Day 7
May 21st 2004
The town of Junction, Texas proclaims itself to be the 'Gateway to the West'. It's true. I'm sure there are dozens of similar towns but it's unmistakable when you pass through the 'gateway'. One minute you're surrounded by trees, farmland and houses, the next minute all you see is bushes, dust and dirt. Yes, you're out West now...
Before we get too 'out West', this morning as I was cleaning my visor (yeah, I know what you're thinking; Here he goes again. I thought he promised he wasn't going to write about those any more...) there were some specs I couldn't remove. Upon closer inspection, I saw that they were actually several little nicks and scrapes in the Plexiglas. Yesterday I hit a small bird right in the faceshield and I assumed the scuff marks on the visor were just bird splatter, but it actually damaged the plastic. Probably the beak or some other hard bits. The reason I'm bringing all this up is that of all the motorcyclists I see, very few are wearing any protective gear at all, no helmets, no eyeglasses, no gloves, no boots and no jacket. I wonder how it feels to have a bird smack you right in the eye at 120 km / h... Anyways, I digress. Enough for my rant on protective gear.
This is the third time in my life that I'm in the south-western United States, and every time I'm in awe at the geography of the area.
The horizon just seems further away than anywhere else. There were a few episodes today where all around me the only thing visible that was man-made was the road I was riding on. No cars to be seen, no buildings, no structures, just emptiness. It's a big dose of reality about the insignificance of one's self on this planet. You feel it a bit when you're driving in a car, but on a bike it's amplified. You just feel so TINY. Then of course you start getting thoughts creeping in your mind. At first they are just vague little things but then they increase and you're thinking stuff like; "Geez, if I have a breakdown here, I'm in Deep Doo" or "I wonder how long you can survive in this heat". Now, don't worry dear reader, all the roads I've been on so far do have some traffic once in a while, so it would be quite easy to flag someone down. Just healthy paranoia, that's all...
There are also some pretty neat dirt roads
Just kidding, no I haven't started exploring unknown dirt roads in the middle of the desert. This is just a side road I took when nature called. Now if I was with someone else, I'm sure it could be a blast to go explore some of these dirt roads, because they seem all level and free of big potholes and lakes like we get in New Brunswick.
Another thing I saw a lot of today was this
This is Texas after all. I must have seen a thousand or so of these dotting the landscape. The big flat featureless Texan landscape. I can't say it was great motorcycling quality today, but the scenery was enjoyable, as it was a good introduction to put me in the right frame of mind for when I'm really in the desert. By the way, I was really happy about all the openness and the lack of traffic. It was a great antidote for Florida and Georgia.
I know I'm starting to sound like a broken record, but the heat today was phenomenal. Every day I think to myself that it can't get any worse, but then it does. Today I hit the hot spot between the New Mexico border and Roswell. The thermometer on the bike peaked at 37.6 degrees Celcius. I lifted my visor for a few moments and the blast of air felt like it was coming from a hair dryer. Thank goodness for my Camelback. I must have drunk 2 litres of water in those last few hours. I think that my suit actually protects me from the heat to some extent. Sure I sweat in it, but with the vents the moisture cools me off. If I was only wearing a tee shirt, the perspiration would evaporate much more quickly and I'd dehydrate much more.
I also had some moments of reflection as to which gadgets are the most important - creature comfort-wise for me during this trip. I think the rating goes like this
Camelback
Earplug / headphones
Throttlemeister
minidisk player
I took mainly secondary and tertiary highways today and was pleased to discover that in Texas everything is big, including speed limits. Even the smaller 2-laners had 70 MPH limits on them. I guess it's only reasonable, as the roads are very straight and you can see for miles in every direction. Made it to Roswell tonight. I'm not sure what drew me here, I'm not particularly fascinated by UFO's but I wanted to see what all the fuss was about. It was a bit disappointing. I was hoping for a nice "Welcome to Roswell" monument with aliens sculpted out of granite or something, but instead all there was was a little crappy sign with no mention of UFO's on it. In fact the only UFO stuff in town is the very tacky and commercial main street shops that sell UFO souvenirs
I did enjoy the street lights though, you can see it near the 'F' of UFO. They are shaped like alien heads with the two eyes. Pretty cool.
I'm also having a bit of paranoia concerning oil consumption. For those of you who do not care for this kind of blather, see you tomorrow. The GS's are infamous for some of them consume oil and some don't. I always thought that mine didn't, but I generally change my oil every 5000 km. I'm now up to 8 000 km on this oil and yesterday at the hotel I thought the oil level had gone down. This bike is pretty weird about how you're supposed to check the oil in the sight glass. After you turn the bike off, you let it sit on the side stand for a few minutes (to let the oil drain out of the right hand cylinder) and then you put it up on the center stand and wait about 15 minutes before taking a reading. Yesterday I thought it was low, so at lunchtime today, I did the procedure again and all seemed fine. When I got to the hotel tonight, I did it again and again I thought it was a bit low. Now we're Friday and everything will be closed tomorrow and Sunday, so I went to the local Honda shop and bought a quart to bring along with me, just in case. After settling back in at the hotel, I checked it again, and all seems fine. It's probably just paranoia about not wanting anything to happen in the desert.
Aiming for Arizona tomorrow, don't know how far I'm going to take it though.
Day Stats;
Total Distance: 1 143 km (Houston, Tx to Roswell, NM)
Total Time: 9 h 42 minutes
Overall Average: 113.94 km / h