August 2008

So pat showed up last night, well prepared with a bottle of Glen Livet.  I had it in my head we were going riding that night and make it to bryce, so we could head up highway 12 the next morning and be back by night.    Then it started raining, so we had dinner, polished off a fine bottle of scotch and caught up.   It was great.   Pat is the first of my brothers to ever come down and stay in my home.  Skip did once, but camped in my driveway in his rig and that was cool too.    Even so, I love my brother and enjoy his company.   Friends are friends, but blood is blood.    I enjoy it when we get together.

So this morning we headed out with intentions of somewhere north.   On the way to zion, we pulled off in rockville and I showed him grafton, a local ghost town where butch cassidy and the sundance kid was filmed.   Remember the raindrops keep falling on my head scene?  That was filmed in grafton.   If you don’t, here it is:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H39CxyNfNOM&hl=en&fs=1]

Theres an old bridge in grafton thats pretty awesome.   Got some good pictures below.  Im too lazy right now to add them up here so you can check em out right now.

From there, we headed up to zion and went through the tunnel.   Thats always a nice ride, and hearing my bike thunder in the tunnel always is just a perfect sound.  Pat had never been through there, and it was a nice ride.  Headed up to mt Carmel and got our bearings, and I took a picture that I just have to post:

From Mt Carmel, we bolted north to bryce had lunch and pat split to head north and I headed back to mt Carmel and continued through to kanab, on my way home.

Stopped at the buckskin tavern for a minute.  never been in there, had a beer and headed south again through Fredonia and on to pipe springs.   Ive probably passed pipe springs a hundred times, and never really had more than a minor curiosity of what it was or all about, and since riding the fat boy for all those miles made my ass feel like it was sitting on a cinder block (or a bag of marbles as pat would put it), i decided to stop in and see it all.   It was pretty cool.  theres a fort there, and a whole history that was pretty significant to the area.   I eat that stuff up.

Then I headed home.   I had a good ride.   The fat boy is not in the same league as my street glide as far as riding long runs goes, but at least I felt I got to know her a bit and she is what she is.   She ran great, and she almost asked me to put some saddlebags on her, and my ass clearly asked me to get another seat, and even some freeway pegs.   I may do both.

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