Route 66, Day 12......Back to Austin

The last road day of a vacation is always the hardest for me.  Your brain usually gets home about one day before your bike does.  You have to be kind of careful with that because it makes you stop concentrating on staying alive, and that is bad.  When we rolled out, it looked like we were going to be riding into a thunderstorm in Austin, so we stopped in Brownwood, TX to put on raingear and get ready for it.  We got a total of 11 drops between the four of us, and we stopped a few miles later and took off our rain liners.  We ended up getting to Austin without any more rain.

Knowing we were pushing to get into Austin before the storm, we really rode hard today.  The way I put it was "Roll like vikings".  We stopped twice for gas, and that was it.  We only stopped long enough to fill the tanks and drink water, and then we were back on the road.  Then we got in and did not see a drop of rain all day long.

After doing a post trip inspection on the bike, I found that one of my side case mounts snapped.  It broke at the connection to the passenger peg.  Not the same place the other one broke.  This one is not going to be fixable with JB weld.  I am going to have to replace them completely.  It sucks, but it is the price of admission I guess.  At least it is a bag mount, not a transmission.

It is time for bed to sleep off this trip.  I will put up a full summary later on this week.

Here is our route:


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Route 66, Day 10.....The ride home....

Today was the first day of the ride home.  We have passed the apex, and now we are dealing with re-entry.  We started off the morning in Tucumcari, NM.  It was a cool morning with a light breeze when we started.  Since we are headed back south, we are going through the section of New Mexico that I don't enjoy riding through.  Aside from the hideous winds and the stupid heat, there are long stretches of nothing.  Leaving town on NM 209 toward Clovis, the road is straight.  We could actually see the road disappear over the curvature of the earth at one point.  All I could see in front of me was a mesa that stretched from one side of my field of view to the other, and a road that was going straight to it.  After about 20 minutes we got close enough for me to tell that there was not one, but two mesas in front of us and the road curved between them.  That was a fairly disturbing visual on the motorcycle.

The other thing that makes me dislike riding in the desert is the sensation of standing still.  Since the only real features in the landscape is a road that goes straight over the horizon, and a Mesa in the distance,  riding is very disorienting.  The speed limit was 65mph.  While I am watching the horizon, if feels like I am standing still.  There is no movement, just vibration and wind.  There are no close features to see whipping past you an the side of the road.  I looked down at my speedometer and it is still telling me 65.  Then I look at the yellow road markings shooting under my bike, and I feel this sudden blast of acceleration.  It feels like I have just gone from a dead stop to 65mph instantly.  It was very disorienting.

    We crossed the border back into Texas at a little town called Texico.  I have always noticed that when I cross back into Texas from anywhere it just seems to get nicer.  In New Mexico we were fighting nasty crosswinds.  Once we came back into Texas, the winds started calming down a bit.  I have also noticed that the desolation out there looks different.  In New Mexico, everything is just empty.  All of the colors tend to blend together, and the sky just seems kind of dull.  There is some amazing scenery as far as mesas and draws and mountain ranges off in the distance.  I do kind of enjoy running out across New Mexico, there are some pretty views out there, but watching the road go over the horizon and not getting any closer, even after 30 minutes of running, starts eating away at your brain.  It is easy to get your brain into a rut that can get kind of spooky.  You will see a sign that indicates a curve ahead, and you can see all the way to the horizon and there are no curves that are visible.  Then you spot the little draw that drops about 5 feet or so makes a quick curve around nothing at all, and then continues directly inline with the road behind you.

    We also had a major accomplishment today.  This was the first time all 4 bikes made it past the burned out shell station in Anton, TX.  Last time we tried to pass that station, Kel blew her transmission out of her bike.  This is also the first time we all four pulled into the Lubbock Radisson under power.  Kel threatened to kill one or all of us if we tried to stop at that little gas station to get a picture.


Here is the Route for the day:


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Route 66, Day 9....Last day on the route

Getting up and getting moving was a bit difficult today. This is the last day on the route, and tomorrow we head home. Since we are cutting the trip a bit short, we are just going to take our time getting home. No need to push high mileage days, just move it along home at a leisurely pace.

The thing that has come as the biggest shock to me on this trip is the number of people from other places that I am seeing. I am not talking about other states, I mean other countries. So far, we have seen a group of Germans, a couple groups from Canada, one group from Switzerland, and a whole group from Norway/Sweden. They were a tour group that comes in from Norway and rents Harleys and rides from Chicago to L.A. There were about 20 or so bikes, and they were moving like a band of vikings headed for a village. They pulled into the Midpoint cafe about 10 minutes after we did, took a bunch of pictures, spent a lot of money in the gift shop, had some pie, and rode out in about an hour or so. It was actually kind of scary to watch the ruthless precision with which they moved through the gift shop into the cafe, and then back on the road. While we were at the midpoint, we ran into a few guys from Spain. they started the route in Dallas, and were headed for L.A.

After the midpoint, we went to Glen Rio. This is a little ghost town on the TX/NM border. This is where the First/Last Motel in Texas was located. Here is a shot from the motel.




After that, we took off down the older alignment of 66. It is about 15 miles of unpaved road. This was where the first real pucker of the trip came from. About 5 miles in, I started getting some heavy head-shake from the bike on the gravel. A bit further on, I hit some sand and it threw me into a full on tank-slapper. I managed to ride it out and keep the bike up, but I think I ruined my pants. Turns out Glenn, who was riding behind me, was using me for his canary in a coal mine. When I hit something that threw me sideways, he know to slow down and be gentle with it. Since we were never getting over about 20 mph, Kel and I were both having heat problems. If I could get up to 30 mph, the bikes would cool. The problem with 30 mph is that you are in tank-slapper territory again. I am glad we went down there, but I think one time is enough.

After we got back on pavement, we hit I-40 and ran straight through to the hotel. My nerves were not up for more riding.

Here is today's slideshow:



Here is the day's route:


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Route 66, Day 8....Palo Duro Canyon side trip

We decided to burn a day and go out to Palo Duro Canyon near Amarillo, we also stopped by Cadillac Ranch on the way. We had a lot of fun at the ranch, and of course I had to mark it. We found some spray paint on the ground and I put my "heart with wings" on a Cadillac. Kel marked it too with a KDVG 2010:





The ride down into the canyon was very twisty, but the speed limit was only 30mph. It was also only about 7 miles to the bottom of the canyon, and then 7 miles coming back up. Unfortunately the video camera failed so I don't have any video of the trip down into the canyon. That just means that we will have to go back

We had lunch at the trading post at the bottom of the canyon and then made it back to the hotel by 3:00.

Tonight we had dinner at The Big Texan. If you ware staying in a hotel along I-40, they will send a car out to pick you up.



Here is our route


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Route 66, Day 7....Amarillo by dinnertime.....

We managed to make our way to the National 66 Museum in Elk City, OK. It is a pretty nice little complex. They have some real neat stuff there. I got a few pics, they are in the slide show further down. Overall it was a very relaxing ride today. We pretty much wanted to get to Amarillo so we vould go and explore some in Palo Duro Canyon and then have dinner at the Big Texan. I think today we actually managed to find a higher percentage of original pavement than we have any other day. Except for about 9 miles on the interstate, we were on Route 66. For most of the trip it was the frontage road, but you have to be very alert and switch sides of the highway or you will be forced onto the interstate due to a creek. This will happen if the bridge is on the other side of the highway. Then there are times where the access road will take off into the middle of nowhere and pass through a few towns and then come back to the interstate.

I think the funniest thing I saw was just west of Texola, OK. When you cross the border you end up on the frontage road of I40. It is a 2 lane 2 way road. The neat part about it is that there were yellow wildflowers growing on the side of the road that were high enough that you could not see I 40, but you could hear it. By the time you got to where the flowers were short enough to see over, we were behind the trees again.

Crossing back into Texas also meant Texas bugs. I collected a huge grasshopper in the cooling fins on my motor. It was kind of scary.

Here is the shot of the U Drop Inn in Shamrock, TX:



It was actually a pretty tiring day of riding for only going about 150 or so miles. Route 66 miles are like dog miles. They feel much longer than the odometer says. This is maily due to the fact that you may end up going 70mph, or you may end up going 10mph on a gravel road. You may also circle an intersection a few times trying to figure out how to get there from here. Then realizing that the only way to get to that section of 66 is to take the back exit of a hotel parking lot.

After we got back from dinner last night, we checked on the bikes and my kickstand had sunk half an inch in the parking lot. The nice people at the Outback Steakhouse gave us a couple small cooking tins to put under the stands so we wouldn't sink.





Here is the route we took, hopefully, I will shoot some video from Palo Duro Canyon tomorrow.


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TTFN

Dave

Route 66, Day 6. everything changes, even our minds....again

So today we took out of Yukon. After looking at the weather options and the condition of all involved, we decided yo continue down Rt 66. We are taking very small jumps, and we will likely end in Tucumcari. Then we will either head back to Austin, or do something else.

Since we have drastically cut back our days, we have a lot of time to mess around and see what we can find. Today, as we left Yukon, we saw a big sign that said "Original Route 66, this way". Beside that one that was an arrow pointing another direction that said "Paved 66". The one for paved 66 was very small and hand painted. It was almost like they did not want us to find it. We followed that one all the way to Hydro Oklahoma. That was where we ran across Lucille's. This was the original that has closed down. We stopped and got a few pictures and then went on to Weatherford, OK to the new Lucille's and had lunch.






After that is was on to Clinton, OK to visit the Oklahoma Route 66 Museum. We managed to follow a little bit of the Route to Elk City, OK, but we ended up back on the Interstate and on our way to the hotel. We are going to hit the Elk City National Route 66 Museum in the morning.



The bid thing I am seeing on this trip is that it is not a mile burner. If you want to ride a lot of miles, don't do 66. Moving too fast misses too much. Following the actual route will be slow. The ribbon road was 13 miles and it took us over an hour to complete. Today we left Yukon at 11:00 and made it to the hotel in Elk City at 5:30. We only went 100 miles or so.

Here is the route for the day....enjoy.


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TTFN

Route 66, Day 5, Slight change of plans.....

Well, after 4 riding days, we got a look at the weather and the condition of the riders and decided that discretion was the better part of valor. Between Vern's bum knee, my trick elbow, and Glenn's sensitivity to heat, we decided that trying to cross the panhandle and then New Mexico in 30 to 40 mph crosswinds would just be stupid. Today we burned a day in Yukon, OK to get the new routing down. We have decided to turn East and go to the Barber Motorsports Museum. The miles will be a little easier on the joints, and the weather will be better.

Spending the day in Yukon has been interesting. We went to the BMW dealership over in OKC to pickup a new pair of gloves to replace the ones that Vern blew the seams on. While we were there, we ran into a couple guys, one from Florida, and one from Toronto. They were going down Route 66. Kel spent about an hour going over maps with them.

Random thought from too many miles on the road...."My butt is asleep, that wasn't a fart.....it is snoring.

We also had our "Wild Hogs" moment....we went into the little restaurant in the lobby of our hotel. The name of the place is Big Dick's Roadhouse. It took us about 5 minutes to realize that we were not in our element there. This is not a restaurant, this is a bar that serves food. It had a very nice bar feel, but we felt a bit.....out of place, especially when most of the other customers sang along with the chorus of "Jack and Dianne". I also got to explain to the rest of the crew that "Biker Friendly" does not always necessarily include the touring crowd..... The service was excellent, the food was awesome.

Ok, tomorrow is the leg to Ft Smith, AR. Kind of a short leg. Most of them will be due to the fact that we only have about 800 miles to cover to get to the museum and 4 days to do it.

Here are a few shots of the Canadian River Bridge here in Yukon.




TTFN

Dave

Route 66, Day 4, It has begun......

First day on the Route, we made the state line out of Joplin. Since we took the very old alignment of 66, there was not much of a state line sign, so this is what I got instead:



The little bit of Kansas that we went through actually provided some fairly interesting stuff. We ran across this little place called 4 women on the Route. They are the ones that provided the truck that was the inspiration for 'Mater in the movie Cars. In fact, here is a picture of the truck that is featured in the DVD special features for the movie:




Next we went off toward the Rainbow Bridge. It is the last single span concrete Marsh Arch style bridge left on the route. It is only one lane wide, so only southbound traffic gets to go over it. Here is the shot:




After the bridge it was pretty much time to head for Oklahoma. There was some pretty scenery on the way, when we got to this little town called Commerce, OK there was a bit of a wrong turn. This put us on a very old section of 66 called the Ribbon Road. This was interesting on the motorcycles. The road is pretty much gravel with a strip of 90 year old asphalt down the center. It was like off-roading with the wrong bike. I am sorry I couldn't get pictures of it, but there was no way we were going to stop that long on that road. It was 13 miles of terror at 10 mph. After we made it back to real pavement, it was on to Foyil, OK to take a look at the totem pole. Then on to Catoosa to see the whale. Here is the whale, I will get the totem pole up later:



After Catoosa, it was a matter of going by interstate through Tulsa and then back off at Sapulpa, OK. Then we followed 66 all the way to Pop's 66 and had some dinner. Then we just hauled it to the hotel by interstate. Tomorrow is going to be the first long leg across the plains. This is likely going to be nasty. Hopefully I will post more from Amarillo, but likely I will wait till I get to Tucumcari, NM for a longer post. Here is a quick preview of all of the pictures I got:




And here is our route for today. 270 or so miles....


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Ok, time to fall down and sleep lots.

Have fun,

Dave

Route 66, Day 3. Tomorow it begins.

Ok, We are in Joplin. Tomorrow morning, bright and early, we start down 66. The goal for tomorrow is to make Yukon, OK. I have noticed over the years that when you are riding, you tend to obsess over the stupidest things. When you are trapped in a helmet with yourself, there is not much else to do. Around mile marker 82, there is a sign that reads "Ponder 1 mile". I realize that this is the exit that takes you to Ponder, TX, but I still spent the next 300 miles pondering 1 mile. My brain is certainly poo. I thought about stopping to get a picture of it, but it was near midnight and that was on I35 in the middle of nowhere.

Today it was a fairly leisurely ride up Route 69, it really exists I am not making it up. We only covered about 125 miles or so today, but they were the last miles off the route for another week or so. I got my state line pic for Missouri, and I updated my map above. Tomorrow night I will update the map with Kansas too.

Here is my state line pic for Missouri:



Here is the route for the first 3 days, A->B Friday, B->C Saturday, C->D Sunday.


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Have fun, I will update with pictures tomorrow night.

TTFN

Dave

Route 66, Day 2 Here we go......

Day one was just a grind up to Denton,TX so we could get some miles behind us. Day 2 was a straight shot to Muskogee, OK. Tomorrow is a straight shot to Joplin, Mo so we can start Route 66 on Monday. Check the "Where is Dave" link on the right side column to see where I am and see the route that we are taking. It is more or less real time tracking, usually about 15-30 minute lag.

Enjoy

Dave

Hill Country Escape Day 3

Today was a sleep late day. Not a whole lot of excitement. We ended up going for a bit of a ride through some familiar areas. The route we took ended up being one that we have ridden quite a number of times before, it was familiar enough that we could really let it hang out, but fast enough that we were not bored with it.

Watching the weather radar and watching out the window can be very disheartening. I can see on the radar that we are surrounded by thunderstorms, but the ground outside is dry. The wind is blowing like there is a storm in the area, but we are not seeing it at the hotel. I certainly want to make sure before I drag this crew up into the hills. There are too many places that a little rain could get fairly disastrous fast. If all goes well, we should be able to hit all 3 of the sisters tomorrow. It will be about 200 miles total, and there will likely be much whining. Worst case, it looks like Sunday is clearing up a bit, so that will likely be an option. Wish us luck on the weather.



Here is the route from today:


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TTFN,

Dave

Hill Country Escape Day 2

The day started off a bit slow. We had a nice leisurely breakfast at the hotel, and then took off into the hills. The first place we visited was the Mini Stonehenge. We got a few pics, but they have not been processed yet. I shot mostly film, and Kel shot a lot of Digital SLR. I will get those shots up as soon as we get around to going through them. We made some pretty good time through RR 1340. It was actually a very nice little twisty road. Highway 83 took us down to Leakey. I know that this is a touchy subject for some, but I think they might possibly have the most unfortunate high school mascot ever. This is, of course, the home of the Leakey Eagles...... something that nobody really wants flying overhead. Highway 83 is fairly long and straight, not a lot of excitement. We spent the rest of the run back to the hotel on nice twisty farm roads. There were a good number of them that were a bit more than we bargained for. There was a lot of twisting and turning, and some corners that were not really always a guaranteed win.

I think the high point of the trip came at this little town called Medina. We rolled in to have a little water and take a rest before the nastiness of TX 16 to Kerrville. As we are sitting in the parking lot having some water, a couple little teenage girls go scampering by chasing something. As Angela goes over to see what is going on, she notices that they are chasing a Luna moth.

Angela manages to rescue this poor little moth from the side of the street and get it over into the bushes so it is not out in the middle of the parking lot. After it made it to the bushes, I managed to get some fairly decent pictures of it. I will get those pictures up as soon as I get them processed.

I am looking at the weather to see what we have to look forward to over the next couple days, and it looks like we have a very good chance of rain every day left in the trip. This displeases me greatly. We have gone through one of the hottest and driest summers on record, and the weekend of our road trip is when the drought decides to break and give us rain. I wish it could have waited just three more days. That would have made things much better for all involved. We had a bit of other excitement, but I will leave the details of that for the wrap-up post.

Oh well, time to figure out where we are going tomorrow.

Here is the route from today:


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TTFN

Dave

The big yearly trip...

Well, due to the work mess I did not get to take the big trip this year. Instead, we got a room at the inn of the hills and invited a bunch of our riding friends to get rooms and join us. Then we can head out each day to run around the hill country and explore. The inn's website is http://www.innofthehills.com/. So far, Vern and Glenn, Kel, and Angela have shown up. We may have more coming in over the next few days.

I am on the R90, Angela is on the Ural.

Here is the route for the day:


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Weekend Trip to Scarborough Faire

This was an interesting little trip. It was kind of a spur of the moment attempt, that turned into a pretty normal little road trip. When I say pretty normal, I mean there were a lot of little things that all went kind of funky, but we all made it back alive, and it was fun.

The idea for this trip came from the fact that Diz got herself a new bike, and wanted to try it out on the highway. Here is a pic of the new bike:



This was our first long ride as a full line. 6 bikes. It was definately a challenge keeping the whole thing together. The trip up to Waxahachie went fairly smooth. We formed up in temple and followed I35 all the way up. The only real excitement, other than getting split up by traffic fairly often, was when my right side carb float stuck open. It wasn't that bad on the highway, but when we hit the first stoplight in town, it started dumping gas on my right boot. I had to pull the bowl and clean it out to get it to stop leaking. After that, it was all gravy....and a boot that stunk of gasoline.

Here is a shot of the line in front of Logan's on the trip back:



This was the funniest looking line I have ever seen. We ended up with a Yamaha, a Honda, a Harley, a Kawasaki, and 2 vintage BMWs. It was actually kind of humorous.

Faire was fun, we each got to do pretty much what we set out to do. I got to ride, Slap got his turkey leg, Diz got to try out her new bike, Glenn got a Steak on a Stake, Kel got to see Queen Anne's Lace on opening weekend. Here is a shot of the girls:



Not a great shot, but you get the idea. If you happen to get out there, go see them. They are great.

The trip back was where the real excitement was. It was decided to come back the long way through Stephenville so we could get BBQ at Hard Eights. To do this we were headed out 287 to 67, then have BBQ. Then we would just follow 281 back south to Austin. The only hitch in this plan was that once we got onto 67 headed for Stephenville, we discovered the 40mph crosswind. All it took was a couple of the bridges to convince us that we should turn south and head for Waco. Once we got to Waco, we had lunch at logans road house and sat around for a while just happy to be alive.

As far as the shakedown run on the new setup for the R90 goes, it was pretty good. One stuck float, but that is actually fairly normal right now. I still need to do some work on that thing. I have a few rattles on the tins that I need to sort out, but other than that, it is looking good.

Here is the route we took for this little trip:


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TTFN

Dave

Shakedown weekend

We are doing a small shakedown trip on the R90 rebuild this weekend. Just a little run up to Scarborough Faire. Me, Kel, Vern, Glenn, Gary, and Laura. This should be fun. A 6 bike line. This will be Laura's first trip on her new bike. I think it will be much easier on her. This one is a bit heavier, has a bit more power, and is a lot more stable than the old one. I have a feeling she will see the difference quickly.

TTFN,

Dave

Film from Brenham and Roswell came back finally

I am re-discovering the joys of film photography. With digital, you take the picture, look at it, post it, and forget it. With film, you take it, get home, get it processed, get around to scanning it, sort through the shots and then post it. With that delay, you get to enjoy the rest of your trip. When you get back you end up waiting up to a week to get the film processed. It gives the trip a bit of time to sink in, and then when you get the pictures back they are viewed in the context of the trip, not just a single day. The shots from Brenham were taken with a Ciroflex TLR. It is an old box camera from the mid 40's. It shoots 6cm x 6cm square negatives. The shots in Roswell were taken with a Speedgraphic 2x3 view camera with a 6cm x 7cm roll film back attached.

Here are the shots from the Brenham shakedown trip with Vern and Glen:




Here are some shots from downtown Roswell (the roll of the wind farms did not come out):




Here are the shots from our first day trip to Stonehenge II near Fredricksburg:



TTFN

Dave

Dodging Oklahoma..............Day 5, Made it home alive.

I made it back to Austin alive at around 5:30 Thursday evening. I left Lubbock at 9:30 in the morning. 400 miles in about 8 hours. My butt still hurts. I can honestly say that 400 miles in a day is the max on that bike. The riding position is not as conducive to super long rides, but the suspension and the seat are a lot more comfortable than the Ural. Here is the route back:


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I actually had quite a nice ride. The new bike is definitely a different beast than the Ural. The handling is much lighter, more acceleration, and a lot less in the way of braking. It takes a very strong hand to reel in that thing from 40 mph or more. I also need to look into decreasing the vibration from the pegs and bars. When I stopped for gas, I would also pick up 2 small bottles of water, and hold one in each hand until I could feel the bottle. That helped the swelling go down so I could get the gloves back on. The vibration plays hell with my arthritis over time. If I can kill the vibration in the feet and hands, I think I will be up to 600-800 miles a day on that bike with no problem.

The ride back was very barren, since it was in the middle of a weekday, there was very little traffic. That plus the fact that I was spending a lot of time out on back roads in the middle of nowhere, it had that very isolating feeling that I love about riding. When I am doing the long distance solo runs like this, it is very comforting to be all alone with that quiet hum of the bike. Being all wrapped up in the gear, and then being wrapped around the bike is very comforting. Then you add in how the bike moves in response to your body movements, you start to get a very connected feeling with the bike. It sounds odd, but in some of the gentle sweepers, it almost feels like the bike is just another piece of gear that you put on, and you are flying down the road lust dipping a shoulder slightly when you see a curve coming up. It is very......liberating.

I think the trip back was a good bit of brain Drain-o after the excitement of the past couple days. Once I get a bit of rest, I will throw a recap of the trip up here. There is a lot of stuff to digest.

Vern and Glenn decided to continue the adventure on their own to Hot Springs. I am proud of them for pushing on. I am looking forward to seeing the pictures and hearing the storis from the rest of the ride.

Tomorrow we drop Kel's bike off with Mikey to get the tranny done.

Ya'll have fun now, Ya'hear......

Dave

Dodging Oklahoma..............Day 4, End of the Line

Day 4 started out quite nicely, it was a nice leisurely ride across the desert to Clovis, NM. That is when we noticed that Kel was hanging back a bit further than normal. Come to find out that her bike won't go into 5th gear. No grinding or whining, just won't stay in 5th. We decide at Clovis, to limp her bike back to Austin to get the transmission rebuild under way. We stopped at Muleshoe, TX at a McDonald's for lunch, and then continued the long limp home. In the small town of Anton, TX (and I mean small), the tranny finally let go. It started to whine. We managed to coast to a little burned out convenience store.

See picture here:




We ended up getting a tow into Lubbock and got a room at the Raddison. As of today....Day 5, we found a towing company in Austin that was willing to come and pick up the bike and Kel to take them home, and I will be taking off in the morning to head for the house.

Vern and Glenn are going to continue the trip to Hot Springs, AR. They are taking the camera so we can at least look at some pretty pictures. I guess this is where it ends.......I will toss another quick update when I get into Austin tomorrow, but Dodging Oklahoma has died with the rattle-grind of vintage BMW transmission bearings. Oh well.......

Dave

Dodging Oklahoma..............Day 3

So we burned a day in Roswell. Tomorrow is another fairly long day heading for Dalhart, TX. Yes, I know.....back into Texas, but it is the smoothest way to get to Dodge City, without going through Denver.

The day in Roswell was fun, we slept late, almost 8:00. Went down to the local cycle shop to pick up some supplies. Also stated picking up some spares that we ended up forgetting. oops. We ended up going to the Roswell UFO Museum, and just about every other alien themed shop on main street. Actually, everything on the 3 block section of main street in Roswell is alien themed. We just puttered around town and played. I got my picture taken with an alien, I will get some pics posted. We also met a couple from Darwin, Australia. They came over to California, bought a couple Honda ST1300s, and are spending 3 months touring the US with the intent on selling them just before they head back. They have already put about 15-20,000 miles on the bikes, and they are only a couple months into it. Their next stop is in Texas. I pointed out the spaghetti bowl around Fredericksburg and wished them well.

Here are the Pics from Roswell. Kel had the camera, so i am linking to the pics on her page.




Other than that it was a fairly lazy day.

Roswell Comfort Inn TPI (Toilet Paper Index) 120 Grit

TTFN

Dave

Dodging Oklahoma..............Day 2

Getting up and out of Abilene was actually fairly well. This time we were aimed at the longest day of the trip. We scheduled about 320 miles. From Abilene to Snyder was a very smooth run, no real excitement. After Snyder we turned north to Post, TX. At Post, we stopped for lunch at a little bbq place. The odd thing was that they did not have bbq on the menu. After we made the left on US380 headed for Roswell, NM. Shortly after making the turn, we went through th wind farms. basically a few hundred acres of huge windmills.

After another hour or so we made it to the New Mexico border. Of course we stopped to get a picture of the bikes at the state line sign. Within the first mile, I remembered why I am not fond of riding in NM.....the wind. We went from a 5 mph headwind to a 15 mph crosswind in less than a mile, and fought it for close to 100 miles.

The next fun thing about NM roads is that they are long and straight. Really long, and really straight. Tatum, NM was the last town before Roswell. That means exactly 72 miles without a town, totally barren terrain, and the occasional idiot driver. I am thinking of naming that particular stretch of 380 "The Destroyer of Hope". It is an interesting thing. You see a log straight road in front of you disappearing over the horison, and it doesn't move. Eventually it seems to be getting closer. It must be a hill. As the crest of the hill gets closer, it is very easy to delude yourself into thinking that there will be something to look at on the other side of the hill. When you get to the top of the hill, you see the same road stretching out to another hill. When you get to the top of that hill, there is another. This repeats 4 times on that stretch of road. by the time you get to the 4th hill you don't dare to think that there is anything on the other side of it. When you get there, you realise there is something.....a curve.

Here is the route:



View Larger Map


We made it into roswell by about 4:30 or 5:00. Immediately unloaded the bikes, and went to the restaraunt next door to the hotel, and had dinner and a couple drinks. Shortly after we get back from dinner the storm starts. 35-40 MPH winds started a dust storm. The dust storm triggered a rain shower. We got some pictures of the dust storm. I am putting the link to the pix up on fotki, the thumbs are below.









Bedtime for Bonzo,

Dave