DAY SIXTEEN - or "A shooting star gone horribly, horribly wrong."

Saturday, 1 November 2008.

Well, the Needles Inn does NOT look any better in the daylight. The place has been in business since the road out front was still called Route 66 (which was actually kinda cool), and it seemed to still have the same bedding from that time. The Krylon that was unsuccessfully applied to the deteriorating porcelain in the bathtub didn't improve my opinion of the place, either. I got online to blog and check out the forums for a bit, but then hit the road almost immediately. It was only 8am and it was already nearing 80 degrees. This was going to be a great day for a ride.

I had looked up the Racetrack Playa in Death Valley on the internet while at Viking Manor. It turned out that the only way to access the lakebed was over 27 miles of unimproved washboard gravel road. No thanks. That was just too far to risk laying the bike down or bouncing into the ditch. So I decided, to my own chagrin, to skip Death Valley. Instead, my first goal this morning was Kingman, Arizona. From there I would turn north to visit the Skywalk over the Grand Canyon.

It was nearly noon when I pulled into Kingman, and I went straight to the local visitors' center to get my bearings and find out any suggestions for my trip north. The visitors' center was in a converted electric plant which was a huge old brick building with a lot of tall arched windows. It also housed a Route 66 museum and a large gift shop. Outside was a huge old locomotive and caboose that seemed to be well cared for. I went inside and talked to the nice lady at the counter and got some rather distressing information from her. Apparently the tribe that owns the skywalk has chosen to invest their considerable income from this venture (did I mention that it costs almost $80 per person between parking and entry fees?) in an airport rather than improving access roads. According to the lady at the visitors' center, the last seven miles approaching the skywalk area are unimproved gravel roads that are bad enough to keep the speeds down to about 15 mph and make you wonder if you'll ever get there when riding in a car. Her advice to me - "don't do it on a motorcycle; you'll hate it." She had been there herself and also told me that the floor of the skywalk is not actually clear acrylic that you can look through. You have to hang your head over the guardrail to get the desired effect and the views are not as spectacular as the "main" part of the canyon. Overall, this was another bust to my plans. I decided to listen to that inner voice telling me to just head home, but I was still pretty peeved to miss two of my major goals for this trip in as many days.

Back on the road, I started seeing remnants of old Route 66 and some abandoned reminders from the Mother Road's heyday. Small cafes and "trading posts" had been bypassed by the new highway, and without a nearby exit ramp many of these places were doomed. I recognized the Twin Arrows trading post from one of my books on Route 66 and was a little sad to see that it was out of business and giving way to vandals and Mother Nature. A sad little part of me thought about how cool it would be to put it all back together and get the neon working, just to save a little part of this country's past. Many miles on down the road I actually saw a rare sight - a trading post from the Route 66 era that was still open and doing business. It was still tough to tell where I should exit from the highway to visit the place, so I just pulled to the side of the highway to take a picture across the fence. That is actually old Route 66 running in front of the store. VERY cool.

About three in the afternoon, I saw a couple of billboards for Meteor Crater. When I saw the one that said the crater was only six miles off the highway, I decided "what the heck" and pulled off to check it out. You could see the crater rim from several miles away as you approached. This is another one of those features of the American west that just overpowers you with its sheer size. The little square spot on the side turned out to be the entire visitors' center complex. The crater itself is nearly a mile wide and nearly 600 feet deep,and the rim rises more than 150 feet above the surrounding desert floor. I paid my entry fee and went inside, checking out the museum before heading out back to the observation platforms. The upper platform was oddly similar to the one overlooking Mount Saint Helens, and gave a similar expansive view. I shot a set of five pictures that were then stitched together by a good friend to form this panorama (thanks Ken!). For a sense of scale, the black spot in the middle of the bottom of the crater is some left over mining equipment from the 1920s expedition to recover the meteor (before they knew that it had been obliterated on impact). It's about ten feet tall and fifteen or more feet long. For some really good background and a great aerial shot of the crater, go to http://www.barringercrater.com/science/. After sightseeing, I went into the gift shop and bought walking stick badges and golf balls, and got my son a piece of the actual meteor as a souvenir. I'm pretty sure he'll like that. Then I headed out to hit the road again.

On my way out, I was fussed at by one of the locals - a crow the size of a small buzzard. The park "ranger" standing out front told me the crow was a bit of a jerk. Apparently he has figured out how to sit on the edge of a trash can and methodically pull up on the side of the bag until it has turned inside out and spilled the contents onto the ground. Then he goes rooting through it for chow. I got within about five feet of the guy and leaned on the handrail to take this picture. When he took off, the entire handrail shook. I can see how these things creeped out Edgar Allen Poe.

I finally got back on the road and started putting some miles under the bike again. I only stopped a little while before sundown to take this last picture and visit a "real" Native American trading post. It turns out that you can tell the "real" stuff by the outrageous price tags. The smallest hand-woven rugs (about 2' x 3') were on sale for 50% off their original price of $700! And all the jewelry started out around $120 and went up from there. Guess they're still a little ticked about the whole Manhattan-for-blankets trade thing, huh? After that, I was able to make it to Albuquerque, New Mexico not long after dark, resulting in 550 miles covered today. The total mileage for this trip is now up to 5490 and I'm starting to feel it a little. But at the same time, I'm feeling good about getting closer to home.

I also had another small epiphany today after leaving Meteor Crater. I had been pretty upset that I had been forced to skip two of my planned stops on this trip. What had really happened, though, is that I had forgotten my "mission" for this trip. I came out here to enjoy the ride and see what I could on the way. I had become so focused on making certain things happen during the trip that I was starting to forget that the trip itself was supposed to be the focus. The epiphany was that this same concept applied to my current situation "back in the world." I have been so focused on forcing certain things to happen a certain way in my personal life that I was forgetting to actually live my life. I don't know if I will be able to keep this mind set when I get home, but if I can I believe it will definitely help me to accept things better and to deal with troubles as they come instead of trying to force them to work out my way ahead of time.

Enough psychobabble for one day. I still have 1500 more miles to cover and it's time for bed.

DAY FIFTEEN - or "Where the heck was Barstow?!"

Friday, 31 October 2008.

Happy Hallowe'en. I woke up this morning to the sound of nothing. It was weird. The Viking family had gotten up and gotten ready for school and work without making any noise apparently. They were letting the old dude sleep, I guess. After staying up talking late into the night, it was nice to sleep in a bit without worrying when check out time was. Mrs. Viking had made cranberry muffins before heading off to work and we stood around chatting for a bit before it was time for me to hit the road. Like the other cachers I had met so far, the Vikings were gracious hosts and even nicer in person than they seemed online.

After leaving Lompoc, I headed toward Los Angeles. The 101 spent some time running right along the coast again. It was a warm beautiful morning for riding and the views of the beaches and the ocean were much clearer than they had been farther north. There were dozens of buses full of migrant workers on the road headed for the fields. Each one pulled a trailer with a couple of porta-potties on it. I hadn't really thought about bathroom breaks in a farm field. I passed the buses pretty quickly to avoid any "sloshing." It was interesting to see these folks in fields within yards of million-dollar homes right on the beach, making a couple of bucks an hour breaking their backs. It gave me something to dwell on as I rode on down the highway.

Although it doesn't look far on a map, it took more than three hours to get from Lompoc to Rancho Cucamonga. I was going to meet a cacher named Webfoot after his teaching job was done for the day, so I arrived with more than an hour to spare. I found a coffee shop with free wi-fi and sat for a while drinking Chai and browsing. The barista was an interesting gal. I at first thought she was wearing the scarf around her neck because the boss wanted her to hide a tatoo. Turns out that she had gotten a nurse friend to sew large stitches into her neck Frankenstein's-monster-style for Hallowe'en and was hiding them to keep from freaking the customers. She must have been a Mac user ("10% of the market, 90% of the weird").

I finally met Webby at the appointed time and we went back to the coffee shop. My original intention was to just hang out and socialize for a bit then hit the road again. It turned out that he and his family had already made plans to invite me to stay for dinner, though. So I changed plans and followed him home. We stopped on the way so that I could find one of his caches in a nearby park, then we went on to his house. It was still a couple of hours until dinner time, so we had plenty of time to sit around and chat and walk to the local grocery for dinner supplies. I got to meet Webby's sons and Jack, their lovable but lunatic dog, then Webby's wife when she got home. After sitting around chatting for a bit, I got to have a second delicious home cooked meal in as many days. This time it was salmon and vegetables, followed by home-made cookies-and-cream ice cream. EXTREMELY good food once again.

It was dark by the time dinner was over and trick-or-treaters had started knocking at the door, as well as parking outside to go through the local haunted house set up by one of Webby's neighbors. All this action was making Jack completely nuts. I still wanted to at least reach I-40 at Barstow before I stopped for the night, so I decided to leave the Webfoots (Webfeet?) to try to calm their poor dog. I had greatly enjoyed the food and the company and was glad to have met this family, but it was time to hit the road. I didn't want to be out on the highway for too long on a Friday night.

An hour later my gas tank was almost empty as I rolled into the outskirts of Barstow on I-15. I stopped for gas at the first exit but then rode on again, intending to find a hotel on I-40. Turns out there wasn't one. I have no idea what happened, but I expected a decent-sized city to be somewhere near the intersection of two major highways and it just wasn't there. The usual gas stations, hotels, and fast food joints that populate every exit near any decent-sized city disappeared as soon as I merged onto I-40. So did the exits. A few miles after I first changed highways, I came to the next exit. There was one Bates Motel-looking inn tucked under the overpass and I decided to skip it. The highway sign said there was another town about 40 miles down the road, so I decided to head for it. It was still just after 8 pm so I figured I had the time. Another bad call. The "town" of Ludlow consisted of one truck stop and one seven-room motel with a sign that said to ask at the truck stop if I wanted a room. The only room left had three king-sized beds in it, but no internet or even a telephone. They wanted $70 for it. I asked the overworked register-jockey where the next hotel was. He told me I could head back to Barstow or I could drive another 90 miles to Needles. Wow. I dug out the cold weather gloves and hit the road again. It was really wild to drive through unlit desert for an hour and a half, passing very few other vehicles and even fewer exits, none of which seemed to go anywhere. I saw more stars that night than I had seen in one place in years. It was peaceful and almost meditative, but became a little lonely after more than an hour had passed. Finally, just as the isolation of it all started to creep me out a little, a slight glow on the horizon let me know that I was approaching civilization again. I had reached Needles. I took the first exit with any sign of commercial activity and pulled into the first crappy motel that had "Free Wi-Fi" on the sign. I paid the nice lady at the front desk, checked the bedspread for cockroaches, and crashed. This had been a lot longer drive than I had planned (like two hours longer) and I was freaking tired. I guess the blogging could wait another night. I had ridden 433 miles today, putting me less than 60 miles from 5000 for the trip. I even ignored the freight trains passing by just across the road and fell into a pretty good sleep.