Day 23 - Flagstaff, AZ

We awoke ready to greet the day with stone-faced tenacity. The highlights had come and gone, and the ride back would be a week and a half of mental endurance. Any scenery along the way would be an added bonus; overall I was preparing for cognitive fasting - pruning the excess of distractions, lukewarm desires, insipid and extraneous thought patterns, and any other clutter in need of purging. The instantaneousness of modern life can effortlessly hinder cultivation of patience, and patience is indispensable to self-knowledge and, ultimately, atonement. In trimming the psychologically extraneous, I intended also to redirect energy into new buds burgeoning off the healthier branches.

We had before us the longest stint to date: just under 500 mi. We hit the road. There is an exotic beauty in the barrenness of the desert from a New Englander point of view; its foreignness brought home a little closer to the heart by contrast. The cloudscape was favorable into Arizona, where we crossed the Colorado River right after the border. I gave a tooting salute in honor of a former excellent adventure, where Snake and I crossed over the Colorado in the base of the Grand Canyon. As we neared exits for Grand Canyon National Park, the sparseness of desert life gave way to a richer landscape.

The folks we have conversed with on the road have been too many to recount, and as diverse as our beautiful and complex country itself. In the abundance of happenings from day to day, only few leave a definitive impression among the blurring multitude - whether for their own characters or for the relevance of their conversations to our own lives. Today there were several - all fellow road warriors. As I parked in front of the pump for a refuel, I noticed out of the corner of my eye a man in a reflective green biker jacket making a beeline for me. He immediately entered into comfortable conversation, as if we were familiar pals. A hand on my shoulder, the other removing his helmet, he looked me dead in the eye: "Whatever you do... don't, don't, don't" (a pat on the shoulder with each syllable) "don't ever sell your bike." He had an R80, and when it was having electrical issues and he was short of time and money, he took advantage of the cheapness of Japanese cycles and traded it in. It was one of his biggest regrets. "You can work on that thing forever." His had 140k on the odometer before he sold it, and was confident it could have gone much longer if he had worked on it. I thought of how, not long ago, I was fearful of having to put it down in Reno. $143 and a little oil later, it was purring as smoothly as day one.

At a later gas station, I pulled up to a couple on an '05 BMW cruiser. "Nice beemer!" I said. "You too! How old is that one?" They had a friend whose old BMW had 300k and still running. All signs assured my desire to keep her on the road as long as possible. As we were getting ready to head out, another couple pulled in on a Harley. The male was sporting a Rte. 66 t-shirt, chaps, and a bandana tied around his neck, his wife in all-black leather. My first inclination was, "this is too American to be American." He approached me, and in broken English, inquired about what kind of gas he should put in his Harley Davidson. They were from Germany. What a wonderful reward it is when good vibes cross the language barrier. Through a system of gestures and very basic English, I explained to them the gas situation - "NO Diesel (hand folded at a right angle, waving horizontally at neck height)... here (point) good, better, best" - and explained that they would have to swipe their card with the attendant, as they did not have a zip code. They smiled cordially when I told them I had relatives in Germany, and hoped to visit there soon. I bid them "auf wiedersehen," which they enthusiastically returned, the woman adding a "very good!"

As the sun set, distant lightning emerged. We were storm chasers again, coasting into the night with the t-storms at our heels. The distant flashes soon became threatening bolts, following us a second time for the last two hours. We arrived in Flagstaff, having barely dodged yet another storm with the insignificant exception of scattered sprinkles. The worst was behind us. So we thought.