howl at the moon...

Rose and I recently returned from a vacation in Utah. It seems like an odd place for a queer couple to vacation, but the land is beautiful and the motorcycling is outstanding. We had a thrilling time.
Our first few days were lazy and fun, just passing time getting across West Texas (snooze) and into Cortez, CO (beautiful). We enjoyed the warm hospitality of my aunt and uncle in Las Vegas, NM along the way and sampled some terrific cuisine in Taos. We even shopped! Furthermore, we bought something! Neither Rose nor I shops recreationally so that was a noteworthy moment. It was a home decor item so large we had to ship it home as it wouldn't have fit on our motorcycles. Srsly. I'm sure that I'll post a photo of it once we get the room painted and hang it on the wall.
We met up in Cortez with some friends from Bakersfield, CA and another friend from Phoenix, AZ. Chewy (one of the two from Bakersfield) started having trouble with her bike out on the road. It turns out an electronic component in her bike was on the fritz, and this is a widespread problem. They had several dozen back ordered at the shop where she stopped for repairs, so we had a makeshift solution for starting her bike: keep trying until it works. It turns out, though, that the uncooperative electronic component governed other miscellaneous systems, like headlights and the cooling fan. These will both be important later...

So on our first day out, we hit a bunch of big destinations: Mesa Verde, the Four Corners, Goosenecks State Park, and a terrific (in the terrifying sense of the word) piece of road called the Moki Dugway. About 2/3 up the Moki Dugway, Chewy's bike overheated and we had to pull over. (Fritzy Electronic Component strikes again!) On the face of a cliff, in a switchback, five bikes parked on the gravel, with sunset approaching rapidly. And that wasn't the scary part of the day. Just so you know, everything worked out okay. Now you don't have to scroll to the bottom of this post looking for the awful news before you come back to finish the story.



After about an hour waiting for the bike to cool, we carried on. This meant we were passing through Lake Powell territory right at sunset, but we were still a good hour and a half from our destination in Hanksville, UT. As full darkness got serious about settling on the mesa there, Chewy's absent headlight became a real problem. (Fritzy Electronic Component strikes again!) However, she's a real tough lady and not one to stop riding for something so silly as absence of light. So she put me out front, and she rode just off my flank so she could use my headlight to illumine her path. Everyone else followed behind. Really, this worked pretty well as long as the road was straight and flat. We had to slow down significantly to take the curves, though. UNTIL... [dramatic music: DUN-DUN-DUNNNNNNNNNNNNNNN!] the coyote.

That's right, gentle readers. I had my first motorcycle/wildlife encounter. This little coyote was out in the middle of the road, sniffing something on the pavement that I'm certain was quite disgusting and probably dead. As soon as I saw it, I jammed on my brakes and (reportedly) created quite a nasty-smelling cloud of rubber smoke behind me. I did not manage to avoid the coyote, but I did manage to avoid the pavement. So I call that a tie. I hit the thing with my tire and then IT hit my left foot and went spinning off into the darkness. Some brainiacs have asked me when I tell them this whether the coyote lived. Now, really, if you hit a wild wolf-like creature on the highway at night, would you go unarmed out into the desert to look at the outcome? Really?!?! Just FYI, the pictured coyote is one that we stumbled across in a national park the following day.

About five minutes later, the massive rush of adrenaline wore off, and I had to pee like i have never in my life needed to pee. And I went through both basic training and military survival school, so I know about needing to pee. :) Luckily, we were only another 10 miles or so from Hanksville, at that point. We pulled up at the first gas station and examined my bike for signs of damage and everyone else's teeth for rubber cinders. Turns out there were none of the above, but I finally got to pee. We concluded (and rightly so) that it was too late by then to expect any restaurants to be open in this roll-up-the-sidewalks-at-dusk sort of town, so we bought some cans of Chef Boyardee and rolled to our campground.

Chef Boyardee heated over a camp stove, when savored with that Boyamigladtobealive sauce and topped with superb company, is probably the finest gourmet meal I've ever eaten.

GO LOOK AT THE MOON!!!

NASA advises you to go take a look at the moon tonight. It'll look large and lovely as a result of an optical illusion that nobody understands, just like microwaves and non-dairy creamer. There are a few theories on why the moon looks so large when it comes up on the horizon, and there are great explanations of them on that link.

I've experienced that myself... the most glorious moonrise I ever saw actually looked like a massive grassfire in the mesas of New Mexico. It spread thick and red and wavy across the horizon, getting larger and larger as I drove toward it, cursing the fact that I had no cell phone reception and the nearest land line was 14 miles TOWARD the fire. For a while, I honestly wondered if I'd have to ditch the truck in an arroyo and hope the flames passed overhead. Then, suddenly the upper edge of the moon popped out crisp and clear into the cooler layers of air. The atmosphere stopped playing mirage tricks and the orange moon rose splendidly over the mesas and canyons.

It's a terrific memory and one that I hold out any time someone says they don't get what the big deal is about light pollution. Happy memories and good moongazing tonight, internet!

Carlsbad, NM - redux

Rose and I just got back from Carlsbad, NM. We went there last year on our road trip, but on that visit it was merely a waypoint. This time, we met up with friends from the Dykes on Bikes e-mail list and the whole point was to visit the caverns and the surrounding countryside, like Roswell. Here we are, a small group of Dykes on Bikes, ready to go into the caverns. Your friendly, neighborhood giant amazon is easy to spot. In fact, this theme was so pronounced that our friend Chelli took a picture of a cavern formation to exemplify it. Here: See? That's me on the right. Now, ordinarily, I'd do a whole cool ride report on how fabby the roads were and all the great places that we ate and all the sorts of things I get excited about. In the case of this trip, however, we were in the unenviable position of having to ride from the edge of the Texas Black Prairie across the Western Plains to the edge of the Guadalupe Mountains. The operative words there are Prairie and Plains. The chief difference between them is their aridness, and they're not much to look at beyond that. They do make for some outstanding sunsets and sunrises with the wide open spaces in front of you. Unfortunately, that only occupies about 2 hours of your day, and then you still have the other 22 in which to contend with the pancake-ocity of it all. So: flat, pancake-ocity, and the tumblin' tumbleweeds. What makes the tumbleweeds tumble, you may wonder? Well, I'll tell you - it ain't the sheer joy of skipping over the thrilling landscape. It's the plain desire to look at something OTHER than the plains. That, or the blistering wind. :)

Our chief form of entertainment on this ride, after we'd seen the caverns, was to ride across the prairie/plains taking pictures of each other.





We had ourselves some fun up in Roswell. The Harley dealership out there has a couple of big bikes on display with an alien and an MP, respectively, riding them. We took some silly photos of ourselves hugging the aliens and whatnot before settling in to a nice light lunch of BBQ ribs, sausage, and all the trimmings.




Oh, Cavern highlights, lest I forget: we walked through it with a Ranger who just happened to be starting his route about the same time as us. He showed us all sorts of neat things about the cave that you'd never find without a guide and a flashlight. There are places right along the path where you can see bat bones being fossilized right into the drip-formed stalagmites, and rock formations that glow if you give them a good dose of light. They even have a cave ghost that you can see in photographs... He's a natural rock formation that doesn't look like anything special until you use the flash on your camera. Then those eyes pop out of the darkness at you! The low wall that keeps tourists on the trail and off the stalagmites is full of fascinating little 'easter eggs' if you know what to look for. Our ranger guide showed us a rubber high bounce ball, a glow-in-the-dark gecko, a keepsake penny, a Pennsylvania quarter, an American flag, and a few other neat little peeks and pokes that probably go unnoticed by 99.9% of the cavern visitors. Finally, a fossil that was dug up from the cave and put out on display to illustrate why it's occasionally good for things in the cavern to break:
So, that was Carlsbad. Well, there was the bit about the largest North American Colony of Mexican Freetail Bats flying out of the cave and right over our heads at sunset and then the thrilling ride back down the mountain in the cool night air with the full moon rising. But honestly, you had to be there for that... so I hope to see you out on the road next time.

Carlsbad, NM

the roadtrip was originally scheduled to begin at o-dark-thirty on tuesday. but then i decided that i could work a crammed half-day on monday so that we could get a little closer to our tuesday goal (El Paso, or thereabouts) on our first day. Dallas to El Paso is a hella long day, so getting part of the way there on Monday would spare us a Hellacious Tuesday.



so the new plan was to leave at noon on monday, ride as far as we could or until we lost the light, and then start at o-dark-thirty on tuesday from a better launching point (which ended up being Abilene). but then, since we our tuesday was going to be easy-peasy instead of hella-hard, we decided to add an extra stop into the trip. and thus, we set our GPS for a waypoint of carlsbad, nm.



carlsbad is an unreasonably hot place in the chihuahuan desert (where there are NO dogs, wtf?!?!?) that lets you enter an unreasonably cold place 750 ft below the floor of the chihuahuan desert.

 
when you arrive at carlsbad caverns national park in an air conditioned car, you have difficulty arriving in the appropriate clothing to enter the cave. when you arrive on a motorcycle, outfitted for riding across the desert, you have no chance.

rose had never been to the caverns, and i had only been once when i was about 12 years old. i remembered a lot of the more lurid details of the place (rocks that look like nekkid bits! teehee!)
 
  but did not remember how cold it was. and it's a deceptive cold, because it's wet. and of course, you enter it from the desert, which is the epitome of dry heat. so at first, it feels all welcoming and cool and refreshing and great. then you notice the goose bumps, then the shivering sets in, and then your jaw locks up and you die huddled on a bench trying to warm yourself on a fluorescent bulb just enough to call for help. srsly. rose claims that she had no such trouble with the atmosphere in the cave, but i think she was just playing tough. damn that butch-girl ethic!

still, once i got back to the surface and thawed out my jaw muscles, i was able to tell rose that i really enjoyed the cave and would love to go back some day for a tour of the parts we didn't get to see. but only if i get to bring my sweater. and lest i make it sound like a bad place to go, the cavern really was quite beautiful. it's a natural marvel and i would love to go back for more. in a sweater.

the albuquerque airport

a friend of mine suggested recently that when i'm traveling, i should make notes about any particularly interesting or weird or good or bad things i encounter. that way, it'll be recorded for posterity and she can look it up here someday if she should travel to one of these locations. so here are my notes on the interesting features of the albuquerque airport:

the bathrooms there were built fairly close in time to the development of the efficient self-flushing toilets. in fact, they were probably built after the first generation of self-flushing toilets (which worked very poorly) and before the current generation. as a result, the toilets have all their plumbing tucked into the wall as self-flushers do, but you still have to flush them yourself. for this purpose, there is a large black button on the wall right where the sensor would be, if these things had been installed a year later. no problem, right? wrong.

it seems that user humans have so adapted to the self-flushing toilets that at some point, they stopped noticing that these toilets had buttons and no infrared sensors to go with them. to fix the problem of people walking away from their bowls with the job undone, the management of the albuquerque airport undoubtedly had many choices. they went with the simple and cheapest one. they installed stickers above the buttons on the wall that read, quite simply "Please Flush". and to make sure you didn't miss the message (i think this is the smartest part of the arrangement) they added an extra sticker on the door of the stall, right at sitting-eye-level, that says the same thing.

it worked. i flushed.

and in other news, i still hate southwest airlines' cattle call boarding. i like that i can check in online 24 hours in advance and ensure my status as a member of Group A, but i still hate the process. i want a guaranteed seat assignment, damnit! they're considering letting people pay a little extra for a guaranteed seat, and if they do, i'll be the first to sign up for the service. giant amazons need aisle seating. somewhere near the front. with a little bin space. it's not too much to ask, don't ya think? far better would be riding out to gigs on my valk, but that takes more than twice as much travel time, and i don't always have it. wish i did, though. the weather in gallup was gorgeous. of course, the sinus infection would've made riding much less fun than the usual. i can't imagine the how heinous it would feel to sneeze inside my helmet at 70 miles an hour. ugh.