I left Tucson with a newly serviced head - engine and otherwise. I was feeling good ready to, as Alex would put it, rage on. I had decided to head up to a meteor crater outside of Flagstaff. The fastest way was Straight up I-10 to I-17 but just before I made it out of Tucson I turned on Miracle Mile and took Hwy 77 out of town on a whim. I tend to avoid freeways and head for the roads that have a little dotted red line next to them, the scenic routes. Slow traffic, long lights and the mid-afternoon heat - not a cool, in any sense of the word. Finally I made it to Apache Junction and soon thereafter the coolness began to abound. I stopped for gas and a fellow KLRati gave ... read more

I woke up with tourists whispering all around me. The first thing I did was check the alarm clock I'd set on the bench next to my head, thinking I had overslept my 5am alarm. 4:59 then Bleep bleep ble... and i shut it off. I knew i was going to need it after the night I'd had. I unzipped and slipped out of my sleeping bag, still dressed and still covered in desert grit. I stuffed away my bed and put my boots back on. A short, shy middle-aged woman tentatively looked up at me whilst she scurried by my Baby who was so rudely blocking the path around the ranger station. I groggily shuffled over to greet her (my bike not the tourist) and to strap my bed back on. "Hey, Baby. We better ... read more

It had been an odd morning. For lack of an Ipod, I kept talking to myself. Passed through some spectacular scenery and some strange towns. I passed Cliff Dwellers, Az., Jackass Creek, The Gap, Az. Scoffing through my helmet at police and natives who ripped past me. I'm sure they wondered why this guy hunched over on a motorcycle as though he were going Mach 4 was actually going under the speed limit. And was he singing to himself? Indeed I was. And for your information, I'm laying forward on my tank bag, not only to duck into that mean headwind, but also because my arse and lower back are wicked sore. Like get me some friggin' butt-cream sore. After lunch at a grossly overpriced gas station in Marble Canyon things got even weirder. It might ... read more

the only noteworthy thing about Cedar Creek Campground, Sequoia Nat´l Forrest, was that i i had the joint to myself. So, as you do, I busted out the harmonica that I still haven´t learned to play. I spent most of the night trying to play along to "Silver and Gold" by Joe Strummer and the Mescaleros and loudly singing along to Hank Williams and Born Ruffians. I made a huge fire and danced around, tooting on the harp - you know, to scare the bears away. They´re rampant in these parts...¨ Then it turned out that someone had shown up in the night, unbeknownst to me. I packed up and split first thing out of emberassment. Then I tipped the bike over on the side of lake Isabella, saw my first joshua trees and was in ... read more

Coming up Highway 198 from Visalia, I saw the dike before I saw the "lake" so I knew better than to believe the hype. I had planned on staying somewhere up here because, after a brief parousal of the map, I saw that some of the Sequoia National Forest bordered on Lake Kaweah. I liked the look of it. Camp for free and on a lake, doesn't that sound nice? It might have been, if i had had an airconditioned RV and could get around the idea of camping next to an over-full reservoir. But I didn´t and I couldn´t and so I ended up deep in a valley past 20 miles of ranch country at a campground that was closed. It was not a compromise. Still free but on the south fork of the river ... read more