Hog Wild

After a good night's sleep in Santa Fe, we hit the road first heading through the center of town to the east side where we picked up highway 285 backtracking 20 miles. We remarked on how much we had missed by covering that stretch of majestic desert after dark. We turned west toward Los Alamos and I thought about how alien this place must have been in the 1940s for the scientist sequestered here to develop the atomic bomb. The Los Alamos National Lab thrives today. We road highway 4 past the entry to Bandelier National Monument, neighborhoods of upscale home and place with intimidating fences and signs like "LANL Technical Area 32" all dispersed in a rugged terrain. We even passed one of those gigantic radio telescope dishes pointed straight up.

A sign announced that the road was about to become a mountain road and trucks shouldn't go there. We quickly scrambled up to 9000 feet, about 3000 feet above the desert valley. The mountains were a fairly dense pine forest and we passed through stretches where fires had raged and renewal was a work in progress.

One of the primary advantages of traveling at this time of year is that there is no tourist traffic to speak of. We zoomed up, around, through and ultimately down the far side along on of the most breathtaking motorcycling roads I have ever been on. Scenery changed like Liberace in concert, in each microclimate mother nature put on something more outlandishly gorgeous than the last.

We descended into the town of Jemez and ate a fantastic enchilada plate at roadside stand run by a pair of native women. While Santa Fe and Los Alamos had seemed comfortably familiar to our Midwestern suburban background, Jemez was a new - or rather very old - slice of life. We chatted with a couple from Fort Worth. Conversation with strangers is remarkably easier when you are wearing motorcycle gear.

My son Marty rides a 500cc sport bike - the style most often referred to as a "crotch rocket." Most long distance cruising is done on 850 pound juggernauts with 1000 - 1700cc motors like Harley-Davidson Electraglides or Honda Gold Wings. His Kawasaki Ninja weighs half of my bike.

The couple from Fort Worth told us about a silly friend who planned to ride her little 650cc bike to Sturgis. We smiled as we pointed out Marty's bike and said "Tell her to go right ahead."

We also talked to a Navajo man who beamed with pride as he told us that the strect of highway 4 had been the location for most of the riding scenes in the movie "Wild Hogs." Too funny!