Captain’s Blog

I’m on day 3-of-4 here in Caracas, Venezuela: a short visit to a long-time customer, and a chance to say hi to a good friend who seems to always be taking care of me in South America, Mr. Francisco Lopez. I’m ready for some cooler Toronto weather, because it’s 30+ degrees here every day…

My camera battery was almost dead, but I managed to get a couple pictures. Here’s one of Francisco and I in the parking lot outside where I’ve been working (doh! I was looking at somebody else when this was taken!…

….a snapshot from the car of the road that we take to lunch every day (area is called “El Hatillo” – on the sign)…

…and a “legacy” picture of the “La Trinidad” hospital… where a coworker ended up during my last trip about a year ago: what I think was food-poisoning mixed with a bad diabetic reaction: talk about a rough trip for him!

Flying home soon, then my first track-day on Monday. Can’t wait!

After running new a new power lead to the front of the bike (hopefully to run some heated gear this fall too) and mounting the RAM arm… I finally have a sturdy way to mount and use my hand-held GPS on the road.

I actually bought the mount a few months ago… but wasn’t motivated to put it on until I could power the GPS at the same time. Just came back from a ride and the Garmin 60CSx sits nice and snug in the bubble of calm air behind the windscreen. Time to start taking some longer trips to places a little more out-of-the way…

I woke up early on Sunday, or at least tried to… and managed to be on the road by 9am. An hour later than I was aiming for… but it took more time than I thought to plan a shorter route than Saturday. First stop: East out highway 60 to Superior, Arizona

I stopped in Superior for about 15 minutes for a drink, and to watch all the other bikes drive by. There were lots of them out! I kinda wondered where the highway went at that point, as it pointed directly into the mountains… (I would find out later)

Next I made a loop South past Kearny, Hayden and Winkelman, stopping to take a look at some of the open-pit mines in the area: really big holes where they dug things up, right beside man-made mountains of dirt where they dumped back what they didn’t need.

I headed North and stopped in Globe for some gas and a bite to eat. From there I planned to head North a bit farther and hit another dirt road back towards Phoenix… but got on the wrong road out of town.. and before I knew what I had done I was barrelling down a mountain road back towards Superior. But since I wanted to be sure to be back home by 6, the road was nice, I decided not to turn around and just take an alternate route back to Phoenix instead… now I know how the highway made it out of Superior… through a tunnel in the mountain!

But first, I needed some ice cream!

I headed up Usery Pass road to see the big “Phoenix” arrow built into the side of the hill…

…then stopped in a recreation area for another break. There were people wading in the river, floating with the current on tubes, and launching kayaks for longer trips downstream:

Before pointing the bike back towards the city I also stopped near a boating area: well upstream of the recreation park was a large dam, and at the top of that damn was a long line of cars waiting to launch their boats and watercraft. I couldn’t get near the actual launch because of the traffic, so I took some pics from a nearby hill of the road and the dam.

Finally, back in town to drop off the bike… a lot dirtier than when I picked it up, but still running perfectly. And, as a bonus, just shy of the 600 mile cap, so I didn’t have to pay for driving too far on the weekend.

I had a great time roaming around, and would do it again in a heartbeat!

Some last-minute travel changes found me in Phoenix for the weekend, instead of back in Toronto. It seems I always miss the beginning of motorcycle season back in Canada because I’m traveling this time of year.

This trip would be different.

A quick Google search turned up a bike rental shop that would give me something to ride, and the safety gear I needed to protect me if I couldn’t keep the rubber side down.

So, get my butt out of the hotel early Saturday morning, hop in the rental car, go to the shop and pick up the bike (Ninja 650r: closest model to my SV650S) and get on the road…

…stop often for a rest, to drink some water (over 30 degrees out!), and to take pictures!…

…until I came to the dirt-road portion of my ride. After reading this report, I decided to try to make it through Schnebly Hill Road, which came with it’s own warning that keeps most street bikes away:

A couple miles in I came across a campsite on the edge of what would be a large pond / small lake in wetter times, with the remains of the dried-up pond on one side of the road, and a small half-broken dam on the other:

I had to trundle along at slow speeds, as the road was occasionally soft/sandy, covered with rocks I might scrape the bike on, or golf-ball-sized loose gravel that made me weave down the road…I really didn’t want to lay down the rental bike and have to pay for damages, so I took my time…

…but eventually I made it to the top! At the highest lookout was a small open area with several jeeps: tour companies run people up the more difficult part of the road from Sedona (which I hadn’t crossed yet) and let them stop at several places on the way up to take photos. Everybody thought I was crazy going through on a street bike! A few came over to take a look at my ride, and a nice couple from the UK took my picture at the lookout:

After having a bit of a break at the top… I started my way down the road to Sedona… taking many more pictures than I can put here, and gingerly nudging the bike around obstacles. It’s funny how the road looks so easy in the pictures, but in real-life I was constantly dodging rocks and potholes…fearful that falling over would leave horrible scratches on the bike and eat up my security deposit

The last part of the road followed a dry riverbed. There must be a lot of water flowing through there when they get a good rain, because in several places you can see where the water carved mini-waterfalls out of steps in the rock over the years:

Finally I made back to pavement with a bike covered in fine red dust, but otherwise no worse for wear. I stopped in Sedona to refill my waterbottle, choke down a nasty bit of beef-jerky (it looked good when I bought it) then a 1.5 hour ride south on highway I-17 got me back to the hotel… just shy of my free 300-mile-per-day mileage limit.

As you can see from the taken-in-the-dark odometer pic I didn’t get home until after sundown, and I was sore and exhausted. But it was oh so worth it! I went to sleep asap, knowing I had one more day with the bike and I had to bring it back before 6pm on Sunday.

If I ever get stuck in Phoenix again I’d definitely rent another motorcycle!

Last week I got to travel to Santa Clara, California for some training on new tech from Sun. I went with my coworker Patrick. After class we had time to wander around a bit.

Here’s a pic of us in front of Sun, Patrick on Page Mill Road overlooking Santa Clara, and an example of the curvy roads we drove.

I don’t know why I noticed this tree: it would look ominous on a dark stormy night:

A couple more shots taken along the road, then another from San Gregario beach (where I’ve been before on other trips)…

…a sunset over the Pacific…

…and finally another visitor that was walking along the top of the cliffs along the beach, as the sun was going down…

Thats enough pics for now… many more on the way from the next place I went: Phoenix, Arizona!