NEW MEXICO

DAY 6 continued - May 17, 2001
523 miles
Total miles: 1900

Mike and I ended up riding all the way to Santa Fe together. We stopped for Mexican food in Farmington, then headed southeast along a 100+ mile stretch of road, ALL of which was under construction. This was easily the worst stretch of road of the entire trip - not because of the surface conditions, which were actually pretty good, but because of the almost continuous no-passing zones, slow trucks and Mike's insistence on passing anyway. We probably made pretty good time but man were we glad to get to the end of that stretch.

We reached San Ysidro about 5 pm and we had two choices - go southeast and then northeast around the Jemez mountains, or cut through them. We took the latter option - the road less traveled - which did indeed make all the difference.

Highway 4 through the Jemez mountains was probably the best stretch of road of this entire trip. Winding, twisting through forests and past red rock canyons, the sun shining, incredible blue sky and white clouds and perfect temperature. 60 in a 35/45 zone seemed quite reasonable and we encountered very little traffic. This was a national park area and most people had either left for the day or were already established in their campsites. We stopped at the top among an incredible set of meadows.

[Wow.]

We pulled ahead to the next set of fields (visible in the center of the shot above) and saw a good-sized group of deer feeding.

[More wow.]

We finally made it into Santa Fe about 8:30. Mike broke off to find his sister and I came here to Annette's house. Dinner was almost ready, but before I could eat I had to run off to Albertsons for a few important ingredients (beer, ice cream, etc.) I made quite a spectacle there in my silver suit. I'm certain most of the shoppers had no idea what to make of me, but they were definitely interested.

And so after Annette's reliably fantastic Thai food and a little Ben & Jerry's (Southern Pecan Pie) I ended a day covering almost 200 miles more than my previous longest day.

DAY 7 - May 18, 2001
5 miles
Total miles: 1905

Ahhh! What a joy to sleep in 'til 10 am.

My host is Annette Prapasiri, 22 year old graphic designer and student at St. John's College here in Santa Fe. Annette worked for a year at RMB Vivid, the design company I founded with two old friends. During that year we discovered how much we think alike and perceive the world in a similar way, and so ended up becoming very good friends. Annette introduced me to Buddhism and Thai cooking - she's from Thailand, spent time as a Buddhist nun, and her mother runs the only (and very good) Thai restaurant in Las Cruces, New Mexico. Last fall I flew down to Las Cruces for her mother's birthday, which included a blessing by five Thai Buddhist monks. I've sort of adopted her as my aunt Kim, so I guess that makes Annette my cousin.

Today was a pretty light day. I tracked down a BMW dealer in town and got the oil changed and the exhaust manifold retorqued (it tends to work loose every few thousand miles). I also hoped they could hook me up with a lighter throttle return spring. Holding the throttle open all day is pretty tiring on the hand, and though I do have a throttle lock it needs to be set so tight (to fight the spring) that fine tuning the throttle is almost as bad as holding it open. But sadly this was something they could not do. I expect I will have to hire someone to be my right hand when I get back.

[BMW of Santa Fe. That's Annette's roommate Amanda hiding behind the sign.]

Santa Fe is a beautiful town. It's about 7,000 feet above sea level, and so is cooler and wetter than the lower country to the south. The "Santa Fe style" - adobe homes with flat roofs, tile floors, beamed ceilings and kiva fireplaces - predominates, and to sit in Annette's house with the sun shining in the windows and skylights, trees moving in the breeze outside, sipping on coffee - well, it's perfect. If I was to start a list of places to move to, this would be on it.

[A corner of Annette's house.]

Aside from some shopping and working on the site, that's about it for the day. We did end up going to a terrific Asian restaurant - Mu Du Noodles - run by a friend of Annette and her mom. After dinner we had a long talk with Mu about the pros and cons of being married to your work (her restaurant) and the difficulty of finding the right kind of human partner who can balance with a very involved work life.

[Saw these at lunch. Got her to show them off for me. Look out Elton John!]

DAY 8 - May 19, 2001
0 miles (on the bike)
Total miles: 1905

Today we decided to take a road-trip-within-a-road-trip and drive up to Taos. Taos is a sort of miniature version of Santa Fe - same beautiful adobe buildings, cool shops, interesting shops, dumb shops, galleries with lots of nice, accessible art for tourists to buy, bad espresso, and a great used bookstore where I bought so much stuff I'm going to have to ship it home.

[Planning the trip to Taos.]

[A classic drugstore horse in Taos.]

An hour and a half in Taos was enough to enjoy its charms, so we headed north to check out Taos Pueblo, a very large and well preserved 1000 year old adobe town. But due to our late start we arrived at 4:30 and the pueblo was closed. This was a bit disappointing.

[Good to know I should not park here. Would not want to anger Warchief or his staff.]

[No entry for us.]

[No photography sign? What no photography sign?]

Licking our wounds, we continued north and branched off on a side road to see what we'd been referring to as "The Crack in The Earth" - the gorge of the Rio Grande. A bridge crosses the gorge at this point and we walked out on it for some dramatic views. Quite scary actually.

[The Crack in The Earth (background).]

[Something odd about the sign...]

[This woman and her daughter were selling sage smudge sticks at the east end of the bridge.]

The white object in the picture below is a car. We ran into a man on the bridge who told us a woman had driven off the nearby cliff a couple of months back in an attempt to commit suicide. Unbelievably she lived, with only broken legs and a few ribs. Wow. I'm not sure if that's lucky or unlucky.

As we left the bridge we were struck by the dramatic contrast between the sky in the distance and the sun shining nearby. In the distance all the color was gone, leaving the mountains and landscape a monotone blue-gray.

We headed north once again and pulled off at San Cristobal, where there is supposedly a shrine to poet/author D.H. Lawrence. We asked for help from some locals and ended up driving a five mile dirt road even further up the mountains. When we arrived at the D.H. Lawrence Ranch (a conference center run by University of New Mexico) we found the place deserted, and a little creepy. The weather was overcast, the day was getting late and there was a wind blowing through the trees that made it feel a very lonely place. So we grabbed a few pictures, read some of the informational plaques that dotted the grounds and headed back south again.

This time our destination was the town of Chimayo, where an excellent Mexican restaurant was rumored to exist. We decided to take a side road that appeared to be about the same distance. It probably was but we didn't really care, as it was a stretch as beautiful as the one Mike and I traveled on our way into Santa Fe. It wound through green fields and forests that were hard to believe in New Mexico. At one point we startled a very large deer waiting right by the roadside (one of the biggest fears on a motorcycle) - fortunately it leaped away from us and into the woods. My only regret on this stretch of road was that the camera batteries had died at the D.H. Lawrence Ranch, and so it must exist only as a memory.

The restaurant at Chimayo was delicious - I had fantastic chile rellenos and Annette had trout - but the service was not quite up to the level of the food. Something about being in a small town I think. Not a problem, just something to notice. Annette and I realized we are complete food snobs.

And so back to Santa Fe and the end of a day of driving. An exhausting day, really. That's something very different between riding a motorcycle and driving a car (especially riding as a passenger). In a car, only some of your attention is required to keep on the road and headed in the right direction, at the right speed. It's easy to carry on a conversation or think deeply about one topic or another. It's also easy to feel very tired, at least for me, riding as a passenger.

On a motorcycle, your attention is constantly focused on the process of riding. Scanning the road surface for obstacles, water, sand, gravel; considering lane position relative to oncoming traffic, corners and whether the road is wet; adjusting body position for comfort and to deal with wind gusts; listening to the constant rush of wind and the changing tone of the engine. All this becomes second nature after a while and happens in the background, but it keeps the rider alert and makes it almost impossible to spend any time ruminating about life. No matter how you try, thinking "okay, I'm going to think about my future career plans for a while", pretty soon you find yourself back to the blank mind, with at most a chunk of song running through your head.

This is fantastic. It seems frustrating at first but it's what makes a solo motorcycle trip so enjoyable. It's really an exercise in meditation, in existing truly in the present moment - not dwelling on the past or trying to imagine the future. Add to that the constantly changing landscape and the fact that, much more so than in a car, you are immersed in it. Any way you turn your head the helmet turns with you, so there is nothing to block your vision. The sky is huge, a big inverted bowl of clouds or blue, and the vastness of the world (and your own smallness) is always present.

In a car, by contrast, there is a constant shelf of roof overhead, door and window posts in every direction and a real sense of separation from the outside world. A lot passes by unnoticed when traveling in a car, and it's easy for this diluted experience of the world to make the trip boring and something that is best when it is over.

I love spending time with Annette, but I'm also getting excited about hitting the road again.

DAY 9 - May 20, 2001
0 miles (on the bike)
Total miles: 1905

Annette and I got off to a late start today. Well she did anyway - I got up at 8:00 to work on this very site. We headed off to a sort of brunch (if you can call pizza brunch) at a groovy joint just off the Plaza, Santa Fe's historic and very groovy shopping district. This was the first time on the trip I actually sat, uncovered, in the sun and I think I got a little scorched.

[Annette scopin' the crowd at blunch.]

Of course we had to contribute to the local economy with a little shopping. We also paid a visit to the Georgia O'Keeffe museum. I decided I am not in love with her work. I'm sure it was groundbreaking for its time but it just doesn't look that great (to me that is, it's all opinion, no?) It's kind of flat, the colors aren't that breathtaking, and it's neither amazingly representational nor does it seem to be loaded with deeper layers of meaning. I'm sure this is going to start an argument or two - well first you've gotta find me!

We visited Home Depot and after a lengthy examination we determined that an electric hedge trimmer was not a good choice for mowing a lawn, however small. We did pick up a new showerhead which I helped Annette install. Afterward I spent a very pleasant hour on the shady deck writing emails before going out for some fanTAStic sushi.

My last efforts for the night went into some packing and prep for tomorrow's departure.

[The bike with special good-luck giraffe installed (top of windshield). Note: This giraffe was found at a gas station at Soldier Summit, Utah.]

DAY 10 - May 21, 2001
585 miles
Total miles: 2490

Okay, if Day 6 was the Death March, Day 10 was "Grand-Daddy of Death March II: Bigger and Deader". I really had no idea this was going to be such a long day. It had to be my detour to the VLA (Very Large Array) - the radio telescope array featured in the movie "Contact", starring Jodie Foster. I figured I had to see this huge cool thing and it ended up adding over a hundred miles to the trip.

I woke up about 4:30 and never really got back to sleep. I was too excited about the coming day - to be back on the road again. I'm really digging this stuff! Didn't get out of Annette's until 9 am (though she made me an excellent breakfast to send me on my way).

I started out in my leather jacket but after a few miles I realized it was too cold - 58 degrees according to my stick-on thermometer - so I switched into the cold weather jacket. The wind was blowing wickedly from the east. It was definitely the strongest wind I've encountered so far on this trip, and at 90 it gets kinda scary. I find myself riding in a constant lean to the left, which is fine until I pass behind a hill at which point some correction is necessary. I also managed to fix my "cruise control" (throttle lock) which had been slipping for the last couple of hundred miles on Day 6.

I reached the VLA about noon. There I ran into a guy named Scott, riding a Ninja 1200 to Tucson. He asked if I wanted to ride along but I was determined to see this thing I'd come for.

[Scott and his machine. He claims riding long stretches doesn't make his shoulders ache. He claims. (The Ninja has a much lower riding position than my bike.)]

The VLA was pretty cool. So quiet, listening to radio emissions from eons ago and far away. I looked very carefully but Jodie was nowhere to be found. I asked around but they hadn't seen her for a while either. I did see a few very BIG jackrabbits with very BIG ears. They hadn't seen Jodie either.

[Approximately one third of the VLA. Can you spot Jodie?]

[Hmmm. Nope. Not there either. Where are you Jodie?]

Despite Jodie's absence the VLA visit was very enjoyable. Well...until I tipped my bike over in the parking lot. This is always a gut-wrenching occurrence. The bike has a very narrow range in which it stays upright easily. This is no problem when rolling as the motion creates a natural gyroscopic effect that makes everything want to stay vertical. But moving slowly, especially over an uneven surface (the gravelly parking lot) it's easy to start to lean a little too much and pretty soon you're past the point of no return. So over it went - though I did try to ease it down. I had to wait a few minutes for a friendly VLA worker to happen by and help me get it back up. At 500 pounds dry, plus gas and all the gear, it's gotta be close to 700 lbs.

Fortunately no major damage. A few scrapes to the plastic of the fairing, and it knocked the left side mirror off (they pop back on - sort of; it's kind of hanging on at the moment but seems solid). Also it un-fixed the cruise control. Grrrr. But at least I wasn't moving. Yes, I am happy.

Crossed into Arizona about 2 pm.