Back in the Back
Today we started our motorcycle ride through Arizona and New Mexico. I really haven’t ridden much since our ride through NorthernSpain and Portugal last October. That has mostly been a weather-related issue, but there has also Ben some dust in the air around our club membership that I have previously described and have no desire to rehash. This ride was organized by one our Phoenix members, so, naturally, it started and will end in Phoenix. Phoenix seems to be your normalAmerican city, best characterized as urban sprawl. We stayed with Steve & Maggie and Ann & Chris stayed with Mark (the Ridemaster) & Jeanne. As Ive mentioned in a recent story, Kim and I drove into Phoenix from our hilltop dragging a U-Haul motorcycle with my bike in tow. That part of the operation came off flawlessly. My buddy Mike had helped me mount it and strap it down and it all held together just like it was supposed to. As we crossed the Sonoran Desert, and the temperature climbed to 105, I was sure I had made the right call to not start the trip with that kind of a day’s ride.
Steve & Maggie kicked off the festivities by hosting dinner at their house for the eight of us plus our emeritus members Steve & Karen, who have stopped riding, but not stopped being dear friends who enjoy sharing old ride stories. This being sizzling summer in Phoenix, Maggie turned on their patio misters and we enjoyed our meal on the patio with the sunset as the backdrop and the misters keeping us nice and cool. It’s amazing how well has learned to adapt to any climate,something he will need to do more and more as our global climate conditions continue to worsen and get more and more severe. After a good night’s sleep, we all arose early to saddle up. Kim and Maggie had to head off to meet Ann near the car rental place. Steve and I went off early to gas up and meet the rest of the riders at a convenient McDonalds. We went wheels up at 8:30, which was pretty much on plan.
As I have explained, this is not my ride, I ama mere joiner, and glad to be responsibility-free. Mark headed the team and knows the territory the best. He was followed by Chris, then Steve and I took up my position as the sweeper, as we call it, back in the back, followed by the Princess Van with Kim at the wheel, Maggie as navigator and Ann as the snack wrangler. Off we went for over an hour of traversing the urban sprawl of Phoenix withThe thermometer rising steadily and chasing us towards the cooler hills to the Northeast. We were headed towards Globe and then on to Alpine and we had an unusual schedule to keep. Because it is the newest wannabe national holiday, Juneteenth, the dinner restaurant in Springerville needed us seated at 4pm. Now we are an aging crew that prefers eating early, but that was early even by our standards. What it meant was that we stopped for brunch instead of lunch and then rode through to Springerville before going to Alpine to check into our cabins for the night. That was a bit of a timing challenge, so we took detours to Sunrise Ski Area and then Greer Park, where we stopped for a mid-afternoon drink on a warm, but not so hot in the mountains, day.
All the way, I rode sweep and enjoyed both the scenery and the familiar sight of a row of bikes in front of me. You don’t get that pleasure when you lead, and you are always checking you mirror to see if you still have all your ducklings. Mark tells me he likes me riding sweep especially because he can so easily identify the end of the line of bikes thanks to my bright yellow fog lights. That’s not why I have them (it’s really for general visibility…anything so cars can see you better), but I’m glad they help. The first day of these rides is also a rediscovery of all the motorcycle muscle memory and the soreness born of lack of use since the last ride. People aren’t aware of how much exercise is involved in motorcycling. They assume its easy just sitting on top of the machine, but. That’s far from so. Just wrestling the bike on and off a trailer is a workout. Then when you’re riding you need all kinds of core strength to muscle around a 750 pound beast that you’re straddling. While riding, you are using your shoulders and arms in ways that you soon remember as they stiffen up and get sore on that first day. But the real slave of these rides is our poor aching backs. This is where the core strength comes in. You are sitting upright with no backrest and by the end of a long first riding day, nothing feels quite as good as getting off the bike and searching for a nice hot shower, i can actually feel myself readjusting to this new yet familiar exercise as the day goes on. So long as we stop to rest and stretch every once in a while, I know it will get better as the afternoon progresses.
We usually plan our first day’s ride with all of these issues in mind. They are usually a bit shorter to allow everyone to adjust back into their riding back. I suspect that the part of these rides that everyone loves the most (other than the beautiful scenery at every turn) is the meal and socializing stops. There is something comforting to be back with old riding friends, swapping old and new tales at every meal. We have finished one of our five days of this and there is still lots to talk about. Five days has always proven to be the perfect length of ride (at least domestically). We hit on that formula 28 years ago and pretty much stick to it to this day. That way, with one arrival day and one departure day, it works out to a perfect week and is thus, “just right”.
Tomorrow we head down off this mountain to Las Cruces, New Mexico. I think we lose an hour and will then gain ii back the day after. We have added Rob & Urch, who rode down from Colorado, so we will be five bikes and one Princess Van tomorrow. I will be back in the sweep position again tomorrow, hoping that my back will be back in good riding form. I know it will be strong by Friday, but it would make for a nicer ride if it started behaving tomorrow.
I am back in the saddle again, which is one of my favorite places to be. I wish i enjoyed everything as much as i enjoy motorcycle touring. This has been my number one passion since I was sixteen,when I rode my new Triumph TR6R 650 Tiger from London to Rome across the channel to Boulogne and through the Mt. Blanc Tunnel into Asset onto the Autostrada. I got a big kick out of it then and I get a big kick out of it now. I don’t remember any back pain back then, but that’s what 60 years of hard living will do to your back. There is something appropriate in riding at the back of the pack for me these days. I’m not sure when I will drop off the line altogether, but I hope it isn’t any time soon. As long as my poor old back keeps coming back for more, I will be mounting up for more.