My Southwest ride

Sorry for the delay report and lack of my post this month but it has been a crazy busy month and doesn't look to change until after Thanksgiving. I have a ton of cool pics to share soon tho and had a cool ride out and will have a hopefully cool ride back after this week. I'm ready to leave although the beach and surf will be missed the LA traffic and Hollywood types won't be. Thanks to Juan for all his cool post while I'm out this fall. I had a unique opportunity w/ my job come up that I couldn't pass up. We have been extremely slow this summer but things have turned around and the contracts are coming in. I was required to work in LA for five weeks at WB Studios and my wife was really bummed although having the money flow again is huge for us but so I asked my boss if instead of weekend flights home if I could that expense and drive the family out. I was little shocked but he was into the idea since paying me mileage really was a ton cheaper than a couple flights. My heart raced at the idea of getting my chance at riding my bike to Cali. for free! I was planning to try to do a summer west coast ride anyways but my finances were looking dim so I really lucked out here. Lets just say it started out insanely cold. Kc to Liberal, Ks. just outside west OK. the first day sucked. I ended up only putting 300 something on the bike before my bones hurt to bad from the cold and I wussed it. Having the trailer and a hotel perdium made this a luxury trip which I took advantage of this day. The next day more crappiness. I rode in sleet through the corner of OK and a little through Texas before taking a brake for awhile.



Finally later that morning a little before New Mexico the sun came out and it dried up.



The rest of that day was one of the best rides of my life. The southwest is beautiful. NM was still very chilly esp. at 70mph but it was nothing short of pure hapiness. The supersuckers country albumn "Must of Been High" along w/ some Willie and Highwaymen made for the perfect southwest ride ipod soundtrack. I did a lot of tuning up on the little Rebel before leaving and it payed off as she ran like a wild Mustang. Not one single problem until Cali. were I just needed a new sparkplug. Splitting off to hit alot of the old parts of rte.66 was a highlight. The kids watched Disney's CARS over and over again while on the road so they really got a kick on route 66.


Wish I had the time to stop at every old cool looking thing that caught my eye but ofcourse I couldn't but I did stop for a quick off road dash across a few fields for some cool pics.





You really got to give some of those guys who run accross the country on chops some credit it takes some endurance and balls. I still want to do it straight on a motorcycle but not on this little bike. Around Albuquerque and gettin into the mountains it got tough. I had horrible head winds hitting me and all I could do to keep highway speed was to tailwind off of semis. Exhaust is not the best fresh air that you would hope to be breathing in the wilderness!

I was pretty satisfied w/ the days ride. I rode way over my eight hour goal and didn't trailer until a hour after dark just to keep my goal of reaching Gallup, NM. that night. The next day oh man soreness but walking out into the desert sun had me pumped considering two days before I was riding in wet fifty (=40 at 70mph) degree on a bad midwest fall day. I rode this whole next day.

We only made it to Flagstaff w/ all our stopping for sights including a meteor and us off roading to some ruins I saw way off in the horizon for some rad pics and rad place to chill for awhile. I realized that if my native american blood would of been a little thicker that I'd have to rename my daughter pooping turtle.

Wish we had time tt stay at this rte.66 classic






slideshow of some cool shots we caught at the ruins
http://s186.photobucket.com/albums/x80/nicholai568/desert/?albumview=slideshow


Waking up in Flagstaff I had the Grand Canyon loop as a must for a day and as you may imagine it was well worth it.






Watched the sunset on the canyon and finished the detour by trailer to stay in Needles Ca.

Made the high desert run to LA the next day on the bike and it was nothing to really show off. The trip was amaizing tho and I will show alot more Cali pics later I rode probly around 80% of it and loved it.........