A Late Start And A Long Ride
Thursday, October 13th, 2022
Getting Bill’s bike loaded on to get towed to the shop for an inner tube.
Morning in Alpine, Arizona, and we had to wait for the tow truck to haul Bill’s Harley to Eager, where a shop would put a tube in. We had been told it would be noon but the guy was able to make it by 11, so that was good.
Meanwhile, I took this opportunity to remove the body work from my Concours so as to put my highway peg back on. Taking the body work off is an involved process that I hate but what better time to do it than right now. And it all went smoothly so it was good.
The tow truck arrived and loaded Bill on and we took off for Eager. There, the shop was ready for us and got on it right away but it was still several hours before the job was done. We finally got off from Eager about 3 p.m., and this was our longest day’s ride of the trip. Time to burn some miles.
We headed north on US 191, up to AZ61, which became NM53 when we crossed the state line, and then north to Gallup on NM602. At one point heading up 191 Bruce blasted past us on his ST1300 and in a flash was lost from view up ahead. Cool. What’s up?
Dennis was leading and at the AZ61 intersection he pulled over for a pit stop. Good thing, as it turned out, because he had not understood that we wanted to turn here and it was only after a couple minutes that we noticed Bruce had made the turn and was waiting over there. So we were back together. Turns out Bruce, who hasn’t owned the ST all that long, figured he wanted to see what it could really do and this road was so open and unbusy that he figured let’s go. And go he did. Everybody needs to do that now and then, don’t they?
So we made the turn and made it to Gallup, where we picked up US 491 headed north to Farmington, our destination for the night. This is a long stretch and we just blasted. Dennis was leading again and his GPS told him our best route would be to take 491 as far as Indian Service Route 5 (BIA-5; this is reservation) and then go east to NM371, then north to Farmington.
Dennis almost missed the turn and we found ourselves past the turn with a median preventing us from doing a U-turn and heading south so we waited till there was no traffic and then turned and rode the wrong way down the highway back to the turn. Of course, by the time we got there there was a lot of traffic coming off BIA-5 so I’m sure we looked kind of funny facing that way on that side of the road waiting to be able to turn. But it worked.
By now it was getting toward dusk. We don’t generally ride after dark these days. This was going to be interesting. Dennis was riding hard because he wanted to get to Farmington before the light was too much gone. But hey, sunset in New Mexico is frequently pretty gorgeous and so the ride did have its charms.
It was almost fully dark by the time we pulled into Farmington and we checked in our hotel and immediately went to dinner so as to get to the restaurant before they closed. Finally we can relax. Except that Bill had noticed his bike handling a bit off coming into town, and now especially going to and from dinner. ???
Biker Quote for Today
You might be a Yuppie biker if you move your bike and the grass is brown under the wheels.
