A good motorcycle ride will do that every time.
Here’s a four-minute GoPro video I put together yesterday after a ride to Arivaca, one of the oldest settlements in southern Arizona. The town is located just 11 miles north of the Mexican border, dead center in one of the Southwest’s busiest drug smuggling and migrant corridors. Toward the end of the video, in fact, you’ll see me stopping at a “temporary” US Border Patrol checkpoint (a polite fiction: that checkpoint’s been there as long as I’ve lived in Arizona, 19 years now).
Arivaca’s one of my favorite local area rides, a 150-mile round trip from my home in northeast Tucson. Getting there involves riding from one corner of the city to the other, then south on Interstate 19 through Green Valley to Amado … a blah ride, nothing to write home about … but the payback comes on Arivaca Road, a nearly-deserted two-lane blacktop through gorgeous country with rolling hills and curves. You have to keep an eye out for wandering cattle (it’s open range country down there), but what a ride. Each of the short clips I spliced together to make this video was filmed on the road to and from Arivaca.
I stopped at the Gadsden Coffee Company in Arivaca, a popular destination for motorcyclists, and enjoyed a cup of dark roast under the shade of a tree. An hour later I retraced my way home, making a quick selfie stop at the old Longhorn Grill in Amado.
A nice day, my Sunday, and I hope yours was too.