{"id":141,"date":"2008-04-23T19:33:38","date_gmt":"2008-04-24T02:33:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mikekirk.org\/?p=141"},"modified":"2013-12-14T12:24:47","modified_gmt":"2013-12-14T17:24:47","slug":"yeah-but-its-a-dry-heat-weekend-in-phoenix-saturday","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.mikekirk.org\/wordpress\/yeah-but-its-a-dry-heat-weekend-in-phoenix-saturday\/","title":{"rendered":"Yeah, but it’s a dry heat… [Weekend in Phoenix: Saturday]"},"content":{"rendered":"

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. <\/p>\n

This trip would be different.<\/p>\n

A quick Google search turned up a bike rental shop<\/a> 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.<\/p>\n

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…<\/p>\n

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…stop often for a rest, to drink some water (over 30 degrees out!), and to take pictures!…<\/p>\n

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

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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:<\/p>\n

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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…<\/p>\n

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…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:<\/p>\n

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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 \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n

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The last part of the road followed a dry riverbed. There must be a lot<\/strong> 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:<\/p>\n

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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.<\/p>\n

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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.<\/p>\n

If I ever get stuck in Phoenix again I’d definitely rent another motorcycle!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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 Continue reading Yeah, but it’s a dry heat… [Weekend in Phoenix: Saturday]<\/span>→<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/ptY4v-2h","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mikekirk.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/141"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mikekirk.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mikekirk.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mikekirk.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mikekirk.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=141"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.mikekirk.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/141\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1036,"href":"https:\/\/www.mikekirk.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/141\/revisions\/1036"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mikekirk.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=141"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mikekirk.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=141"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mikekirk.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=141"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}