Frenchy's Rant

Free and un-crashed after my dirt dumbness adventure, we chase shimmering mirages back to the highway, back to civilization, routine and normalcy, whatever that is. The mirages all dry up before we reach them, but we still give chase, all the way to Nogales.

In Nogales, a town who’s name I consistently mispronounce, I get lost. Not lost like the usual “Oh no, I’m lost.” Lost like, “Oh shit, are we in Mexico?” lost. I know that once on the other side of Homeland Security’s protection and terror threat rainbow warnings, we’ll be on our own in the wild, and most likely dead within minutes. I learned this from watching TV. Rather than finding out what it feels like to be instantly murdered, I perform a few highly illegal motorcycle maneuvers, and we remain in the safety of the US of A.

We’re supposed to be scared, aren’t we? I mean, it’s MEXICO!! Right in front of us! How come we’re not? If we had a few more days, I think we’d have kept on going. Another time, for sure.

For a few miles, we travel along the SBI (Secure Border Initiative) fence. Expensive? Look it up for a good laugh. Effective? At keeping fence builders swimming in money, sure. At keeping ‘illegals’ out? Maybe…

Monkey time is over, we still have a lot of road between us and home, and time is running out. We latch on to I-19 and speed north towards home. An hour into our slog, Sleeping Beauty nearly knocks me off the bike with one of her patented head butts. I knew she was settling in for a nap when she tucked in and wrapped up tight, but I didn’t expect the 7.2 on the Richter scale slam from behind when she finally nodded off. I take the exit for Tumacácori National Historical Park, and a National Parks Passport stamp I have yet to add, in an effort to wake her up.

As a bonus, a sweet old native woman is offering samples of traditional bean burritos fresh from a simmering pot. Every National Park would benefit immensely from having fresh burritos on hand.

The woman only speaks Spanish, so I use my immense knowledge of her language to tell her her hat is blue, which it isn’t, then ask where the library is. She shrugs and gives us four burritos in an effort to make us go away. Full and happy, I bid our benevolent cook a hearty “Merci” and we are on our way.

Shortly, I stop by what seems like a military base, and we wave at the Predator drone circling overhead as I snap my final ghost Rider picture of this trip.

Back on the road for a boring hour, then I finally see it. The Titan Missile Museum. I know we’re too late to take the tour, but being so close, I figure there has to be a way to hot-wire that flying bad boy rocket and send it skyward towards lawless, flag-filching Tombstone. Can’t hurt to try!

We park next to a fully overloaded Interceptor and a nicely loaded BMW touring bike, and walk inside the museum. Of course we are thirty minutes too late for the final tour of the day, a fact that the girl behind the desk is a little too happy to tell us. Perfect. If only I’d eaten less burritos at Tumacácori, we’d have made it for sure. Drat.

Outside, the Interceptor and BMW riders, fresh from their tour have assembled. One of them looks like he’s waiting for me.

“Hey man! Are you Frenchy?”

What the hell?

“Yes?” I reply.

“Man, I’ve read all your stuff!” He’s excited. “Hello, Sleeping Beauty! I’m Dave!” Turning to his group, he says, “I told you this was him! This is the guy that works for the WWE!” Pointing to my bike, Dave exclaims, “That’s Rain Cloud Follows! Cool! I knew it from your license plate! Do you still have Stormbringer in the Kingdom of Rhode Island?”

This is… weird. I honestly didn’t think people actually read this drivel. Wow. For once in my life I am speechless.

Dave goes on, “You must get this kind of reaction all the time, huh?”

“Um, no, not really…”

We pose for a ‘ADVrider Salute’ picture, shake hands and part ways. Dave, if you’re reading this (and somehow, I’m sure you are) get in touch with me, OK? And, thanks for being one of the Faithful Fifteen!!

“We’re famous!” says Fiona.

We decide to spend the night as famous people do, gambling at a casino. The closest casino is out of the way, which means getting off the sleep-inducing highway. Fine by me. With darkness threatening, we beat a hasty retreat towards it.

In darkness, we find Harrah’s, and pull up to watch as two paramedics wheel someone out in a stretcher. I walk up to the front desk and ask for a room.

“Sorry, sir, we’re full.”

“But someone just left in the ambulance! Can we have their room?”

“No, they’ll be back.”

Drat.

For once our gamble fails, and now we’re stuck. This part of the world isn’t exactly chock full of hotels. The GPS indicates the nearest hotel is a Best Western in Gila Bend, a hundred or so miles away. An hour later we pull up to the hotel, which is instantly familiar to me. This Best Western, replete in a weird Space Age motif has hosted me before, on a trip that Dark Meat Snack and I made through Baja and Arizona a few years ago. (That poorly written report can be found here.)

Small world.

All night long, the same freight trains shriek the same annoying whistles not ten feet from the back of the hotel. Oh yeah, now I remember.

Most of the next day is spent on the highway, at ludicrous speeds, bridging the gap between us and home. I take a detour through the Anza-Borrego desert, but by now I’m as tired of taking pictures as you are of reading this.

The final sunset of the ride caps off the Best Day Ever, and we arrive home late Saturday night, safe, sound and extremely happy. While Fiona relaxes after this undertaking, I sneak a peak at a map of Alaska and another dream begins…

The Entire 2643 Mile Route Map

A day off. Almost never happens when we ride. I’m not sure why really, guess there’s just too much to see, and too little time to see it all. Turns out the decision to stay was a good one.

The morning is soggy, but the winds have blown out, and the rain clouds soon follow. The day improves greatly, and we take in the sights of the town.

Stopped at an overlook, a car pulls up, and a nice, older couple bounds right up to us. “Hi. I see you have a Canon. I do too, but it’s not working. Says ‘Err 99’ every time I try to take a picture. Whaddaya think?”

I don’t have to think, I know. Err 99 is the catch-all error code, like a check engine light. I’ve had a few Err 99’s; one was a dead shutter mechanism, another was a lens problem. We try a few roadside repairs, and after some fiddling around, manage to get the camera to take a few pictures.

All the while we’re trying to repair the camera, we talk. They’re from Canada, driving around and seeing the sights, heading to someplace else from somewhere else; visiting, laughing and having a great time. After our few snapshots, his dreaded Err 99 pops up again. He shrugs and says, “Well, so much for that. Thanks for trying.” As they get ready to leave, the lady says, “Oh no. I don’t do handshakes, I do hugs.” Fiona and I are both enveloped in a hug so strong it feels like a python has wrapped around us.

After they leave Fiona says, “That’ll be you and me someday, don’t you think?”

“No,” I reply. “My camera will work.”

Back to town, we’ve got lots of time to kill, and a storm brewing on the horizon. The rain clouds have followed us once again. We know this drill well, it’s just a matter of time. We need someplace, dry and indoors to kill some time. The Queen Mine Tour fills that bill perfectly.

We don helmets, mining lights and for some reason, yellow rain slickers, and board the world’s weirdest train to be shuttled deep into the vertical mine shaft.

Our tour guide leads us off the train and into a chamber, where he bombards us with facts we can later use as a natural repellent to bore people away from us.

“Did you know the Queen Mine produced over eight billion pounds of copper in its day?”

Snore…

The tour guide was a master at evading questions. Sometimes he feigned deafness “due to all the dynamite” he used to use, other times he’d repeat what he just said, whether it answered a question or not. One parent finally asked him a question he could answer. “What do you do with a five year old that has to use the bathroom really bad?”

“Sir, this is a mine. Pick a wall. Go anywhere you like!”

Back at the Copper Queen, a guy and his daughter ask us if we’re taking the ghost hunting tour. I walk to the front desk, where a woman is unpacking strange looking devices. “EMF detectors, to aid in ghost hunts. No, sorry, the tour is already full,” she says without ever looking up. Strange thing is, I didn’t even ask.

Oh well, what to do?

Exactly. Best Day Ever? Absolutely!

The night is ghost free, fortunate for us, less so for the EMF detector toting tourists. The morning is rain free, fortunate for us. With two days left to get home, we’ve got to get moving, but after two days of sitting still, we’re ready to go.

As I load Rain Cloud Follows, a guy working on the sewer walks over and starts a conversation. By now in Bisbee, I expect conversation from strangers, and am never disappointed. The usual friendly banter leads to the usual local nuggets of knowledge that no tour book can provide. Back roads, secret routes, great places to eat. But Sewer Man has more.

“The sewer’s clogged with grease. Come see!”

“Err… OK, I guess…” Peeking over the rim and into the clogged abyss, I get to see a part of Bisbee that no tour dares show, much more frightening than even the best ghost tour ever could be.

We follow Sewer Man’s suggestion, diverting southward toward Nogales before the westward slog commences. On the map I spy the ghost town of Harshaw, and while I know the dashed line means a dirt road, I conveniently leave this fact out when I suggest visiting the ghost town to Sleeping Beauty.

“Ok,” she replies, pointing over my shoulder at the map, “but doesn’t that dashed line mean dirt?”

“I’m not sure, dear.”

Five miles of slippery, silly gravel road later, we find Harshaw, more of a ‘ghost house’ than a proper ghost town.

Thrilling. At this point I could turn around, but to me, turning around equals defeat. The dashed lines all eventually lead to Nogales, so, I choose the dirt road less traveled. I take our fully overloaded, two-up sport bike deeper into the wilds of no-man’s land.

Up gravelly hills, down rocky descents, through five water crossings, the FJR never misses a beat. Sure, steering is sloppy fun, but at a comfortable 18 MPH, I’m happy. Maybe as happy as I’ve ever been on a ride. This is insane, but for the moment I’m free of crew calls, departure gates, cell phones, with my girl in the bright sunshine and fresh air, and this dirty nonsense is exactly what I need. My involuntary smile pulls so tightly it feels like I’ve had three facelifts.

With a swat on my leg, Sleeping Beauty shatters my reverie. “This is nuts. You’re fucking crazy. You know that, right?”

Right. It’s OK, she’s smiling too (or is that a grimace? I’m not entirely sure). I reassure her that we’re fine and I know what I am doing. She knows better.

At a dirt crossroads we have an official Mexican standoff with an official Mexican on an official donkey.

He concedes the route, his one donkey power vehicle no match for my 141 ponies. Though in this dirt, I think he could outrun me. We round perilous corners, almost always nearly out of control, but not quite. Just as I allow myself to think the worst of it is over, the worst of it hits us like, well, like a ton of sand.

We pass a campsite, and I absorb the wild stares we get from the campers, when suddenly, without warning, things get deadly serious. My handlebars launch into a wild Irish jig. The bars slam lock to lock, side to side, and suddenly we’re on a bucking rodeo bronco that wants desperately to lay down. The road, until this point loose gravel and hard packed dirt, has turned into a beach, and my road tires have zero traction in the soft, silty shit beneath them. I’m sure we’re going to crash spectacularly, but my butt is clenched so tight I can’t even speak.

I picture the headline in tomorrow’s El Periódico Nogales: “The Line Between Adventure and Stupidity Is Thin. El Gringo Was Estupido.”

Somehow, through more dumb luck than skill, my definitely non-dual-sport bike remains upright, and we ride the case of the head shakes out. Fiona, aware that some scary shit just happened but unaware that it wasn’t scary shit of my doing yells at me for shaking the bars and scaring her.

You weren’t the only one scared, hon.

A few miles of this sandy stupidity, using my legs as outriggers to keep us upright, and suddenly we’re stopped by the Border Patrol. They are more surprised to see us two goofballs than we are to see them. The agents all have a good laugh at us as the sergeant says to me, “You rode all this way here on that? You’re crazy, you know that?”

I know.

One more day. One more post, and the Road to Wrestlemania XXVI will be nothing more than a footnote in the annals of ride report history.

Grand Finale? Click Here!

Ka’ahele, the god of travel and arena booking smiled twice on The Hardest Working Crew in Television™. His first benevolent act; the show the day after Wrestlemania – Monday Night RAW, also affectionately known as ‘Go Fuck Yourself Monday’ is booked in downtown Phoenix, a scant twenty-seven miles from Wrestlemania’s University of Phoenix arena. This is good for two reasons. First, it means The Crew™ will be able to attend the Wrestlemania after-party instead of jumping on a bus and riding through the night to Monday’s show. Second and more importantly, the Phoenix arena is conveniently close to the Phoenix airport, meaning I’ll be able to stash Rain Cloud Follows at the airport again for a Wednesday pickup.

The second benevolent act of Ka’ahele is arguably even better. Smackdown on Tuesday, affectionately known as ‘And The Horse You Rode In On Tuesday’ is booked in none other than Las Vegas! I can think of no better place to end a week of insanity than in an insane city. Rather than trying to ride three hundred miles in the dark from Phoenix to Sin City on Monday night, I opt for the safety, comfort, and conveniently stashed bottle of Macallan on the bus.

After the show on ATHYRIO Tuesday, I sneak away to the Hard Rock Casino, for some well deserved slot machine therapy. This time I don’t mess with the paltry nickel slots, I go straight to the dollar machines. Sometimes you just have to go for it.

Pretty soon I am up. Way up.

Pretty soon I’m out. Sometimes you just have to take the money and run.

Wednesday is also affectionately known as ‘The Best Day Ever’ because it is the day that The Crew™ gets to go home, to finally separate from the constant drone of close quarters Crew contact, to go and do anything but another day of television production. On Wednesday, I fly back to Phoenix, meet Fiona, grab Rain Cloud Follows and start the Long Ride Home.

While I’ve been working to make sure all the fantastic sounds of wrestling are appreciated by the masses, Fiona’s been busy saving lives. After her third night of preserving people, she flew directly to Phoenix to ride with me, just because she’s tough like that. She’s also tired, but still game to ride. My original plan was to head up to Show Low to visit my friends Dean and Mz. Pam, introduce them to Sleeping Beauty, and, in the interest of full disclosure, make my riding gear a little tighter with big helpings of Mz. Pam’s incredible pie.

Mother Nature has other plans. The weather forecast for Show Low is a high of 44 with the possibility of up to two inches of snow. Fiona’s reaction to this little news flash immediately tells me it’s time for Plan B.

I Love This Girl!

Plan B… Plan B… B… Hmmm… B…. What about… Bisbee?!? I liked Bisbee, it’s forecast is better than Show Low, and, while I’m not a huge fan of going back to places I’ve already been, I have to admit the beer in Bisbee is good. Right in the Terminal Four parking garage of Sky Harbor International airport, our plan officially changes from Oh No, Snow in Show Low to Plan Bisbee. Just before we leave, I phone ahead and book a special “room” at the Shady Dell, paid for with my Hard Rock windfall.

Mother Nature’s foul mood extends into Phoenix. The wind is brutal, bitch slapping us from one direction, then sucker punching from the other. I struggle to keep us on the black and out of the brown. Passing trucks is like entering the Vortex of Doom, as the sudden vacuum threatens to suck us under. I notice with some trepidation that there are hardly any motorcycles coming up from the Bisbee area.

What an adventure.

After enduring this blow job for far too long, we arrive at the Shady Dell. The Shady Dell is a trailer park with a twist. The “rooms” for rent are all 1950’s mobile homes that, according to their website, are “perfectly restored to combine mid-century Americana kitsch with the comforts of home in a way that only the 1950s were capable of.”

Our kitschy home for the evening is the lavishly, if not entirely accurately titled Royal Mansion.

And with that, Sleeping Beauty and I officially are trailer trash.

I try to find a taxi to take us to my new favoritest place on Earth, the Old Bisbee Brewery. Unfortunately, it seems there are none to be found, so we gear back up and ride Rain Cloud Follows into town. This sucks, because it means I’ll only be able to enjoy one of OBB’s fine IPAs, but that’s the price you have to pay for being the designated front-seat jockey. We learn from the bartender Vic that Mindy, his daughter and my favoritest brewmaster isn’t in. It’s probably just as well because I’m sure Fiona could take her in a fight. Vic fills us in on the history of the brewery, telling us that he and his business partner had a brainstorm to open a brewery in Brewery Gulch, the only problem was they needed a brewmaster. Vic called his daughter one fateful night with a tempting offer to go to England to attend Brewmaster School. She readily accepted. Vic then asked when she thought she’d be able to go. Her answer, “Well, I guess I’ll need about an hour to pack…” The rest is history. Turns out the brewpub has only been open two weeks. Also turns out I was there on the first Friday, a fact which gets me a hearty “Thank You!” but no free beer.

I ask Vic if there is a taxi in town. “Yeah, we have one… sometimes… when he’s sober enough to drive… ” I’m guessing tonight isn’t one of those nights. Draining my pint, we leave for a forgettable dinner, then head back to our trailer in the still raging wind.

The gale shakes the trailer all night long. At one point Fiona and I both jump up thinking our Spartan Royal Mansion is about to flip over. I’d thought about heading to San Felipe in Baja the next day, but with hurricane force winds still threatening to blow us all away to OZ, that plan is quickly scrapped as well. We decide that one more day in Bisbee won’t kill us, while attempting to ride in this violent windstorm just might. I book a room in the haunted Copper Queen for that night, as sadly, the trailer park is full.

I walk around the next morning and snap a few pics of this interesting place.

The diner isn’t open, so we prepare to leave the Shady Dell. As I am setting up the tripod for the mandatory Shady Dell shot, a man runs up and says, “Oh, let me take that picture for you! I do this all the time!” Now, I hate trusting pictures to other people, because if there’s one thing I’ve learned in all my travels, it is that most people pretty much suck at taking pictures.

Case in point. Here is the picture that Dead Eye took for us:

Awesome. I thanked him anyway, then, when he left, I took the picture that you’d think anyone that doesn’t walk around tapping a white stick would take at a location like this.

Right.

Our entire days ride takes all of three minutes. Exhausted from the road, we check into the haunted hotel, fully ready for a day off, and fully prepared for whatever that day may have in store for us in the lovely town of Bisbee.

More? Click Here!

San Jose blurs by. Compressing what normally is a two-day, four show taping into one super long day has a strange way of making time (and eyes, brains, ect) blur. For the second time in less than two days, I take to the unfriendly skies, where US Air (Motto: We hate to fly and it shows) delivers my half-asleep carcass back to Phoenix. And now, it’s time. The Road to Wrestlemania has come to an end. The flying over for a while, I quickly rescue Rain Cloud Follows from the confines of the parking garage, and the ever trustworthy, ever predictable Garmin Everlost takes me on a tour of the smallest streets of Phoenix on the way to the hotel that will be my home for the next week.

And that home is not bad at all if I do say so myself. Usually, it seems our hotels are conveniently located in a desolate warehouse district, presumably in an effort to keep the crew safe and sober. This time, for a welcome change, our hotel is located directly next door to one of those fun bar/restaurant/fun complexes. Uh oh…

On Thursday night, this fun bar/restaurant/fun complex hosts Bike Night, with enough raw, blatant motorcycle porn on display to  cause that gland in my tiny brain to dump happy juice into my system at a pleasantly alarming rate.

Warning: Motorcycle Porn to Follow

The biggest tribute to motorcycling excess I’ve ever seen, the Boss Hoss makes me chuckle.

Standing next to this behemoth, I laugh as I picture this monster firing up, and the wash from the exhaust cannons knocking surrounding bikes and bystanders down like dominoes.

Then, there is this tribute to the other extreme; the three wheeled, 1 HP Road Hog trike:

I love the look of this motorcycle.

Then, I see it. Tucked away in a corner, hidden from view of all but the most determined moto-porn connoisseurs is the bike I lusted after, the bike I decorated the inside of my high school locker with centerfolds of, the motorcycle that for years I couldn’t get out of my head (and now it thankfully back in my head once again) the one and only Yamaha FZR.

MMMmmmmm-MMMmmmm good.

As much as I hate to do it, I tear myself away from this dangerous but delicious bike, as grand theft moto is still probably a felony in Arizona.

A few days of setup in the University of Phoenix stadium, a building that sort of looks like a futuristic toaster oven from the 1950’s, begins. For about a week prior to the TV crew’s arrival, other crews armed with fun toys like cranes and lifts have been setting up jillions of tons of steel, stages, screens, lights and everything else it takes to put on this massive show.

On Friday, Dark Meat Snack and I leave the chaos of the futuristic toaster building for the relative calm of the Dodge Theater, to set up for Saturday evening’s Hall of Fame ceremony. This year, for a welcome change, set up is smooth, and the show, featuring the induction of Ted Dibiase, the Million Dollar Man, comes off without a hitch.

Then, the big day arrives. 72,219 of our closest friends file into the arena, and at the appropriate time, the announcement is made, the crowd erupts in a wild cheer, America the Beautiful booms through the building, and the show goes on, as all shows must.

Now it’s just 364 days until the Road to Wrestlemania XXVII takes me and Rain Cloud Follows to Atlanta.

Up next, Sleeping Beauty arrives to accompany me on the Road Home.

More? Click Here!

Five days and well over a thousand miles after leaving California, through deserts, forests, reservations, dry counties, curvy roads, a hot Bisbee microbrewmaster, and all the rest, D-Day has finally arrived. I ponder the map, wondering just how lost I can get and still make my appointment with the airline to have them whisk me to San Jose for the final marathon session of WWE shows before the insanity that is Wrestlemania begins.

Biosphere 2 lies somewhat between me and my date with Delta, but so does the Titan Missile museum. I know that if I go to the missile, I will figure out how to launch it and lob a nuke at Tombstone in revenge for stealing my flag. This is why I will probably never be president.

Cooler heads prevail, and I opt for Biosphere 2.

I end up at the tail end of a huge Harley train on the way to Biosphere 2. At the entrance to the ‘Place Where Science Lives’ , the Hog train roars on, leaving my by myself to explore this strange place.

The campus of Biosphere 2 is impressive, and the price of admission is a steep $20. I try to decide if the hour long tour is worth it, decide it isn’t, turn around, get all the way to the parking lot, then decide oh what the hell, it IS worth it and turn back around. Though I am on a somewhat strict schedule, as long as the tour is over by 1 PM, I think I’ll be OK.

If you’re wondering where Biosphere I is, the wackos that built this ultra-expensive debacle consider Biosphere I the Earth, and Biosphere 2 was designed as an enclosed environment and possible way to colonize other planets.

I kind of remember reading about Biosphere 2, and thinking even back then it was a sham. Now that I’m inside the giant glass terrarium, I can see firsthand what a huge sham it is. For example, in the movie that precedes the tour, an eager looking scientist in overalls and a checkered shirt exclaims, “Biosphere 2 is a great way for us to learn about the environment. For example, to study the effects of drought on living organisms, we stopped watering these trees three weeks ago, and now all the trees are dead.”

Dude, if you want to learn about the effect of not watering trees, you don’t need to spend $150,000,000, you are welcome, in the name of science, to visit my front yard anytime for free.

Another Biosphere 2 ‘Experiment’

Comedy in the name of science continues, as our tour guide confides the ‘Biospherians’ – the eight lunatics that volunteered to seal themselves in Biosphere 2 for a few years to see what would happen didn’t have such an easy go of it. Within two months, the group of eight splintered into two groups of four, and the two groups stopped speaking to each other. For nearly two years. Yeah, I bet that was comfortable!

As the experiment wore on, critics disclaimed Biosphere 2, saying the two-year experiment in self-sufficiency is starting to look less like science and more like a $150 million stunt.

Some Biosphere 2 literature defends their experiments, saying, “In the case of Biosphere 2, the experimenters learned that small, closed ecosystems are complex and vulnerable to unplanned events.”

Kind of like life, no?

The tour led us through the ‘Desert,’ the ‘Ocean,’ and the ‘Rainforest,’ before taking us backstage, to the underground machine rooms that make the Biosphere, um… Sphere.

At this point, I’d seen enough. The tour went on, and on, and on. I briefly considered using the emergency axe to make an escape, but simply told the tour guide I had to leave. He nodded, we shared a ‘I know this place is loony’ stare, and I left.

They never did show us where the Biospherians grew their weed, I guess that is on the VIP tour.

One more brief stop for one more Ghost Rider Tribute, and it was time to make a beeline to Sky Harbor International airport, where I made my flight with plenty of time to spare. Before boarding my flight, before imprisoning myself in a tube to breathe recycled farts for two hours, I snapped one, final Ghost Rider tribute, from the parking lot of the airport.

In two days I’ll be back to Phoenix for the week long terror fest known as Wrestlemania.

More? Click Here!