October 24, 2005 Trip to Phoenix

 

My son Brian signed up to attend that Motorcycle Mechanic Institute school in Phoenix.  We took our time and got up there in two nights.  Brian and I took turns riding the 650cc VStar he was going to use. Wife terri followed in the car.  The pictures shown as "tinyurl" point to the small thumbprints on the right.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Started here:
http://tinyurl.com/dwvs9
and 1004 miles later ended up here:
http://tinyurl.com/dmxpl
 

Made a couple of stops.  This was a pee stop
http://tinyurl.com/9oafn
when we went over the cattle guard the water underneath it should have been
a clue as to what we were to expect.  Brian is not in that picture, he was
running as fast as he could to get away from the mosquitoes.  I could not
even zip my pants up fast enough to keep them out.  This was somewhere about
Lordsburg new Mexico.
 

One interesting thing about New Mexico ... they sell fireworks all year
round.  We stopped at Bowlins Continental Divide (another new Mexico trading
post) and saw the biggest display of fireworks for sale I have ever seen.
Nothing like this in Texas.  Photo of the trading post here
http://tinyurl.com/7k3zy and the firework displays are in the right panel.
 

It got dark again just outside of Tucson.  We were on a 3 lane divided
highway and an 18 wheeler blew a retread on the left lane.  The car behind
the 18 wheeler hit the tire knocking it up in the air and into the middle
lane where Brian was.  He swerved and avoided it, but my wife got hit on the
driver side rear of the cage.  There was a car on our right that seemed to
move over to "get a better look" which prevent us from getting out of the
way.  f**king jerk.  There was as huge black mark on the side of the Toyota
where the retread hit us and went under the rear wheel.
 

 http://tinyurl.com/8jupv is a pic of a few of those saguaro cactus.  The
battery went dead just before we got into the saguaro national forest there
in Arizona.  I did get some movie shots of the forest with all that cactus
as far as the eye could see but cannot cant digitize them now.   If anyone
is really interested I can post it later.  Check back at that "mmi"
subdirectory.
 

Wish we had time to stop at that Barnett Harley Dealer.  It was the biggest
dealership I have ever seen.  They had signs even 200+ miles around el Paso
advertising that even 18 wheelers could get on and get off.. Could have
parked a dozen of those in their parking lot.  Arizona was beautiful, bikes
everywhere, really biker weather.  Brian got invited to a poker run by a
biker we met at the waffle house in phoenix.
 

Followup from March, 2006.  Brian joined the HA support club Sober Riders and is a patch holder.  He also got an 1100cc and we got to figure a way to bring the 650cc back so the other kids can use it.