Some highlights from my long weekend motorcycle trip:
- I rode from Tucson to Las Vegas on Thursday. That night the kids and I went out to dinner, along with our friend Rudy. Rudy’s an old hashing friend; I slept at his house during the trip.
- I bought a balaclava to wear under my open-face helmet so I didn’t get too much sun on my face. On Facebook (and in an earlier post to this blog) I called it a baclava. I’ll never live that down … my friends won’t let me.
- On Friday I went to see Taylor play fast-pitch softball. She plays high school varsity and is really quite the athlete … as are all her team members. I know that because they won. Not only did they win, it was a shutout.
- Saturday we watched Quentin play Little League. His team lost, but we all had a great time watching the game. After the game we went to Hooters for the by-now obligatory photo session.
- If you don’t count my two 400+ mile solo rides to & from Las Vegas, the big ride was Sunday, when Gregory and I rode from Las Vegas to Zion National Park in Utah and back. Gregory rode a loaner from the local BMW dealer, and unfortunately didn’t make it all the way home … a flat tire sidelined him 10.7 miles west of Mesquite, Nevada (aka “the perineum of Nevada”). We put a can of compressed air and sealant in the tire, but that didn’t work. I plugged the hole with a tubeless tire repair kit and we put another can of air/sealant in it. That worked … for about a mile. We waited together in a truck pullover beside I-15, working things out with the BMW dealer back in Las Vegas. Once we got the cell phone call that the dealer was en route to Mesquite to pick up Gregory and the bike, I rode back alone. Gregory got back, safe & sound, two hours later.
And now, the photos to go with the highlights (click the photos to view on a separate page; click them again to enlarge):
Total mileage this trip: 1410. The Wing ran perfectly, but after Gregory’s experience, I made sure to stock up on emergency tire repair stuff … compressed air, extra plugs, rubber cement. The baclava/balaclava was a lifesaver … although it was cold, it was always sunny, and I’d have been badly sunburnt without it.
Next big trip? Probably this fall, when I plan to ride up to the Flagstaff/Grand Canyon area. And you can bet I’ll be ready in the event of a flat!
Actually, I liked the baclava. Sosrt of like my mother, the English teacher, telling us to degradate the Christmas tree. She loved to play with the English language.
But remember Lewis Carroll’s explanation of such slips:
If a man starts to say “furious” and “fuming,” if he leans, no matter how slightly, towards “furious,” he will say “furious” first. If, on the other hand, he leans ever so slightly towards “fuming,” he will say “fuming” first. But the man with a perfectly balanced mind will have no choice but to say “frumious.” I’ve always believed that David Darling is a classic example of a man with a perfectly balanced mind.
And, by the way, how come no one ever goes far enough north to Dinosaur National Park to bring me back a trilobite fossil? Hmmmmmmmmmm?
Thanks for the info on the flying radar screen.
r