CHiPs Robertson
Mini-Me Tayler
A quick update.
With the ride officially over, I should point out that three of the group are still on the road. With their home base in the San Francisco bay area, “Duracell” Dennis, “Mini-Me”Tayler and “CHiPs”Roberston stayed overnight in Santa Barbara and are continuing up the California coastline. When they finish, they will have travelled over 3200 miles!!!
Duracell Dennis
Rob, Dennis & Scott are excited to be in Santa Monica
How Many Miles?
“The Boss”took the lead for the final 60 mile run to Santa Monica. The traffic built up and got quite heavy but, without the Phoenix heat, it was still very manageable. Keeping the group together was tricky but we achieved it and seeing the LA skyline appear was very cool indeed. We rolled into “The Cuban’s” Santa Monica hotel at around 11.00am to drop of his bags. As you can imagine, everyone was very excited to be here and Janice “Turtle-Mama” got lots of hugs and praise for crossing the entire country with her house on her back bike.
After a short break, we headed to the beach for a group photo and lunch. Fittingly, as the President of PRISM, we asked “Duracell”to lead us on this final journey, secretly hoping that he wouldn’t run out of gas on the way. Everyone was excited, relieved, exhiliarated and exhausted and the photos turned out great. We will post a gallery of photos from the entire trip over the next few days.
Then it was time for the group to disband and go their separate ways. After between 2760 and 2800 miles, depending on who took the adrenaline or leisurely route in Arizona, it was hard to ride off leaving some members behind. The view in the rear view mirror would never be the same!
I joked before we left that, by the end of the journey, we would all be great friends with an amazing shared experience, or there would be some unmarked graves in the New Mexico desert!! The desert remains undisturbed.
Road to Globe
Thursday was a beautiful morning in Socorro, New Mexico. Everyone was up early and all the bikes hit the road at 6:30am for the ride to Arizona. We headed out on Route 60 West with the sun coming up, providing us with an amazing sun rise departure. “Duracell” Dennis was as excited as a 2-year old (again!) and shot off into the distance in his t-shirt and leather vest, only to learn about 20 miles along that it was cold this morning… really cold. While he tried to flag down members of the “adrenaline junkies” so he could put on a jacket, the rest of us had a leisurely stop at the Very Large Array (VLA) for photos. This spot was made famous in the movie Contact.
We all re-grouped at our first gas-station and made our first, and only agreed split. The “adrenaline junkies” headed for the hills, while the sightseers wound their way along route 60 towards the town of Show Low. Here the weather was a lot warmer and, as the leisurely group rode in, the adrenaline junkies came in right behind… perfect timing. A short coffe break and we were on our way again, this time to the town of Globe. The ride was, agreed by all, as the best of the whole trip. Beautiful sweeping roads with the most amazing canyons in the background (see photo). We had clearly reached Heaven. We were all so happy we decided to push on an extra 100 miles today… Hindsight would prove to be wonderful!!
After a short lunchstop we headed for Phoenix. We decided Hell has no fury like Phoenix. After being stopped in roadworks for about 20 minutes, in 100+ degree heat, we eventually wound oer way towards the city. “Duracell” Dennis took off with the “Mini-Me”Tayler in the Lotus in pursuit. The rest of us made our way together into downtown, rush-hour traffic and everything started to get tough. Our next fuel stop couldn’t come soon enough. After 100 miles in heavy traffic, we were all in need of re-hydration. We all agreed that the heat on this leg was one of the most difficult things to deal with on the entire trip. We had reached Hell!!
In the meantime, Duracell decided to ignore the gas stop and plow on to get out of the heat. Much debate about what happened next ensued over dinner. I will let you decide. Dennis’s story is that he was so low on gas, and not stupid enough to actually run out of gas twice, so he parked up in a rest area on Interstate 10, and summoned the Lotus to go and get a gallon of gas. Hmmm?? That sound logical???
We all rode on, towards Palm Desert, where we arrived at 8:00pm after a long day and well over 600 miles behind us that day, and 2500 in total. After showering we re-grouped for our final dinner at PF Changs and celebrated our achievement of riding from Florida to California. Heaven had returned and many stories shared, from missing gas caps, bird strikes, wandering turtles, and how “Lucky” Rob really was that lucky.
Friday we make the final run to Santa Monica Pier…