Day 06 - Wasting away in Oracle, AZ

The remainder of my ride to Oracle would be short and leisurely, less than 100 miles so I slept in and lazed around the room taking my time. When I awoke I was finally able to take in the Grande Vista that my motel was named after. Eww...

Finally packed up I walked over to the office to get a cup of coffee before leaving only to discover there was none made. The manager spotted me and came out ready to brew up a pot but since it was fairly late I knew it would go to waste so I told him to forget it. 



They make the other people park in back. I'm a VIP so I park out front. Nice.



The dinner I’d had at Tag’s last night was good so I headed back for breakfast and ordered their scrambled eggs with green chilies, homemade hash browns, toast and coffee. The portion was huge and the spuds were some of the best I’ve eaten anywhere but I managed a tiny bit of restraint and only ate what was reasonable. If kids are starving in China because I didn’t clean up my place I’m truly sorry but my pants are tight enough as they are. Besides, kids are supposed to eat junk food, not hash browns.



Nasty rain must be coming





It's my helmet that makes me look fat, not the yellow jacket. Duh...



I rode south through an area called the cactus forest, stopped for a few pics here and there. The sky was beginning to blacken but I only felt a few drops of rain and nothing more came. I made another stop to explore an area of public lands where I saw some really great cacti....that absolutely has to be the plural form for cactus, eh? Eh?



Beautiful public lands - posted of course. 



Close by I saw a small memorial marker where someone had died and since it was a ways off the road I think it may have been non-traffic related, maybe a homicide? It was pretty sad in any case.

The wash where the little marker was located

And speaking of memorials I saw the Tom Mix memorial too. I always thought he was a Hollywood fictional character but evidently he was real and people admired him. Some of the people have been shooting holes in the horse at the top of his memorial so maybe not everyone admired him.

Sorry Tom. Anyone know his horse's name? Not Trigger or Champ.

Once I got to Oracle I waited at the Circle K gas station for my buddy Mike to show up and lead me to his new home. I could probably have found it but he volunteered so I took the easy way out.



I've never understood this facination with elevation. Seems a bit odd to me.



The blog's starting to get exciting now...Circle K !

While waiting a bunch of HD bikers showed up making all the racket that you can expect out of grey-haired children. One of the riders was on white Honda Goldwing and since he was bringing up the rear I asked him if they made him ride in the back. “Sometimes” he answered rather wistfully. His bike was hospital clean and so was he including the dumb-ass Harley vest he had on. No way would I make that kind of concession but I suppose he wanted to be part of the pack. Poor guy must be clueless about how much better his bike is than any of the ones his buds were riding.

Nice front yard Mike.



Grrrrr..watcha doing in my yard Dude...

Mike showed up and led me to his new digs where I reunited with his recent bride Lois aka Lou whom I’ve known for nearly as long as Mike, going on 50+ years now. She’s looking pretty damn good but Michael looks like an 80-year old elephant’s trunk. Probably has something to do with the people he’s associated with in his life. Anyway we had fun catching up on all the stuff we’ve been up to and when it was time we went to dinner at a local barbeque place. I’ve been being careful about my food intake but that place drove me over the top so I had a rack of baby back pork ribs done with mesquite and sides of slaw and applesauce. Not that I was still hungry but it seemed like a good time to have a slab of cheesecake drizzled with raspberry sauce so I did. Now my pants have shrunk another inch…gawd…

We stayed up late yakking some more and Lou left us to ourselves so we could discuss old girlfriends and ex-wives. I expect there were a few ears burning and we’ll probably both have to keep an eye out in case any of them really heard us. You know guys, women don’t really need to hear you, they can somehow sense it when you’ve been saying the wrong stuff. We’ve gotta be more careful.

That ended another fine day on this ride and as I was about to drift off the neighbor’s two dogs set up a howling session in response to some far off coyotes yodeling. The great southwest; always fun to visit and probably a great place to live. Especially if you happen to be a dog.  

Tomorrow I’ll head to Mexico! Yeoweee!

LL