Many miles of kick ass fun, great roads, and beautiful scenery shown below...fromTony, Wichita, Don, Ara, Karen, Dale, Toni, & as the list grows...

AZ Bike Week April 2006

Hideaway...Cave Creek, AZ                       the bikini bike wash...feeling dirty? she'll clean ya right up

Lake Havasu Dam

London Bridge

Joshua Tree National Park

 Tombstone Thanksgiving 2005

  Gila Bend

after 600 miles...best steak ever!!

motorcycle cowboys

early morning

Hawg Corral

Wickenburg

Laughlin, AZ and beyond 2005 

Tony & Doug

highlights of Laughlin...then back on the road....

4/26/05 Wichita and I left Laughlin Saturday morning.  Our destination was Sedona and then maybe Payson if we could.  We side tracked for a ride up to Hoover Dam.  The roads were wide open, but longer than we expected.  We rode for a long while to spend 10 minutes lookin at that damn dam.  Hell of a sight though.

Back on the road blasting our way down 93 toward Wickenburg.  We out ran 3 down pours, and looked in our side mirrors at black skies behind us.  We arrived in Wickenburg to find wet streets and large puddles.  We missed a pretty heavy down pour there.  We considered rolling south toward Phoenix.  It was 4:00pm.  The huge disappointment starting to rise in my throat was enough to fuel a 7 hour ride home right then and there.  I'd just as soon ride all the way back to San Diego by midnight rather than camp near Phoenix just to ride home the next day.  The storms were headed north-east, which was where we wanted to be, up in the Prescott to Sedona area.  Well, we figured we'd take the chance to make it to Prescott by nightfall, and if the weather wasn't too bad in the morning, we'd see the likes of Sedona afterall.  Full tanks, and we're back on the road heading north-east.

We could see the black clouds to our right as we motored north on 89.  We also saw that our route would take us directly into the storm.  As we climbed the mountain, the roads were wet 15 to 25 mile turns.  We got to the top after some sizeable rain drops (you never see rain like that in San Diego), but pushed on in the cold.  It's getting later.  It's cold and wet.  We'd been riding all day and tired.  Around the turns we could see lightening on top of the mountain.  When we reached the top, we were hit with a massive down pour and wind.  Couldn't see a damn thing.  No shelter anywhere, and then came the hail.  That shit hurt.  We pushed as long as we could until we finally rolled up to a stop in a little spot called Peeples.  We pulled in under an awning and grabbed a hot coffee to wait out the storm.  An older fellow rolled up on a '94 Road King.  Lived in Prescott for 30 years.  Nice older man.  Friendly.  A warm spot on the side of a cold, dark, wet road.  Doug was none too happy.  He was still thinking about Phoenix.  The sumbitch cain't stand bein cold.

We finally rolled into Prescott.  We did call from Wickenburg about a room, but didn't make a reservation.  By the time we got there it was booked.  We rode in the dark and the rain until we found a place called American Motel.  Lady was nice enough.  Best thing we'd seen in hundreds of miles.  She'd lived there for the past 3 years after her car broke down from Chicago.  Heart warming story really.  Should have told us the place was a fuckin crack house!  We unloaded and laughed about the whole damn thing, and decided we'd get a hot meal at the steak house down the way.  Warm inside and the food was good as hell.  Steaks, wings, baked potatoes with the works, soup, salad, warm friendly folks. 

We slept some and hit the road after breakfast next day.  We were finally stopped for good by the worst blackest sky we'd seen yet.  Pulled around and headed for home.  Wide open on the throttle.  Done.  By the time we got back to Prescott we hit more rain, hail, and wind.  We waited it out at a gas station before heading back down the wet mountain road.  When we finally got through all the wet, we opened it wide up for the next 8 hours home.  We took 89-71-60-72 up to Parker, and then cut across the 62 through 29 Palms.  That must have been the wind Colleen was talking about.  Wild.  We rode into Palm Springs to catch the 111 and were blasted by a sand storm across the road.  We had sand in places sand should never be.  Took the 111-74-371-79.  Got home at 7:30pm with 1298 miles on the odometer.  Still haven't seen Sedona.  Another day, another ride. 

It was great to ride with my friends up to Laughlin.  I would say we all had a great time on that ride in the early hours of the morning.  It was great to see RayRay, Metalman, Gabe, Catfish, Snake, and Colleen.  Sorry we missed Robert and Maricruz.  It was an outstanding weekend. Wouldn't have changed a thing.

AZ Grand Canyon Sedona

Yosemite, Tahoe 

Tony, Doug, Randy

Up the coast to Northern CA 

Karen & Dale

AZ, New Mexico, Colorado

Ara & Don

evil trailer