Desert to the Delta
Aug. 30, continued
Barely past the first "Entering Las Vegas" sign, the world changed. From sand and mirages and an occasional sign pointing the way to Needles, it was broad avenues of gaudy casinos, hotels, neon signs and lots of traffic. It even cooled off a bit, to 105, one sign blinked. It was early afternoon and in the stop-and-go traffic, the heat was now reaching up, clawlike, from the tar street up our pantlegs.
Bet had gotten directions to her Uncle Larry and Aunt Erolia's, who lived in a mobile home park slightly more elegant than Pete and Lee's. Like Jim and Anna, they were older and had no children.
I cut the engine and we coasted to Larry and Erolia's double-wide, having been forewarned that the development had a rule against motorcycles and lots of people in Nevada have guns. The mobile home park was nestled against a golf course, to the delight of golf-crazed Larry, and was but a short drive from town.
Clearly glad to have company, the couple welcomed us warmly, which I suppose is the only way to welcome someone when it's 105 out. Our stop was another path-crossing of sorts with Jake, since Erolia was his sister.
Larry, a career Army man who had traveled all over the world and loved to tell stories about his various postings and adventures, was also a gourmet cook. And, like me, he was from New Jersey and admitted it, so we got along just fine.
We started off with cocktails, poured from Larry's ample supply of spirits. Erolia, or Pat as Larry called her, chatted about her travels while Larry joined in from his familiar post in the kitchen. He rustled up a delightful meal of sweet and sour spare ribs and after a couple of more drinks we decided to take a run into the city.
The blinking lights told their story of the strip, while Larry narrated his version. He pointed out the Silver Slipper, where Howard Hughes lived. Bothered by the flashing brightness of the big slipper, Howard bought the hotel and had the sign lowered, as Larry told it.
Back at the double-wide, we were given the guest room for the night. The bed was huge and as comfortable as anything we'd slept on since starting out. With no blinking slippers to keep us awake we were out on no time.
Aug. 31
Las Vegas
We were up around 9:30 a.m. Larry must have been out for an early game of golf, but we weren't in a hurry to get anywhere today. We relaxed and talked to Erolia until Larry returned and decided to go downtown for lunch at the Golden Nugget, where shrimp was the fare.
Two pleasant and happy-go-lucky people, Larry and Erolia. We kept in touch with them for years after this visit, exchanging Christmas cards and the like. After Erolia died, Larry, then pushing 90, packed his portable bar and a couple of bags in his Chrysler New Yorker and headed east, stopping back in Pennsylvania and swinging up to Maine before looping into Canada and back home. He had lost contact with his family from New Jersey and was pretty much on his own. But I'm getting ahead of myself here.
Bet and I knew we had a lot of riding ahead of us, so we took it easy for the day, which Larry topped off with one of his fine dinners. We hit the sack early with hopes getting started before the sun got too hot. Our next destination: the Grand Canyon.
Sept. 1
34,797 miles on the odometer
At 6:30 we were up, and Larry had a pancake and eggs breakfast ready for us. After saying our goodbyes, we were on Sahara Ave. by 7:30 and gassed up at Terrible Herbst, with its trademark oversize American flag barely fluttering in the still desert air. I didn't like paying the outrageous price of 61.9 cents a gallon, but with a name like Terrible Herbst, how could you question the quality of this gas?
The orange sun made its rise as we headed out U.S. Route 93 bound for the Hoover Dam, where we stopped and stretched our legs crossing the top of the monumental marvel of engineering.
We reached Kingman by 10:30 a.m., stopping for a short break for a beer and a few tunes in a bar. The song "Life Is Good" by Joe Walsh, the last one to play before we left, was lodged in my head as we motored on to the famed U.S. Route 66, a rite of passage if you are to say you really drove across the country. Route 66 swung us just under the south rim of the Canyon, to Ash Fork and finally Williams. The sky had turned gray and it began to spit huge droplets of rain, not enough to get us seriously wet but enough to give me pause, knowing that a cloudburst out here can mean instant flooding. The gray sky turned deep blue, and to our sides streaks of lightning flashed every few seconds. Now, I was scared.
It was a good time to stop; besides, we were hungry. We found a steak house not far from the road and had a late lunch while we waited for the storm to pass. Luckily, the moved through fast and didn't bring much rain. Back on the bike, we picked up Arizona Route 64 and bore north for Grand Canyon.
Along this route, we crossed trails with Jake and Elmer again. One of Jake's old photos shows a lone Model T puttering along a dirt, two-lane roadway, with nothing but range in the foreground and a faint shadow of mountains in the distance. A sign suspended over the dusty road from a crossbar held high by a pair of rough-hewn poles says, "Williams Grand Canyon Highway," with the word "Turnpike" painted diagonally at the side. It must have been Jake's car on the road, and at some point he must have driven to the marvelous site ahead.
On the bike, we followed what must be the same road to the south rim to take in the view that's inspired millions of words but defies my ability to describe. I knew that this alone made the trip worthwhile.
Luck was with still us. We had beat the rain and now claimed one of the last eight campsites available in the national park. The $2 entry fee and $3 campsite fee didn't bother me at all. Bet and I set up camp, such as it was with a modest pup tent and sleeping bag in our spot in an open, grassy area, bought a rack of beer and some food and settled down with a copy of the Arizona Republic. Bed time comes early when you're camping, and we were ready to sleep by the time it got dark.
Sept. 2
34,105 miles on the odometer
The weather had returned to normal by daybreak and we were up at 7, taking our time rolling up our gear and packing it up. Along the canyon's southern rim, we rode from one lookout spot to another, at times climbing a few steps into the crevices until we knew it was safe to go no farther.
Back on the bike, the breathtaking beauty of the vista constantly drew my eyes like a magnet from the road in front of me as we slowly motored along. Route 64 took us east straight into the sprawling Navajo reservation to Cameron, where we followed U.S. Route 89 south. Along the roadsides, Navajos sold their crafts to passing motorists.
The straight paths of the highway gave way to winding curves and switchbacks after we passed through Flagstaff and picked up Route 89A. We stopped in Sedona, nestled among mesas and beautiful red buttes. The pleasantly cool air of northern Arizona was giving way to desert heat as we moved on, cutting across on Route 279 to I-17.
The ride began to feel like our crossing of the Mojave Desert to Las Vegas, with the temperature up to a blistering 105 degrees. We made a straight shot for Phoenix, and now and then I checked the engine heat by reaching down and touching the extended heads. They usually are pretty warm after hours of riding, but this time the heat seemed a tad excessive, not enough to burn by fingers but a few degrees over normal. Lucky, a tiny bar appeared in the distance just below a place called Black Canyon. I pulled the bike to the shade of a long awning over the front of the wooden building, which had old wagon wheels leaning up against the front wall. It was quiet inside, but had the look of a cowboy bar that came alive at night. We cooled off with a couple of beers, enough time give the engine a rest, and headed on to Phoenix.
In town, we called George Tucker, a friend of Bet's who had come our West in hoping to launch a career as a guitarist. George had grown up in the same development in West Chester, a few houses away from the Holman's. He was living in a rented house with some other guys on Linwood Street and was working in Diamond's Department Store in Phoenix, where we met up with him that afternoon.
George was a great host, which is saying a lot for a single guy in his 20s
who lives to play guitar. He was glad to see someone from back East and
listened with interest as we told him of where we'd been. George has heard
about the job we were going to start a few months later, working as editors
on the Queen Elizabeth 2, and pumped us with questions about it.
"How'd you get that gig?" he asked.
Bet told her friend we had sailed on a two-week crossing of the North Atlantic, a sort of test to see if we could manage to put out a daily newspaper. We had succeeded, and were now scheduled to sail for a year starting in December. But, once again, I am getting ahead of myself.
Sept. 3
Phoenix
George's house was nice and cool _ refrigerated, he said _ and we slept well, once again in a bed instead of a sleeping bag on hard ground.
"Up around 9. Got donuts from Winchell's and eggs to make chili omelette," Bet wrote in our journal. George told us the way to a local pool at Escanto Park, but unfortunately when we got there it was empty _no people, no water. After all, we were in a desert here.
Back at George's, we got a return call from Bet's Uncle Steve McGill, who lived in Phoenix with his wife Bobby and their two daughters. Steve was the brother of Jake's wife, Grace Elizabeth, and had left the East for work and a better climate for his wife's health. They invited us over, and Bet and I headed over on the bike, wearing swim suits, t-shirts and sandals. I had packed, as an extravagance, an old pair of sandals I had bought in Colombia a couple of years earlier for about 50 cents, and found out how awkward driving a motorcycle in straw sandals can be.
The McGills' ranch-style house was nice, with palms and desert plants around it, but unfortunately the air conditioning was on the blink. Ever the gracious hosts, they took us to their previous apartment where there was a pool, giving us a shot at our first dip since the Pacific.
They treated us to dinner at a Mexican restaurant, Los Olivos, where the food was tops but gave me the trots. Steve, proud of his newfound home, drove us on a tour of the city, showing as Camelback, the Arizona State campus and all of the construction going on around Phoenix. They were nice people and seemed sincere in asking us to stay longer, but we were getting hot feet _ literally _ to move on. We planned to get up at 4 a.m. the next day for what was to be one of our longest rides of the trip.
Sept. 4
34,410 miles on the odometer
At 5:45 a.m. and the day's first light, we motored off from Phoenix, once again breaking the no-interstates rule and gliding east on I-10, as the low sun cast long shadows from the saguaro cacti over the parched sands.
The sun was high enough to throw off some real heat as we reached Tucson, where we stopped for breakfast in a diner at the edge of the city.
The vista didn't seem to change much as the miles mounted up; far-off mountain ranges and desert, wide open emptiness.
The landscape didn't change much as we rolled past the state line into New Mexico. The oppressive heat of the desert had eased up some, and the sky was blue with a few far-off clouds toward the horizon.
I thought about when I had been through here 10 years earlier, in the old Rambler with my cousins. I remembered pitching a camp on the range _ really just a plastic ground cloth and sleeping bags _ as we headed west through Texas. We arose early, packed our gear and headed off.
We began to notice black spots scurrying across the highway, and for a while couldn't make out what they were. Finally, slowing down a bit, we concluded they were tarantulas. My cousins and I had heard about the jack rabbits out here, but not tarantulas, and we wondered how many had crawled across our sleeping bags the night before. No one wondered aloud whether any were still in our sleeping bags.
Anyhow, Rich, Bob and I made to a place called Dragoon, near Benson, Ariz., just north of Tombstone and below the Cochise Stronghold in the Dragoon Mountains. A man I had been put in touch with through a neighbor ran a ranch, the Quarter Circle F, in these hills. He and his wife put us up in the bunkhouse behind their house for a night or two.
The afternoon we arrived, it poured buckets of rain, which sent the toads out in force as we drove up the muddy drive toward the ranch. I remembered stopping and picking them up, one after another, until i had 11 of the little hoppers in my hands.
Our host, whose name I forget, rode a beautiful golden horse, whose name I do remember to be Ed. he showed us around the ranch and told us to make ourselves at home, which we did. The bunkhouse was more than what it sounds like; it was more like a cottage, with kitchen, bedrooms and a nice sitting room with a fireplace.
On our second day there, the three of us decided to climb the mountain that loomed big behind the bunkhouse, figuring we'd make it to the top, have a look and return by, say, lunch time. But we were but Eastern boys and had no sense of the enormity of that mountain. Halfway through the day, we were maybe a quarter way up the rise, huffing and puffing and sore. But the work was worth it when we stopped to take in the incredible vista, vast openness for maybe 100 miles. Off in the distance, we saw a train etching a fine line across the landscape, and wondered how far off the tracks were. Our host told us later: "Oh, about 50 miles."
Ten years had passed, plus one hour we lost as we crossed the state line. Now in higher country, we crossed the Continental Divide and headed on toward Las Cruces, where we got onto a smaller highway, Route 478 that took us toward El Paso. We stopped in a pizza joint for dinner and I pulled out my BMW owners book to see if we could find a willing host for the night.
I found the El Paso area listing, called a number and talked to Art Haines, an Army supply sergeant, who gave us directions to his home in a development outside the military border city. Art and his wife Sue turned out to be very hospitable and didn't mind sharing their little ranch home as long as we didn't mind their two dogs, and a cat which insisted on sleeping with us.
Art was also a BMW fanatic, and owned a couple of old models and enough parts in his workshop to probably build three more. He ran an old Beemer with sidecar and offered to take each of us for a spin. On my turn, that included a couple of sharp turns and flips, right up on the cylinder head with me hanging on for dear life inside. I was never really in danger and Art was greatly amused. Bet's turn elicited a few yowls of excitement, and since then she has never shown much interest when I talk about getting a sidecar.
Sept. 5
34,904 miles on the odometer
We were up by 5:30 a.m., thanked our hosts and headed out, but somehow got going east instead of south. This came to light when we were stopped at a Border Patrol blockade, where the officers checked our IDs and waved us on. We soon found ourselves in a little wild West town that looked like a set from "Gunfight at the OK Corral," and I did my best to get directions in a cafe-bus station.
With the sky turning gray and a few drops of rain falling, we turned around and after a half hour or so found Interstate 10, which hugs the Rio Grande for quite a stretch. We rode in and out of rain clouds, but felt lucky we weren't hitting the downpours we saw off in the distance to our sides.
At Van Horn, we got off the I-10 and veered southeast on U.S. 90, through Lobo, Wendell, and through the high range country north of Big Bend National Park. I noticed my clutch cable was wearing, but motored on, knowing there was nowhere for miles I could get a replacement. Through Alpine, Marathon and Sanderson, we drew near the Rio Grande again, where a dam blocks the river at the aptly named town of Del Rio.
We had ridden enough for the day and booked a room at a local motel, the Esquire, along Highway 90 at the edge of town. With tax, the bill came to $11.72. The receipt came with a little disclaimer saying, "We reserve the right to refuse service to any one and we are not responsible for any accidents or injury to our guests, or for loss of money, jewelry or any valuables of any kind."
I could only be relieved I had paid in cash, had no valuables and wasn't feeling accident-prone. Hey, a bed's a bed, and the place wasn't that bad, shaded by some big trees and overlooking the highway just in case you had to make a fast getaway.
We rested for a bit and then, without our gear, followed a road leading Ciudad Acuna, a little Mexican town just across the Rio Grande. It seemed like a nice enough spot to stop and walk around, with little shops and cantinas, but I didn't dare to leave the bike for even a minute.
We drove up and down the streets for maybe a half-hour, and then, tired of riding after putting in nearly 500 miles that day, headed back to the border. While waiting in line to be checked by customs, a little Mexican kid came up to us and started wiping the windscreen with a grimy rag, which was the last thing I needed because all he managed to do was scratch the surface with all the dust and grit it had picked up through the day. I tried to wave him off, but of course that didn't work, so gave him a nickel for all his work.
Back at the motel, we got into a conversation with another couple staying there, who had arrived in a beaten Ford Galaxy 500, only with the rear half of the roof cut off and trunk removed so it functioned something like an El Camino pickup. The owner, Don Webster, looked 55 with his weathered, lined face and graying hair, but said he was 45. He was with a young thing, who might have been 25 if that and actually not bad-looking, though a tad plump. The two said they had traveled all over Mexico in their custom Galaxy-Camino and were now looking for a place around here to settle.
Sitting on the porch while we downed a couple of beers, Don also told us he had been an "assassination squad" patrol leader in the "Blue Berets," which he said had the respect of the Green Berets, Brown Berets and all the rest. I tried not to make any sudden moves or raise his ire in any way, although he did get a tad worked up when I told him about the lack of hospitality we had received in Oregon.
"What rock did they crawl out from under thinking they can treat somebody that way?" I remember him saying.
The girlfriend/wife wanted a ride on the bike, so we went for a short spin to pick up some beer, but we got back fast, because you never know what a Blue Beret assassin might do in your absence.
Sept. 6
35,400 miles on the odometer
It was hot standing still when we started off at 11 a.m., but things cooled off a bit as we got moving again. The weather seemed fairly promising as we picked up U.S. Route 277, which follows the Rio Grande down to Eagle Pass before jutting east because there just weren't any more roads along the riverside. From there, it was Route 83 all the way to our destination at the south end of the state, Brownsville.
It was a long ride between stops as we motored our way across the wide open range, passing on old general store here and there that might have been a stage stop sometime in the past, and spotting a ranch house and barns somewhere off in the distance.
In Eagle Pass, we stopped for lunch where we met another biker who was giving his 650 Yamaha a rest for the day but wished us luck. I think it was in this town where I ordered a bowl of chili, but it wasn't the kind of chili easterners are used to. This stuff was hot, so hot I thought the waitress was goofing on me just to see what would happen. I worked my way through it, with the help of several gulps of water, and learned what real Texas chili is all about.
The sky grew increasingly ominous as we motored on, and about 40 miles outside of town it started raining, then pouring. We kept on until violent wind and pounding rain hit, and found a roadside picnic area where we found shelter under a picnic table canopy.
Listening to the rain beating on the roof and watching as little rivulets of water began flowing under us was kind of depressing, but after all, here we were crossing Texas in hurricane season. We waited it out until it relented some, then hit the highway again and made for Laredo.
The streets in town were flooded in some places and the sky still looked threatening, but rather than stop and try to wait out the weather we were fixed on our destination, and just breezed through the cowboy berg.
Still trying to outrun the iffy weather, we passed through Zapata, where we tested out more Texas fare _ a steak sandwich with half-inch slab of steak on crusty bread _ all for $1.50. Feeling optimistic, we took off our rain gear in Zapata, only to hit light rain again as we passed through Rio Grande City and Mission, but by the time we rode into and McAllen, where tall palms lined the broad avenue leading into town, the rain stopped and the sky grew brighter. The evening ride into Harlingen was great _ worth all the bad weather we had encountered as we snaked along the route of the Rio Grande through the day.
The river itself was nowhere to be seen most of the time, but past Zapata it appeared, widening out and blossoming into a wide, fertile swath encompassing both sides of the river.
In Harlingen, we found Pat's place. I hadn't sen Pat, a college buddy, since he stayed for a couple of weeks with Bet and I back in Pennsylvania. He had stopped on his way from Bangor, Maine, to Texas, where his brother was living and Pat hoped to find a job.
Pat, tall with reddish hair and a square jaw, had found work in Harlingen doing construction. He had the use of a pickup truck and a decent apartment which was now practically devoid of furniture. It sSeems his former roommates had rented the chairs, tablen, sofa and what not, but Pat, not one to spend money needlessly, told the rental company to take it all back. The absence of furniture did have one plus _ it made his apartment seem Texas big.
We talked about old times, which usually led us back to Sparrows, a country bar in Chester County, Pa., where cockroaches crawled up the walls, and Wally's Spa in Bangor, where we spent hours fitting in with the city's lowliest misfits as we enhanced our education at the University of Maine.
Bet and I were tired and still drying out from the long day's ride. The next day had to be drier _ this was Texas, after all.
Sept. 7
Harlingen
The rain clouds disappeared and hit, muggy weather returned. I rode with Pat to Brownsville on the border where he measured for a construction job. He knocked off early and back in Harlingen, the three of us stopped in at Pat's favorite haunt, the Texas Moon, where Raul was on duty behind the bar. The Texas Moon was a quiet place off on a side street, with a good pool table.
Next stop was Richard's, of which I remember nothing.
Sept. 8
Harlingen
We sat around all day and took advantage of the fact we had nowhere to go. With a little time to talk, Bet and I speculated on our chances for our next job, something that would take us far from where we were now _ editing a daily newspaper at sea on the Queen Elizabeth 2.
Our two-week tryout, New York to Southampton, England and return, had gone well, but we were careful not to get too optimistic about our prospects. The motorcycle trip seemed like a good way to slake our anxiety. Now, we weren't riding for a few days and the conversation dwelled on the QE2. It would soon be time to check with Cunard's New York office to see if they had made a decision, but we didn't want to pester them.
Sept. 9
Harlingen
Another day of taking it easy, but wound it up by seeing "Animal House," which had just come out and I swore had to be based on Kappa Sigma at UMaine, where Pat and I had lived for a year. All of the characters seemed to fit, although I'm not sure which role I played, or Pat for that matter.
Sept. 10
Harlingen and Reynosa, Mexico
Pat, his friend Christy, Bet and I rode in Pat's truck to the border and crossed into Reynosa, not quite the border town of Juarez I remembered from my trip in the Rambler in '68.
Juarez was wild, energy going in all directions, filled with hucksters posing as cabbies, putrid air, prostitutes and lost souls, including one vagabond from New Jersey who latched on to us while we shopped around for cheap cigarettes, switch blades and other quaint mementos. Our visits to a whorehouse or two were brief and scarier house of horrors; we said no thanks and made hasty exits because we didn't want any surprise souvenirs and frankly, didn't want to get ripped off worse than we had already bargained for.
Jake's post cards showed a different Mexico altogether: white facades of calumnated bars and casinos, rag-top cars of Prohibition-era Yankees parked helter-skelter in the dirt streets; Tijuana's Mexicali Beer Garden beckoning touristas with ample shade from its huge red-and-white striped awnings; the posh Vernon Club bar, where the well-heeled sipped forbidden cocktails; and the race track where lucky gamblers could wager their winnings.
Reynosa was somewhere in the middle, a bit run down but a place where the locals gave you some space. Colorful, but not in-your-face. Pat drove the truck around for a while, at one point to the edge of town where the local avenue just sort of stopped, giving way to a cracked and forbidding-looking highway leading off toward the dusty horizon.
Pat parked and we walked to a place called Trevino's, plush by local standards, with tables facing a garden built around a waterfall. After a couple of cervezas, we walked around the city, to the market, and then had dinner of nachos, tacos, peppers and of course more beer.
After dark, we headed back across the border. At Pat's Bet called home and got the message that we were hired for the QE2; the word was we were supposed to start Oct. 15 for a European and Canary Island cruise.
Sept. 11
Harlingen
Bet called New York and asked for our contact, Mr. Bill North, who had by now moved on and was replaced by a younger man, Rick somebody, who said he'd call back.
The staff shift caught us unawares, and we started wondering if we were still on for the job. Would the bad news come back here to Texas that it was all off?
Rather than sit in anxiety, we got on the bike and found a route to Port Isabel off the south end of South Padre Island, the string-bean strip of an island that forms a reef along the south Texas shoreline with the Gulf of Mexico. This was hurricane season, and the sky turned pewter gray before the rain started. We decided not to chance it and made a quick turnaround before we got too wet.
Back at Pat's, Rick from Cunard called back. We got the job, only the starting date was pushed back to Nov. 27 rather than October. We would fly to Southampton, England, to meet the ship. No more about Bill North.
When Pat got back from work, we headed off to the Texas Moon to celebrate, and celebrate we did until most of the beer in Texas was gone and Pat's Waylon Jennings album was worn through.
Sept. 12-13
Harlingen
There's not much to speak of for Sept. 11, a date that we had no idea would be infamous many years later. We took it easy, played a couple of games of Scrabble. When Pat got home he took us for a ride in the "new" light green 1958 International pickup he had bought.
The weather had cleared up a bit, so we made another run for South Padre. Aside from a couple of high rises and mostly closed shops and restaurants in Port Isabel, there wasn't much to stop and see, so we made for the island, which was wide open for miles, and lines on shore side by towering palms.
I carefully maneuvered the bike up the beach through the soft sand and found a way to prop it up. The temperature had risen to about 100 degrees. The water must have been 85 degrees, making it a delight to swim in, but soon the wind picked up enough to bring an end to our beach day.
Sept. 14
35,973 miles on the odometer
It was time to move on. Pat wanted us to stay longer, but a week is long enough to test even a friend's hospitality. It was in the 80s already at 7:30 a.m. when we said so-long and headed north.
The musical curse of the 70s, disco, had been exorcised from by mind's tape by Waylon Jennings singing "I'm getting by, getting high, living day to day, pickin' up pieces wherever they fall" as we motored along U.S. Route 77 to Kingsville, around Corpus Christi and on toward Victoria.
Along the way we could see the effects of heavy rains that had hit, with miles of fields still inundated and fences damaged from winds that had punched through. Miles of open ranges were broken up by rice and grain warehouses and oil fields. In Victoria, we veered northeast to U.S. Route 59.
The temperature was now in the 90s and while the sky didn't look promising, it stayed dry though very humid. In the town of Edna we stopped for a lunch of chili dogs, and by 3 p.m. the road had opened to a wide artery of interstate and we were on our way into Houston. As the traffic got thicker, I stopped to get our bearings. Somehow, I found a BMW dealer called Cycle Shack in the outskirts of the bulging city and picked up some oil and a clutch cable ($8.50) to replace mine, which by now was down to its last few strands of steel.
In the shop, Bet saw an announcement for a BMW club "meeting" at a place called Frank's Ice House, so we got directions and with each shift of gears further straining what was left of the clutch cable, finally found Frank's.
It was a friendly crowd. Another biker, Bob, helped me install the replacement cable as we had a couple of beers, and we hung around telling stories until about 9:30. The other riders wanted us to stick around for a some parties they knew about, which sounded OK, except we were now looking for a place to crash for the night. I dug out the trusty BMW Anonymous book and found a guy called Shane who set up in an apartment he managed on Shakespeare Street.
Shane was quite the BMWer, with an R 90 and R 60, and had ridden the bigger bike all the way to Alaska the previous year. Shane was a civil engineering student who was due to graduate after the present term from Rice University.
We went out to a bar called, aptly, The Graduate, where we met up with Shane's girlfriend Pam. There was quite a lot of activity on the streets, mostly students out in small groups meandering their way up and down the brick sidewalks looking for some night life.
In The Graduate, Shane told us more about the ride from Texas to Alaska on his R 90 _ with his mother riding along. That was much more of an endurance run, not so much from having a mom on back but because he had to contend with countless miles of gravel roads which led to all-too-frequent blowouts. I forget how many spare tires and tubes he told me he had had packed with his gear, but it turned out not to be enough. I hoped the story wouldn't be a bad omen for us. We had been lucky so far, three-quarters of the way around the 48 states without a single blowout. Could we do it? I didn't want to consider the odds against us.
Sept. 15
36,339 miles on the odometer
New Orleans, we decided, would be our next stop. The weather was warm and sunny when we arose at 7:15 a.m. and it looked like a fine day to cover some serious distance. Once in the city, I promised, we'd book a nice hotel room, feast on shrimp and oysters, do it up right.
We made our way out of Houston, passing through smells of paper mills, chemicals and sewers before we were back on the open highway. With the city well behind, we stopped at a Stuckey's for breakfast, and then continued east along on I-10 to Route 73. As we approached Port Arthur near the Louisiana border, the skies turned dark and we were soon riding through a downpour. But there were no overpasses or other convenient places to pull over and avoid the rain, so we just kept moving until we found our way to Route 82, the closest road to the Gulf Coast.
The rain backed off after a while and we let the warm air dry us off as we pushed east through the heat, stopping once or twice for a beer. One place, the Bridge Club, a little better than a shack with peeling paint and a need for some carpentry, sat just to the side of the road, its door wide open to a small collection of Cajuns passing the time away. We maneuvered through the language barrier and they bought us a couple of rounds as we told them where we'd been.
It turned out to be a friendly place, and we could have stayed a couple of hours, but we knew we had to move on.
Back into the afternoon heat, we motored on until just before Morgan City, when the odds caught up with us: a flat tire.
At least we were lucky enough to break down across the road from a seafood restaurant and motorcycle shop. With the help of a stranger, we got straightened out and spent the night there, missing our destination in New Orleans. But what difference would a day make? As it turned out, we were lucky, because there weren't any rooms in New Orleans that night anyway thanks to the Spinks-Ali heavyweight fight. Besides, we got to spend the night in The Plantation _ the motel where the guy who had helped us out let us stay.
Sept. 16
36,699 miles on the odometer
We pulled out from The Plantation at about 9 a.m., and it was already in the 90s and thick with humidity.
I pulled into a Suzuki dealership to get a can of Fix-a-Flat, mainly for the reassurance just in case the unthinkable happened again. I pumped the throttle a couple of times and kick started the bike, but it wouldn't turn over after several tries. Now what? It seemed electrical, so I popped the headlight fixture to get look at the ganglia of wires and see if anything was obviously amiss. But tracked the battery and quickly found the problem: the starter line connected to the battery had corroded off. We replaced the part _ free _ and were soon on the road again. I will never doubt Bet's instincts when it comes to this machine.
The weather was good as we followed U.S. 90 along the Intercoastal Waterway through Amelia, Gibson, Houma, Allemands and Boutte before reaching New Orleans at about 2 p.m. By the time we crossed the Huey P. Long Bridge, the Spinks-Ali fight crowd had pretty much cleared out and we booked a hotel room at a Travel Lodge downtown for the pricey sum of $42.
We showered, changed into the best clothes we could dig out of the tank bag and walked down Canal Street looking for a place to eat. The Holiday Inn seemed to be just the right place, with New York strip steak dinners for $6.95 and two-for-one drinks. The crowd in the place seemed quite friendly and in a mood to party, and the fact that we were in the minority as whites didn't seem to be noticed. Seventies pop tunes filled the room and to this day Bet swears the Village People were there, though I can't remember meeting a single construction worker, policeman, Indian or cowboy. She fixed my electrical system, so I'll go along with her story.
Anyway, we met some guys from Milwaukee who had driven down for the fight. They invited me up to their room for a couple of blasts of weed, but Bet said she'd wait because she was never interested in that stuff anyway. Maybe it was in my absence that she met the Village People.
Our dinner was great and we decided to take a stroll into the French Quarter, stopping at an outside bar near the levee and then taking a riverboat ride on the Natchez.
It was a warm night, but not stifling, and very pleasant on the Mississippi. After the boat ride we walked down Bourbon Street, listening to jazz pouring out to the street from clubs downstairs and upstairs along the way. At one of the livelier places, a young lady made her appearance over the sidewalk on a swing that made its arc from the open front window.
I don't know what time we got back to the hotel, or how we found it, but we did.
