We headed out of Austin on two heavily loaded motorcycles on Friday evening. In two days, we clocked 900 miles across the three southern states of Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona. Getting across the south looks everything one expects it to look. Straight road with red, dusty hue, stretching for hundreds of miles and coming together as a single point at the horizon? Check. Sand storms on the sides of the road? Check. 106 degrees of blazing heat? Check. Neil Young melodies mysteriously sounding from thin air? Ch…nah, that doesn’t actually happen.
In case you’re wondering whether that’s actually fun — yes, it’s a ton of fun, for the first 15 minutes. The rest of the time, which for us has been like 12 hours in the saddle in total, is boring as wretched hell. Riding on a straight, perfectly paved road isn’t much of a ride, and the excruciating heat doesn’t make it any better. The boredom is occasionally pierced by the sighting of beautiful trains, but that doesn’t happen often enough to be anything more than just a blip.
El Paso looked great. Definitely need to go back and explore it thoroughly. Riding along the US-Mexican border and seeing all the colorful houses on the other side of the border within a thousand feet was great. I’m feeling more and more drawn towards the idea of riding across mainland Mexico.
Unfortunately neither Cesare nor I haven’t yet mounted the GoPros, so there aren’t any ride photos/videos in this post.
The real treat was Tim, whose camper we slept in for the night in Arizona, in preparation of crossing the Mexican border tomorrow.
Tim telling the story of how he hit a tractor with his Harley in 1975 and broke his arm.
