Phew, Well I just flew back into Houston last night after spending a week in Arizona for work. Well Saturday we all got the stupid idea of renting Harley's and riding from Phoenix to Flagstaff then on to grand canyon then Williams and back to phoenix.



It was rough the high was 115 and it was pretty damn hot from 3:30pm till 5:30 when we got back to the hotel.

We left at 7am and headed north. The weather was perfect, 70-75 and clear blue sky's I slathered on some suntan lotion and hit the road. 2 things sucked. 1) I didnt get to pick out my bike since I was in sales seminars all day the guys got me a spirnger with no wind screen which sucked but the bike itself was quite nice after 200+ miles I liked it. 2) They didn't get me a helmet. Oh great.. rode trip in Harleys with riders i've never been with before... no helmet... /wrists Just kill me now. I didnt have any of my gear it was all back in Texas I didnt plan on riding.. Well i'm already out 150 bucks for a Harley rental.. I guess 1 day of riding with no gear wont kill me.... *insert irony here*


Nothing but desert around Phoenix and 15 foot tall cactus's are ever where.





There wasn't much to see at first other then mountains in the distance. All I was told was that they rode up to the grand canyon last year and this year we were going close to it, I figured a 5 hour ride or so.



Got gas that morning


So we took to the open rode and headed towards the mountains, The whole time I'm wishing I had my F4i or 1000RR 400 miles? no problem 500? piff if it means hitting these twisties on a sportbike I'm game!



we stopped pretty quickly in the first *tiny* town in the hills before the mountain to buy water it was very hot the high of the day was 115 which just... well sucks lol


These guys all owned Harley's except for one who had a big dog, which is basicly a stock "custom" chopper made by CAN-AM.

 

I saw this guy a few feet away from where we stopped to get water and thought it was kinda cool. Apparently in the old west they chained criminals to this tree for day's as punishment in the hot sun... and they say we are cruel to terriorsts now? lol



Getting closer to the mountains





Starting to see more tree's the closer we get to the rockies


We stopped in the foothills of the mountain just to take a break and look out from the view, it was pretty cool but as soon as we stopped this guy fell over on his Road King...
Epic huh?


After that we stopped around 11 for breakfast

There was a cool statue of an army soldier by the court house


Once we hit the road we left mountains pretty quickly for flat land again but there were more mountains in the distance we were heading for and in a blink of an eye we went from 100% desert to pine trees and the start of a forest!




One of the things these guys decided before I tagged along was to go visit ALL 4 of the Harley dealerships in Arizona... so... here's the 3rd one on our stop in Flagstaff and it was big and nice, much larger then all but the one we rented the bikes from although I didnt walk into that one. I gota admit though the people inside were nice they even had a cooler with free soda's and water just inside the door but the saving grace of this dealership was EARPLUGS!!! I about kissed the ugly old lady behind the counter my ear's hurt so much from the 5 hours of riding before I got them lol...


Once inside I couldn't help but LOL at this sticker so much I took a picture of it.

70HP A REAL RACER!?!?! Rofl... first of all 70HP isint all that much... 2nd of all you are pushing 70HP on a fat heavy turd of a Harley so I couldn't help but laugh when I read this sign.


Now we really were in the mountains and I have a few video's I need to upload to youtube from my cell phone I took *yeah while riding* but the area is soooo beautiful here's some of the mountains

 

Now it's 3:30pm 8 and a half hours into our ride... Brunch time and wow did we find a beautiful place to eat lunch!




Yes, at the last dealership I sold out and bought a Harley shirt :P but hey... i was getting my *** sunburned I needed it lol and the heat was picking up quickly.


Well up until lunch the weather believe it or not was very cool during the ride through the forest I was actually chilly in my Harley riding armor *tshirt shorts and sun glasses*
Well out of no where on the ride home we get hit with this blanket of WTF YOU JUST GOT OWNED BY ARIZONA heat wave... I mean it was as close to a light switch as you can get. One second it's 80 the next it's 115. I felt like I was going to die... and yup you guessed it.. 2 hours left in the ride... and no more stops!


I saw this rain cloud much like I'm sure farmers and indians who lived here years ago must have felt.. Dear god, please rain on me... I dont care if rain hurts.... I'm going to ride my bike off this next cliff if there is water at the bottom! lol... it was That hot :P



Of course the rain didnt come and it was a miserable 2 hours back to the Hotel.. It was so bad that some of the bad riders "relative term I know they are all Harley riders"
Started lagging behind...


I had a huge problem with this... 1) you don't just leave someone behind on a group ride 2) this heat was insane.. What if something happened to them?
I understand they are all way older then I was but come on.. that's messed up. I may be 26 but I have 9 years of "owning a bike" and I was a WAY better rider then all of them which was quite evident during the ride. Well my delima was that I had no clue where I was going since I didn't have a map and I didn't ride this the year before... so I was following the lead guy who was just pretty damn selfish as far as "getting back asap" so we lost one rider.... then another... we started with 5 now it's just 3... I didnt have much of a choice but to follow the leader. I lagged back as long as I could to keep a visual connection between the group but I couldn't forever

I made it back to the hotel sunburned and exhausted but I had a blast. Everyone made it back later ok but that heat wave was crazy. If I would have known the way home or had been on my own bike I would have just stopped and had something to eat till dark.

Anyway here's a few more pictures I missed and I'll try and get some video of it up soon the vid's are of the twisties in the mountains and they were awesome.

Squid myspace pic

 

Awesome story, great pics, was fun to read! Thank man, looks like you had fun. Kinda ****ty you didnt have any gear or your CBR 1000rr, 500 miles would have taken about 5 hours on those open roads! 183HP a real racer sounds more like it.


How were the vibrations on that bike? I couldnt imagine riding one for 10 miles, just the noise gags me.

 

That looks like an *awesome* trip.

 

looks like it was a great ride, other than the heat

 

Well to be perfectly honest and I did a review of the Harley I rode it after nit picking all the things on it for the first two hours I rode it to be quite honest if I owned the bike... I wouldn't change a thing on it. The stock pipes were about as loud as a sport bike with a pipe they weren't too loud at all. I would put a windscreen on it though, for sure.

here's the review on the bike you'll get a kick out of it hehehe
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Thats the Harley I was riding. It was pretty nice other then a few nit picky things like NO WINDSCREEN SUCKS...

also the MPH were done like an RPM I dont know what retard thought that up, the speedo said 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 and then at the bottom it sad MPH x10... I guess they were trying to be cute but it was stupid I never even looked at it.

also good idea on adding a gear indicator on this bike.. but typical crappy Harley implantation. instead of having a normal gear indicator 1-6... all it had was a light bulb under the dash gauge and it lit up a tiny 6 when you were in 6th gear... no 5th no 3rd no *man did i just down shift into first in a turn oops?* nope none of that.. just a light bulb showing you the gear you always know your in anyway lol..

other then that the bike barely shook and if you compared it to the rode king i tried out, the king was total ****. but the springer thing i was riding was pretty nice. Honestly it didn't vibrate enough to even notice on the road although the road king made me want to stop riding after 5 min of riding it back from the dealership for the guy who dropped it later anyway :P. If I owned it the only thing I would change would be a wind screen. you just can't sit STRAIGHT up like that.. and not have a windscreen the wind hits you like you are a flying brick!

 

Had a similar experience out there my self with the , spur of the moment , no helmet/no gear thing .

Riding in Arizona you really feel the temperature change with the altitude .

Great post and terrific pictures!

 

Thanks I had a blast