Aguila!

Riding, like life, has twists, turns, forks in the road, ups and downs and sometimes just straight and narrow for as far as the eye can see.

You just never quite know what's coming at you next do ya :)

Take last fall's ride on the venerable Apache Trail.

Just a pleasure cruise in the back country of the Superstitions, that does not go as planned.

I'd arrived in mid March to a Phoenix of warm weather, only to be faced with a major drop in temperatures soon after turning the key in the lock, coupled with rain, hail and in the higher elevations over 4 feet of snow!

You read that right, in a desert, not far from the Grandest of Canyons, there was 53 inches of snowfall literally overnight and one day.

Good thing I wasn't headed there I thought to myself.  To be perfectly honest, I don't much relish the following items in no particular order.





Having my nipples freeze.
Scraping frost from my visor.
Mud.
Running out of gas.
Flat tires.
Being lost and never finding my way home again.
 Having to push the bike.
 Falling onto cactus.


I decided as I often do, with a toss of the dice.  In my case, checking out the map and Google Earth and looking for someplace I have A)  Never been before B)  Has at least 40% gravel and C)  Cool names like Aguila or Vulture Mine road or Dead Horse wash!

 So... like millions afore me... I headed west. 

Somehow I wound my way out of the city, along familiar Bell Rd to the Sun Valley Freeway... and with no GPS to guide me, found myself on the Tonopah-Salome highway, which at this point was 99% sand!   To get here from there, involved good pavement, several Google roads which unfortunately had wire strung across them or were simply non-existent, and a flirt with a well planned brand new neighborhood (Buckeye) on the other side of the White Mountain regional Park.



Once across I-10 for a fill up and directions to Aquila, the helpful staff of one guy with a Blackberry and two women, sent me off to Vulture Mine rd.  It's simply amazing what the WWW has done for  accessing information isn't it.  After all, with a "phone" in hand now, you can get the latest weather report up to the minute in Beijing China, the results of the Toronto SX, or directions to some obscure dead town in the middle of a desert!  The ever helpful staff warned me that my planned route was extremely rough road and I would be better running down the Interstate then north via Eagle Eye road on pavement!

Rough road?  Me??  What are the chances eh???

Smiling briefly at the Los Angeles turn-off and remembering another XT trip of long gone days, I glimpsed the Papago Freeway (I-10) as I headed back several miles to 355 Avenue north.

The pavement was about as perfect as pavement gets, the corners were smooth and wide, the stripes stood out like candy canes on a Christmas tree.

Little traffic on this gentle back road, the occasional Harley or similar passed by the opposite direction.  It still surprises me to see grown men, riding their bikes, with little more than a bald scalp or red/white/blue bandanna above their eyebrows.

Not sure how they do it, I feel positively naked without a lid on.

I had quite the trip in mind, kinda multi purpose really.  I wanted to check out the back road into Aguila, then go cross country to a place named Congress, which like the Washington version, seemed devoid of humanity and life in general.  There was a Ghost town up there I wanted to scope out.

From Congress I was going to swing by Wickedburg for a bite to eat, and if there was time in the day remaining, take the back way into Peoria via the Castle Hot Springs rd... but here I am giving away my story.  Getting ahead of myself to to speak...

Although I didn't see any Jackrabbits at Jack Rabbit wash, I did see one at Dead Horse! 

As often happens when I'm tooling around in these out of the way places, I came upon a fork in the road which of course, was not signed.  I even wandered around looking for a post on the ground but nada.  'Cept for the quality of the road surface, this could have been Baja California.

I had an apple as I pondered which way to turn, either would have been fine I'm sure, but I choose the right fork.

Arrow straight for miles, we soldiered along at 55 mph, skimming the washboard ripples, enjoying the warmth and feeling the freedom that only riding gives you...