I've been through the desert* on a horse with no name,
It felt good to be out of the rain,
In the desert, you can remember your name, for there ain't no one for to give you no pain.
La laaa laa, la la la la la, la la laa, laa la.
*The Mojave desert, to be precise. A nice little number from the appropriately named group America. Are you picking up my general drift. Carolyn often reckons I should have been a hermit, and she ought to know! This morning I left Bakersfield, at the lower end of the San Joaquin Valley. If not the breadbasket of California, certainly the fruit and veg basket. To get to San Diego from Bakersfield, you have basically two choices. You go through Los Angeles, or you don't. I decided not to, and gave it a wide berth. So wide, in fact, that I went through the Mojave Desert rather than suffer the pain of the LA freeways. So, west on the CA 58 for a hundred and forty miles to Barstow, well into the Mojave, and past Edwards Air Force Base and past one of those plane parks where they keep mothballed airliners, then south down the CA 247 to Yucca Valley. The 58 is indistinguishable from a fast and furious Interstate, or so I thought until I did an unavoidable few miles on the I-15 just before I got into Barstow. That was a reality check. It has to be said that the main road system here does exactly what it is supposed to do. It allows vehicles to get from A to B in a hurry. You can cover over 200 miles in around 3 hours, but I don't reckon its much fun. Especially on a little bike with a lot of luggage. You get about as much respect as an insect.
I was bloody glad to get onto the 247, which I had pretty much to myself. Mainly because it doesn't go anywhere in particular, except through more desert. It was warm, but not unpleasant, and I enjoyed the ride, the scenery and the solitude. Even had time to hum a few tunes to myself, as we hermits are prone to do.
I stopped for a break at a nondescript little joint called Lucerne Valley. If anyone could grow lucerne here, that really would be a miracle. I think the main industry is sand. However, at a gas station, I engaged the friendly hispanic looking babe behind the counter in conversation, after she asked me if I was English or German. I responded in my best Spanish that I was an Australian tourist, and had been here for 3 months. She totally ignored that information, and asked me another question, in English. Oops. Sometimes the Mexicanos think you are patronising them if you slip in a bit of espanol, just trying to be friendly. A few minutes later, she told me she was from Morocco. No wonder she missed the Spanish. What a waste. D'oh!
Before I left, another guy came up, said he was a rider, and we just started chatting. You can't beat a small town if you want to meet real people. In a similar small town a little earlier, I spotted a bit of local humour. Or more likely the result of frustration at idiot drivers and lack of action by local officialdom. This house was located on a sharp s-bend on the main street. Clearly the home owner was hispanic, due to the structure of the sentence, as in Spanish the words get the way wrong around put. But who needs as truck in their lounge room?
So I moved on towards Yucca Valley. No issues with nomenclature this time, there were actually yuccas all over the place. I decided to wring the maximum value out of my Parks Pass before I leave, and headed into the Joshua Tree National Park, just a few miles down the road. It was only 95 degrees, but didn't feel too bad if you kept moving. So it was a quick visit, unimpeded as it was by anyone else in the park. Looks like the cover of an Eagles LP, doesn't it?
As you can plainly see, the landscape consists entirely of the so called Joshua Trees, saltbush, and piles of rocks. But it is visually stunning all the same. In the desert, you can.....................etc. Actually, I thought it was pretty neat to have a National Park named after a U2 album. Bono must be really pleased about that. My accommodation for the night was in Palm Springs, and speaking of Bono, you may be aware that Sonny Bono used to be the Mayor of Palm Springs, when he was alive, and there is a Sonny Bono Memorial Highway or some such around here somewhere, I noted on a map. (Like the way I slipped that in?). This is the sort of stuff I think about when I'm riding.
Heading into Palm Springs, the CA 62 drops literally hundreds of metres onto the floor of a wide a valley. The temperature rocketed up to 100 deg, and the wind picked up. The valley floor is filled with wind turbines, hundreds of the things. And where do they put wind turbines, Einstein?? Next minute I was battling a full-on cross wind that had me freaking out again. Not quite as bad as I got earlier in the trip, but right up there. Once again, the weather gods were making sure I wasn't getting out of this until I paid the full fare. Not too much later, I actually saw a road sign which read Cross Wind. No shit, I thought as I read it at an angle of 45 degrees to the vertical, with neck muscles bulging. By the time I got into town, the temperature readout was 105.5 degrees and it was blowing fit to rip the roofs off houses. Not as hot as the 120 deg F blast furnaces that Chrispy and I got in Pakistan and Iran, but close enough, especially with the raging wind factor. This was truly the Breath of Hell. As in "who left the doors open, Satan will be really pissed off", and "who the Hell would want to live here?"
But at this juncture, let me quote from (arguably) one of the worst Aussie movies ever, and we've had a few, the 1970's vintage The Adventures of Barry McKenzie. When Bazza meets an expat Aussie living in Paris, namely Col the Frog, Col imparts - with his newly acquired Euro sophistication - some wisdom along the following lines. This must be said with an Australian accent, with no trace of French pronunciation whatsoever, just like the way I pronounce French: "Well mon Baz, i'ts an ill vent that blows nobody any bon."
You know, sometimes the stuff floating around in my head really scares me. (And its my head!!)
It was an ill wind all right, but it did actually blow me some good. Let me explain. A few nights back, I had rocked up to a typical low end motel, to which I find myself attracted these days, just out side Yosemite. I hadn't booked anywhere, as I wasn't sure where I might be when I finished riding. It was too hot to even think about putting the tent up, and I had a long day, and was fairly knackered. So as a walk in, you pay a little more, but I wasn't prepared for the shock of $150 a night, for very ordinary. The town was packed, and that was it. Tourist season, and I was screwed! I took it, but after this reality check, I got back to booking ahead, at my preferred price range. And I only told you that so I could tell you this. I rode into Palm Springs thinking I was looking for the usual dump, sorry, economical lodging. When the GPS guided me to some really flash looking joint, I thought it had gone bunta again, and I was just about to crack a fruity, when the penny finally dropped. Wake up, numb nuts, this is summer, and nobody wants to live here! In other words, my faithful readers, its off season. The pleasure palaces are all empty, so they just about give the rooms away, just so they can pay the power bills and the skeleton staff. As I write these words, I am ensconced in a palatial room with all mod cons, and then some. Just had a dip in the pool, I have some antipasto and cheese happening, along with a cheeky little pino grigio, (Californian, of course) and the air conditioner is drawing about 100 amps, maybe even 150. In fact, I'm getting a bit cold, better put the monogrammed bathrobe on. It's going to be a wrench to leave here tomorrow. Maybe just another day.
Let me just backtrack a bit. A few days earlier, when I left Merced, I followed a route suggested to me by Steve Linden, which had me doing a loop on the north side of the Yosemite NP, through the Stanislaus National Forest, then entering the Park from the eastern side. I would have been unlikely to have picked this route by myself. And it was a blast. There was hardly any other traffic on the CA 108 through the forest, it crested at the Sondra Pass, at 9,624 ft, then dropped down the other side, past Mono Lake, and into Yosemite via the back door, somewhat.
At one point, I thought I was in a war zone, but it turned out the Marines have a training facility in the forest, and there were humvees everywhere and funny little houses all waiting to be blown up. Down at lower elevations there was a flight line of 6 Chinook helicopters, but signs on the road said no stopping. So no photos, either. But a bloody good ride, so thanks Steve. I took a few more conventional photos in the park, which was, as indicated earlier, chock a block, and the traffic out of the place was painful. But it is summertime, and this is what happens. Nevertheless, it is still very spectacular, but you do have to like rocks.
So there it is, all good things must come to an end. As much as I'd like to just keep on riding till I finally kark it, I now have aches and pains in places I didn't even know belonged to me. Well, at 40 you have to expect these things. Three months of seeing most of the places in the USA and Canada that I have always wanted to see, and a few places I've seen again. I am indeed one lucky, lucky bastard. And tomorrow (if I can tear myself away from this ridiculously priced luxury) I head back into San Diego, but it will be a circuitous route, stretching the journey out as long as possible. I have a cunning plan which will take me through the backblocks, and deposit me at my chosen lodging under a bridge somewhere near the main flightpath, hopefully before the rush hour traffic gets too bad. I then have to clean the battle scarred machine for the last time, this time it gets the full treatment. I have a potential buyer looking at it on the weekend, and you never know your luck in the big city. I might even have time to reflect (blogwise, I mean) on what has been for me, a fantastic, wonderful journey. Otherwise, I'll do it when I get home and get over the jetlag. Or maybe after Carolyn and I get back from a weekend of making up for lost time in our preferred treatment facility, ie a farmhouse in the picture perfect wine country of the Clare Valley in Winter time. I can almost smell the shiraz now. But I will have a wrap up sometime. Friends, thanks for coming with me and sharing once again the highs and lows of bike travel.
It felt good to be out of the rain,
In the desert, you can remember your name, for there ain't no one for to give you no pain.
La laaa laa, la la la la la, la la laa, laa la.
*The Mojave desert, to be precise. A nice little number from the appropriately named group America. Are you picking up my general drift. Carolyn often reckons I should have been a hermit, and she ought to know! This morning I left Bakersfield, at the lower end of the San Joaquin Valley. If not the breadbasket of California, certainly the fruit and veg basket. To get to San Diego from Bakersfield, you have basically two choices. You go through Los Angeles, or you don't. I decided not to, and gave it a wide berth. So wide, in fact, that I went through the Mojave Desert rather than suffer the pain of the LA freeways. So, west on the CA 58 for a hundred and forty miles to Barstow, well into the Mojave, and past Edwards Air Force Base and past one of those plane parks where they keep mothballed airliners, then south down the CA 247 to Yucca Valley. The 58 is indistinguishable from a fast and furious Interstate, or so I thought until I did an unavoidable few miles on the I-15 just before I got into Barstow. That was a reality check. It has to be said that the main road system here does exactly what it is supposed to do. It allows vehicles to get from A to B in a hurry. You can cover over 200 miles in around 3 hours, but I don't reckon its much fun. Especially on a little bike with a lot of luggage. You get about as much respect as an insect.
I was bloody glad to get onto the 247, which I had pretty much to myself. Mainly because it doesn't go anywhere in particular, except through more desert. It was warm, but not unpleasant, and I enjoyed the ride, the scenery and the solitude. Even had time to hum a few tunes to myself, as we hermits are prone to do.
I stopped for a break at a nondescript little joint called Lucerne Valley. If anyone could grow lucerne here, that really would be a miracle. I think the main industry is sand. However, at a gas station, I engaged the friendly hispanic looking babe behind the counter in conversation, after she asked me if I was English or German. I responded in my best Spanish that I was an Australian tourist, and had been here for 3 months. She totally ignored that information, and asked me another question, in English. Oops. Sometimes the Mexicanos think you are patronising them if you slip in a bit of espanol, just trying to be friendly. A few minutes later, she told me she was from Morocco. No wonder she missed the Spanish. What a waste. D'oh!
Before I left, another guy came up, said he was a rider, and we just started chatting. You can't beat a small town if you want to meet real people. In a similar small town a little earlier, I spotted a bit of local humour. Or more likely the result of frustration at idiot drivers and lack of action by local officialdom. This house was located on a sharp s-bend on the main street. Clearly the home owner was hispanic, due to the structure of the sentence, as in Spanish the words get the way wrong around put. But who needs as truck in their lounge room?
So I moved on towards Yucca Valley. No issues with nomenclature this time, there were actually yuccas all over the place. I decided to wring the maximum value out of my Parks Pass before I leave, and headed into the Joshua Tree National Park, just a few miles down the road. It was only 95 degrees, but didn't feel too bad if you kept moving. So it was a quick visit, unimpeded as it was by anyone else in the park. Looks like the cover of an Eagles LP, doesn't it?
As you can plainly see, the landscape consists entirely of the so called Joshua Trees, saltbush, and piles of rocks. But it is visually stunning all the same. In the desert, you can.....................etc. Actually, I thought it was pretty neat to have a National Park named after a U2 album. Bono must be really pleased about that. My accommodation for the night was in Palm Springs, and speaking of Bono, you may be aware that Sonny Bono used to be the Mayor of Palm Springs, when he was alive, and there is a Sonny Bono Memorial Highway or some such around here somewhere, I noted on a map. (Like the way I slipped that in?). This is the sort of stuff I think about when I'm riding.
Heading into Palm Springs, the CA 62 drops literally hundreds of metres onto the floor of a wide a valley. The temperature rocketed up to 100 deg, and the wind picked up. The valley floor is filled with wind turbines, hundreds of the things. And where do they put wind turbines, Einstein?? Next minute I was battling a full-on cross wind that had me freaking out again. Not quite as bad as I got earlier in the trip, but right up there. Once again, the weather gods were making sure I wasn't getting out of this until I paid the full fare. Not too much later, I actually saw a road sign which read Cross Wind. No shit, I thought as I read it at an angle of 45 degrees to the vertical, with neck muscles bulging. By the time I got into town, the temperature readout was 105.5 degrees and it was blowing fit to rip the roofs off houses. Not as hot as the 120 deg F blast furnaces that Chrispy and I got in Pakistan and Iran, but close enough, especially with the raging wind factor. This was truly the Breath of Hell. As in "who left the doors open, Satan will be really pissed off", and "who the Hell would want to live here?"
But at this juncture, let me quote from (arguably) one of the worst Aussie movies ever, and we've had a few, the 1970's vintage The Adventures of Barry McKenzie. When Bazza meets an expat Aussie living in Paris, namely Col the Frog, Col imparts - with his newly acquired Euro sophistication - some wisdom along the following lines. This must be said with an Australian accent, with no trace of French pronunciation whatsoever, just like the way I pronounce French: "Well mon Baz, i'ts an ill vent that blows nobody any bon."
You know, sometimes the stuff floating around in my head really scares me. (And its my head!!)
It was an ill wind all right, but it did actually blow me some good. Let me explain. A few nights back, I had rocked up to a typical low end motel, to which I find myself attracted these days, just out side Yosemite. I hadn't booked anywhere, as I wasn't sure where I might be when I finished riding. It was too hot to even think about putting the tent up, and I had a long day, and was fairly knackered. So as a walk in, you pay a little more, but I wasn't prepared for the shock of $150 a night, for very ordinary. The town was packed, and that was it. Tourist season, and I was screwed! I took it, but after this reality check, I got back to booking ahead, at my preferred price range. And I only told you that so I could tell you this. I rode into Palm Springs thinking I was looking for the usual dump, sorry, economical lodging. When the GPS guided me to some really flash looking joint, I thought it had gone bunta again, and I was just about to crack a fruity, when the penny finally dropped. Wake up, numb nuts, this is summer, and nobody wants to live here! In other words, my faithful readers, its off season. The pleasure palaces are all empty, so they just about give the rooms away, just so they can pay the power bills and the skeleton staff. As I write these words, I am ensconced in a palatial room with all mod cons, and then some. Just had a dip in the pool, I have some antipasto and cheese happening, along with a cheeky little pino grigio, (Californian, of course) and the air conditioner is drawing about 100 amps, maybe even 150. In fact, I'm getting a bit cold, better put the monogrammed bathrobe on. It's going to be a wrench to leave here tomorrow. Maybe just another day.
Let me just backtrack a bit. A few days earlier, when I left Merced, I followed a route suggested to me by Steve Linden, which had me doing a loop on the north side of the Yosemite NP, through the Stanislaus National Forest, then entering the Park from the eastern side. I would have been unlikely to have picked this route by myself. And it was a blast. There was hardly any other traffic on the CA 108 through the forest, it crested at the Sondra Pass, at 9,624 ft, then dropped down the other side, past Mono Lake, and into Yosemite via the back door, somewhat.
At one point, I thought I was in a war zone, but it turned out the Marines have a training facility in the forest, and there were humvees everywhere and funny little houses all waiting to be blown up. Down at lower elevations there was a flight line of 6 Chinook helicopters, but signs on the road said no stopping. So no photos, either. But a bloody good ride, so thanks Steve. I took a few more conventional photos in the park, which was, as indicated earlier, chock a block, and the traffic out of the place was painful. But it is summertime, and this is what happens. Nevertheless, it is still very spectacular, but you do have to like rocks.
So there it is, all good things must come to an end. As much as I'd like to just keep on riding till I finally kark it, I now have aches and pains in places I didn't even know belonged to me. Well, at 40 you have to expect these things. Three months of seeing most of the places in the USA and Canada that I have always wanted to see, and a few places I've seen again. I am indeed one lucky, lucky bastard. And tomorrow (if I can tear myself away from this ridiculously priced luxury) I head back into San Diego, but it will be a circuitous route, stretching the journey out as long as possible. I have a cunning plan which will take me through the backblocks, and deposit me at my chosen lodging under a bridge somewhere near the main flightpath, hopefully before the rush hour traffic gets too bad. I then have to clean the battle scarred machine for the last time, this time it gets the full treatment. I have a potential buyer looking at it on the weekend, and you never know your luck in the big city. I might even have time to reflect (blogwise, I mean) on what has been for me, a fantastic, wonderful journey. Otherwise, I'll do it when I get home and get over the jetlag. Or maybe after Carolyn and I get back from a weekend of making up for lost time in our preferred treatment facility, ie a farmhouse in the picture perfect wine country of the Clare Valley in Winter time. I can almost smell the shiraz now. But I will have a wrap up sometime. Friends, thanks for coming with me and sharing once again the highs and lows of bike travel.
2 comments:
Thanks for sharing mate, I've looked forward to and enjoyed all your posts (especially the rants, they make me laugh) I know all about the highs and lows, I've been there. Looking forward to catching up again sometime. Chris.
I had a big shiraz in your honour.
Life is good
Stay safe.
Cheers Errol
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