Day Two Blog

Well, things got off to a flying stop with the motel latching fire alarm system going off at 3 am. This was, without a doubt, the most disorienting event I’ve ever experienced.  Imagine waking up from a deep, sound sleep to the most ear piercing sound imaginable, total darkness except for the eye blasting strobe light, and then seeing another man in the room standing in his underwear.  This was overload for my brain … too much to take in.  Apparently everyone else in the motel just ignored it, but once the room 114 fire officials assured me all is well, normalcy returned. I thought we were supposed to do like at Linda’s school, form a single file and march out to the parking lot, but we’d probably violate some local ordinance with indecent exposure. Mike claimed to be already awake when it happened, and now he and Tom are snoring away and I’m getting a great start on today’s blog, typing away here in the bathroom.  Oh, by the way, in case you were wondering, we got a suite for about the same price as a regular room, so we didn’t have to get a roll-away bed.

Now for the fun part … as we were firing up the Harley’s in the motel parking lot early this morning, we set off at least two car alarms, sending people bolting out of their rooms.  Needless to say, we didn’t hang around to say goodbye.

The trip started out pretty cold and I was glad to have the long underwear on, although I regretted it later. Highway 10 had light traffic, and I thought, as we headed into Phoenix, that we really lucked out.  Well, naturally, I jinxed us, because about ten minutes later after merging onto Highway 70 we hit major construction traffic in Mesa, where they had reduced four lanes into one, and the temperature kicked up.  Once we got past this we settled on a nice two lane by-pass instead of the interstate and enjoy a great trip through the Tonto National Forest, AZ … that is, of course, you consider Yucca Plants and Cacti a forest. 

We had a nice lunch in Globe, AZ and then, not five minutes down the road, Mike has to pull into a run down store/station to use the bathroom!  Just like a little kid.  A local Native American offered to let us take his picture for twenty bucks.

As we crossed into New Mexico, we had the most beautiful desert sunset in our rear view mirrors … very nice.  We decided to keep going to Deming, and ended up with the same covered miles as yesterday, 474. What are the odds of that? This part of the trip was also mind numbing cold. 

Tomorrow, short trip to Carlsbad and we’ll take a sightseeing diversion.  A nice day before the extended journey across Texas.

Dave

Some info:

Miles covered - 472

Total butt time – 8 hours and one minute.