Tortilla Flat, and a flat tire.

      This weekend was me making that second attempt at trying to reach Roosevelt Lake, via exploring the famous Apache Trail or also called the Arizona 88, carved through the eastern mountains past and beyond the Superstition mountains.  It's a historical route where cattle drives once thrived through those canyons and rough terrain.  Ancient remains of cattle storage corrals lead you along the trail.  Old chopped trees and coarse posts, wound with old barbed wire, where inside it's gates cowboys and cattle were safe at night from coyotes and other predatory desert creatures.  An old fire pit sits in the centers of one corral.  And a light layer of grass grows throughout the platform.
I rode through Apache Junction, one of those old western towns, where the historical customs are preserved, such as people ride their horses to town, and to the saloon, which is hopping on a Sunday afternoon, motorcycles and horses tied up outside.
     I didn't stop because I had just reached the beginning of my journey, and I had a few hours of light and warmth, and was destined to make it without a jacket.  
     Apache trail was paved yet bumpy.  I rode to the left and right sides of my lane to avoid the steady barrage of poor center lane maintenance, like trying to ride the back of a stegosaurus.  That was fine, I rode slow, because it's so windy up to the top of those ridges, that you can't go much faster than 30mph, which is a good speed to pull over at any moment to capture a photo of the view.  I pulled over a lot.  
     A beautiful ride, mostly blasted through flanks of redrock walls rising and falling along a snaking canyons.  Trying my hand at daredevilism, I took a photo with one hand, while throwing up a peace sign with my other one, while leaning into a corner.  Risky? So.  I landed the trick.  On to the next one. Wheelies, I need wheelies.  
     I wound down and around the cactus lined two-lane road.  Down along a beautiful lake with sheer redstone cliffs that looked like sweet cliff jumping (to your death) which I don't recommend, but hey, different strokes for different folks.  The lake was called Canyon Lake. The road rides along the south rim of the lake, and over a one lane bridge I raced to beat oncoming traffic.  
     After passing the lake, I came to Tortilla Flat, which was just a short line of some old wooden buildings, that used to and still is a hot spot along that route.  Serving great food and spirits every day of the week.  I rode through cause I was aiming for Roosevelt, or as far as I could make it.  About 4 windy miles past the road turned into dirt.  This is where I saw another cattle pen that I rolled up to for some pics.  It was just me up there, and the road was a few feet away, and only a sparse car, truck or van, would roll by.  There were a few bikes that I saw stopped where the pavement ended, but the only ones I saw take the dirt road other than myself were a crew of enduros.   I rode up a bit further to a summit, and then past that the road dropped into a canyon and disappeared beyond the features of the desert mountains 20 miles to Roosevelt and the backside 188 highway.  I would not make this trek today.  But I shot some photos at the summit, and headed back to Tortilla Flat, mainly cause my stomach wouldn't make the slow 20 miles to Roosevelt, and neither would my sunglasses in the quickly disappearing sunlight.  So I rode back down the dirt toward the western light.  
     I stopped this time, right in front of Tortilla Flat Saloon.  I walked around the wooden sidewalks and checked out the shops.  When I went in to the Saloon for some grub, I saw this empty saddle waiting for me.  So I hopped on, and ordered the "Cowboy burger" with cheese.  It was huge and delicious.  My company was travelers, which I didn't make anything but random eye contact with, and muttered no more than a polite, "please pass the ketchup and mustard, thank you."  I really enjoyed the interior decorating, of dollar bill lined walls, and old cowboy accoutrement.  Looks like all the live long history was living on those walls.  My kinda place.  I finished my burger, and got off the saddle, just to get back on mine, and head out for the last bit of light on the horizon.
       So now for the part about the flat.  When I woke up the next morning, I was headed somewhere, and I was getting my things all ready and I put the key in the bike, and moved the handle bars a little, and wow, was something like that really weird resistance feeling.  I looked down, and there it was, a flat tire.  I was like, Oh, damn.  That's a first.  So I was kinda proud of that moment, but still felt like my mission was foiled.  Everything happens for a reason.  So maybe that flat kept me off the road that day for even bigger detriment.  I even tried pumping it up, but my pump sucked, and couldn't push air, cause my nozzle was broken or something.  Anyway, I thought it super rad and ironic that I had ridden Tortilla Flat, and come back with a flat.  I thanked my lucky stars it didn't start leaking till I got it home.  I rolled my bike to school the next day, and repaired a big hole in my tube.  It kinda looked like a manufacturing break, but it was a nice round little puncture looking hole, like maybe a sharp cactus needle had snuck to it.  But I checked the inside of the tire for any stuck needly culprits, but didn't find a damn thing.   So that's why I thought it maybe had just broke loose with all that rough riding I'd done on that dirt road.   Feast your eyes on the photos, and enjoy.  Thanks for reading.

That's Superstition mountain to the deep left there.

On the edge of Canyon Lake.

Tortilla Flat

the chute.

What it feels like in the chute.

In the pen.

My kinda place.

This is that summit, before it drops the 20 miles to Roosevelt.

Look ma, no hands.

My kinda bar stool.

dig the old juke.

dollar walls.

Tortilla Flat, Superstition Saloon.  Super rad watering hole.

Love old towns and their hang man.

Riding back: western sun setting, on eastern tips.

Yer gonna "Payson."

     
       Last couple weeks have been cold for the desert.  Days are ideal, and nights make me squeal, when I'm riding from class to work at midnight, 30 minutes away and it's a freezing cold desert night.  The long johns have come out.  The thermals have gone on.  The nose picking finger hole in my left glove needs to get stitched up, sad as that may be.  But winter is upon me.  I wore my cowboy boots to work last night, the ones with the toe holes, and my feet got that cool air conditioning.  It was nice, since my thick wool socks had been makin' 'em sweat.
       I know, I know, I know, Eww, so back to the whole "Payson" story.  It had been about a couple weeks since I'd been able to take an exploration of the area, so of course I was antsy.  I got out a map of Phoenix and the surrounding areas and started looking for long unaccompanied roads.  I saw cities and neighborhoods turn from suburbs to rural, and the more vacant the territory surrounding a long road looked, the better I knew the scenery and ride would be.  Then there it was, mountains and lonely roads heading to far out towns, out past other lonely junctions, and into a great exploration.  I put my finger on a town called Payson.  And I went to bed early and excited.
        I woke up that next morning, and my head and body said stay down.  Stay in bed.  Like getting up was  pushing a barn full of hay off of me, and maybe some barn spiders had moved into my head and made cobwebs or something.  I was just knocked out.  I closed my eyes.  When I re-opened my eyes, t'was a whole hour later.  Damn!  I said to myself "force yourself out of bed, and walk around."  I made it to the kitchen, and still nothing.  So I walked out to the pool, and forcibly dunked my head (which I would never otherwise) And I then dunked my arms, and then I took my feet out of their toasty wool lair and pissed em off real nice by dunking them in the ice cold water.  "BBBRRRRRRRrrrrrrrr!!!!"  is an understatement.  It was definitely a drastic measures to get drastic results kinda morning.
       I dried my soaking hair off, and sat, or more like curled up into a ball on the love seat and closed my eyes.  When I woke up, another hour had passed.  And this time, doggone it, my head was still dead, and my body was following suit, so I said, "I'm going to do this today, whether my body likes it or not."  Now, I've gotten on my bike, tired and hungover, and all sorts of out of it before, and this time will be a rival to those for sure.  So I gathered my things.
      Sitting on the bike, letting it idle awake, warming the gaskets and expanding metal, I checked my route again.  It was pretty easy, take 101 to Shaw exit and just head east.  Make a left at the 87 and just keep riding.  And then there I was moments later, riding out through Scottsdale, disappeared into and over the mountains that frame the eastern side of Phoenix.  It was a beautiful, warm, sunny desert afternoon.  Not too many cars on the road, lanes to myself, dipping through little suburban canyons, past civilized outcropping of gas stations and shopping needs.  I momentarily toyed with the idea for gas, sitting next to a pump, I checked the route to Payson.  I saw that it was only 60 some miles of winding desert road, so I knew my tank would make it.  I pulled back onto the road.  Along the route there was an Ironwoman competition happening, so there was some heavily directed traffic at the main junction, but that was about it.  And as much as I would have loved to watch some tough ass women do their thing, I had a ride to do, countryside to see, a world to explore, and all before the sun would go down and leave me high and frozen.
       High and Frozen I was indeed.  Payson is some 5000+ elevation gain from my desert floor.  It is also the mountains, with forest and all the things that go with forests like, cold moist air, and snow.  Lucky for me, the snow was not part of the equation, but I bet had I stuck around to find out, well, I'd have indeed been stuck.  Man it was cold up there.  I went from sleeveless to fully layered in an hour.  And the sun was sinking over that mountain range I'd just come, so I had to ditch this Payson town.
It was getting too late, cold, and dark, for my sunglasses and remote route exploration, so I ditched the plan to take the 188 to Roosevelt Lake back over the 88 to Apache junction.  In fact that'll be the next story you're tuning into read about.  So I just traced and raced my steps back down the 87, gunning for that warmer and lower elevation.  I rode further down the 87 than the turnoff I'd come in on, and ended up making a right on a McDowell road.  This brought me to lower central Phoenix, just a couple blocks off from where my work was.  I browsed the area for an atmospheric coffee shop, deciding on Jobot Cafe.  It had all the elements: Old house turned coffee shop, chairs and tables on the front lawn, and indie music on the speakers.  The coffee was really good, the lady at the counter was awesome and talkative, the atmosphere and patronage, was a book reading, comfy chairs, free wifi kinda joint.  Thus I'll just have to go back, I say.
                      After I finished my coffee, I rode to work (I work nights).  I just love that place.

       Now, I know the desert around here seems to some people like, nothing, vacant, boring.  But to me, it is years of wild west exploration, indian and cowboy battles, and habitation, acres and miles of opportunity, people living and dying at its feet.  Survival at its finest.  And I love that feeling I get when I can just look for miles and miles, with decorative red rock mountainous outcroppings, shaping my imagination on the horizon.  The sound of the coyotes yipping and yapping at night.  Crickets chirping endlessly, and the open sky forever, deep blue, stars twinkling just inches from your eyes.  And I'll always love the desert.


See you on the road!

This little thang fell out of my hair in Payson.  

 

Desert for days!

                      

The Overhaul, Cave Creek, and Bartlett Lake.

So I just finished putting my wheels on the bike.
Over the course of a week, juggling school/work/sleep/eat/and waiting for the mail to arrive with my goods, and only able to make it into the shop with a 30 minute window to work on my things on any given day:  It took me over the course of a week, 3 days in and out of the shop, and then the work I did at my house and it all came down to about 6 hours of work, and this is what I accomplished:

*Truing front and rear rims.
*Rust busting off inner rims, (years of rain damage)
*Bearings front and rear replacement.  (The rear bearings took a half hour alone to get out. They were like welded in there.)
*New tires mounted and balanced.
*Assembly and disassembly.
*Belt adjusting.

I finished this all Saturday afternoon, and still made it to an evening BBQ, and Rolled out to a class party.  I wrote the first part of this really fast while I was drinking my coffee.  Now to finish the story.

Just a little rust.

Bed sheet awnings.

The next day:  

So I stayed at the house I partied at Saturday night,  but only on 4 hours of sleep before getting woken by kids playing beer pong at 10:30 am.  At that point, it was time to jump ship, so me and some guys went to the Waffle House.  Now, it's funny how whenever I go to a Waffle House, it's when I've gotten no sleep the night before, and I look like hell.  And yes, I brought that point up between my sips of coffee at the counter, and yes, the counter is the only place to sit at a diner.  Whilst dining on hashbrowns, biscuits, and eggs over easy, I told the guys I wanted to take a ride up to Horseshoe Reservoir after breakfast, and they were unanimously like, "we're in."

 There we were, the three of us, hung over as we were, headed up the two-lane roads through Cave Creek, AZ.  I love this place, cause it's rugged, and southwestern, small and fun.  We strolled around for a sec, but then it was back on the road and out through some gorgeous countryside, destination Horseshoe.  We climbed out of the desert floor into the high desert for a while, through some sparse neighborhoods.  I read somewhere that Danica Patrick lives out there somewhere.  Anyway, it was nice slow going, just enjoying the scenery, keeping a watchful eye out for the turn off.  And then there it was, up ahead about 400 ft, around a sweeping bend, and I could tell by the body language and lane position of tthe guy ahead of me that he didn't see it right away, so I had to lay on the horn to get his attention.  After a few long horn blasts, he woke up, and quickly made a sharp left onto the turn to Horseshoe Reservoir.

These old paved roads out here in the desert are the kind where they used lots of little gravel and glue, so after years of sun and travel damage, the top layer is broken and a sifty top layer of pebble asphalt.  It can be dangerous riding in the center of those lanes, so you have to keep an eye out and ride in the tire grooves to the left or right of the lane.   Other than that, and an occasional rock in the road, it was smooth going for about a mile, and then it turned abruptly into washed out road and sand, which provided some fun traversing practice.  Well, I'm one to take my bike anywhere my destination is, even if it's a shady/shifty sandy washed out road.  This one was.  I was relieved when the other guy on his much nicer Harley, was being a champ about it, and said he didn't care about the dirt.  So we kept riding and riding and riding.  I was much further ahead of him, and I knew we'd covered some hairy ground, so I waited up ahead for him and did a re-check of the distance to the reservoir.  It was at this point that we realized we still had some heavy miles ahead of us, and at least another hour or two of that kind of riding to go, and with the washboard getting worse, we both agreed to take the other route to Bartlett Lake instead.  I said I'd come back when I had more time to spend out there, rather than having to just turn around and head back.  The 3rd guy with us, he was in a big old truck, and he wasn't even liking the washboard, so it was unanimously given that we turned around and headed back out and on toward Bartlett Lake.

This was the easy part.

"she'll be comin round the mountain when she comes...."

 

After we left Bartlett Lake, we headed back to Cave Creek, to walk around the old town fun.  The bars in town were hopping with bikers and music, eats and drinks by the time we rolled back through.  You'll know where to find me.

Rear Tire

Front Tire

I love my new treads.

See you on the road!   In AZ.

I love this so much.

Tires, Bearings, Tubes.

I just ordered all these fantastic things.  My bike is in skeletal form on a lift, at the moment.  And I'm doing major front and rear overhaul maintenance.  She'll be ridin mean and clean after this.
Damn bearings can be expensive, if you go to a Harley shop.  And that's why we don't do these things to our pocket books.  If I had a Harley shop, I'd low ball all my prices, just to piss all those pretentiously ritzy Harley Dealerships off.  Oh, yes I would.  Cause I'm not a greedy bastard.

So they wanted 30$ for one bearing.  That's when I said, thanks but no thanks.  That's the price you pay for needing things on the spot.  Well, I'm willing to wait for a couple days or my mail to arrive.

Front Wheel Bearing kit (includes 2 bearings):  25$   (hail to the cheapf)

Rear Wheel Bearing Kit (includes 2 bearings): 25$   (again hail to the cheapf)

This time around I'm trying some vintage tires out:

Front tire: 80$

Rear tire: 85$

Rear tube: 16$

Way I figure it, I'm saving a lot of money doing all the maintenance myself, and a little shopping and I saved a grip of dough.  Let's see how they handle off-road, cause that's the first place I'm heading.

Nothing like affordability, to get you rollin again.

My new tires are sittin here waiting to go on, but first I need to give those old spokes a good truing.  So I'm getting my rear wheel on the stand tonight and settin her up nice and straight.  I'm betting I'll find a hop or a wobble, or both.  Crossing my fingers it's not that bad.

See ya round!

My last trip from Phoenix to Los Angeles, via Arizona's Carefree Highway.

Loaded up and heading for California.

This thing floated right over me.  It was neat.

This stretch of highway is clean, courtesy of the Doom family. 

(You're in good hands.)

She's a big beautiful desert.

I swear, I find more places in the desert that I wanna make home.  

The old horse posts are still standing.  How cool.

This hotel just screamed "vacancy!"

Salome, AZ.  "Where She Danced."  Who was she?  

And yes, they were having a town dance that night.

Too bad I was just rolling through.  But the quesadilla wasn't half bad.

"Passmore"  Hey, they said it, not me.  

Here comes the bride!

It was a Cowboy wed'n.

The night before I'd gotten these 3D glasses at the theater to watch my movie.  

So, naturally I wore them home.

Ahh, bees.  Found this lil sap stuck between my helmet shell and my ear foam.

There's still plenty of tread on that rear tire, 

but it was still a good reason to take it leisurely home.   

I just love it when my Taco Bell sauce has a message for me.

Well, now I already knew that.  

But what'd you expect from a town with just a church and a trailer park.  

Proper grammar?  I hope not.

My little buckaroo found another buckaroo.  

At least mine gets around.

Cowboy slacks, and wedding shoes.

Just lean'n back.

It's an off-roading day.   Along for the ride.

I swore these were human, until I found the cows head.