The day started at a decent hour since we were all asleep by 9pm the night before.
We got the complimentary breakfast in the lobby along with all the golfers in town. Two different ideas of a vacation I guess.
I should mention that on the way from the bike dealer to the hotel I was following my map app on the iphone and before I really knew it we were jumping onto the freeway. I had never been on the freeway with a bike and this was not how I wanted it to start. As I maxed out around 70mph (250cc) my bike was shaking a bit and getting whipped by the wind. I had a minor panic attack before we got to our exit. So today I was all about taking the scenic route that avoided expressways until I was more comfortable.
I should say something about navigation. Joe had bought a GPS Garmin device but for some reason was not keen on using it. My backup plan became primary. I had downloaded the Rever app to my phone. Since it was not GPS it would not download data when out of range of cell towers. To plan for this I downloaded the map of Arizona to the app before we left. This allowed it to show our location on the app because although cells do not work out of range they do ping the GPS and can show your location on a previously generated map. In addition I had downloaded the coordinates from the BDR route. So that route would overlay onto my existing map and allow a turn by turn navigation.
We went for about an hour East from Scottsdale to Apache Junction before hitting Hwy 88 towards Roosevelt Lake. We would be skipping the Southern half of the AZ BDR, working our way up towards the UT border
When we got to 188 at the dam, we turned right to join up with 288N to Young. We had hit a little offroad up to this point. I was having my issues with the height of the bike and the weight. I did fine when the bike was moving but when I stopped I could not always stand flat footed and once the bike started leaning I was screwed. At home my bike was so small that I could stop wherever I wanted and just support it with my legs but now, with the added weight, I was learning that you had to park bikes in a certain way and on certain slopes or you were set up for failure. It was quite comical. We stopped at a restaurant "Ma's Kitcken" before getting on 288 and I basically just ran into the side of the place and fell over, still having my hand on the throttle causing the bike to spin to the left on top of me. I almost took chris out in the process. The wait staff watched the whole thing and were thoroughly impressed with my stunt skills. I was then known as "Coming in Hot." Rob and Chris had their own issues with the BMWs. Apparently the ABS had some backwards function. Michael said that the light blinks and goes off when it is on and stays solid when off. Seems a bit counter intuitive. So when we came to the dam turn off, rob sat there for 10 minutes backing up traffic trying to get the ABS back on yelling, "I cant get the ABS light to turn off"…to mean it was on?
We started getting our first taste of dirt
We pressed on through Young after filling up on gas. The lady at the station said there was a good place to camp just south of 260 once we got on top of the Mongollon rim along fire road 171.
We got on top of the rim and the weather dropped. I mean like really dropped. We were suddenly in a snow storm. This is still AZ right? We drove around among groups of hunters camped out with all the finest cold weather gear from Cabelas. We found a decent spot out of the wind and raced to set up shop.
We were not supposed to start fires here but with temperatures below freezing we decided that did not apply to us tonight.
Here are a couple videos of the campsite
3 of us brought camp chairs. Chris decided to bring some inflatable beach couch of sorts. It was a running joke throughout the week as he tried to sell us on the comfort, "anyone want to try the inflatable out? Its really nice."
Here is a video of him trying to use the bike exhaust to blow it up.
We had a good fire and slept well. Day one on the road had no injuries or mechanical failures. The mechanical failures would come along shortly thanks to rob.
Stay Tuned,
Darren
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