If you read the blog, then you've already gone on our ride around the Superstition Mountains in Arizona. Motorcycle Mojo picked up the story to run in this month's (August) edition. I then got an email from the editor of noplacelikeout.com saying that I'd been included in their recent list of top 25 motorcycle bloggers. It's always nice to get a compliment, and I'm in the company of some pretty major bloggers on that list (you'll find many of them in the blog roll on the right side of this page).
Five or so years ago I stopped playing video games after wracking up 1000 hours on Left For Dead 2 (I was really good!), and then reading Chris Hardwick's excerpt of The Nerdist's Way on Wired. Gaming never got in the way of my career like it did with Hardwick (the breaks I got involved manual labour in 100° warehouses), but that thousand hours spent shooting zombies had me asking myself a difficult question, "what the fuck are you doing with your time?"
I went cold turkey on video games. I'll occasionally play with my son, but a single game and not often. What I did instead was kick off a hobby that I'd always wanted to do (motorcycling) and reinvigorate my dream of getting published as a writer. A few less electron zombies have been killed by me, but the things I've done instead feel a lot more satisfying because they are, you know, actual things.
The rolling hills mean short sight lines and lightened suspension. Patchy pavement means a rough ride. Lots of corners means you're depending on the sides of your tires. The Bush Highway is a demanding ride.
After our horse ride in the Arizona desert we took the rental SUV down the Bush Highway and into Apache Junction for dinner. Over one of the many hills we came upon a dozen emergency vehicles with lights blazing. The road was closed down to one lane. As we crept past we cleared the ambulance in the middle of the road and a rider came into view. He was sitting in the middle of the pavement my son and I had ridden down a couple of days before, his GSX-R a pile of broken plastic and bent metal on the gravel shoulder. He'd obviously been thrown clear of it. He was sitting up because he was wearing a full helmet, armoured leather jacket, pants and boots. ATGATT meant this was an expensive crash, but not an overly injurious one, he looked winded and freaked out, but paramedics won't have you sitting up unless they've ruled out a lot of more serious injuries. Helmets are optional in Arizona. If this guy had come off at the speed he was travelling (he ended up a good sixty feet away from the bike) without a helmet he wouldn't have been sitting up. He also would've left a lot of skin on the pavement if he wasn't wearing armoured gear. As it was he looked cut free. There might be a sport bike argument to be made here. Cruiser riders may ride around in t-shirts and no helmet in Arizona, but then they don't try and tackle the bumpy, undulating Bush Highway at high speed either. If you're going to ride a sports bike aggressively, full gear seems like an obvious thing to do. Exploring the limits of said sports bike on a bumpy, poorly maintained desert road with a patina of sand on it might not be such a bright idea either; that's what track days are for. I didn't start riding until my forties. I could have started in my twenties when I had fewer responsibilities and much more free time, but a bad crash at work put me off it again. Every time I see a rider down my heart jumps into my throat. I want them to be ok, but I also don't want it to be the result of a stupid decision they made. Every time that happens someone like me is shaken off the idea of riding, which means they are missing out on a magical experience.
While in Arizona we went out horseback riding for a couple of hours. I hadn't ridden a horse since I was a kid (almost forty years ago - back then they were tiny prehistoric horses). I got Butch, who liked to eat a lot and thought it a good idea to stick his nose up the horse in front's ass to get it back to the paddock early for lunch. He managed to piss off half a dozen horses doing this. I ended up with mighty sore knees because I kept weight on the stirrups for the entire ride. Partly because it was suggested and partly because it took weight off the horse's back. Working with an animal is a very different process than inhabiting a machine. I imagine that developing a longer term relationship with the creature eases the guilt I was feeling over using the animal. If I knew that Butch enjoyed taking people out and going for a walk I'd have been a lot happier with bothering him with it. His habit of rushing the other horses suggested that he wasn't enjoying hauling my heaviness around though. How different is riding a horse from asking a taxi to drive you somewhere? In both cases you're paying an organization to provide an animal that will transport you (one a horse, the other a machine assisted human). In the case of the taxi driver you can at least communicate with them and get a sense of their willingness to do the work. You can probably do that with the horse too, but the non-verbal communication takes longer to figure out.
I don't worry about my largeness (6'3" 240lbs) hurting a motorcycle but it was on my mind with the horse, even though they gave me one of the biggest ones they had. My animal empathy is overdeveloped, no doubt, but even with a machine I still sympathize with its situation, it's one of the reasons I take care of mine so diligently. With an animal I'm unfamiliar with I'm not clear on our relationship. If the animal doesn't want to be there it sours the experience. Put another way, I've never met a motorcycle that wasn't eager to be ridden - it's their purpose. We might have domesticated horses but their reason for being isn't to carry people around. While machines may have their problems they have also offered us an opportunity to stop using many animals as chattel for our own ends. I enjoyed the horse ride and I'd do it again, but it would be nice to better understand the horse and their situation. Knowing that a horse was excited to see me and go out would go a long way toward enjoying the ride more in the same way that taking out an excited dog for a walk is a positive process. Two days before our rental horse ride I took a rental motorcycle out for the day and didn't have anything like the same moral quandary, though perhaps I should have.
It's wonderfully quiet out on a horse in the desert.
I'm getting suspicious as I ride out of Scottsdale into the desert and see signs saying I'm entering Phoenix. My son and I are riding in December, not something we usually achieve in Canada. Our rental is a Kawasaki Concours14 from AZride.com. We pull over into a gas station to pick up some water we needed anyway then turn around and start heading the right way. I'm dataless and gpsless and we're heading deep into the mountains a couple of days after Christmas. Soon enough we're out of the urban sprawl of Phoenix and feeling the cool desert breeze as we head north on Highway 87 through scattered saguaro cactus. I have that realization I often get when I haven't been in the saddle in a while: wow, do I love riding a motorbike! The vulnerability, the sensory overload and the speed conspire to make a rush of adrenaline that opens you up to this overwhelming experience even more. I've tried many things, some of them not particularly good for me, but nothing, and I mean nothing, feels better than disappearing down the road on two wheels. Once clear of traffic lights I immediately get lost in the winding corners and elevation changes of the Bush Highway. The bike is leaning left and right, feeling weightless under me and eager to spring forward at the twist of the throttle. My twenty year old Concours at home under a blanket in the garage does a good job with a thousand ccs, this newer fourteen-hundred cc machine is a revelation, even two up.
The Ride: 350+kms through the Superstition Mountains
A couple of weeks after our ride our route was buried in a foot of snow.
We leave the traffic lights of the city behind and immediately find ourselves amongst ranches and desert aficionados hauling everything from ATVs and Dakar looking off-roaders to boats and bicycles. It's the end of December but it's still 16°C on the digital dash and people are making use of their time off after Christmas. The Bush Highway turns back toward the sprawl, so after crossing Usurer's Pass we drop down to Highway 60 in Apache Junction having bypassed miles of Mesan strip malls. Highway 60 is empty and arrow straight. What would you do on a 160 horsepower bike you've never ridden before? I do it. In what feels like moments we're leaving the desert floor behind us and climbing into the Superstition Mountains. I feel like I'm sitting on a Saturn V in a full stage one burn.
The ride into the Superstition Mountains is elevating.
We're both wearing fleeces and leathers and it was comfortable on the warm desert floor, however the mountains ahead are looking mighty foreboding. We started our ride in Scottsdale at just over a thousand feet above sea level, but the road to Globe is going to take us up to almost five thousand feet and we can feel the temperature plunging as we climb. I've wanted to ride this road to Globe since driving it in a miserly Nissan rental car years before. It's twenty five miles of being on the side of your tires. You're only upright as you're switching sides. The temperature drops and snow begins to appear in shady patches on the side of the road. We surge ever upward in a cocoon of still air. The Concours' fairing is keeping the worst of it at bay while that mighty engine makes short work of any moving chicanes in front of us. Would I like to ride this road on a sport bike? Sure, but the big Kawi makes it easy to enjoy two up with luggage. As is the way with winding roads I get to the end of them in a trance, and always earlier than I think I should. By this point we're both cold regardless of what we're wearing and fairings. The outside temperature in Globe is 4°C. We jump off the bike at the Copper Bistro and stamp some feeling back into our legs. Walking into the restaurant we're met with the incredulous stares of the locals. "Kinda cold to be out on a bike, ain't it?" "We're Canadian." "Ahh..." The old timer at the bar gives us a look like he understands why we're out but still pities us for doing it. We can't help being what we are.
Do not mess with the Globe popo.
We warm up to a damn fine burgers and fries. Max likes the splotches of copper made into art on the wall. Globe is home to one of the biggest copper mines in America and the locals have that toughness that you see in people who don't sit at a desk for a living. The Globe Police department comes in for lunch, men with no necks who look like they stay in shape by managing the miners on Friday nights. You wouldn't want to mess with these guys. Warmed up, we're back on the bike and filling up before ducking out of Globe on the 188 into the Tonto Basin, a two thousand foot drop down from where we had lunch. In warmer weather the 188 is busy with boat haulers heading to the lake behind the Roosevelt dam, but today the road is ours.
Roosevelt Dam, a nice stop and the beginning of the rather bananas Apache Trail - an astonishing road but not the sort of thing you'd want to two up on a Concours.
We wind down into the Basin and see the big saguaro cactus return. The temperature is back into double digits and we're at our ease following the twisties on an empty road. We meet the odd bundled up motorcyclist coming the other way and get the universal wave, but otherwise it's wonderfully quiet. We pull into Roosevelt Dam for a stretch and a drink of water before following 188 to its end at Highway 87. Our animal sighting luck kicks in at this point. As we're kitting up to leave the dam a bald eagle flies over it and down the Salt River looking a scene out of a movie.
By this point it's mid-afternoon and we're both wind blown, dehydrated and a bit achy from the swings in temperature, and I've got the trickiest part of the ride coming up. I've driven the 87 in a car and know what's coming. We pull up to make sure our ATGATT is airtight and for me to get my head on straight for a high speed decent on a fast two lane highway down the side of a mountain range.
Have a stretch and get your head on straight for the ride back to Phoenix. The locals don't take this road slowly.
The first time I drove the 87 toward Phoenix from Payson I was astonished to see large trucks towing full sized boats blow past me at better than eighty miles an hour. This road moves and none of it is straight. Some of the corners feel like they last forever and they all generally lead straight into another corner. For a guy from Southern Ontario, home of boring, straight roads, this isn't business as usual. The Concours surges down the highway and I drop into the flow of traffic. Leaning into corners for up to thirty seconds at a time has me concentrating on perfect arcs and not being happy with the results. How often do you get to describe high speed arcs for an hour at a time? I'm feeling rusty, frustrated and want to find a way to smooth out my mid-corner corrections. Fortunately I'd been reading Total Control by Lee Parks on Kindle and found his advice about one handed steering to be the solution to my broken corners.
Total Control by Lee Parks - it's exhaustive in its description of motorcycle physics. I wouldn't call it light reading, but that one bit on steering input made me a better rider instantly.
Lee's advice is to only push on the inside handlebar when in a corner. This causes the bike to counter steer deeper into the corner with very little effort and much finer control from the rider. I wouldn't normally get much of a chance to play with this on Southern Ontario roads but Arizona was made for this sort of thing! That one piece of advice got me down the 87 with significantly fewer sore muscles. By the time I was getting to the bottom of the Superstition Mountains I'd had many long corners to test and refine my technique and my arcs were more precise and less meandering as a result.
The Concours is back in the lot next to this ridiculous thing. I'd take two wheels over anything else any day.
We roll back into Scottsdale afternoon traffic like two cowboys who have just time travelled back from the Old West. The suddenly onslaught of traffic is a bit overwhelming. After a last fill up (the gas station attendant has a starry eyed look at the bike) we return the Concours to AZrides and get checked out in a matter of seconds. The rush hour drive home in the rental SUV is tedious and slow, but that blast in the mountains cleared out the cobwebs. The ZG1400 made an interesting comparison with my ZG1000. I found the newer bike a comfortable and agile machine, but the whining of electronics didn't thrill me, and the tightness of the foot controls were awkward. Because this is someone else's bike they made choices (like ridiculously high risers) that I wouldn't have. None of these things spoiled the ride, and the biblical power of the ZG1400 motor is something that needs to be felt to be believed. This taste of ZG1400 makes me wonder how I'd fettle my own. Thoughts of a ZG1400 swirl in my mind as I roll along with the commuters into the setting sun. ZG1400s for sale (they aren't $800 like my old ZG1000 was)... 2008 with 100k on it: $8600 (really?) 2008 with 63k on it: $7850 2008 with 13k on it: $8900 2009 with 72k on it: $7000 2013 with 8k on it: $13,000 2015 with <1k on it: $13,500 new 2016: $18,000 Photos from the helmet cam. It was supposed to be video but I didn't set it up right. I guess I'll have to go back and do it again. I'm most sorry you can't hear the sound of a ZG1400 engine singing in the tunnel...
The Bush Highway
The tunnel out of Superior - the Concours' engine was a spine tingling howl!
The road to Globe
The never straight 87 back to Scottsdale - 3300 feet down to the desert floor, none of it straight... at 80mph.
Dropping down into the Tonto Basin
188 into the Roosevelt Dam
The Apache Trail a couple of days later in the rental car...
Back of the Roosevelt Dam before tackling the Apache Trail.
Roosevelt Dam
Sunset on the Apache Trail
Maybe on a dual sport or adventure bike? Not on a Concours. Apache Trail is a couple of hours of hair raising corners with no crash barriers, washboard gravel and thousand foot drops. A brilliant road, if you're brave enough!
Ride Maps The actual trip:
The original plan:
A bit less: the Superstition loop with a jaunt up to the interesting bit of Hwy 60 - though mileage wise this is pretty close to the full monty below. it doesn't include AZride's Bushy bypass... Getting to the twisty bits (hitting the interesting bit of 60 before coming back):
The full monty: what I would have aimed for solo
We just left Sedona and headed south to Phoenix. The Sedona area is astonishingly beautiful, and there isn't anything like a South West Ontario dull road to be seen. The interstates have more twists and turns than the most interesting roads where I live. Coming back here on two wheels is a must do. Not only are the roads fantastic, but the scenery is otherworldly. We stayed at the Arroyo Roble Best Western on the north edge of town and it made for a excellent base for exploring the area. The on site hot tubs, sauna and steam room would also ease sore muscles after a long day of leaning into corners on the byzantine surrounding roads. Here are some of the highlights from Sedona:
The view just south of Sedona
Looking down into the Oak Creek Canyon...
Local micro breweries abound, America is no longer the land of Bud Light.
The Black Ridge Brewery in Kingman make a lovely IPA, while the Oak Creek Brewery
in Sedona make a fantastic Nut Brown Ale.
Any direction you look, Sedona is magical.
Top of Cathedral Rock Trail - it was worth a sweaty climb
Boynton Canyon, a lovely drive in, then a secluded canyon spoiled by constantly running machinery from the golf course
stuffed up the middle of it. There was an Apache ceremony at the vista coming in - flute sounds over a quiet desert
was much preferred to heavy equipment thumping away around the corner. Still petty though.
Since missing the opportunity to ride in the desert last time I was in Arizona, I'm aiming for a day out on two wheels over this Christmas holiday. Since the adventure bike I want isn't available, I'm looking at a pavement orientated trip. That doesn't mean I'm suffering for choice in Arizona though.
Route 60 from Globe to Show Low has fantastic reviews and offers a winding way through the mountains. The views are so spectacular that I won't tire of seeing them twice. You see different things riding the other way anyway. The section of sweeping switchbacks on the way down to the bridge over Salt River look fantastic...
...though I hope I can keep the bike in my lane unlike Sparky in the streetview above.
Route 60 over Salt River looks special.
Phoenix to Superior on the edge of the mountains is about an hour, then it gets even better!
From Superior, AZ into the mountains it's beautiful riding... easily a hundred miles of sweeping curves and glorious high desert scenery. It's only about an hour from AZRide on lightly trafficked, arrow straight roads to get to the good bits, and even there you're in the desert surrounded by massive saguaro cactuses soaking up the heat.
Once into the mountains, the roads are interesting and the views astounding.
A nice thing about not doing a loop means that we'll know when enough is enough and turn around. I was knocking myself out in BC to make sure the bike was back on time. It won't be an issue on this out and back excursion. I'm hoping to get the new Concours from AZride.com sometime between Dec 24th and the 30th for a foray into the high desert, hopefully on a weekday when the roads are quiet. It'll handle my son and I with ease while making mince meat of those twisty mountain roads.
I've been through the desert on a lousy rental car with no name, now I'll do it properly on two wheels!
I landed a free trip to Arizona a couple of years ago for an educational conference. I'd never been to the desert before, it was a great trip but the cunning plan to rent a bike fell apart when I discovered they don't rent over the Easter weekend when I was flying in. Ever since driving a lousy Nissan rental car through the Superstition Mountains, I've wanted to go back and do it properly on two wheels. My time has come! We're doing a family trip to Arizona over the Christmas break. Opportunity never knocks twice, except when it does, like this time.
Eaglerider's selections look all of a kind, a kind that doesn't really grab me.
Eaglerider has a huge selection of bikes, but AZ Ride has exceptional customer ratings. I'll end up looking into both and seeing which grabs me.
AZ has the Indian Scout, which tickles a fancy (riding in the desert with an Indian Scout, c'mon!), along with the ZG1400 Concours, which I'm curious about for obvious reasons. Eaglerider has a lot of Harleys and a smattering of other very heavy offerings from other manufacturers. In other locations they offer Triumphs but not in Phoenix. Scraping floor boards doesn't make me think of spirited riding, it makes me think of a poorly designed motorcycle. Lugging a massive hunk of iron that can't corner around the desert doesn't strike me as a good time. Looking at what's on offer, and taking into account the customer ratings on Google, I think I'll be giving AZride a go. They're both up the right end of Phoenix to get to easily, so location isn't a factor. I'll be aiming at a Concours if my son wants to come with or the Scout if I'm solo, then it's off into the Superstition Mountains for a day... or is it?
309kms/192 miles, with that many bends should make for a good day of riding
The road to Roosevelt is something else. I skipped it in the Nissan rental car, but on two wheels it might be reason enough to live in Phoenix. It's about 80kms of serious switchbacks through breathtaking high desert, except it's a dirt road! All my day dreaming about riding switchbacks of smooth Arizona tarmac aren't happening unless I go the long way around and stay on paved roads. Once up on the plateau I'll make a point of stopping at the Tonto National Monument, which is a magical place. The ride back down the other side offers a couple of nice stops, but also some tedium. If that road to Roosevelt is as magical as it looks, I might just come back that way.
How do you say no to a road like that? AZride has a BMW 800GS Adventure, but a ride like this would be the perfect time to try the new Triumph Tiger Explorer - alas, no one rents it. I've been eyeing the 800XCx as well as the new Explorer, but no one rents 'em. There is a Triumph dealer in Scottsdale. Think I could convince them to let me have a 300km test ride along that crazy road?
***
In a more perfect world I'd rent bikes I'm curious about owning. A short list would include: The new Triumph Bonneville with the Scrambler package (favourite classic) - It'd also look awesome in the desert!
A Kawasaki Z1000 (favourite naked bike), though Kawi just came out with a Z800, which I'd also like to have a go on - but I'd be trapped on pavement.
The Kawasaki H2 (because it's bonkers) - but not so good on a dirt road in the high desert...
The Ariel Ace (because it's sooo pretty) - but I suspect it lacks off road chops.
I'm in a conundrum now. I really want to ride out of Apache Junction on the Apache Trail, but the bikes I want to ride are all pavement specialists while the adventure bikes I'd want to rent aren't available to ride. Meanwhile Triumph cruelly taunts me with their lovely new machines.
Damn it! FOLLOW UP
Instead of turning left before Globe, head on towards Show Low. The roads be magic there!
All is not lost. If we're on pavement for the ride there is a nice triangle that'll make for a fine high-desert ride. The road north out of Globe into the higher mountains looks like a corker too. I don't think I'll be suffering too much if I can't ride the Apache Trail. Either of those would be a blast on a big Connie. Now to find a day when the weather is cooperating and see if I can make this happen.
If you read the blog, then you've already gone on our ride around the Superstition Mountains in Arizona. Motorcycle Mojo picked up the story to run in this month's (August) edition.
