Category General

May 9 2017

Santa Fe, the never ending story

The multitude of brown buildings that comprise Santa Fe are fast disappearing in our rear view mirrors as we accelerate towards the gap in the thunderstorms at 9 am in the morning. We are leaving after an unplanned week in Santa Fe. We had no idea we would find another reason to stay a little longer day after day; would we ever leave? Let’s roll back to last Monday and see how this unfolded……

Rising above the sound of the wind beating against our helmets as we travel south on I25 in New Mexico, the ‘chain death rattle’, that sound we have heard before in Peru indicating that the chain is stretching fast, warranting a daily adjustment every couple of hundred miles/kilometres. We had hoped it would last until Vancouver but it was not to be. When we checked the milage on Streak’s chain, last replaced in Dubai in September 2014, we calculated that it had done an amazing 28,500 miles / 45,000 kilometres – wow!!! – when we heard the an average chain lasts around 15,000 miles / 24,000 kilometres. We have done well.

For some time, Anne has had problems with low speed braking, with a juddering effect that was finally diagnosed as a warped front disc. Outside the normal tolerances by over 100%. Another eye-watering priced present for Anne’s birthday list, why are motorcycle spares so expensive? With the chain and sprockets installed and front disc on order we will spend a couple of extra days here renewing our acquaintance with a city we spent time in on our way from Texas to Colorado in June 2015 on our last RTW trip.

We are staying is the same hotel, the Doubletree near to BMW Santa Fe, 6 miles / 10 kilometres outside town we used the last time we were here and with ‘Streak’ in the shop as they say here, we will use the Santa Fe Trails bus service. This service is very reasonably priced especially for the over 60’s, only a dollar for the whole day. Anne will benefit shortly!

Riding the buses for a couple of days gives us an insider’s view of a world that, as motorcyclists, we only see as advertising written on the side as we pass buy. Conversations, friendships, generosity are all part and parcel of an interesting world that we are clearly not part of.

“Someone just posted, never thought I’d get out today” says one passenger on his cell phone next to us, another shares her written poetry with others to read and misses her stop, a third opens a new packet of cigarettes and offers them around, ‘take two’ he says to one man. Constant conversation between passengers who obviously know each other well fills the bus. There is a virtual community on the buses and this includes the drivers. Sadly this community also includes some who appear to have substance abuse problems, but that notwithstanding, a great experience for us in a country that is based around the automobile, to see how another group of people interact.

As we start to relax, we have both found that the last two weeks riding have taken a toll on us physically, with a few persistent aches and pains emerging. Our bodies not have not taken to kindly to elements we have exposed them too. Spending time in one location, the easily paced days, comfortable hotel rooms and good food did have me questioning the reason for this RTW adventure and whether I would not be happier on a beach somewhere in Mexico or the Caribbean for the next few months. While I wrestled with these thoughts for a few days, Anne mentions to me that she has been questioning whether she feels like chasing the sunset for the next 5 months. As we discuss the options, we both agreed that the journey continues unless one or both of us really feel that we do not want to continue, same as the last trip. I suspect that these thoughts will resurface for both of us from time to time, but that is all part and parcel of the adventure.

Anne wants me to see the works of Allan Houser, a famous native American sculptor, so that accounted for another day spent in Santa Fe. The visit is covered in a separate blog entry by Anne but I did find it amazing to see how much one man could accomplish in his lifetime.

With Anne’s birthday looming, I was still looking for a location to the west where we could spend the weekend, go somewhere warmer, Las Vegas, mountain cabin (burrrrr… in this weather!) but nothing seemed to make sense so yes a couple more days in Santa Fe were the answer. We enjoy it here so why rush somewhere else?

We spend the time in town seeing a small show of Mexican lowrider cars, a special category of cars that started in Los Angles in the late 1940’s and early 50’s. From sandbags first loaded in the boot/trunk to today’s sophisticated electro/hydraulic systems, the aim, by modifying the suspension and chassis, is to be “low & slow”. The cars were also decorated, paint and trim, to reflect the Mexican culture where the drivers came from in contrast to the then “Anglo” culture prevalent in the USA at the time.

1960’s cars, crazy suspension, Santa Fe

How to create a little ‘lift’

1950’s Chevrolet Impala Lowrider

When one sits in the Loretto Chapel in Santa Fe, the vision that surrounds you is that of a French Church. This is made more believable when you are told the architect is French, Antoine Mouly, and that the stained glass windows are from France and the altar, organ and other fittings are from France and Italy. The most interesting aspect of the chapel, and the reason for its fame, is the double helix spiral staircase which gives access to the Choir loft. The architect died while the chapel was under construction and upon the chapel’s completion it was realised that no staircase had been built to access the choir loft some 20 feet / 6 metres above the chapel floor. Since the chapel was small, a normal staircase would take up too much floor space, and the Sisters of Loretto, not confused with Mother Thersea’s Sisters of Loreto order, whom the care of the church was entrusted to, did not appreciate the proposal of using a ladder in their habits! All the local carpenters do not have a solution to the problem, so the nuns decide to pray to St Joseph, the patron saint of carpenters. On the ninth and last day of their prayers, a unknown carpenter arrives and offers to build their staircase. We understand he worked with only the most basic of hand tools and spent three months building this amazing self supporting staircase then left with out asking for any payment. The nuns believed that their prayers to St Joseph had been answered and who can doubt them. It should be noted that the staircase originally had no handrail, which both the nuns and I found a little unnerving. The handrail was added a few years later.

Loretto Chapel staircase, Santa Fe

On our final day in Santa Fe, we visit Canyon Road, famous for a variety of art galleries and a must see place for visitors. We wander along the street and nothing catches Anne’s eye to entice her in until we see a large gallery space that appears to be setting up. We are invited in and meet Kiyomi, Joseph and Jesse who are preparing the gallery for its opening next week. They have created a great exhibition space, perfect for an Aboriginal art exhibition? Who knows, anyway we learn that a series of five marble sculptures will be craned in at 6 am on Monday morning, yes you guessed it, we are staying another couple of days to see this. Will we ever leave Santa Fe?

Mural in Santa Fe

A central hotel location would be great for this early start so on the way home we stop at the Hilton and ask what rate they would do for us. We are greeted by Haley who, I think after hearing it is Anne’s birthday says she will match our Doubletree rate. We are moving to a great location. Little did we know she had given us one of three apartments in the restored historic building adjacent to the hotel with our own lounge, dining, spa bath and two fireplaces! Are we so lucky or what?! I think I want a fireplace in the bedroom at home, it looks great, but have no idea where it will fit.

Lounge in our upgraded hotel ‘room’!

We do get up early, hard to do in such a comfortable location, our apartment, and go to see the statues being unloaded and installed with great precision by an enthusiastic group including the galley owner and the sculptor. Both show great pleasure in seeing the works installed.

 

Carefully does it….

Three down, two to go.

This rounds off a memorable week that also saw us visit Ghost Ranch, where Georgia O’Keeffe painted, stopped while riding to avoid a ferocious dust storm and listened to Native American drumming in the centre of Santa Fe.

Indian drumming and chanting, Santa Fe

Georgia O’Keefe’s studio, Ghost Ranch, New Mexico

Crazy wind gusts north west of Santa Fe

The Santa Fe story ends for us, but the journey continues….

– Anthony

May 6 2017

My 60th

My 60th birthday celebrations started on the 15th February thanks to friends going away on holiday before our pre-departure and pre-birthday little gathering a month later. I know my sister will be proud of me celebrating that long!! At that gathering, everybody there wrote me a little note, and some a longer letter, which I carried with me to read today – wow, I definitely feel loved. Have a look at the amazing cake my dear friend Pat had made for me for that lunch!!  We had a number of further small celebrations with various friends leading up to our departure on this trip at the end of March. Then celebrations continued with family when we arrived in Europe – that was very special. I have been thoroughly spoilt! Even the hotel here delivered a bottle of bubbles and left chocolate coated strawberries in the fridge for me.

The most stunning birthday cake

 

Birthday notes written by many friends

Bubbles from the hotel

Thank you Jonathan for organising these too

So what did I get up to today? We ended up deciding to spend the day in Santa Fe. We went to a gorgeous French bakery, Clafoutis, for breakfast (thanks for the tip Mario), had a walk around town, visited Loretto chapel to see its ‘miraculous’ staircase, returned to Canyon Road, the art gallery road which I first went to back in 2005 when I was looking for venues to hold an Aboriginal art exhibition, had a long chat with the owner of a new gallery there that was just setting up for their opening next week, walked around SantabFe some more, took the bus back to the hotel, rested for a couple of hours to snack and read more of my messages and went out to dinner – thank you Mmy for a delicious meal. And I got some gorgeous yellow roses from Anthony which was a lovely suprise – I had already got my Sidi Adventure boots, new chain and sprocket and even new front disc – what more could a girl want?!

Waiting for our bus to town

It’s official – I am now a Senior!!!

Delicious meal at Restaurant Martin, Santa Fe

One of the best deserts I have ever had

How weird to think I am now 60! How did that happen?! I don’t feel sixty, definitely not in the mind anyway – in the body at times, yes, I feel it, but for now, I can still ignore it mostly so I am determined to keep making the most of it.  Because, you never know what’s around the corner, so why put off to tomorrow the fun you can have today. No regrets, whatever happens… And luckily, I once got a card saying “ageing is inevitable, maturing is optional”!!! Won’t be maturing just yet…

– Anne

May 2 2017

Snowangels and shuffleboard

It is a short 92 mile ride from Ogallala in Nebraska where we spent last night to our friends on the northside of Denver so after yesterday’s tough ride, we take it easy and leave our motel at 10 am. We know we need to get to Denver by early afternoon as snow is coming according to all weather reports. As we approach the outskirts of Denver, it is looking interesting out there!! Maybe we should have left earlier… We get rain but no snow by the time we arrive at Karen and Mike’s home and we feel frozen to the bone.

We last saw our friends when we came through on our last round the world trip, so it’s great to see them on this trip. We had planned on spending 2 nights there but snow did arrive as forecast and they kindly invite us to stay 4, until the snow has melted, in Denver at least. We make the most of our time to do some minor bike maintenance (we have been tightening my chain everyday and doubt it will last until Vancouver – we might have to get it changed sooner), use the washing machine (rather than hand wash), buy some emergency rations from REI camping store nearby and generally chat and relax. We tried one packet of the freeze dried breakfast skillet which contains scrambled eggs, potato, capsicum or peppers one morning: it was surpringingly as tasty as I had read in online reviews, so we got 7 more packs. Although this food is light, it is horribly bulky. Perfect excuse to reduce the contents of our panniers and ship stuff back.

As forecast, we wake up Saturday morning to snow!! It is wet snow, not the light fluffy type but I can’t resist this:

Anne sleeping again or making her first snow Angel

That was fun!!

Sunday evening out with Mike and Karen’s friends Jeff and Leah introduces us to a new game: shuffleboard. In table shuffleboard, the play area is most commonly a narrow wooden or laminated 22ft, or 6.7m, surface covered with silicone beads (also know as called ‘shuffleboard wax’) to reduce friction. Players propel metal-and-plastic pucks by hand, to come to rest within zones of different values at the other end of the board. It is a variation of the British coin “shove ha’ penny”. The object of the game is to either score or prevent the opponent from scoring by either blocking or hitting their puck off the board. All of us being quite competitive, it is a lively (yes, at times loud) and fun evening.

 

Playing shuffleboard

With Karen and Mike

Thank you for your hospitality Karen and Mike. Your turn to come to us next time, or stay at our home if we are on the road!

As we get ready to leave, we suddenly make the decision to head to Santa Fe because I made a comment I would like to revisit BMW in Santa Fe as they had been so helpful a couple of years ago with my bike and in fear my chain will not last much longer – we had not fixed our destination until then. It is a gorgeous day, the sky is deep blue, the air is crisp, the clouds fluffy white and the mountains in the distance snow covered. As we head towards Denver with the Rockies to our right, we comment on how stunning the mountains are, how inviting they look. What a pitty to be missing out on crossing them. Shall we give it a go we ask each other through our bluetooth headsets? Yes, let’s. Quick turn off, detour and we join I70 West. A road we have taken so many times over the past 37 years as we managed to combiness business trips with skiing holidays.

As I write this blog and Anthony is watching Star Trek, and I hear: If you always see the road ahead of you, it is not worth the trip – how apt!!!

As we approach Idaho Springs, the sky looks really bad ahead so we turn off: a quick check of the weather radar reveals that it is now raining and -2 centigrade ahead. Not a good combination so we turn back!

I70 West towards Idaho Springs

The weather gradually warms up as we head south but with pretty gusty winds. (Read ‘very’ gusty). We detour via the Garden of the Gods then stop at Pueblo at 4.30 – we are completely done for the day so find ourselves a motel for the night. We have not travelled far at all today but who cares?! My chain is already very loose though: a quick call to BMW Santa Fe and we order a new chain and sprocket. It will be there the next day – perfect – we now have our route for the next couple of days sorted. The plan now is to head towards Taos via Eagle Nest on route 64 tomorrow which should be pretty. I am still hopeful we might find a quaint place to camp before we get to Taos, but a quick check of the weather tells me it will be freezing overnight again.

Garden of the Gods, Colorado

It is amazing to think that a couple of days ago, the I25 road south of Pueblo was closed to all traffic because of a foot of snow. It is all clear now luckily. Shortly south of Ratton we turn off onto the much quieter 64 road which is wonderful but boy is it windy!! My shoulders and neck have barely recovered from yesterday’s winds and now we get some more but the scenery makes up for the discomfort.

Culebra range, Colorado

 

Cimarron Canyon State Park, New Mexico

 

We are too early in the season, all is closed

We have made good time and head into Taos. After riding around the town for a couple of minutes, we realise this is not where we stayed a couple of years ago – no wonder we can’t find the hotel, we are in the wrong place!! We had been thinking of Santa Fe!! Thank goodness for McDonalds in every town: free wifi means we can always check for hotels, vacancies, weather etc.  Neither of us is not getting a good vibe from Taos, (we have never seen a McDonald with signs saying washing and brushing teeth in the toilets is prohibited) so we decide to go onto Santa Fe and find ourselves a motel on the outskirts of town.

This long day ends meeting a wonderful man in the car park of our motel. Bill is 70 years old, lost his wife of 40 years, Emily, 2 years ago and has done what she asked him to do before she died: got himself a motorcycle to travel. It is always great to meet kindred spirits as we travel…

Traveller Bill

If you are confused about our route, don’t be. As you will have read here, we are making it up as we go along. But for now, we are aiming for warmth and sunshine if possible, with scenery and culture along the way.

– Anne

May 1 2017

Westward Ho.

The title ‘Westward Ho’ comes from my recollection of the call of the wagon masters in cowboy movies of the 1940’s and 50’s, and maybe real life as the wagon trains started on their westward journey across the great plains.

We are roughly following one of the routes blazed by the pioneers in the 19th century in wagon trains across Iowa and Nebraska although we cover their daily average of 10-20 miles (16-32 kilometres) in as many minutes as we wiz along Interstate 80 (I80), at up to 70 mph (110 kmh). Denver will be a four day journey for the ‘2slowspeeds’ as we plan to cover up to 300 miles a day. We also have the comfort of motels, gas stations and numerous fast food outlets to aid our journey, something the early pioneers lacked.

The various trails for Western Travellers in the 19th Century


Since leaving our Amish friends, we have skirted to the south of Lake Michigan – note we have now seen all 5 of the great lakes seeing the missing two, Erie and Ontario on this trip – passed Chicago and ridden across Illinois and Iowa. We pass signs with names like Ottawa, Peru, Marseilles plus both Oxford and Cambridge giving us a global tour off one road: should we dive down any of these links, I feel we may end up in that named location. The location names are perhaps an indication of the varied origins of the people who started to settle the Great Plains in significant numbers almost 180 years ago.

When we stop for fuel or food, ‘Streak & Storm’ always attract attention. It may be because we are riding so early in the season, while the local ‘hogs’ (Harley Davidsons) are still sleeping gently in the caves waiting for warmer weather, but more likely is the friendly nature of the people we meet along the way in the USA. If time permitted, I am sure our journey would be at an even slower pace with all these wonderful people to meet.

The winds blasted us as we travelled across central Iowa, gusting up to 35mph (55 kph) which made life interesting as the large trucks (semi trailers) overtook us. With more weight concentrated on the rear of the bikes, our front wheel contact is a little ‘light’ at times. While we are used to winds, having lived and ridden in Cape Town, on one occasion as one particular truck passed both of us, we found our handlebars started to oscillate for a split second. Very disconcerting! Never happened before and not since, must have been a rare combination of wind currents. Hour after hour constant buffeting is tiring especially as we were riding 280 miles (450 kilometres). I admire those who have ventured to the tip of South America to whom this wind would seem like a light breeze, we have experienced that region’s weather while hiking, but not on motorcycles. We will leave that to more adventurous souls.

Foot and Hand warmers today


I am surprised at the gently rolling nature of the landscape as far as Lincoln Nebraska: I had an image of this region as flat as far as the eye could see, but this is not the case to the East of Lincoln. The occasional woodland nestled in the undulating terrain gives us a moments respite from the unrelenting winds. Temperatures are as low as 2 degrees Celsius, 35 degrees Fahrenheit, it is bitterly cold which even six layers of clothing cannot cannot defeat. Our stops are more frequent as we thaw out enough to ride for another 45 minutes at a time. Roll on summer!

We take a break on our westward journey at the Golden Spike Tower, http://www.goldenspiketower.com which has a commanding view over Union Pacific’s (UP) Bailey Yard in North Platte, the largest rail-yard in the world. They have a great live feed on their website for any train buffs. Statistics are impressive, more than 8 miles long, 150 trains and 14,000 wagons per day pass through here. They are sorted, checked, fuelled and have their crews changed. Short trains can only be 8000 feet long to be able to fit on the 9000 foot sidings. Express freights with priority right of way can be any length. Amazing stuff.

Massive rail network at North Platte


There is a plethora of other interesting facts about this location, which you can easily find many online, but a couple of interesting ones I thought are that the eastbound and westbound hump sorting yards are in the same direction, to use the natural fall the land from West to East to save moving large quantities of earth and that during the Second World War the North Platte Canteen was founded as a volunteer and self funded organisation that met each of the troop trains passing through North Platte with coffee and cakes. Over six million military personnel passed though during that time. Even some marriages occurred due to hastily scribbled notes passed from volunteers to military personnel!

Our last full day on the road heading to Denver sees the contrast of clear blue skies and warmer weather that makes me feel I could ride forever, to the thrill/excitement/fear of skirting a massive foreboding storm to the east of I76, watching the lightening forking down to the ground from black clouds so low you feel you could reach out and touch them.

Storm off I76


Our current destination is Denver where we will catch up with friends before deciding on our next move. As some of you may be aware we were keen to return to Alaska, but have decided that we will not be riding there this trip, perhaps another time. A couple of factors have influenced us, firstly while we are enjoying above average temperatures most days, further north has had one of the longest winters on record, snow is expected in Calgary for the next three days and as I write this we are riding with temperature that has dropped to 6 degrees celsius (43 degrees Fahrenheit) in the middle of the day. With windchill calculations travelling at 70 mph the effective temperature is -3 degrees celsius (27 degrees Fahrenheit). This has led us to delay our northward move as we hear it has for others who have also planned Alaska trips this spring.

Secondly, we have found it difficult to secure transport for Streak and Storm back from Anchorage to Vancouver: we had planned to ride one way only to give us more time to explore Alaska and have the bikes trucked back to Vancouver. With a deadline to deliver the bikes for their next service, chain, sprocket and tyre change on June 6, we would just be riding long distances daily without time to enjoy the journey in the way we like do. We are also cognisant that we will have 30 days hard riding in Russia and Mongolia to meet our visa restrictions.

We still plan to explore parts of Western Canada but will spend a little more time in the lower 48 states. Where is still to be determined, but both old haunts and new opportunities beckon in warmer climes. We will keep you advised.

– Anthony