keep it cold on the trip back to the Ranch, but we had no luck. On the way back to the freeway, I kept an eye out for larger stores where we might find beer, or children's toothbrushes, or pet food (all were boni). I didn't spot any.
Outside of El Paso, the border patrol checkpoint was open, and all the traffic was being diverted into it. We were right behind a semi, and couldn't see what was happening at first. Then they waved the semi on, and we got a full view of the drama in progress. Three people were laying on their stomachs with their hands on their heads, and a couple of officers were handcuffing them. A police dog was going nuts, barking up a storm and raging at the bars holding it in the back of a truck. The border patrol officers were stirred up like ants whose nest has just been kicked; they were racing out into the field by the road, running this way and that with flashlights. Someone must have made a break for it, out into the dark. They were all so distracted they could hardly focus on the queued-up traffic or what to do with the rest of us. Finally one of the officers waved us on, in a distracted fashion.
The civil libertarian in me raged at this scene. We have constitutional protection against search and seizure without due process, yet they're allowed to do this stuff because somehow people think it'll stop drugs. Idiots. The so-called "War On Drugs" is not just a threat to all of our civil liberties, it's also ineffective, a waste of tax dollars, and it promotes organized crime. But I digress...
Back out on I-10, traffic thinned to the point where we had the road to ourselves. I rode in the left lane, John rode in the right, and we both ran our brights. It was nice to be able to see so well. Unfortunately I was fading fast. Finally I just had to stop. I saw an exit with a store and pulled ahead, leading us off the freeway. We discovered that we'd just pulled in to "See Live Tigers!" This store was odd to begin with; and my sleep deprived state made it seem even more surreal. It was like a truck stop; there was truck parking and they had places for the diesel pumps, but they didn't actually have any diesel. They had one ancient gas pump out front to fill cars from, and a guy to pump the gas. Inside they had all kinds of souvenirs, mexican blankets, dream catchers, black velvet paintings, lawn art. They also had some grocery items, all wearing a thick blanket of dust and looking like they'd been there for twenty years. Yet the place was still under construction. We looked for pet food and toothbrushes. The toothbrushes were in a locked case; they only had adult sizes, and we needed kid size, so we didn't buy them. I found some cat food, but we needed five pound bags; these were three pound bags and they were all torn, so we didn't buy them either. Looking around, I wondered if all the grocery items hadn't been pulled from shelves of better stores due to being damaged in some way; it was like this shop had been raiding the dumpster behind a grocery wholesaler's warehouse.
I didn't see the tigers. But there were two more wooden indians outside, hooray! I took a picture of John with his rally towel and this second set of wooden indians.
John and I had turned off I-10 and were on Route 118 when the sun came up. We roared across the flat desert land and into the mountains. In the mountains, I had to slow down; I was just too tired to negotiate the winding roads with any speed. Also, we had passed signs warning us of loose livestock, and I didn't want to come around a curve and hit a cow. My fears were justified; during a five mile stretch I maneuvered to avoid cows, deer, and pigs in the road. It was 7:45 when we came to the observatory, which was a bonus. John had told me he'd already gotten the observatory bonus in the morning. I was tired and wasn't sure how long it would take me to negotiate the ten miles of twisties and sweepers between observatory and ranch, so I was going to pass it by. John flagged me down and persuaded me to stop. I collected the bonus with his instructions; I honestly never even read the description myself. We were surrounded by other riders who had also waited to collect this bonus until last.
I pulled into the Ranch a little after 8am, with twenty minutes to spare. John had disappeared someplace; he'd been ahead of me coming down the mountain but I didn't see him at the finish. I collected my photos of the bear and the two headed calf. Later I saw John again. He had stopped at the campground by the Ranch gates, and found some people awake who were willing to give him two cold beers. He looked everywhere for me to give me one of them for the beer bonus, but he couldn't find me, so he sold the beer to another rider for $20, which he donated to the hospital.
Back in the big meeting room, they gave us numbers as we came in the door; they took people's packets and scored them in the order of these numbers. I staked out some floor space in a corner and organizeded out my photos and paperwork. At one point Michael came in hunting for me; he'd heard a third-hand rumor that I had decided to DNF and he wanted to make sure I was OK. I don't know where that rumor came from, unless perhaps one of the riders I'd met on the road and told I wasn't going to Lubbock had exaggerated that statement to mean I planned to DNF.
It's odd, the rumors that go around. At the Crawfish Boil, I heard a rumor from several people, that I had crashed en route. Totally untrue. Where do these rumors come from? Who thinks these things up?
After I finished sorting my paperwork, I sat on a folding chair and listened to the chatter around me. One rider said he just got carried away once he felt the road under his tires; he hadn't stopped for many boni but he had done over 1400 miles. Other riders told tales of the speeds they had traveled. Everyone seemed to be in an odd emotional state, half punchy and half euphoric. Many of the riders weren't making a lot of sense.
Finally my number was called and I turned in my paperwork. I don't even know how I got to the room, but I went to bed and slept like a log. Lunch time arrived far too soon, and we gathered in the dining hall to eat and hear the results. A spokesman for the hospital thanked us for the money raised. The top finishers and the top fundraisers were announced; I didn't know any of them. I finally managed to show Doug Grosjean's vest to some folks. I was still too sleep deprived to have a good recollection of who I talked to or who did what, but the general good cheer of the group sticks in my mind. Nice people.
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.
After I finished eating, we all went out to the parking lot for some bike sniffing, tire kicking, and photo ops. Then we went our separate ways. Before they left, though, they told me to stop and see them if I ever came through town again, that they were at this Arby's almost every afternoon, around 2pm, for coffee.
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.
