Grab a coffee, pull up a chair.
Heading West
Chapter One!
Since thousands of you asked me to tell you about our scooter vacation...how could I refuse? lol! About a month or two before we pulled out, the M/C club we belonged to decided to take a trip to Wash DC. Hey sounds like a great thing to do. So we went to all the planning meetings. After about the third time we knew it wasn't for us. We were living just south of Dallas TX at the time.
They had it planned out to where they would be, at what hour, what was to be cooked for all the meals....and no one would be allowed to vary from the agenda. I asked what if we wanted to do a side trip to see something...no way....we have a schedule we have to keep. I couldn't see the fun in that so we cancelled the trip.
But hey, we wanted to get away.....so we got the map and started looking. When we were racing we carried a Harley Sportster with us all the time. We raced on Sat nite or Sun and if we didn't break, we had the rest of the week to ride and look at all the tourist spots wherever we happened to be. Because we were based out of Detroit, we had visited most of the places and the states in that part of the country. So....we decided it would be the northwest that we would visit. We struck out heading west with just the two of us....scooer and popup. Before we left, I fashioned a camera mount on the handlebars. I set my Nikon on the mount, connected a remote to the camera and placed the remote button next to my handlegrip. I could reach it by using my thumb without moving my hand. That way I could take picxs as we rode.
We followed I-20 west till it merged with I-10 out around Pecos. Remember now this is in the heat of the Texas summer.....we stopped when we needed to and we rode, rode, and rode. We stopped at campgrounds and set up the popup. We knew that at night we would run into cold temps on the high desert, so we had an electric blanket to keep us warm. We rode on into New Mexico and saw a sign...Visit "Billy The Kid's Grave"...why not so we looked at the map and decided we could leave I-10 and go up and catch I-40... so we rode the back roads up to Fort Sumner and stopped at his grave....westward ho and the next stop was the Painted Desert and the Petrified Forest in Arizona...we had a nice visit there.....headed west once more and I was cruising along the freeway when suddenly I changed lanes without doing so on purpose. Yup, a flat on the back tire. I was able to get stopped without going down. Beth, you know what a flat on a scooter means...not good for sure. It wasn't just a flat but a tire that the tread came off of....we're talking about a tire that is one month old. We were 40 miles east of Winslow AZ....
First thing I did was to get off the road onto the right of way. The road was wide and flat as far as the eye could see. I told Mz Sherry we were in a heck of a fix...we're riding a full dressed Goldwing...it's bad enough to change a tire on a regular scooter, nearly impossible on the side of the road with no real tools and a dresser scooter to boot. We looked at each other and I took both helmets and set them on the edge of the roadway. That is an SOS We Need Help sign in the cycling world. About an hour went by with car and trucks all whizzing by at 70 to 100 mph. Then a Goldwing passes with a girl driving and a guy behind her....they wave and keep going. About a mile down the road they pull over and sit a minute, then make a u turn and come back to us on our side of the road. We were happy to see them and introduced ourselves and told them of our flat. He was in the military and were on their way back to CA and his base. We discussed it and decided that his girlfriend would stay with Sherry and he would take me into Winslow to find help.
We get to Winslow and no one has a tire that size. People there say to go to the dealer in Snowflake, a small town south of Winslow. So we go to Snowflake...dealer says he will send his truck to pick up the scooter and trailer as soon as his delivery guy returns. Said to go back to the scooter and wait. We get back and the girls wanted to know where we had been for so long...we explained. Sherry said while we were gone a Yellow Freight truck stopped to help. She said if I had been there he would have loaded our scoot in his trailer ...he was on his way to Colorado Springs and the Goldwing Road Riders Rally & Trade Show. He waited about 3 hours and then had to leave when we hadn't returned. The guy on the scooter said they had to ride as he was due back at his base. We waited and waited...finally this truck showed up....it was a little Datsun pickup and my scooter was almost as big as his truck. Not an easy job getting an 800 pound cycle shoehorned in to the bed of his truck. The weight put the truck on the frame and almost dragging the ground...and we still had a trailer to add to the weight on the back. Sherry and I crawled in the truck with this kid and we're about a hundred miles back to the shop.
The ride was like an iron wheeled wagon. We could feel every rock in the road. Finally make it to the shop and the service manager tells me it will cost $300 for the tire. Folks, this is an $80 tire....so I asked why so much and was told he had to charge something for his time. We didn't have a choice, so they put a new tire on. Get ready to pay and pull out my American Express Travelers Checks and he says I don't accept those. So I asked why??? Because as soon as you leave here you will have the bank cancel them. I only take cash. Well I have about $50 in cash and about a thousand in Travelers Checks....he told me anyone in town would be glad to cash them for me....then why wouldn't he cash them I thought???? We walk around town, poputation 3600, trying to find enough stores to get $300 so we can get the heck outta Dodge. We collect enough to pay the ransome on our scooter. We hit the road and Snowflake AZ disappears in my rear view mirror. Get back to the interstate and turn west....we've wasted the whole day and now it getting dark and I'm looking right into the setting sun. It was beginning to cool off and I was still mad, so we kept riding till we got tired and stopped for the night.
The next morning we ride through Flagstaff and see snow on the sides of the road for the first time. Here we turn north on our way to the Grand Canyon. When we pull into one of the parking lots, the first person we see is the owner of the bike shop where I bought the tire that is lashed to the top of the trailer. Hey Joe!!!!...we got a problem what'cha going to do about it??? huh? He said he would replace it when we got home. We stopped at Castle Rock lookout I think the name was...we eat a sandwich and talk to a young man about 18-19....and notice he's sitting very close to the rim of the canyon. We move on to the next stop and meet police and ambulances going where we had just been. We found out the kid we talked to had jumped off the rim and killed himself. Had we only known, maybe we could have talked him out of it. Who knows?
We headed west once more and passed through Kingman and followed I-40 on the downward loop back to the CA border. Since we had lived in LA when we were racing, we decided to head up to Vegas as we had friends there on their way to the GWRA Rally in CO, instead of going on to LA.......we get to the Strip and can you imagine trying to find a couple on the street. Impossible.....heard a whistle and it was the couple. They had a hotel room and invited us to stay with them. We got cleaned up, had something to eat, spent the rest of the night at the slots. Never did get in bed. Next stop would be Zion Nat'l Park.
Our trip across the desert was a tough one. My thermometer on the scooter stayed around 120° F. We'd stop about every 30 minutes, dip our long sleeve denim shirts in the ice cooler and start out...wouldn't be long before it was dry and we'd do it all again. We finally pulled into a casino to rest till it cooled a little. Made it to Zions just after dark. Got the popup all ready and hit the bed...we were both wore out. Woke up and crawled out of the sleeping bags to a cold tent...it was 26° with ice on top of our tent. We went from 120° in the afternoon to 26° the next morning....burrrrrr! We had to break the ice off the tent to fold it down and close up the trailer. Stay tuned to this station for chapter 2...coming soon.
Last Updated: April 18, 2005