Ardentbold: Return Trip and Afterword of the California Trip 2023.

I've had a couple of days to sit and sort out all of my thoughts and adventures from my 2023 California trip. I completed a total of 2,875.4 miles on this journey, and it was all so worth it.

There's so much I experienced while visiting my niece Liz and her family in California. I arrived the evening of April 4 and departed April 15. My whole tenish day visit was nothing short of rejuvenating and enlightening. Liz introduced me to a lot of new food, music, and film, and we got to catch up on tons of personal stuff from the last decade, which is how long it had been since we'd had a chance to spend any time together. Her man Jonathan also taught me how to solder copper while I was there, which will definitely come in handy in the future I'm sure. I also got to visit a lot of spots I wanted to see on my own, and that was all very fun and energizing as well. I'll leave it at that because so much of it was so personal, but suffice it to say that I'm glad for the time I spent there, more so than I can really express here.

The Saturday I began my return was kind of silly. I had ordered a center stand for my Tiger 800 XC upon my arrival because it was going to be much easier to get the bike off the rear wheel for chain lubing and adjusting, which one should really do every few hundred miles. SW Motech chose to use the Easter holiday as an excuse for taking four days to ship my order. It mysteriously arrived the morning I was supposed to leave after having shown that it had arrived on Friday via UPS tracking, and after I had started a claim with UPS and written SW Motech.

So...I opened the center stand package and realized how silly I had been thinking I'd be able to install it without at least a paddock stand. I used an old 1x4 as a "field stand" to lift the rear wheel off the ground with the help of the regular kick stand, but there was absolutely no way to install the center stand without either the paddock stand or having Liz hold the bike up for however long it would take to install the center stand, but the morning hours were flying by, and I had 370 miles to ride, so I claimed stupidity and asked Liz and Jon to ship it to me.

I then lubed and adjusted my chain using the 1x4 as my swing arm stand, stuck it in my pannier, and headed for Phoenix via the "Mighty I-10" as my dad used to say. It took me almost two hours just to get out of the LA area, hilariously, despite lane-splitting as much as humanly possible. It's a lot of people in a pretty large area, almost 13 million living in 33,954 square miles, like ants crawling all over each other and the land. I have to say though, as soon as you get out of the metro area, the land is incredibly beautiful, and I explored as much as I could while I was there, but I'd love to explore it even more, especially moving up into Northern California and the PNW.

The ride to Phoenix was pretty uneventful. The wind wasn't nearly as strong as it had been on my way to California, so it was pretty easy going, fast and flowy as soon as I was out of the metro area. I stayed in Chandler, which is a little south of Phoenix after taking 220 as I bypass around downtown. It's a timesaver, and nothing else really. If you want to experience city life during your stay, continue on I-10 by all means, but I was literally just passing by.

The second day's ride was amazing. I left Chandler and headed East on AZ-60, so basically my day 2 trip heading to LA, but in reverse. I really enjoyed the beautiful climb into the Pinal Mountains, and there are a lot of incredibly beautiful, far-reaching vistas on the way up. I then joined Route 70 as I was descending, which runs along the Gila River, oddly kind of like a green scar on the otherwise red and brown desert. My one regret on this day is that I didn't take the time to actually go down one of the county roads to get to the river and sit around for a bit, but one must pay a price to crush hundreds of miles in a day. I should've done it anyways and arrived a little later.

I stopped for lunch at the Denny's attached to the Flying J Travel Stop in Lordsburg, NM because I was starving by that point and planned the rest of my route. This is the day I was on I-10 the least, and I really enjoyed it. I was only on I-10 for about 30 more miles when I took 146 south towards the border, just east of Separ, NM. I then hooked up with Route 9 going East and ran along the border for almost 100 miles. The border wall-fence thingy is monstrous and hideous, but that's a rant for another day. It was an obvious geographic intruder in the area, a tall blackened fence in the brown and red desert, and really the only other human beings I saw on this part of the route were Border Patrol and maybe a couple of lonely contractors. The land down here is a little different than what you'd see on I-10 and amazingly more desolate because of the lack of any real humanity down there. I kind of feel like the US has made the area a militarized zone, but again, I digress. Much of the area is flat with large hills peppered throughout the landscape, some with spectacular geology showing from one side or the other. It really was a lovely and calm ride into El Paso.

The border route from Lordsburg to El Paso

My stay in El Paso was nice. I stayed at the same hotel, went to the same restaurant, and spoke to the same lovely employees there. I highly recommend Famous Dave's BBQ if you're in El Paso and looking for a good hearty meal.

My third day's ride from El Paso to San Antonio was the longest leg of my trip, 570 miles, and it exhausted me. The wind was really blowing, about 20-30 mph sustained, with gusts of likely 40 mph, some of which really were a little shocking. Of the 570 miles, I probably spent 200 miles in full tuck, just for a lil peace from the wind noise (and yes I always always wear ear plugs). I blasted down I-10 the whole way, again flying at DeLorean Time Machine speeds. I feel like you start to see cedars and mesquites getting taller at about mile 180 on I-10, but I'm going to continue to try to see that transition every time I pass that way. It's probably changing more quickly than it really should anyways. I also think it would be really cool to hike the miles between Sonora and Kerrville, but that's another idea for another time.

It's actually pretty hard to distill the myriad thoughts I contemplated while riding all these miles alone on this trip. I'd listen to the news on NPR in the mornings for an hour or so, music for a few hours on and off, and just the wind for many more each day. I guess one big takeaway I really have embraced is that every single one of us is stuck in our own heads constantly. We have all these relationships around us that are necessary or not, beneficial or not, but in the end, how we think about everything is what allows us to be productive or destructive, and I'd much rather be productive, as I've always tried to be.

The last several months have been extremely bittersweet for me, some of the darkest and brightest times of my life honestly, and this trip was an absolute necessity, not just to see family I hadn't seen in a decade, which had been far too long and could be the topic of a whole other essay, but because this trip and the trip I took back in October to the Hill Country are like gateways for me, spiritually, mentally, and physically. I've lived for others and their pursuits for most of my adult life, albeit along with my own as much as possible (especially musically), and most of it quite willingly, too, but I do now vehemently refuse to wait on anyone else ever again, which is something I've said more than once in the last several months, precisely because it's poignant.

There's a lot to be said for mindset, which is why it's talked about so much in sport and business. Get your head clear. Get focused on your goals. Make shit happen. Don't fight with anyone about anything unless you absolutely have to do it, and even then, some arguments will never be won or lost. Is it even worth it to you? Just do what you need to do to maintain your sanity in this lovely sociology experiment we call life.