DAY 3 - Sunday, October 26, 2008
Since I would be at Ann's house for only this, and one additional morning, and she and Eron don't drink coffee, I decided not to buy any for the house. I liked the early morning ride to the local mini-mart-gas-station anyway. After I got back and made my LSB Site post, I settled into the couch for some football pregame babble and to wait for the phone to ring. Doug and Tammy were supposed to call, to confirm our meeting place and time. Eron had introduced us. They are Austin's parents.
Austin is Eron's most recent victim. That's another thing about her that is similar to me. She can go thru more guys in a shorter length of time, than anyone else I know, including me. I'm so lucky I was able to get that habit out of my system (he says with fingers crossed).
The phone call I was waiting for from Doug & Tammy was to tell me where and when to meet them and another friend, for a ride. Yep, Eron had chosen a victim who's parents rode motorcycles.
The call came right on time, at 9am sharp. I ran upstairs and kissed my still sleeping daughter on the cheek, and was off on Honey again. We all met at a coffee shop in Glendale and spent the late morning and early afternoon exploring the back roads of the west and north sides of the greater Phoenix area (GPA for future reference).
Unfortunately, we actually spent the better part of the morning stuck in traffic. There had been a tanker truck accident on I-17, and the detours around it were clogging the back roads for about 50 square miles. It was very frustrating for me. I had become accustomed to traveling at 60~80mph, and this stop and go and stop and wait day ride was making me jittery. Example: Doug had warned me at breakfast about the drivers in the area not being good at seeing us, and to be careful because some of them actually go out of their way to get in the way of motorcyclists. I disregarded Doug's warning when my feeling of anxiety made me pull a maneuver that would have been perfectly acceptable in California….
People where I live in California are so accustomed to having motorcycles on the road, that it is not unusual for most of them to help us stay in a pack. Well, my maneuver wasn’t as successful as I intended it to be, partly because of the guy I had respectfully cut off, but mostly because one of the riders in our group was a girl. KIDDING. It's not that she was a girl, it's that she was a novice rider, and had not yet gotten anywhere near the comfort level the rest of us had. We were making a left turn at a stop sign, with the traffic at a standstill in all directions, and as I pulled out, I put my right arm out, with my hand held in a stop position towards the car I had pulled in front of.
I stopped my bike so as to allow the last two bikes of our group pull into line. First, I was surprised that the car that I pulled in front of, didn't want to stop and came within inches of running into me before slamming on their brakes, but even more surprising (and saddening) for me… the rookie rider and her partner refused to pull out and get in front of me.
I had been following Doug & Tammy, so the three of us pulled over, and waited about 15 minutes for Del & Debbie to catch up to us. Yes, it took them that long to finally have the courage to merge out into the virtually stopped traffic… amazing. While we were waiting, I explained to Doug that I now believed him, about drivers not respecting motorcyclists and begrudgedly accepted his look of, I told you so.
I normally don't like being wrong about anything, but Doug has a know it all type of personality, which makes me want to be right, and him wrong, even more than usual. Fortunately, I was able to get back at him later… on several occasions, as I pointed to the cigarette butt I had just picked up after he threw it on the ground. Yes, I'm a kid… whatta ya gonna do with me?
Ned with Tammy & Doug at breakfast
Anyway, the ride was mostly fun. We stopped at a craft fair in Cave Creek, and had lunch at a really cool authentic western-ghost-town-saloon, outside of Carefree in a very picturesque area called Pinnacle Peak. Not nearly as dramatic as the Pinnacles south of Salinas in central California, but surrounded by not much else besides sand, rock, and a few shrubs and cactus… this rock formation definitely stood out.
Eron had a school project that morning, and was working that evening, so I didn't see her again until the following morning.
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