Monday, September 30, 2019
I used to say my travel dispatches have “legions of followers” but then I looked up “legion” and it turns out that’s a slight exaggeration.
To be fair, I might have half a “cohort” or so of folks who ride vicariously through me.
But as I draft these dispatches in Word, and they run into many pages of what often seems like meaningless minutia, I find myself wondering, “Why would even that many people want to read this stuff?”
Still, I continue to get the occasional positive review, and fortunately any readers who might be inclined to pen less complimentary critiques apparently don’t find it worth the effort to do so.
And I keep reminding myself that I write these dispatches as much to my future self as to anyone else. Much as I’ve now taken to enjoying my GoPro re-runs, I have long enjoyed re-reading these blogs, and reflecting on the adventures they’ve captured.
So sometimes…
I used to say my travel dispatches have “legions of followers” but then I looked up “legion” and it turns out that’s a slight exaggeration.
To be fair, I might have half a “cohort” or so of folks who ride vicariously through me.
But as I draft these dispatches in Word, and they run into many pages of what often seems like meaningless minutia, I find myself wondering, “Why would even that many people want to read this stuff?”
Still, I continue to get the occasional positive review, and fortunately any readers who might be inclined to pen less complimentary critiques apparently don’t find it worth the effort to do so.
And I keep reminding myself that I write these dispatches as much to my future self as to anyone else. Much as I’ve now taken to enjoying my GoPro re-runs, I have long enjoyed re-reading these blogs, and reflecting on the adventures they’ve captured.
So sometimes…
Our original intention to breakfast at the Wendell’s restaurant was thwarted by a wait list, so we ate at the buffet.
As Larry pointed out, we were probably done before Gary’s waffle would have arrived at Wendell’s.
I was certainly satisfied by augmenting my scrambled eggs with a heap of excellent Pico de Gallo from the salsa bar.
Gary and I brought our gear down to the front entrance to find Merlin and Ziggy already parked in a wedge of shade near the conference center entrance, but with neither Larry nor Jana in evidence. I waited with the luggage cart while Gary went down to the garage to bring his bike up, then I went down to recover Therese. We ended up getting our bikes completely loaded before Larry finally appeared with his and Jana’s gear.
As Larry pointed out, we were probably done before Gary’s waffle would have arrived at Wendell’s.
I was certainly satisfied by augmenting my scrambled eggs with a heap of excellent Pico de Gallo from the salsa bar.
Gary and I brought our gear down to the front entrance to find Merlin and Ziggy already parked in a wedge of shade near the conference center entrance, but with neither Larry nor Jana in evidence. I waited with the luggage cart while Gary went down to the garage to bring his bike up, then I went down to recover Therese. We ended up getting our bikes completely loaded before Larry finally appeared with his and Jana’s gear.
We departed the Inn of the Mountain Gods and went into Ruidoso for fuel, then retraced our route back past the resort and out to US-70, the highway we’d come in on the previous evening. But what we were really heading for was NM-244, a delightful backroad I’d ridden on 2015's Good Timings tour.
After getting around a pickup truck with a crew of locals in the back, Jana immediately waved “the boys” ahead to “go play”. Gary and I stepped up the pace, but Larry elected to stay back with Jana. Soon the intercom began crackling with static, a symptom that I was moving out of range. In between the bursts of static and total gaps in reception, I could hear L&J complaining that I wasn’t switching out; they apparently couldn’t hear my protestations that I was attempting to do just that, but pushing the button that initiates intercom pairing wasn’t toggling me off. Finally shutting the unit down completely presumably did the trick, but by then I might have finally moved out of range anyway.
After that it was just me chasing Gary along a really sumptuous twisty road through the mountain forest. His lighter machine was better suited to some of the tighter curves, but I was certainly able to keep him in my camera frame.
After getting around a pickup truck with a crew of locals in the back, Jana immediately waved “the boys” ahead to “go play”. Gary and I stepped up the pace, but Larry elected to stay back with Jana. Soon the intercom began crackling with static, a symptom that I was moving out of range. In between the bursts of static and total gaps in reception, I could hear L&J complaining that I wasn’t switching out; they apparently couldn’t hear my protestations that I was attempting to do just that, but pushing the button that initiates intercom pairing wasn’t toggling me off. Finally shutting the unit down completely presumably did the trick, but by then I might have finally moved out of range anyway.
After that it was just me chasing Gary along a really sumptuous twisty road through the mountain forest. His lighter machine was better suited to some of the tighter curves, but I was certainly able to keep him in my camera frame.
It was a blast. The weather was cool and dry, there was virtually no traffic, and this was exactly the kind of road we live for.
I guess that’s not quite correct. The “exact” kind of road we live for would ideally have zero, and certainly many fewer, inexplicable and unpredictable piles of large animal excrement littering the macadam.
Nonetheless it was a memorable ride for all the right reasons, including my successful atonement for a mistake I’d made the previous Christmas.
FLASHBACK
L&J had moved from Michigan to Arizona back in the 1970s, and over time developed a tradition they called “Orphan’s Christmas”. They’d invite riding friends who had similarly moved to the Phoenix area from elsewhere in the country, and whose family still lived (in general) “back east” – and so were “virtual orphans” as far as traditional Christmas family gathering was concerned – to go for a ride Christmas morning and then come back to their house for the feast.
It had been years since I’d been in the Valley on Christmas, and this was the first time since I’d moved from Arizona that I had my own bike available for the Orphan’s Ride. It was also the first year I had the GoPro camera.
It was a crisp but sunny Christmas morning as our troop zoomed out to Tortilla Flat, a typical destination for the Orphan’s Ride. Tortilla Flat is the last settlement along the Apache Trail which winds its way up the chain of lakes that form the Salt River Project’s reservoir system. The road out to Canyon Lake is a great set of twisties, and had been resurfaced since the last time I’d been on it – it was in good condition and I really enjoyed hurling Therese along its convolutions.
I guess that’s not quite correct. The “exact” kind of road we live for would ideally have zero, and certainly many fewer, inexplicable and unpredictable piles of large animal excrement littering the macadam.
Nonetheless it was a memorable ride for all the right reasons, including my successful atonement for a mistake I’d made the previous Christmas.
FLASHBACK
L&J had moved from Michigan to Arizona back in the 1970s, and over time developed a tradition they called “Orphan’s Christmas”. They’d invite riding friends who had similarly moved to the Phoenix area from elsewhere in the country, and whose family still lived (in general) “back east” – and so were “virtual orphans” as far as traditional Christmas family gathering was concerned – to go for a ride Christmas morning and then come back to their house for the feast.
It had been years since I’d been in the Valley on Christmas, and this was the first time since I’d moved from Arizona that I had my own bike available for the Orphan’s Ride. It was also the first year I had the GoPro camera.
It was a crisp but sunny Christmas morning as our troop zoomed out to Tortilla Flat, a typical destination for the Orphan’s Ride. Tortilla Flat is the last settlement along the Apache Trail which winds its way up the chain of lakes that form the Salt River Project’s reservoir system. The road out to Canyon Lake is a great set of twisties, and had been resurfaced since the last time I’d been on it – it was in good condition and I really enjoyed hurling Therese along its convolutions.
We hung out at Tortilla Flat for a while, and discussed who might be interested in riding to the end of the pavement, another five miles or so farther up Apache Trail. It finally shook out that only Gary and I were up for it, so we headed east when everyone else turned back west.
It was a great ride chasing Gary up the road and back, and I was really looking forward to the movie I’d be able to make out of it.
Which idea was shattered when back at Larry’s I discovered I’d accidentally set the camera in still frame mode, and instead of taking what should have been an awesome high-action video... I’d taken hundreds of JPG images.
They were completely useless and I ended up deleting them all.
BACK TO SCENE
When Gary and I finally pulled to a stop at the US-82 junction a couple miles east of Cloudcroft, I checked that I’d successfully recorded video this time. Then I told Gary, “Let me know what music you want for the soundtrack.”
His response was immediate.
“Doobie Brothers, Nobody.”
“And what else? I should easily have enough footage for two or three tunes.”
“Steely Dan, Reelin’ In The Years.”
“Excellent.”
L&J arrived and after giving them a chance to relax for a bit, we saddled up and headed into Cloudcroft.
NM-244 goes from nowhere to nowhere; such roads generally make for the best riding. US-82, unfortunately, is a major east-west corridor that goes from somewhere to somewhere; while it could have been a fun road had there been no other traffic, it was too busy to have much real fun at the time we were on it.
At least we were still basking in the afterglow of that road to nowhere.
US-82 dumped us out on the north side of Alamogordo; we worked our way from stoplight to stoplight along US-54 and then US-70 west back towards White Sands. When we arrived at the entrance to the national monument, traffic came to a complete stop.
We could see the front of the line half a mile ahead, but no apparent reason for the stop. Fortunately that steady prevailing wind was in action, providing a cooling breeze as we sat there in the sun.
Occasionally the jam crawled forward.
I debated with Larry whether we had moved. He argued we hadn’t, because we could plainly see the front of the line hadn’t budged a millimeter. I held to the position that the wheels of our motorcycles had in fact turned in a forward direction, and our machines were now located a regrettably small but nevertheless distinguishable distance further along the roadway than they had been previously, and thus our actions had indeed met the strictest definition of the verb “moved”.
Neither of us yielded.
After quite some time of bemused idleness we observed motion at the front of the line. But the movement wasn’t happening to the car we’d been looking at the entire time; it was still parked right where it had been since we’d first come to a stop. But cars were pulling in front of our queue from some location off to the right and hidden from our view, and then moving along down the highway.
Lots of cars were doing this.
Hundreds of cars.
Eventually this bolus of previously unknown and unimagined traffic exhausted itself and our queue finally began moving. A while later so did we, and in a manner not subject to continued debate.
However, we did continue to discuss the event and concluded the road had probably been closed for a missile test, and all that traffic had been shunted into parking at the monument. It was likely a fairly common occurrence.
So on across the desert we went, but now behind miles and miles and miles of traffic which we were of course obliged to overtake; it’s the safest way for motorcycles to travel in such conditions. We certainly need to keep our attention focused forward, not in the mirrors at cars approaching from behind.
When we got to Las Cruces, we swung south on I-25. I was in third position in the formation, but I waved Gary ahead. I’d reminded L&J via intercom that I needed to exit on Lohman Avenue, whereas they would exit at University to get fuel and then lunch at Chachi’s. But I wasn’t sure if Gary remembered or even knew that I was making a stop at Best Buy, and I didn’t want him following me there for no good reason.
The best thing about Best Buy was the air conditioning; it was a welcome cool respite from what had become another hot desert afternoon. My mission took 15 minutes, not the 10 I’d said told the group it would, but when I came out I had a 4 terabyte Western Digital Passport USB hard drive – an effectively bottomless black box into which I could dump camera video files unconstrained by my laptop’s remaining capacity, or any destination’s paucity of internet bandwidth.
I hustled down the freeway to the next exit, gassed up (correctly guessing the Speedway is what was previously the Exxon-Mobile Larry had identified as the fuel stop of choice), and a quick check of Googlemaps confirmed Chachi’s was literally a stone’s throw down the side street. I rolled into the parking lot and found a shady spot; my fellow riders were out on the patio with my icewater already set and available for my refreshment.
Once again we were presented with the choice of “red or green” chile to be ladled atop our meals. By this time Larry had been advocating the name of this epic should be Red or Green?, since it seemed like every place we ate we always got the same question.
Gary and I always gave the same answer: “Christmas!”, which is to say, both.
But I was by no means going to simply allow Larry to dictate the title of my tour, of which his tour was only a significant fraction. And at this point my choice of the tour’s working title was bending toward Now Where The Hell Did I Put That?
The salient recurring theme for me on this trip was that I had constantly been misplacing small items. I’d apparently left one of my prescriptions in my shaving kit back at mom’s house; the previous night I’d wasted way far too much valuable time searching for the GoPro data cable (pro tip: turning lights on often helps); and the same where the hell...? question could have been asked and would have resulted in a variety of answers regarding the locations of my video files. Which clips were still on the camera? Which were only on the camera? Which were on my laptop? Which were in the cloud, wherever that was?
However, there was no point in getting too hung up about it; trek names can’t really be determined until the ride is over.
Chachi’s had served us enormous lunches. Gary had the good sense to abandon his at some point, but I followed my usual self-destructive tendency to consume the entirety of my chile rellenos platter. After such a lunch came the challenge of staying awake as we rolled north on I-25, past the Hillsboro exit from where we’d come the day before and to where we’d return tomorrow.
Our destination this afternoon was Riverbend Hot Springs in Truth or Consequences, where my first task was to sign a waiver full of fine print that obligated me not to drown or otherwise instigate anything that might lead to legal repercussions. At least that’s what Larry claimed was the content; I read it the way I read all EULAs which is to say, not a word. Even so, the gals at the desk were far less emphatic about points of personal hazard and possible death than ensuring my awareness that raising voices above a whisper is considered somewhere between extremely impolite and absolutely forbidden, depending on some arcane demarcation of where on the premises a need to speak might occur. Since the hot tubs themselves were apparently the most restrictive zone, I’m not entirely sure that a drowning person would actually be permitted to cry for help.
Next I was snapped into a wristband containing a waterproof RFID tag that served as my room key. The practicality of this soon became evident as I took a quick shower and changed into my swim trunks, then silently padded to the towel dispenser (also secured by the same RFID key). It was a comforting realization when it finally sank in that I didn’t need to carry around and manage any other key, yet I couldn’t possibly lock myself out of my room or the cool shady courtyard upon which our three-room suit opened.
The tubs all look out over the Rio Grande, the gate to which indicated a “temporary” prohibition against swimming in the river itself. I suspected that sign probably never came down, but I wasn’t particularly keen on the idea of immersing myself in the diluted effluent of the town proper immediately upstream, not to mention more distant but much larger conurbations such as Socorro and Albuquerque.
It was a great ride chasing Gary up the road and back, and I was really looking forward to the movie I’d be able to make out of it.
Which idea was shattered when back at Larry’s I discovered I’d accidentally set the camera in still frame mode, and instead of taking what should have been an awesome high-action video... I’d taken hundreds of JPG images.
They were completely useless and I ended up deleting them all.
BACK TO SCENE
When Gary and I finally pulled to a stop at the US-82 junction a couple miles east of Cloudcroft, I checked that I’d successfully recorded video this time. Then I told Gary, “Let me know what music you want for the soundtrack.”
His response was immediate.
“Doobie Brothers, Nobody.”
“And what else? I should easily have enough footage for two or three tunes.”
“Steely Dan, Reelin’ In The Years.”
“Excellent.”
L&J arrived and after giving them a chance to relax for a bit, we saddled up and headed into Cloudcroft.
NM-244 goes from nowhere to nowhere; such roads generally make for the best riding. US-82, unfortunately, is a major east-west corridor that goes from somewhere to somewhere; while it could have been a fun road had there been no other traffic, it was too busy to have much real fun at the time we were on it.
At least we were still basking in the afterglow of that road to nowhere.
US-82 dumped us out on the north side of Alamogordo; we worked our way from stoplight to stoplight along US-54 and then US-70 west back towards White Sands. When we arrived at the entrance to the national monument, traffic came to a complete stop.
We could see the front of the line half a mile ahead, but no apparent reason for the stop. Fortunately that steady prevailing wind was in action, providing a cooling breeze as we sat there in the sun.
Occasionally the jam crawled forward.
I debated with Larry whether we had moved. He argued we hadn’t, because we could plainly see the front of the line hadn’t budged a millimeter. I held to the position that the wheels of our motorcycles had in fact turned in a forward direction, and our machines were now located a regrettably small but nevertheless distinguishable distance further along the roadway than they had been previously, and thus our actions had indeed met the strictest definition of the verb “moved”.
Neither of us yielded.
After quite some time of bemused idleness we observed motion at the front of the line. But the movement wasn’t happening to the car we’d been looking at the entire time; it was still parked right where it had been since we’d first come to a stop. But cars were pulling in front of our queue from some location off to the right and hidden from our view, and then moving along down the highway.
Lots of cars were doing this.
Hundreds of cars.
Eventually this bolus of previously unknown and unimagined traffic exhausted itself and our queue finally began moving. A while later so did we, and in a manner not subject to continued debate.
However, we did continue to discuss the event and concluded the road had probably been closed for a missile test, and all that traffic had been shunted into parking at the monument. It was likely a fairly common occurrence.
So on across the desert we went, but now behind miles and miles and miles of traffic which we were of course obliged to overtake; it’s the safest way for motorcycles to travel in such conditions. We certainly need to keep our attention focused forward, not in the mirrors at cars approaching from behind.
When we got to Las Cruces, we swung south on I-25. I was in third position in the formation, but I waved Gary ahead. I’d reminded L&J via intercom that I needed to exit on Lohman Avenue, whereas they would exit at University to get fuel and then lunch at Chachi’s. But I wasn’t sure if Gary remembered or even knew that I was making a stop at Best Buy, and I didn’t want him following me there for no good reason.
The best thing about Best Buy was the air conditioning; it was a welcome cool respite from what had become another hot desert afternoon. My mission took 15 minutes, not the 10 I’d said told the group it would, but when I came out I had a 4 terabyte Western Digital Passport USB hard drive – an effectively bottomless black box into which I could dump camera video files unconstrained by my laptop’s remaining capacity, or any destination’s paucity of internet bandwidth.
I hustled down the freeway to the next exit, gassed up (correctly guessing the Speedway is what was previously the Exxon-Mobile Larry had identified as the fuel stop of choice), and a quick check of Googlemaps confirmed Chachi’s was literally a stone’s throw down the side street. I rolled into the parking lot and found a shady spot; my fellow riders were out on the patio with my icewater already set and available for my refreshment.
Once again we were presented with the choice of “red or green” chile to be ladled atop our meals. By this time Larry had been advocating the name of this epic should be Red or Green?, since it seemed like every place we ate we always got the same question.
Gary and I always gave the same answer: “Christmas!”, which is to say, both.
But I was by no means going to simply allow Larry to dictate the title of my tour, of which his tour was only a significant fraction. And at this point my choice of the tour’s working title was bending toward Now Where The Hell Did I Put That?
The salient recurring theme for me on this trip was that I had constantly been misplacing small items. I’d apparently left one of my prescriptions in my shaving kit back at mom’s house; the previous night I’d wasted way far too much valuable time searching for the GoPro data cable (pro tip: turning lights on often helps); and the same where the hell...? question could have been asked and would have resulted in a variety of answers regarding the locations of my video files. Which clips were still on the camera? Which were only on the camera? Which were on my laptop? Which were in the cloud, wherever that was?
However, there was no point in getting too hung up about it; trek names can’t really be determined until the ride is over.
Chachi’s had served us enormous lunches. Gary had the good sense to abandon his at some point, but I followed my usual self-destructive tendency to consume the entirety of my chile rellenos platter. After such a lunch came the challenge of staying awake as we rolled north on I-25, past the Hillsboro exit from where we’d come the day before and to where we’d return tomorrow.
Our destination this afternoon was Riverbend Hot Springs in Truth or Consequences, where my first task was to sign a waiver full of fine print that obligated me not to drown or otherwise instigate anything that might lead to legal repercussions. At least that’s what Larry claimed was the content; I read it the way I read all EULAs which is to say, not a word. Even so, the gals at the desk were far less emphatic about points of personal hazard and possible death than ensuring my awareness that raising voices above a whisper is considered somewhere between extremely impolite and absolutely forbidden, depending on some arcane demarcation of where on the premises a need to speak might occur. Since the hot tubs themselves were apparently the most restrictive zone, I’m not entirely sure that a drowning person would actually be permitted to cry for help.
Next I was snapped into a wristband containing a waterproof RFID tag that served as my room key. The practicality of this soon became evident as I took a quick shower and changed into my swim trunks, then silently padded to the towel dispenser (also secured by the same RFID key). It was a comforting realization when it finally sank in that I didn’t need to carry around and manage any other key, yet I couldn’t possibly lock myself out of my room or the cool shady courtyard upon which our three-room suit opened.
The tubs all look out over the Rio Grande, the gate to which indicated a “temporary” prohibition against swimming in the river itself. I suspected that sign probably never came down, but I wasn’t particularly keen on the idea of immersing myself in the diluted effluent of the town proper immediately upstream, not to mention more distant but much larger conurbations such as Socorro and Albuquerque.
Riverbend Hot Springs, Truth or Consequences, New Mexico. Image courtesy Larry Haruska.
I settled into one of the larger pools and yeah, it was everything it should have been. My muscles forgot about the tensions introduced by hours in the saddle, and my brain likewise quit working as I gazed vacantly across the river at the mountain ridge beyond, behind which rose banks of cumulonimbus clouds that a few days earlier had been forecast to dampen our ride on this part of the trip.
For a while I napped on a chaise lounge but was eventually roused by Larry with a reminder that this town rolled up its sidewalks very early and if we wanted dinner, we needed to act soon.
I returned to the suite and got dressed, and the four of us took a walk through what passed for downtown, which was indeed essentially closed.
However, Larry had made a heroic attempt to indulge my Thai food addiction, and during his meticulous planning had managed to find, in this single location on the entire itinerary, a restaurant that might sate my inevitable craving. Latitude 33 wasn’t technically a “Thai” restaurant; it advertised as “Asian Fusion”. I’d checked out the online menu from Larry’s house before we left, and thought it might do the trick. But I didn’t have high expectations.
Gary was still full from his giant Mexican lunch; he only ordered a drink and pilfered a few bites from the plate of Crispy Orange Chicken that L&J shared, and seemed to think was pretty good. I wasn’t all that hungry myself and probably should have tried one of the curries, but based on what looked to be a decent spice kick ordered Kitchen Sink Fried Rice. It was palatable, but not particularly spicy by my standards. It didn’t even register on my Thai meter so I remained several days into cold turkey on that score.
We returned to the resort as a spectacular sunset blazed across the western sky.
For a while I napped on a chaise lounge but was eventually roused by Larry with a reminder that this town rolled up its sidewalks very early and if we wanted dinner, we needed to act soon.
I returned to the suite and got dressed, and the four of us took a walk through what passed for downtown, which was indeed essentially closed.
However, Larry had made a heroic attempt to indulge my Thai food addiction, and during his meticulous planning had managed to find, in this single location on the entire itinerary, a restaurant that might sate my inevitable craving. Latitude 33 wasn’t technically a “Thai” restaurant; it advertised as “Asian Fusion”. I’d checked out the online menu from Larry’s house before we left, and thought it might do the trick. But I didn’t have high expectations.
Gary was still full from his giant Mexican lunch; he only ordered a drink and pilfered a few bites from the plate of Crispy Orange Chicken that L&J shared, and seemed to think was pretty good. I wasn’t all that hungry myself and probably should have tried one of the curries, but based on what looked to be a decent spice kick ordered Kitchen Sink Fried Rice. It was palatable, but not particularly spicy by my standards. It didn’t even register on my Thai meter so I remained several days into cold turkey on that score.
We returned to the resort as a spectacular sunset blazed across the western sky.
That aspect of the sunset was invisible from the hot tubs, which all faced east, but the mountains and clouds over there ultimately developed a soft glow that lingered for a very long time.
I was comfortable in all possible ways, not least being the knowledge that as I floated effortlessly in the steamy baths my GoPro was busily dumping its entire contents into the 4TB hard drive, where it would barely make a perceptible dent.
Ultimately the deepening gloom revealed hundreds of points of green laser light projected from somewhere atop the resort’s pergola onto the riparian vegetation on the river's far bank.
I like lasers.
I was comfortable in all possible ways, not least being the knowledge that as I floated effortlessly in the steamy baths my GoPro was busily dumping its entire contents into the 4TB hard drive, where it would barely make a perceptible dent.
Ultimately the deepening gloom revealed hundreds of points of green laser light projected from somewhere atop the resort’s pergola onto the riparian vegetation on the river's far bank.
I like lasers.
Riverbend Hot Springs, Truth or Consequences, New Mexico. Image courtesy Larry Haruska.
CineMusicalMotoEpics of the Day:
- Journey To Cloudcroft
- Music: Nobody by The Doobie Brothers
- Rest and Ricklaxation
- Music: Alligator by Of Monsters and Men
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