Tuesday, October 1, 2019
The ride to Hillbsboro was fast, in part because Larry goaded me into asking Scarlett to defend my honor, which she did in an expeditious and decisive manner.
Once again we ate al fresco at the Hillsboro Café’s single patio table.
The ride to Hillbsboro was fast, in part because Larry goaded me into asking Scarlett to defend my honor, which she did in an expeditious and decisive manner.
Once again we ate al fresco at the Hillsboro Café’s single patio table.
Hillsboro Cafe redux. Image courtesy Larry Haruska.
I’d expressed an inclination to sit inside to experience the ambiance of the historic building’s inner space, and to make things less inconvenient for the waitresses (whom I suspect are co-proprietresses). Perhaps we might even have interacted with other locals who may well have been entertained by the wondrous stories of a crew of outlandish travelers who two days ago had appeared from beyond the western horizon, disappeared into the east, and had now returned to this tiny hamlet in the middle of nowhere.
But Larry wasn’t on board with going inside, insistent as always that while dining he must remain in full view of his motorcycle. To be fair, Merlin was loaded with expensive photographic equipment that was possibly incapable of being fully secured. And all the bikes had hundreds of dollars’ worth of riding apparel draped loosely over their saddles -- though my gear is mostly a cobbled together combination of year-end close-outs that are all about due for replacement anyway.
Perhaps if the café had a picture window through which he could have maintained continuous surveillance Larry would have been accepting of the idea, but the only such portals didn’t deliver an adequate view. Perhaps if the weather had been something approaching atrocious, he’d have been more inclined to duck inside; but the day would best be described as “idyllic”.
Nevertheless, Gary and I were unconvinced that anything on any of our machines was at even the slightest risk in this particular time and place. Certainly, there were places we’d all visited where a high degree of vigilance is appropriate – but this wasn’t one of them. Gary and I both affirmed that in all our combined decades of rambling about on motorcycles loaded with easily removable gear, only once had either of us lost so much as a penny pilfered from a tank bag pocket.
And we’d both parked, at times, in some very dodgy places.
The exception was mine to relate, and ironically the place that a theft from my machine might have happened was at a BMW rally.
I want to stress “might have” happened – I’ve no proof that the original equipment tire pump was stolen from beneath the saddle of my R60/6 back in May of 1980. But I had discovered the pump was missing shortly after departing the '49er Rally in Mariposa, California. The chance it had fallen off its mounting posts was as unlikely as the possibility that anyone but a BMW rider would have even known it was there…or would have wanted it badly enough to steal it.
Since then the only case of attempted larceny of my riding gear was by a crow with a working knowledge of zippers in the parking lot at Old Faithful.
After breakfast we saddled back up and headed west across the mountains. Much as had been the case the previous morning, Jana was disinclined to ride at the kind of pace Gary and I preferred, and Larry elected to ride alongside her. With the agreement we’d all regroup on the far side of Silver City, at the junction of US-180 and NM-78, I powered down my intercom before subjecting any of us to the hiss and crackle caused by my passing the limits of radio range.
Gary and I had a very enjoyable ride up over Emory Pass and down the other side. Perfect weather, a hint of fall color, little in the way of traffic, yadda yadda.
Then a careful crawl through Silver City.
Beyond, back out on the open road, we resumed a spirited pace heading northwest on US-180.
Gary was ahead of me when he blew past the junction for Mule Creek. While he slowed and pulled a U turn, I rolled up and stopped beside a road grader parked on a gravel lot taking up the northwest corner of the intersection. I doffed my helmet and unpacked my canteen for a swig of water.
After removing his helmet, Gary informed me that while riding through Silver City he’d taken a call from Larry. Jana had again been afflicted by a vision problem and so the couple would continue to our destination via US-180, a much more direct and much less physically demanding route than the seriously gnarly twists of the Coronado Trail, the highway formerly known as US-666.
I’ll withhold my opinions of the thought processes underpinning the motivations of the group that successfully lobbied to have the highway re-designated as US-191.
As we cleaned the bugs off our face shields we discussed the pros and cons of motorcycle intercoms. Obviously I was OK with the chatter between riders, but that’s something Gary's inclined to avoid in favor of listening to music.
“Oh, I get that", I said. "But I do think it's fun to talk to other riders, and it's potentially lifesaving if someone up ahead alerts me to a hazard I'm approaching. The thing I don’t get is that you're willing to take phone calls.”
Gary had previously described how well he’d gotten all his gadgets to work together: his Bluetooth intercom system, helmet speakers, radar detector, cell phone, and Pandora music streaming service that's becoming ever better at delivering tunes that suit his taste – whether he’s heard them before or not.
"My phone doesn’t even ring if I’m moving faster than walking speed”, I said. “And that’s how I like it. I don’t even want to know if someone’s calling me.”
It then occurred to me that for the remainder of today’s ride, I wouldn’t have anyone to talk to on the intercom. I might as well try to get my own tunes working.
I considered the roads ahead. Mostly tight twisty two-lanes where our relatively low speed would produce a correspondingly subdued level of wind noise. Ideally, that combined with a calm day and a complete absence of other vehicular traffic would mean little or none of the chaotic wake turbulence that's beyond the ability of my Bose noise-cancelling earbuds to defeat.
I dug my iPod and the Bose device from my laptop case and then closed everything back up. I selected the Goin' To California playlist I'd compiled for my 2017 tour, jacked in the Bose unit, fitted the earbuds. After tweaking the volume I tucked it all into my jacket pocket, arranged the cable control clip, then carefully slid my helmet on. I successfully avoided the usual effect of ripping the buds from my ears in the process.
Two thumbs up satisfactorily replaced the need for speech that neither of us could possibly hear; one thing that hasn't changed in the fifty years I've been riding motorcycles.
I lit out as the leader for this leg, in part because I'd told Gary that if the Bose system wasn't up to the task, I'd pull over (probably pretty soon) and reroute the music through the Sena's helmet-mounted speakers.
But I didn't need to stop. Conditions were indeed well within the Bose system's operating parameters, with the result that the noise cancellation was more effective than the best earplugs I've ever used, and the quality of the music was certainly far better than what would have blasted out of the Sena speakers (and past the earplugs I'd have been wearing that would still have been grossly ineffective at completely suppressing the wind noise).
So I had just an absolutely marvelous ride through the mountains of western New Mexico, rocking out to my favorite tunes in one of the few circumstances I've ever experienced where everything worked well enough that I was simultaneously riding a motorcycle and enjoying something that could arguably be classified as high-fidelity musical playback.
The weather literally could not have been nicer.
The roads were fine and twisty.
Traffic, while not absent, was light and easily dealt with.
Too soon, it seemed, we descended from cool forested hills into a barren desert basin.
But Larry wasn’t on board with going inside, insistent as always that while dining he must remain in full view of his motorcycle. To be fair, Merlin was loaded with expensive photographic equipment that was possibly incapable of being fully secured. And all the bikes had hundreds of dollars’ worth of riding apparel draped loosely over their saddles -- though my gear is mostly a cobbled together combination of year-end close-outs that are all about due for replacement anyway.
Perhaps if the café had a picture window through which he could have maintained continuous surveillance Larry would have been accepting of the idea, but the only such portals didn’t deliver an adequate view. Perhaps if the weather had been something approaching atrocious, he’d have been more inclined to duck inside; but the day would best be described as “idyllic”.
Nevertheless, Gary and I were unconvinced that anything on any of our machines was at even the slightest risk in this particular time and place. Certainly, there were places we’d all visited where a high degree of vigilance is appropriate – but this wasn’t one of them. Gary and I both affirmed that in all our combined decades of rambling about on motorcycles loaded with easily removable gear, only once had either of us lost so much as a penny pilfered from a tank bag pocket.
And we’d both parked, at times, in some very dodgy places.
The exception was mine to relate, and ironically the place that a theft from my machine might have happened was at a BMW rally.
I want to stress “might have” happened – I’ve no proof that the original equipment tire pump was stolen from beneath the saddle of my R60/6 back in May of 1980. But I had discovered the pump was missing shortly after departing the '49er Rally in Mariposa, California. The chance it had fallen off its mounting posts was as unlikely as the possibility that anyone but a BMW rider would have even known it was there…or would have wanted it badly enough to steal it.
Since then the only case of attempted larceny of my riding gear was by a crow with a working knowledge of zippers in the parking lot at Old Faithful.
After breakfast we saddled back up and headed west across the mountains. Much as had been the case the previous morning, Jana was disinclined to ride at the kind of pace Gary and I preferred, and Larry elected to ride alongside her. With the agreement we’d all regroup on the far side of Silver City, at the junction of US-180 and NM-78, I powered down my intercom before subjecting any of us to the hiss and crackle caused by my passing the limits of radio range.
Gary and I had a very enjoyable ride up over Emory Pass and down the other side. Perfect weather, a hint of fall color, little in the way of traffic, yadda yadda.
Then a careful crawl through Silver City.
Beyond, back out on the open road, we resumed a spirited pace heading northwest on US-180.
Gary was ahead of me when he blew past the junction for Mule Creek. While he slowed and pulled a U turn, I rolled up and stopped beside a road grader parked on a gravel lot taking up the northwest corner of the intersection. I doffed my helmet and unpacked my canteen for a swig of water.
After removing his helmet, Gary informed me that while riding through Silver City he’d taken a call from Larry. Jana had again been afflicted by a vision problem and so the couple would continue to our destination via US-180, a much more direct and much less physically demanding route than the seriously gnarly twists of the Coronado Trail, the highway formerly known as US-666.
I’ll withhold my opinions of the thought processes underpinning the motivations of the group that successfully lobbied to have the highway re-designated as US-191.
As we cleaned the bugs off our face shields we discussed the pros and cons of motorcycle intercoms. Obviously I was OK with the chatter between riders, but that’s something Gary's inclined to avoid in favor of listening to music.
“Oh, I get that", I said. "But I do think it's fun to talk to other riders, and it's potentially lifesaving if someone up ahead alerts me to a hazard I'm approaching. The thing I don’t get is that you're willing to take phone calls.”
Gary had previously described how well he’d gotten all his gadgets to work together: his Bluetooth intercom system, helmet speakers, radar detector, cell phone, and Pandora music streaming service that's becoming ever better at delivering tunes that suit his taste – whether he’s heard them before or not.
"My phone doesn’t even ring if I’m moving faster than walking speed”, I said. “And that’s how I like it. I don’t even want to know if someone’s calling me.”
It then occurred to me that for the remainder of today’s ride, I wouldn’t have anyone to talk to on the intercom. I might as well try to get my own tunes working.
I considered the roads ahead. Mostly tight twisty two-lanes where our relatively low speed would produce a correspondingly subdued level of wind noise. Ideally, that combined with a calm day and a complete absence of other vehicular traffic would mean little or none of the chaotic wake turbulence that's beyond the ability of my Bose noise-cancelling earbuds to defeat.
I dug my iPod and the Bose device from my laptop case and then closed everything back up. I selected the Goin' To California playlist I'd compiled for my 2017 tour, jacked in the Bose unit, fitted the earbuds. After tweaking the volume I tucked it all into my jacket pocket, arranged the cable control clip, then carefully slid my helmet on. I successfully avoided the usual effect of ripping the buds from my ears in the process.
Two thumbs up satisfactorily replaced the need for speech that neither of us could possibly hear; one thing that hasn't changed in the fifty years I've been riding motorcycles.
I lit out as the leader for this leg, in part because I'd told Gary that if the Bose system wasn't up to the task, I'd pull over (probably pretty soon) and reroute the music through the Sena's helmet-mounted speakers.
But I didn't need to stop. Conditions were indeed well within the Bose system's operating parameters, with the result that the noise cancellation was more effective than the best earplugs I've ever used, and the quality of the music was certainly far better than what would have blasted out of the Sena speakers (and past the earplugs I'd have been wearing that would still have been grossly ineffective at completely suppressing the wind noise).
So I had just an absolutely marvelous ride through the mountains of western New Mexico, rocking out to my favorite tunes in one of the few circumstances I've ever experienced where everything worked well enough that I was simultaneously riding a motorcycle and enjoying something that could arguably be classified as high-fidelity musical playback.
The weather literally could not have been nicer.
The roads were fine and twisty.
Traffic, while not absent, was light and easily dealt with.
Too soon, it seemed, we descended from cool forested hills into a barren desert basin.
We pulled to a stop at the intersection of what had become AZ-78, where the crossroad highway was the one formerly designated US-666.
We'd arrived at a place identified as "3 Way".
I'm not sure if "3 Way" is supposed to be a town or maybe an old train stop or perhaps nothing more than some kind of isolated industrial installation; there sure isn't much to it. I checked my fuel situation. As expected, I still had enough to get me to Clifton just a few more miles down the road, and presumably so did Gary since we both had about the same effective fuel range. Neither of us had any to spare beyond that, but it was a good thing we didn't need it now; the "3 Way Store and Station"'s gas pumps had been removed long ago.
Larry had told us we could get gas here, and when I glanced over my other shoulder I saw a facility that might indeed have had functioning pumps. But even so it didn't look to me like any fuel they might dispense would be of a quality that Therese's sensitive palate would savor. I hung a right and headed for Clifton.
The ride into and through Clifton was soured by the fact that we were obliged to follow a gravel truck right up to the point where the Shell station came into view.
Riding through and out of Clifton, and then up through Morenci past its gigantic copper mine, was an exercise in dodging dust and gravel and rocks and streams of mining effluent and the occasional freight train sharing the roadway as if it were a streetcar.
We'd arrived at a place identified as "3 Way".
I'm not sure if "3 Way" is supposed to be a town or maybe an old train stop or perhaps nothing more than some kind of isolated industrial installation; there sure isn't much to it. I checked my fuel situation. As expected, I still had enough to get me to Clifton just a few more miles down the road, and presumably so did Gary since we both had about the same effective fuel range. Neither of us had any to spare beyond that, but it was a good thing we didn't need it now; the "3 Way Store and Station"'s gas pumps had been removed long ago.
Larry had told us we could get gas here, and when I glanced over my other shoulder I saw a facility that might indeed have had functioning pumps. But even so it didn't look to me like any fuel they might dispense would be of a quality that Therese's sensitive palate would savor. I hung a right and headed for Clifton.
The ride into and through Clifton was soured by the fact that we were obliged to follow a gravel truck right up to the point where the Shell station came into view.
Riding through and out of Clifton, and then up through Morenci past its gigantic copper mine, was an exercise in dodging dust and gravel and rocks and streams of mining effluent and the occasional freight train sharing the roadway as if it were a streetcar.
Finally we were back up in the hills, heading north along the crest of the White Mountains on good ol' 666.
For the first segment I followed Gary, just hoping to stay close enough to keep him in frame. Although this was the third time I'd been on this road since 2013, it was the first time since the '80s that I'd ridden it south-to-north and having Gary in front for guidance was a helpful thing indeed.
At one point we stopped and Gary expressed his dissatisfaction with the condition of the road (potholed, patched, and liberally sprinkled with gravel). He didn't think there was any excuse for it, especially considering the sprawling road maintenance facility right up on the ridge and clearly dedicated to this single stretch of pavement.
I certainly noted the road was not up to the standards of much of what we'd been riding the past few days, or what I've grown used to riding out west in general.
But I'm from Michigan where the condition of this road that Gary considered so scandalously neglected wouldn't have raised the eyebrow of a typical driver who would have been thankful that it had both lanes open.
For the first segment I followed Gary, just hoping to stay close enough to keep him in frame. Although this was the third time I'd been on this road since 2013, it was the first time since the '80s that I'd ridden it south-to-north and having Gary in front for guidance was a helpful thing indeed.
At one point we stopped and Gary expressed his dissatisfaction with the condition of the road (potholed, patched, and liberally sprinkled with gravel). He didn't think there was any excuse for it, especially considering the sprawling road maintenance facility right up on the ridge and clearly dedicated to this single stretch of pavement.
I certainly noted the road was not up to the standards of much of what we'd been riding the past few days, or what I've grown used to riding out west in general.
But I'm from Michigan where the condition of this road that Gary considered so scandalously neglected wouldn't have raised the eyebrow of a typical driver who would have been thankful that it had both lanes open.
I took the lead departing our rest stop and pushed on until just past Hannigan Meadow, at which point when I had a nice long straightaway with lots of space on the verge I stood up on the footpegs and leaned far forward, out over the top of Therese's fairing.
I was doing what has now become a routine of periodic checks to see if my GoPro's lens had been obscured by a bug splat. I found it had indeed collected a smear of yellow-green guts, thus rendering unusable some as-yet unknown fraction of the most recent MP4. But at this point I had no shortage of recorded action; I just made sure I wasn't wasting battery power shooting through a sheen of insect gore.
The decision to stop came suddenly.
I was rolling through an alpine park when ahead I saw a wide spot, an extra lane provided for cars to pull over so their occupants could ogle the local wildlife without being rear ended. My turn signal maybe flashed once before I was in the lane and then heavy on the brakes to pull down from a speed quite a bit higher than that of the average Griswold trolling along with eyes scanning the forest in hopes of espying some kind of big animal.
You know, the kind of animal I'm also keenly interested in spotting whenever they're about, but for an entirely different reason.
The kind of animal I wish Therese was equipped to automatically detect and instantly vaporize should one ever set so much as a single hoof onto the shoulder of the highway.
Gary was understandably caught off guard by my sudden and inexplicable decision to depart the traveled portion of the roadway and rapidly decelerate to a complete stop for no apparent reason.
I could have maybe given him a clue if we'd had our intercoms on...
Gary got stopped OK and I guess figured out what I was doing when I whipped the microfiber towel out of my tank bag pocket and wiped the lens off.
We saddled back up and continued the last few miles into Alpine. Fueled up at the crossroads. Continued north a couple more miles to Tal-Wi-Wi Lodge.
We arrived within seconds of L&J. What was more important, at least one of us had arrived during the time window (something like between 4:33 and 4:57 PM) only within which, according to Larry, would a person actually be at the lodge office and thus able to process our reservation and provide room keys.
We quickly unloaded the bikes enough that we could easily shuttle into town for dinner.
The meal was hot and hearty. Cherry pie and coffee for dessert. Served by a friendly waitress.
But I left in a bit of a funk.
It was the first time in days I'd encountered the "current political climate".
Plastered across the front door and elsewhere were a lot of bumper stickers and such that often expressed a disturbingly vengeful tone, gleeful suggestions of latent violence, and cult-like obeisance toward a person whose entire life is a continuous stream of pathological dishonesty, racism and bigotry, brazen criminality, abuse of power, and collusion with and indebtedness to hostile foreign powers.
Finding similar messaging in the general store across the street further clouded my mood.
I hoped the pint of Jameson I bought would help snap me out of it.
Back at the lodge, we discovered (finally!) a TV that hadn't been made user-proof. Larry hooked up his camera and we watched a slide show of our trip.
Then I tried to do the same with my videos, but it was a bit more complicated. GoPro direct to TV didn't work. Files on the 4TB drive were unwatchable due to some kind of buffering lag. Anything in the cloud was out of reach.
But we could watch what I'd recorded during the first couple of days, big files I'd tried (but failed) to move completely off the laptop into cloud storage. Those files played normally, so we watched some with random background music from one of my playlists.
That resulted in the discovery of another song Gary said he'd like on his video.
We watched a couple of the produced videos that I'd put on USB sticks for L&J&G to take home.
I spent some time looking at the stars, so brilliant in the high thin air far from the pollution of city lights.
I was doing what has now become a routine of periodic checks to see if my GoPro's lens had been obscured by a bug splat. I found it had indeed collected a smear of yellow-green guts, thus rendering unusable some as-yet unknown fraction of the most recent MP4. But at this point I had no shortage of recorded action; I just made sure I wasn't wasting battery power shooting through a sheen of insect gore.
The decision to stop came suddenly.
I was rolling through an alpine park when ahead I saw a wide spot, an extra lane provided for cars to pull over so their occupants could ogle the local wildlife without being rear ended. My turn signal maybe flashed once before I was in the lane and then heavy on the brakes to pull down from a speed quite a bit higher than that of the average Griswold trolling along with eyes scanning the forest in hopes of espying some kind of big animal.
You know, the kind of animal I'm also keenly interested in spotting whenever they're about, but for an entirely different reason.
The kind of animal I wish Therese was equipped to automatically detect and instantly vaporize should one ever set so much as a single hoof onto the shoulder of the highway.
Gary was understandably caught off guard by my sudden and inexplicable decision to depart the traveled portion of the roadway and rapidly decelerate to a complete stop for no apparent reason.
I could have maybe given him a clue if we'd had our intercoms on...
Gary got stopped OK and I guess figured out what I was doing when I whipped the microfiber towel out of my tank bag pocket and wiped the lens off.
We saddled back up and continued the last few miles into Alpine. Fueled up at the crossroads. Continued north a couple more miles to Tal-Wi-Wi Lodge.
We arrived within seconds of L&J. What was more important, at least one of us had arrived during the time window (something like between 4:33 and 4:57 PM) only within which, according to Larry, would a person actually be at the lodge office and thus able to process our reservation and provide room keys.
We quickly unloaded the bikes enough that we could easily shuttle into town for dinner.
The meal was hot and hearty. Cherry pie and coffee for dessert. Served by a friendly waitress.
But I left in a bit of a funk.
It was the first time in days I'd encountered the "current political climate".
Plastered across the front door and elsewhere were a lot of bumper stickers and such that often expressed a disturbingly vengeful tone, gleeful suggestions of latent violence, and cult-like obeisance toward a person whose entire life is a continuous stream of pathological dishonesty, racism and bigotry, brazen criminality, abuse of power, and collusion with and indebtedness to hostile foreign powers.
Finding similar messaging in the general store across the street further clouded my mood.
I hoped the pint of Jameson I bought would help snap me out of it.
Back at the lodge, we discovered (finally!) a TV that hadn't been made user-proof. Larry hooked up his camera and we watched a slide show of our trip.
Then I tried to do the same with my videos, but it was a bit more complicated. GoPro direct to TV didn't work. Files on the 4TB drive were unwatchable due to some kind of buffering lag. Anything in the cloud was out of reach.
But we could watch what I'd recorded during the first couple of days, big files I'd tried (but failed) to move completely off the laptop into cloud storage. Those files played normally, so we watched some with random background music from one of my playlists.
That resulted in the discovery of another song Gary said he'd like on his video.
We watched a couple of the produced videos that I'd put on USB sticks for L&J&G to take home.
I spent some time looking at the stars, so brilliant in the high thin air far from the pollution of city lights.
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