You know, NBC cut Matt Lauer's Travel series. I think you might want to contact NBC and let them know that you'd work a bit cheaper than Matt, maybe this is a livelyhood....
"Will work for gas, tires and canned fruit. In that order"
One day I will do a long long trip on the 750 I am about to start and build. I figure if Emilio Scotto could manage to get some help so can I. I will see when the time comes.
After leaving White Sands I kept heading toward Roswell. The clouds got darker but I hoped it would pass or not rain at all. After leaving the wide valley and passing Alamogordo I headed into the mountains and cold air. Its was pretty cold but bearable, when I was dry anyways. Since I was passing though Indian Reservation I wished I was old enough to just go into one of the casinos and wander around while warming up until morning. I ate as the sun set and continued on the mild curvy roads though the mountains. I pulled over to try find a place to pee, there were not a lot of options because of the terrain but I found a field next to the hills and an abandon gas station. I walked a little distance out and as I started walking back a pickup truck pulled into the station and slowly drove by my bike then stopped about 10 feet ahead of it. My first reaction was to stay hidden in the field but all my stuff, including my jacket was sitting on my bike. So I walked up toward them with my phone against my ear. As soon as they say me they took off. Odd. Replaced the tail light bulb again and kept on going. Soon it started to rain. I hoped it was just a quick shower so I pressed on but it started to come down. I parked on the side of the road, complete black hills around me.
This is why I love google maps/earth. I can find the EXACT location where I pulled over.
http://maps.google.com/?ie=UTF8&ll=33.325365,-105.097189&spn=0.026428,0.038624&t=h&z=15Little did I know there was a major storm heading from south to north that I was just on the edge of. I sat there a while watching the impressive light show just over the hills. The quick flashes reflecting on all the pooled water in the previously dark reaches of flat between the hills. Definitely surreal, my digi cam was still dead so I took some long exposure film photos of the storm. (Which I hope will turn out alright!) After a while I decided to keep moving, not knowing I was just heading straight into the storm. My legs started to get wet but I pressed on hoping to pass it. After a couple of minutes I was past the mountains and there was a pretty much straight, flat desert road going to Roswell about 40 miles away. A few miles in the rain got heavy and I had to pull over just ahead of a single mile marker. I pulled over there because it was something to help make where I was more visible. I yanked out my just-too-small tarp and hid under it. My bike demanding more tarp than me to keep the essentials dry. My legs were soaked from the knees down and I was freezing! I leaned against my bike in the middle of this flat dark void. The only difference of the black around me was the black divider of sky and earth was a little bit higher back down the road from where I came.
Then there was the storm I was in the middle of. I think everyone should experience this situation once in their life. I have never ever been in something like it before and I will never forget it. I sat against my bike looking from out under the tarp. As the lightning lit up the expanse of desert for miles and mile around me. The flashes creating contrasted glances of the desert, always at a different angle creating a new vision of the surroundings every time. The pools of water reflecting the clouds above during the flashes making the ground look like it was full of holes that dumped into an extra sky that was some how below me. I worried about being struck by lighting for a bit but there was nothing I could do, I was at the complete mercy of the storm, wind, rain and lighting while absolutely freezing. All there was, was me and this storm and the seemingly ever changing surroundings. The only other evidence of modern civilization was the road under my feet and my bike and tarp. There is no way I could ever come close to describing the feeling of being in the middle of no where in the middle of a heavy rain and lighting storm with almost nothing around me like that while alone. It was more surreal than any dream could ever be.
I sat there watching this unfold around me. I thought about how the frontiersmen must have felt, taking shelter in their covered wagons while they waded into the unknown and then even further back in the past. Seeing almost the exact same thing I was then. The only thing I had over the travelers of the distant past were carefully shaped and combined hunks of metals, plastics and some cleverly applied electrical and chemical principles to power it.
I decided my best plan of action was to wait for it to pass or until sunrise to continue on my way. I was much too cold in the shape I was in to move. Hours and hours of this passed with the storm never letting up. Freezing cold I manged to eventually nod off for a bit while standing. I was shocked awake by a passing truck, coming to just as it was passing in front of me. One of the few vehicles I would see while waiting. After what seemed like forever the rain let up to a slight drizzle and behind the clouds you could see a slight blue light. Which I incorrectly assumed was the morning light. Turns out it was just the moon lighting the backs of the clouds up. I checked the time and it was only 1:00 AM! only one! how! This was not working, since the rain let up and packed my tarp back up and used my energy to head back on the road. During this entire time I was maybe close to the coldest I had ever been in my life, but when you have no other options or choice it becomes inconsequential. (At one point I did try to kindle a little fire using some unused paper from my notebook, failed miserably) After about a half hour I was in Roswell thinking what the hell was I doing and what kind of situation I had got into just to see a sign beginning with "R" and ending with "oswell". Perfect time for a cold soda, I asked the gas station employees where the nearest 24 hour dry cleaner was. They knew of none but I did get directions to the laundry center in some nearby apartments, which I should be able to get away with. By this time I would have killed for a set of dry warm clothes.
As I rode deeper into the town I passed motel after motel. It started to rain harder and there was no where to take shelter so I figured it was about time on my trip to stay in a motel for once. I found the cheapest and consequently most sketchy motel I could get to and it only cost a couple days worth of food. First thing I did was take a warm shower to repair my friendship with falling water. No towels and the T.V. was bolted down. I watched the weather and saw that it was not going to get any better and that it was going to keep coming from the south. Only choice to stay dry was to get out of its path. There was no way I was touching the mattress or sheets of that place so I laid down my sleeping bag cover on the bed and put my wet clothes over the heater to dry. Charged my digi cam and got what sleep I could before checkout. The next morning my pants were not completely dry and I was still beat but I packed back up and left.
On the way out while it was still raining I finally got my god damn photo of the Roswell sign I had went thought so much for. I am pretty sure you can tell how pissed I am in the photo. But again the best memories are usually a #$%* when your actually making them. They are sometimes a lot better to look back on than to be currently making them.
As soon as I got out side of Roswell and out of the path of the storm it cleared up. Once again heading in the right direction... Clubmans can double as foot pegs and a throttle lock. Since I was heading back the way I came I got to see the day incarnation of the surroundings were I spent so much time the night before. Hard to believe they are the same place.
