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Wow. What a day today was! We did more today than any other day so far. I know, we have just
started!
Today started with Mike waking up and saying, “At least you don’t have to look out the window to
see what the weather’s
like”. He was right, a perfect morning was waiting to greet us as we prepared to move
on to our first dealer visit of the
trip at Sun Country Cycles in Farmington New Mexico.
As we started off, we stopped to get
a quick picture of us on Rt. 66 in Holbrook Arizona.
We rode up Rt. 77 and jumped on a road that took us to Ganado that
had a measured section of straight road with absolutely no
curves that lasted over 9 miles! “Another road for Paul!” Mike said.
We have been on a lot of very straight roads over the past few days and that may seem boring
to some as they want to be on
all twisty roads but on these bikes, any road, straight or curved is a blast! We draft each
other for miles at a time and get
up close to each other and listen for the carburetors and exhaust to get perfectly synchronized
and make our two twin
cylinder bikes sound like one four cylinder! To hear the resonance of the carburetors is just
sooo cool! We are going to try
to get this on our voice recorder. If it turns out we’ll try to get it on the sight.
Our first encounter of other life forms
was quite a surprise. The sight of two wild horses crossing the road on one the huge open
ranges. By the time I could get
stopped, they were moved quite away from the road but just sort of hanging out on the range.
We saw over 25 wild horses and
even a couple of newborn colts! Then we came across a herd of cattle that seemed to be pretty
curious of us as well.
We gassed up in Ganado and as we parked Mike got quite and said, “You will NOT believe
this!” I thought that something bad
had happened to his bike and was startled at his tone of voice. I asked him what was up as
I was taking off my helmet and he
told me to come take a look at something. Turns out that his trick speedometer that he has
hooked up to his bike for accurate
mileage and speed-readings showed EXACTLY 1000 miles right at the gas station! That was pretty
amazing, well maybe not to you
but to us it was. Sure it doesn’t take much to humor us already but what can we say?!
I took a quick catnap (or dognap!) and then we got on with the ride.
We then headed up to Mexican Water and stopped for lunch. I have to say that this stretch
of road had some of the best “eye
candy” (as Mike says) that either of us has ever seen. The scenery was absolutely amazing
and to be honest, the only words
that Mike and I can come up with would be “truly awesome”. It seemed like we were
stopping every mile or so from amazement of
the desert scenery. When we started on this road, we thought that we would be just riding
in the desert, but, turns out that
we lucked out. This road in my (and Mikes) opinion makes Sedona look pale! Not because of
the scenery but because you ride
right up to it! We rode on top of and inside canyons that were hundreds of feet high. We saw
things that pictures could never
do proper justice, but instead of thinking that I can describe it, here are a few of them.
Our abilities as photographers do not do much justice to what we saw, but it’s the best
we can do!
We rode up to Four Corners to see where the states of Utah, Arizona, New Mexico and Colorado
meet. This spot is in Navajo
Nation Territory and after paying three bucks to get to the monument, we got or picture taken
on the site. Mike wanted to
take the bikes on the monument but I did not feel like taking that sort of chance as there
was a sign stating that no
motorized vehicles or livestock were allowed on the spot. Mike argued that we would only be
pushing the bikes there but I
overruled his wishes!
After Four Corners, we rode to Sun Country Cycles in Farmington New Mexico and made our first
stop at a Honda Riders Club of
America Chapter Dealer. Keith Jones, the storeowner was there with a bunch of folks waiting
for us as we pulled in on the
bikes. We made one miscalculation on this day. We forgot that there was a time change on the
New Mexico State Line! I thought
that we were there an hour earlier that we actually were until I saw a clock with the local
time. Turns out we lost an hour!
Of well, Keith started feeding his guests that consisted of HRCA members as well as many store
customers.
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| Two states down and 11 to go!!!! |
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| A nice crowd showed up for the cookout |
Mike and I chatted with scores of people and had a blast talking about the trip and the bikes
as well as hearing stories from
others on rides that they have taken over the years!
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| Mel Harroll with his new VTX |
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| Richard Hostetler and grandson Chuck Hood |
We got a shot of us with Keith in front of the store.
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| Keith just celebrated his first ten years in business |
After we left the store, we rode to Chuck Thurston’s home and received a quick tour
of his collection of bikes. Its great to
know that there are plenty of us out there!
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| Chuck Thurston with some of his toys |
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| Another Marusho that makes three this trip |
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| 1947 Wizzer like Mike's father owned as a kid |
We rode 268 miles today, which takes us to a total of 1195 accumulated miles. We also did
a fuel consumption test on a 100
mile stretch. Mike got 62mpg and I got 55mpg. We had a tailwind during this but we have also
been no lower than 5200 feet
above sea level since 9:00am Wednesday! The bikes have been running perfect and we have not
had a glitch. As far as our
butts… well, believe it or not we have been fine there! We both had some concerns about
that portion of our body on the
bikes, but so far, things are really great!
Tomorrow we will have breakfast with a few Sun Country’s HRCA Chapter members and then
head for Taos New Mexico.
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