Raven's Roads
Living an interesting life: the travels and musings
of motorcycling author Linda R. Moore

Apr 6, 2005

April 4th - the kindness of strangers

I woke up at 4 am to the sound of rain. This threw me into an unhappy state of mind, because it wasn’t supposed to rain and I was dreading having to ride in the wet. As it turned out, that wasn’t the kind of weather I had to deal with today. When I eventually got up, around nine, it was sunny. I got ready rather slowly, and I think it must’ve been around eleven by the time Trudy and I were on the road again.

Originally, Trudy had intended to come as far as Barstow with me, but in the end she stayed to Mojave, which was closer. This was because it was FREEZING! Even with my leather jacket and overjacket on, I was frozen. Even so, I did enjoy the ride, after an initial very shaky start in which I made real fool of myself, and the less said about that, the better. :-(

The hills were all very green and blooming with little yellow and purple flowers, and rugged with many interesting rocks and pointy bits. I was particularly fascinated by the joshua trees, straight out of a wild west film, or maybe a science fiction set! They are really quite funky. Trudy is a skilled enough rider to ride hands-free and thus there are now several pictures of me riding. I was having some trouble with my own camera, but eventually I figured out that I had it on the wrong setting - it got shifted in my waist pack - and while I have overexposed most of the pictures I took today (or they have blonde hairs floating in front of the lens from my wild helmet look), I still have good memories.

I was grateful for the company, but humbled - I now know how much I have to learn, which always happens in the company of a truly skilled rider. Still, I have made it this far - 300.7 miles today by the odometer, and 280.1 miles yesterday - and that’s already further than I’ve ever been before. The Beast is powerful and strong, and eats up the miles quite easily.

I had a lot of trouble with wind today. And no, it wasn’t the food I ate. ;-) The roads I took, state route 58 first and then I-15 north and then I-40, were exposed and blustery, and I had to cope with constant wind and the odd rather vicious gust. But at least it was sunny. It makes for a physically demanding ride, though.

Mostly I stopped for fuel, and once in a rather odd little middle-of-nowhere place called Four Corners. I didn’t like Barstow. I got lost and had to deal with annoying, tight on-ramps and Mexican rap music. I also didn’t like Ludlow. It was a godforsaken, windy place with a horrible, unhappy vibe. I’m sure it’s places like this that inspire Stephen King in stuff like “Desolation”.

But I did like Four Corners, where I met a nice family who wanted to know what I was up to, and I enjoyed my brief sojourn at one of the rest stops on I-40. I took a nap there because I was sleepy and frazzled. I spent some time taking pictures. The desert was more bleak, more brown,and with different plants - splashes of gold flowers in amongst a lot of brown and grey, scrubby, low-growing plants, and things that looked like pineapples but which are apparently yucca. It’s a sharp, harsh landscape, very empty and very beautiful in its own way…and there is an awful lot of it.

I have been experiencing some weirdnesses with my gears. The bike doesn’t always seem to want to shift down from third to second, particularly on a slope and after a long run in fourth (top gear). I have found various coping mechanisms, but it would be nice to know if it’s just my bike, or a “feature” of this make and model. I haven’t been able to get online to ask on the Intruder Alert forum.

I crossed a 2700′ pass with the sun behind me, and came down into Needles at dusk, with my sunglasses on. I pulled into the nearest gas station and hit paydirt. I was so frazzled by then that I couldn’t even think of a dollar number to give the attendant, so he just told me to go fill up and we’d settle up (I then found out I was getting magnificent gas mileage - 95 miles to 1.8 gallons). He recommended a nice motel and I pulled over to one side to take a break, and he came out and asked if I was okay, and we chatted a while and I even got a free drink. :-) He had been in the Marines, or at least working on the Marine base, and we talked a bit about how other militaries came to 29 Palms to do their training, including some from Scotland, and how there wasn’t really that much to do there. He used to go to the Joshua Tree preserve at weekends.

It was just so nice to have a friendly chat with someone at the end of a long day. I was on the road for eight hours, give or take. My next few days should be a bit gentler.

Then I took his recommendation and pulled in at the hotel. The owner was a man from India who had also lived in Tasmania and was now making a new life here. He had also been a biker since 1972! So The Beast got a prime location in the owner’s own carport, and much fussing over and admiration. I got Chinese food from the place next door, and chatted to a guy from Louisiana with a nice accent who was working in the gasoline industry. I am finding that the combination of an English accent, wild hair and a fully loaded motorcycle is a powerful tool for getting people to come and talk to me, and I am very glad of that. It makes the journey so much nicer.