I was supposed to be here for 1 night. I was going to meet up with a friend of a friend but that fell through because some stuff came up that he had to deal with. No big deal, but instead of going somewhere with AC I hung out in my tent. I did at least manage to find an RV park in downtown Memphis to camp at. How sweet is that?

Anyways, the ride to Memphis was boring. The highlight was when some kid in a Mustang pulled a U-turn on a 5-lane (2 each way with a turn lane) about 1,000 feet ahead of me. I slowly caught up him doing about 75 mph and eased by him with only one hand on the handlebars. I don’t know if he took that as a sign of intimidation, but a few seconds later he punched it and flew by me. I figured he was just having fun.

A couple miles later we were both stuck behind the same car going 66 mph to pass a truck going 65 mph. You got to love those kind of drivers. When that ordeal ended I was pacing him from a couple seconds back, and we were doing about 80 mph. That’s when I decided to have some fun and grabbed a handful of throttle. I got up to around 100 mph and blew by him. I checked my mirror though and could tell he was speeding up to follow me. Eventually I slowed down a bit and he passed me. I didn’t know what to do at the point, but he started swerving a little and crossing yellow lines. It was friday night around 7 pm. Maybe he was drunk; I don’t know, but his inability to keep to his lane was enough for me to let him get away. And then a cop drove by a mile later which reaffirmed my decision to return back to a decent speed.

Downtown Memphis looked pretty wild. I didn’t spend too much time there. I followed the advice my friend of a friend gave me and went to the Flying Saucer to get dinner and use their Wifi to find a campground. I opted for the soft pretzel baked with chopped up bratwurst and Swiss cheese. That was a really good choice. With no word from my contact there I went to the campground to set up my home.

The campground was actually an RV park that let me pitch a tent in the courtyard. That worked for me though. I was close enough to a building that I had power to charge all my chargeables. I was going to take a nice cold shower, but at this point I remember I never packed any shampoo. ugh, time to find a gas station.

I figured downtown would be a pain in the ass to find anything, so I headed south of downtown because that was kind of where the RV park was. I don’t know if the whole city is in a ghetto, but this part of it appeared to be. At this point I will offer this information: I grew up in a small Alaskan fishing village, so I’ve spent most of my life in an isolated white culture. I wouldn’t go as far to say I’m racist, but I think certain stereotypes are there for a reason. I’ll give anyone I meet a fair chance, but when it comes to strangers I revert to stereotypes.

So I come to this little corner store. There are a couple cars full of people just loitering in the parking lot. As I get off my bike and head indoors an 8-10 year old black kid and his mother come out. The kid came out and said, “Oh shit, is that a GS bike? You gotta let me ride it. At least take me as a passenger and do a lap around the block.” And then he and his mother just stopped and stared at me awaiting my response. What the hell was this kid thinking I would say? “Oh here, take the keys. I’m going to assume you know how to ride it. Just bring it back in a few minutes so I can be on way when I finish shopping.” So I told him, “No, sorry. I’m kind of in the middle of something important.” This was a true statement though.

When I realized I didn’t have any shampoo I figured I could just use the hand soap at the bathroom facility at the RV park. Soap/shampoo, they all do the same basic thing. No, I couldn’t because both the men’s and women’s bathrooms were absent of any soap. By the time I caught this I had already brought all my supplies to the shower and set aside which clean clothes to wear. The next step would have been to strip down, but without and shampoo I had to go out.

I asked the guy behind the counter (and behind some very thick glass) if they had shampoo. He tried to hand me some family sized bottle which I turned down. I asked for the small bottle of children’s shampoo instead and was on my way. To my delight when I came back out my bike was still there and unharmed. I was thrilled that the kid wasn’t bitter and didn’t knock it over. On I went back to the RV park.

I took a cold shower, but even that water felt warm after about a minute. I found this to be frustrating since I didn’t even turn the hot water knob. I got dressed and sat in my tent to figure out what to do. My quickly decided it was too hot and promptly begin sweating. Good thing I bothered with that shower 10 minutes earlier. I decided to use the downtime to catch up on the blog. I had been putting that off for far too long.

But since I was hot and sweaty once I again, I figured I might as well go to a gas station to get a cold drink. Since the last one was as sketch as it gets, I opted to not take the freeway south this time but instead take the streets to south edge of downtown. It turned out to not make a difference.

I pulled up first to a red light and waited. A car pulled up next to me with two black guys in it. No big deal. Their windows were down and they yelled to me “You better be careful.” So I thought “Oh shit here it comes. Why do I need to be careful?” I figured it was either because they were warning me about the neighborhood I was in or they were going to rob me. Instead he told me something about how he buried his cousin the day before after something involving a bike lead to his death. I told him was sorry to hear that and felt a little embarrassed about my overreaction.

I’ve never been to a gas station with a security guard before, but I’d never been to Memphis either. He didn’t even look happy. He looked mad. I did some shopping and got some water and gatorade and also planned on getting a cup of ice for my camelbak. I was next in line when this guy just walks in, stands next to me, and takes the place of the guy in front of me after he buys his stuff. What the fuck just happened? I was clearly in line, but I wasn’t going to say anything. What a friendly and inviting place to live in. Full of line cutters. I bought my stuff, got my ice, and got the hell out of there.

Since my tent was close enough to a building to use its outdoor outlets, it was also about 5 feet from the AC unit. The AC unit alternated from on/off every 20 minutes all night long. It sounded like a generator operating just outside of my tent.

Around 4 am I tried my luck at sleeping. That didn’t go so well because every time I almost fell asleep a slight breeze would blow the side of my tent into my leg. I really felt like a dog’s nose pressing into the tent, so I kept waking up startled. There was also a mosquito that kept landing on me. After 4 or 5 times of being woken up shortly after dozing off I was on quite the edge. So I grabbed my knife and slept with it on my chest. I kept it in its sheath though. Safety first.

Anyways, after spending a long time in line I made it to the elevators that took me to the top of the arch. I probably saved myself 1-2 hours of waiting in line since I was alone. They let me cut up to the group way ahead of everyone else. I guess that’s one bonus of traveling alone.

This was taken while waiting in line. They had this old fashion scale on display. The kids could sit on it and rock back and forth depending on which kid was heavier, or in most cases, which kid jumped on. It was really loud because everytime a kid hopped on the stop at the top slammed into a piece of steel. It was rather annoying

This was the tiny door we had to go through to get into the elevator to the top of the arch. It was like 2.5′ wide and maybe 5′ tall

This is the tiny elevator we piled into. Not much room but it worked.

I tried to take a pic of the elevator shaft, but they didn’t come out too well :/

This was the tiny observation deck. It was a tight area.

The next 3 shots are of east St. Louis

Here is downtown St. Louis

I wanted to test out the zoom of the camera. I thought it turned out all right. I can read the words on the sign. Scroll up a few pics to see the same shot of the stadium without the zoom.

This is from inside the monument. It honors the designers and builders

Here is the world famous St. Louis bear

This is the Arch from different angles

Some bridge over to the east side

St. Louis likes the brick roads. On my bike I don’t care for them. My old boss said the best way to capture the poor condition of a road was to get down low. Here was my attempt

After spending the time at the monument I needed to secure a home for the night. I remembered that my buddy said his cousin lived in St. Louis, so after some number exchanging I got a hold of this guy named Kevin. He said I could crash at his place. We had a couple beers, watched the Cardinals game, and then I slept on his couch. Here’s a picture of me and Kevin before I left in the morning. Notice his shirt matches his glasses. He has a small clothing company and that’s actually the logo for his brand.

Now I’m off to Memphis to explore the famous Beale Street and all of its offerings

I originally planned to overnight it somewhere in Kansas and head to Lawrence the following day. But since I made good time I decided to push through and get there the same day. What a mistake that was…

I heard at a gas station that there was a storm up ahead. I was surprised to hear that since it was a hot and clear day. A few hours later I saw some angry clouds in the distance. It felt like I chased them for hours.

Finally around 6pm I caught up to the storm. There was thunder and lightening in the distance, but I was still dry. I don’t want to say I’m scared of lightening, but it is something that worries me. I finally started to get rained on, and it was really coming down hard. By this point the lightening was striking very closely. It was so loud that when I heard the thunder I couldn’t hear anything else – not even the bike or the wind. I also took my headphone out because I figured I didn’t need to help the lightening hit me.

After a couple miles of this I conceded to the storm and pulled off at an exit. I pulled off to the side of the road under a bridge. I was on the road long enough to get soaking wet though. Just like in Denver, when I squeezed my hand into a fist a bunch of water came flowing out of my glove. Not fun.

I tried calling Laura to tell her I was being delayed, but it was so loud under the bridge from the storm and traffic that I couldn’t hear a word she said. She said she could hear me though. I took these pics while I was waiting. After about 20 minutes it cleared up and I got back on I-70.

It took 4 tries to get this shot with the hazard lights blinking

I stopped to get some gas and asked the gal there about the storm. She said it was moving east which meant I would be chasing it the rest of the way. Since the storm wasn’t going 75 mph with gusts of 95, I stopped a number of times to prevent myself from catching it. The toll booths helped with this too because it’s a pain in the ass getting a wallet out with my gloves on.

I had already memorized the directions to Laura’s house while waiting under the bridge. I got a bit sidetracked because I didn’t memorize the updates she sent me. I was pretty sure I needed to take a left, but according to the outdated directions I was recalling a right turn was in order. When the cross streets started getting smaller I knew I needed to do a U-turn. Then I made it to her neighborhood.

Wow, these houses and lots were huge. I was blown away by it. She said most people were on 2 acre lots. It made me think of old southern farm homes because of the size and space each one had. It was a very pretty neighborhood. But it was also really weird. I was supposed to stay on 85th ave to get to her house. But then I intersected 85th ave while on 85th so I took a right to maintain the road. This was a mistake.

I called Laura and ask her to go outside to see if she could see me. She couldn’t. I had to use my speaker phone to talk to her, which meant I needed to kill the engine. That worked fine for the flats and downhills, but then I encountered an uphill portion of the road. I told her to hang on, flipped my helmet up, put the phone in my mouth, turned the engine on, put it into 1st gear, and slowly rode off. I rode around for a bit like this and would periodically kill the engine to ask her where to go. It probably looked goofy, but it got the job done.

It turns out she actually lives on 86th ave but that road also connects to 85th. Once that was straightened out I made it to her. We were both happy to see each other. We split a bottle of wine while playing ping-pong in her basement. She also has a sweet basement. That’s where I stayed while here. It’s furnished and finished with a couch, tv, ping-pong table, and a computer. It seemed like a sweet room to have growing up. Eventually she retired to her room, and I slept on the fold out couch.

I stayed in Lawrence, Kansas with Laura much longer than I thought I would. Despite staying here for 4 nights, I don’t actually have much to say about the area. But the other side of that is I’ve probably had the most fun on the trip chilling with Laura. The only thing I did worth taking pics of was playing mini-golf. I talked myself up hoping to intimidate her to weaken her game, but I think she saw right through me. I started out playing terribly, and despite a brief burst of pars I managed to maintain that terrible play throughout the day.

We didn’t check or count the scores until the end. I figured I had lost but also thought it was close. Turns out I was right on both accounts. She beat me 86-88. The only asterisk here is that we played with a 7 stroke limit per hole. I think I had a few more meltdown holes that I took 7s on, but she had a couple really bad ones. Either way she beat me. Here are the pics from golfing

The mini-golf here is haunted. I don’t know why that was the theme for the place, but it is what it is. Here are pictures of all the ghouls

This hole almost got me in trouble. You can’t see it now, but when we played this hole there was a motorcycle parked in the open space left of the bat and right of the tree. No big deal, but I hit my ball so hard it launched off the course, past the grass, through the fence, and missed the guy’s bike by about a foot. It then traveled the length of the parking lot. Argh

I think Laura would have taken 20 strokes on this hole if it weren’t for the 7 stroke limit. I had a lot of 7-stroke holes myself, but this one really gave her some grief

After 18 holes we each had a shot at a free game. Typical mini golf rules – get a hole-in-one and you get a free game. We each found an extra ball so we both got 2 attempts.

Laura’s attempt:

My attempt:

Laura also snagged an action shot of me on the green

When we got home we had some food and then hung out in the basement for the rest of the night. There isn’t really anything from it that is wroth reporting though. We were just hanging out enjoying movies and music. The next night we wanted to hit up Lawrence’s downtown area. If you didn’t know it already, Lawrence is home to Kansas University. It makes me cringe to type this because I know Laura will enjoy this admission, but they have a pretty good basketball team.

Anyways, it was like a 30-40 minute drive to get there. We didn’t want to risk a DUI on the way back, so instead we camped at a nearby campground. It was a good idea and that place was empty. Sadly it was a KOA and I had to drop another $25 to camp in a tent. Here are the pics from our campsite:

We only went to one bar called the Sandbar. It was pretty small, but when we walked in 3 girls were dancing on the bar. It seemed like 1/2 the crowd was watching the girls, and the other half was watching some weird video on the screens beside them. Then a big fan connected to the ceiling turned on. The bouncer told us to stay put before checking our IDs. He walked over the the fan and started tossing small cocktail napkins at it, which caused them to blow across the bar. But it got stranger. Then some sort of popcorn storing device connected to the fan released a bunch of popcorn. Wtf? Now there is popcorn flying, napkins flying, strobe lights going crazy, so-so girls dancing on the bar, and a crowd left trying to figure out what the hell was going on.

Eventually we took a seat at a table in a nook by itself next to an aquarium. We had a couple drinks and took these pictures.

Then Laura was like “hey, let’s try to make fish faces” Why not?

Then I tried to make a puffer fish face. The beard really blocks how good of a face it actually was.

Some clever chalk advertising we saw on the walk back

Max is too manly to hold a purse and showed Laura his mad face

Earlier in the night I saw a girl drinking a beverage with a shark in it, so I asked the bartender to make me one. He said they were premade mixes which meant 2 things: it would be really weak and really sweet. But I was lured in by the novelty of the shark. I figured I could try to add it to my bike somehow.

So we’re sitting together examining my drink. I pulled the shark out to play with it. I didn’t realize this (and fuck the bartender for not mentioning it to a customer that obviously doesn’t know what it is) that the shark was filled with grenadine. So I pulled it out to look at it. Then I noticed the table was now covered in 2 blood-red puddles. I immediately thought “Oh shit! Laura’s dress!” Remarkably none of it got spilled on her dress or myself. Phew. And now the shark looked like he had a fresh kill with his red jaws. The drink was ok but I felt like since I spilled all the grenadine I didn’t actually taste it correctly I ordered another one and then Laura shot a video of me playing with the shark. I guess the darkness of the bar went over both of our heads because the video is too dark to view. whoops

I forgot to mention this earlier, but the night before Laura asked if she could join me on the back of the bike traveling for a few days. The condition was she had to be back to Kansas by the 20th, but she was going to fly there anyways. Adding a passenger would add another chapter to the trip, and it would also be fun to spend traveling days with another person. I agreed to it and said I would have to repack my bags to fit her added gear. All she would really need are clothes and toiletries. I could cut back on my clothes and leave some here to fit hers in. So we also wanted to camp out as a test run for the trip. We fit fine in my tent. There wasn’t room to sprawl out by any means, but we each had enough space.

The next morning we were being lazy and sleeping in/dozing. After a while we were just laying there talking until an old man who worked there pulled up in his golf cart. He told us checkout time was in 20 minutes. This amused us both because this isn’t a hotel. It’s not like they are in a hurry to clean a room for the next guess. Also, we were the only tent there on a space about as big as a football field. We got some breakfast and headed back home.

The next day she did her thing and I did mine. She had a job interview to go to and whatnot. At this point I reflected on our friendship and thought about how confusing the whole thing was. I thought about how I’ve known her for a couple years, but we never really ever hung out or spent much time together. We had a couple spurts where we’d hang out for about a week, but that was it. We always had an awesome time and a lot of fun, but for whatever reason we just drifted away and didn’t spend much time together outside of class. After spending a few days with her now I just started to wonder what caused that. Wouldn’t you think that if you had a good time together you would continue that until it stopped? I don’t know. I’ve had other friends over the years that I saw on a much more frequent basis than her, but it seemed like I always had a blast with her. I guess this is just turned into a bored ramble.

We went to a movie my last night in town. Public Enemy was all right. If that was portrayed accurately then John Dillenger was a bad ass. I know stealing and killing isn’t cool, but that guy had some brass ones and executed his plans very well. It may have been illegal, but he accomplished some amazing things.

Tomorrow morning (Friday) I will be leaving for St. Louis. I guess I’ll have a peak at that big arch. Also – special shout out for my father. His birthday is today. Happy birthday dad!

Before I left Laura’s house I took some pics of her neighborhood. Here are a few shots of these cool houses

I stopped at a gas station before leaving and spotted this monster mantis

I actually took this picture as we were leaving Golden. I thought it came out pretty well considering I was holding the camera up backwards through the sun roof.

This is the largest set up brewing vats in the world

This is the fresh beer room. They have beer on tap straight from the production line. It hasn’t even been in a keg. Sadly it was only producing foam when we were there. Christina has had it before though, and she said you can taste the difference and it’s great.

Look at the assembly line in action!

These pictures are from the lounge downstairs where you get 3 free samples. It was packed.

They wanted $20 for this picture. They take it when you get there regardless of if you want it, and then at the end of the tour they give it to you. We weren’t going to spend $20 for one photo. If they’re going to print them all anyways, I don’t know why they didn’t sell them for like $5 or $10. Christina had the bright idea to take a picture of the picture. Ha, take that Coors!

I didn’t really take anymore photos while in Colorado. I did get an oil change for my bike while I was here. BMW charges $150 for an oil change. This will most likely be the last oil change I get done at a dealership. On Saturday there was a big BBQ at Christina’s Aunt’s house. There was a ton of delicious food. After that some of us went to some bar to check out a friend’s band that was playing.

So I spent like $50 to camp at some shitty local hotel rather than a Best Western. What a tragic mistake. Rather than spend the night catching up on the blog, I stayed in a place with an internet connection that only worked in one corner of the room and was slower than dial up. Not exactly the fuel needed to keep a website running. I watched some Law & Order: SVU because nothing else was on and went to bed after taking a shower. The shower was very refreshing after a long day of desert riding.

The next morning my back still hurt, which made me bitter about even bothering with the hotel. But as it was pointed out to me, if I had camped my back pain could have increased.

My goal for the day was Denver, Colorado. Christina’s sister Sonja lives there. Also, Christina was on a short vacation for work and was due in at midnight. It was a race to Denver for Christina and me!

There was really no time effective way to make it to Denver with out taking the free way. So I headed north from Monticello to I-70. Before reaching I-70 I stopped at Arches National Park which I think was somewhere near Moab, Utah.

Here are some pics from the park

Twisties

So there was this trail and sign. It was a mile walk to the lookout area, but I was way to hot to walk a mile. So instead I figured I would ride this trail instead and hope it took me near the same place.

I got maybe a mile before I encountered this. Oh well, I did a U-turn and went back to the parking lot

They call those holes in the rocks the Windows

After Arches I just headed for Denver. I took a couple pics on the way there before things hit the fan.

I stopped in this town to get gas and took a picture of this weird lady

The rest of the pics were taken at this pull out

Then these huge dark clouds appeared in the distance. I didn’t like the look of them one bit. As I approached them I saw lightening and felt thunder. I figured I better get as many miles in while dry as I could and sped up. Then I hit the rain. Mesh gear is great for desert riding, but it takes about 5 seconds of rain to have me soaked all the way through.

I quickly pulled off to find shelter. There was a big restaurant and shop that had long eaves that provided the cover I needed. I tried to take some pictures of the storm, but it kept coming out blurry. I don’t know why the camera was having issues. Maybe it was focusing on the moving rain. Here is the only picture that someone came out

I was still a ways out, but since I was already soaked I toughed the weather and kept going. I drove 40 miles with my hazards flashing going about 35 mph. The road was covered in water and it alternated between rain and hail the entire way. It was a miserable experience. Also, since my visor is tinted, I couldn’t see with it closed because it was so dark. But since it was raining, I couldn’t really ride with it open either. So I had to open the visor almost all the way, but I left it down a couple clicks to protect my eyes. I wore my sunglasses low on my nose so I could see over the top of them. It sucked, and I probably looked foolish.

When I finally made it there I missed the road to my friend’s house. I finally stopped at a gas station to get directions, and I was told I overshot it by about 50 blocks. Ugh. When I stopped there I held my hand up and clenched my fist. A bunch of water shot out of the glove. Fun stuff. I finally made it to Sonja’s place. Sonja is Christina’s sister.

We picked up Christina at the airport a couple hours later and called it a night.

The thing about Zion is it’s in southern Utah. If you never been there before, then you should consider your self lucky and do nothing in your life that would force you to drive through it or even worse – stop there. You can believe whatever religion you’d like; I don’t really care. I’m going to toss this blanket statement out there and assume everyone in southern Utah is a Mormon though.

The small towns there are just so fucking spooky. It was like something out of a M. Night Shamalan movie. I hate his movies, but he can at least portray creepy shit well. I stopped at this little drug store. It was filled with 10-15 females of all ages. They all wore the same style bland, one-color dresses. “Oh, I love your beige dress.” “Well I like your beige dress. I see it’s a slight bit darker than mine.” They all had the same hairdo with this huge bump/ball of hair above their foreheads. And they all had the same expressionless face. It’s just so damn creepy. It’s like they aren’t alive, but they aren’t dead. They are just there, breathing and talking. It’s like they aren’t looking at you, but instead look right past you.

I asked her for directions to Zion to ensure my assumptions were correct. I immediately thought I’d rather get lost than to stay in this store talking to this woman any second longer. My end of the conversation quickly became “Yep, sure, thanks, ok, bye”. I figured if I stayed for a moment later they were try to harvest my unpure flesh.

I couldn’t take a picture, but I really wanted to. Here’s the best I could do with google

But eventually I made it Zion. I barely found a place to camp at this park. It was pretty busy. After getting change to pay for spot I ran into another rider on a GS BMW bike at the camp-fee drop off box. He said he drove through and all the spots were full. I told him he could camp with me. The spots were huge, and I only had my little tent. He managed to find the site while I paid for it.

His name was Pedro, and he was riding a mid 90s 1100 GS if I remember correctly. More importantly though, he had a hard bag on top of his bike where a passenger would ride. It was filled with ice and Coronas. What a nice refreshing way to end a long day of riding. He offered me a beer and we shot this shit for a couple hours at our camp table. He was a professor at the U of A in Tucson, AZ. He was headed south back to his home in Tucson. He told me the route he had taken to get down to Zion and which parts were fun and which parts should be avoided. I used that knowledge to plan my route the next day. Then we went to bed. Let me just note that his tent made mine look like a mansion. I was almost embarrassed to be in what I thought was a small tent. His tent was like shrink wrap over a sleeping bag. A coffin would have given him more room.

Pedro woke up earlier than I did and hit the road while I was still dozing. I woke up with back pains because my sleeping pad was leaking air all night. Here are the pics of the campsite I took in the morning.

I looked at my map that came with my park pass and saw a cool looking road. It was quite a climb in elevation and ended at a reservoir. It only looked to be about 20 miles each way, so I figured that would be a nice was to explore the area with the bike. So off I went. It was gorgous, and everything I had hoped for. Lots of twists to accompany the never ending hills. I decided not to take pics until my way back down the hill though. I figured I should see it all first to determine what is worth photographing and what isn’t.

When I got to the reservoir the road switched from asphalt to gravel. I was really excited for a chance to cruise on the gravel road. It was no dirt trail, but it was my first real time taking the bike off of pavement for an extended period.

Here is a pic from the far side of the reservoir

I figured the road would wrap around the reservoir back to where I started. I mean that makes sense, right? Why would it only go 3/4 of the way around a lake? After a while when I had gone past the half way point and began coming around the back side. The dirt road got pretty rough. The gravel had become more like a densely packed fine dirt. There were also many large bumps and potholes.

I became very nervous about dumping the bike and having a bad spill. There were large rocks and big holes. Those two things kind of work against each other and made things difficult. I scraped my skid plate a couple times and also scraped the bottom of one the bags. As nervous as I was I also had a blast doing it. Then I got to a point where there was a fence in front of me that went to the waterline and the road stopped. Oh shit!

So now I’m stuck on this rocky road trying to turn the bike around without dropping it. This picture really doesn’t due the rough road justice, but this was where I parked the bike when I reached the end of the road.

A view of the water from the same area

I manned up and got turned around and made it all the way back without problems. Once I got off of the hard dirt road and back on the gravel one I was so excited! I felt like I had really accomplished something by successfully navigating all the bumps, rocks, grooves, and holes along the way. I had that high-on-life feeling. I was really pumped and in the zone. It made me wonder if that’s how really healthy and outgoing people feel all the time. I mean I hike here and there and it’s nice, but the rush from this couldn’t really be matched by anything else. I had that feeling of all the hairs on my body standing on edge, but it wasn’t like the typical goosebump sensation. It also furthered my desire to buy a dirt bike.

Here’s one last pic from the side I started on that had a small boat launch ramp

Here are all the pics I took on the way back down. This area was just breathtaking

After fending on the vicious off-road challenges from earlier, I was feeling pretty invincible. I pulled off the road for this picture, but I almost lost it trying to get going in this fine gravel. It was sort of a humbling experience struggling on the edge of the roadway.

I had similar traction problems with this fine sand too

I probably took too many photos, but around every corner I kept thinking how great it all looked.

This next series of photos were taken as I drove through the park on my way to southeast Utah later in the day. Enjoy

That part of the ride was pretty nice when I wasn’t behind a car. There was a really long tunnel that was limited to one-way traffic. I would have loved to pull over and take pictures from the open spots in the walls of the tunnels, but that wasn’t allowed.

Later on in the day I was just cruising through southern Utah. Here are the photos I pulled over to get

Here where my timeline gets iffy. I can’t remember which night it was, but I think it was Saturday night that I went out to downtown Flagstaff with Tim again. A lot of his old friends from high school were in town. Some of which he hadn’t seen in over 5 years. So his plan was to join them downtown for a few drinks.

Our friend Carri was also going out that night too. Her sister and her sister’s friend were visiting from Colorado. My friend Christi was also included in that group. The sister’s friend is a Denver Nuggets cheer leader. When I met her she just came up and started dancing all crazy style. I’m all for intense dancing, lord knows I’ve been there, but I was nursing my first when she got and was way to sober to kick my dancing skills up to her level.

Carri and Christi wanted to get drinks so the 3 of us went to the bar. Carri asked me what I was drinking and I said tequila and sprite. As a disclaimer, let me warn you that tequila and sprite is a terrible drink. I usually can’t think of anything to order at bars so I usually just guess by mixing alcohol+something. For a long time I went with those two, and at this point I actually like them. Most people find the tequila taste to be too powerful and hate it. Carri assumed I ordered good drinks, so she ordered that for all 3 of us. I was fine with it, but I told the girls they better ask for a few more limes.

Tim was spending time telling his former classmates how’s he been doing. He may have even had to tell the same story 2, 3, and possibly even 4 times. I thought he heard us say we were going to a different bar, but I guess he didn’t. My bad, Tim. So we left for San Felipes.

At this point I had consumed a couple more cocktails and was feeling a bit looser and ready to dance. I guess the cheer leader had too because she and Christi were suddenly dancing atop the bar (it’s allowed at this bar). So Carri and I were left at the base of it wondering what to do. As I mention earlier in the blog, I’ve danced on bars before. It was actually at this bar last Halloween. So I once again used the cunning line of “I will if you will.” That was all Carri need to hear to get her dancing feet up on the bar.

So now the 4 of us were up there dancing. At this point I felt like quite the champion, maybe even godlike. I mean here I was dancing with 3 chicks atop the bar for everyone to see. Then a kid I played hockey with 2 years earlier called out my name. I was like “hey, how you doing?” I was never that outspoken on the team, and I only played for a semester. So I’m sure he was quite surprised to see me at a bar years later dancing on it with chicks. I’m still waiting to get the pics from Carri. She almost seemed embarrassed by these photos and has been quite hesitant to let have them.

[pics - san felipes]

After that night I said some good byes and hit the road. My original plan was to head east to Albuquerque, but after a few people told me that it was a gang infested shithole I decided to follow Tim’s advice and head to Zion national park in Utah.

I took these pics in the far northern parts of AZ on the way to Zion

This is some bridge

More shots closer to southeast Utah

That night we went out for a few drinks. We started at Maloney’s pub, which is my favorite bar in Flag. Here are some pics from that night with my pals Tim and Christina.

There were a lot more pics, but they were mainly of us drinking and being goofy at a bar, so I’ll save you from having to watch that spectacle. The highlight that night didn’t get saved on film though.

The Arizona Cardinals hold their mini camp in Flagstaff. A few of their players were at the bar that night. Some girl at the bar tried to get their autograph and picture. I guess they told her they couldn’t take photos at a bar or sign her body like she wanted. Instead they signed a napkin for her. I felt bad that her dreams of getting her body signed by an athlete were shattered, so I offered her my services. I mean, I do still play hockey, so I think I can consider myself an athlete. She was delighted to hear this and had me sign a certain part of her chest. Max D #7 is what I left her. I have no pics of her, but I can assure you she was gorgeous.

The next day Christina and I decided to ride up to Snowbowl and take the chairlift to the top of the mountain. Flagstaff is at the base a mountain with a ski resort. Christina rode on the back of the bike. Neither of us thought about sun burns, and we were quite red at the end of the day. Here are the pics from Snowbowl.

If you’re my mother ignore the following picture. Just pretend like it’s not there and scroll past it for the rest of them.

Christina’s camera had a panoramic mode, so here is a panoramic shot of Flagstaff

Here is Halo and Holly which belong to Matt:

And here is Joe’s dog Hallie. She’s the sweetest German Shepard ever