I have been seeing several colleagues of mine ride their bikes to work. We have had several mailing lists for non work related stuff. Recently, we created one for bikers, and related talk. I proposed a 3 day ride to Arizona, and 6 others signed up. One of the riders, had Microsoft Streets and Trips. Truly the best software products I have seen from M$. We made a detailed plan, including gas stops, dinner stops, etc. We had a route plan that was almost free of freeways, and filled with just hilly twisties. The plan was accurate to the minute.

We took the Friday off, and started at my colleague’s (boss’s) house in Ramona. We all gassed up, and rode into the Anza Borrego Desert, and Imperial Dunes. We were greeted by a sand storm.


Riding through the hills on the way to Prescott, I was doing my normal speeds of around 55mph, in a 30mph zone. This is while a couple of my buddies were doing 75+ on the hills. I was promptly pulled over by a Arizona cop. He asked for my license, and asked the speed I thought I was doing. I promptly replied “I was doing the speed limit, sir”. He scoffed at me and said, “You did not buy such a bike to do speed limits”, he had a open palm and he pointed to the length of my bike. I was frankly puzzled by his remark. I was thinking, I am going to get a ticket for buying a red bike. I replied ”In the past 8 years that I have had bikes, I have always been doing doing speed limit, sir….. I am not the racing kind”. He has a smirk on his face, and he goes, “look at you, you are wearing a suit waith all this protection and armour, and you claim you do not speed! Five minutes from now you will be speeding down the hill”. At this point I could not stay quiet. I said ”I do not wear a suit to race, but I am a responsible father, who hates to get hurt because he has 2 kids, a 2 year old, and a 4 year old”. He continued to say, how my buddies went flying past us, etc. He said, “I know you sped, and will speed, but I am letting you go with a warning, go on have fun, and a good day”. He gave me a warning, sped off, and was waiting for me a mile down the road. Luckily I was doing speed limit at that time. When I caught up with my buddies, I had the most truthful smile that I could possibly have, and I had a great story for dinner time.


We did not do much on Friday evening, we had sore butts from all the riding. Saturday, we went to Sedona for breakfast. Now that’s a great vacation spot, tucked away in between those red rock mountains the views are spectacular.



We moved on to Flagstaff, where we faced some fresh snowfall. The scene was not looking pretty for riding.




We went straight to Grand Canyon caverns. Here is a pic by the vintage fire truck at the cave entrance. We stayed at Hualapalai Lodge. This was the only motel available in the vicinity because of some vintage car rally called “Fun Run”. Even though the 100 sq miles around the lodge was vacant, the stupid lodge was located right next to a railway crossing, By law those stupid trains are required to honk atleast 3 times at the crossing. It meant lots of disturbance at night. Here is a pic in front of a vintage fire truck parked near the caves.



We started on Sunday morning from Peach Springs. One of my buddies rides a BMW with ABS. The ABS broke, and the rear wheel/brakes got jammed. One the mechanically inclined guys, disconnected the rear brake, and were on our way again. We started out on Historic Route 66. This road is great, lots of really old shops, and stuff to see.



There was a vintage car rally going on, so we got to check out a lot of really old cars. The proud owners were always too eager to talk about their beauties.


We had lunch at Indio, and we took 74 to get back to SD. This is a great windy road that goes up the mountains in the east county, and has a couple scenic spots.

I was back at home just after sunset. It was a 1200mi trip in 3 days, it just felt great. I cant wait to do it all over again.