Day Eleven - Santa Fe again

I slept in a little this morning but made sure that I was up early enough to update yesterday's blog posts and get ready for my doctor's appointment. I updated the blog because I had forgotten to download a couple of pictures that I wanted to add. Step back a day and you can see the updates for Day Ten.

Wayne picked me up and we arrived at the doctor's office in time to provide insurance information and fill out one of those forms that asks about all of your habits and complete medical history back to the womb. The doctor is a character as well as being a friend of my brother. We had a very enjoyable conversation that actually lasted longer than the exam. The bottom line is that I have some sort of viral bronchitis. All he could do is give me a prescripton for some non-narcotic pills that may help with the cough. Other than that, this thing just has to run its course.

We dropped off the prescription at Walgreens and went by the Harley dealership. My crash bars were bent up on Pike's Peak and I was concerned that, having been bent, the structual integrity of the bars may not be 100%. They are there to give you protection (field tested on Pike's Peak) and I wanted no less than all of the protection that I could have. Also, because the bar was twisted, the highway pegs are not aligned and I noticed that it was not comftorable using them on the ride from Colorado Springs to Santa Fe. The service manager said that he would be happy to look at the damage if I could bring my bike by.

Wayne and I went back to the hotel where Mark and I packed up another bunch of stuff to UPS back home. Mark and I got on our bikes and followed Wayne back to the Harley shop. The service manager looked at my bike and said that he could put new crash bars on in about an hour and that he would switch over the highway pegs at no charge. I had him write the repair order. While I was in the back with the service personnel, Mark went to the parts counter and purchased a new CB antenna for his bike. Somewhere along the road it just disappeared from the back of his bike!

We left both bikes there and then went to the UPS store and shipped our stuff home. The next stop was the Sprint phone store because Mark's phone had died and he needed to purchase another one.

Carol and the kids met us at a chinese buffet restaurant in the same shopping center as the Sprint store. Wayne treated us and we had a good and filling lunch.

After lunch we said good-bye to Carol & the kids and then Wayne, Mark, and I went back to the Harley store. My bike was ready, so we started back to the hotel just in time for a torrential downpour. We were in t-shirts and jeans. Our rain suits were in the hotel room. It rained so hard that we could barely see. Not only that, but Santa Fe's storm drain system is not engineered to handle the amount of rain that they are getting this year. We rode through streets flooded with over a foot of water!! We were riding fairly slowly...I didn't want to bend up my new crash bars in the first three minutes that I had them. Other people did not seem to understand why we were riding so slowly and were rushing past us at speeds that were unsafe for them and us. We were drenched not only by the pouring rain, but by waves of water that seemed to rival some surfing competitions that I have seen on TV. Sorry, but I was unable to get any pictures!! This was not very relaxing. We arrived totally drenched back at the hotel. We got out of our wet clothes and put them in bags to take back to Wayne's to wash yet another load of clothes.

On the way to Wayne's house we picked up my prescription and then stopped by the fire station. Wayne is a volunteer fireman and he treated us to a tour.



My brother is a flight attendent with American Airlines. He flies the Chicago to London and other countries in Europe. Every time he travels he takes a baseball type hat has the fire station's information on it. He has an opportunity to run into a lot of people so he tries to get pictures of famous folks posing with or wearing the hat. No one in my family has ever met a stranger. We are all a little gregarious. Anyway, there is a wall of photos in the fire house that has folks posing with "the hat".
I am sure that I have forgotten some, but here is a partial list:

Bill Clinton
Paris Hilton
The guy that plays Kramer on Seinfeld (I forgot his name)
Holly Hunter
Bill Idol (he and Wayne are friends from way back)
Grace Slick (from The Jefferson Airplane rock group)
The actress who played the teenage girl on the original Brady Bunch TV show.
Matthew Perry (Chandler Bing on the Friends TV show)

We locked up the fire house (it is all volunteer, and we were the only ones there) and went to Wayne's house. We washed closed, visited, got carry out pizza and finally just relaxed. Wayne and his younger son Austin took Mark and I back to the hotel. We explained the motorcycles to Austin and he was very interested and attentive. He was a little too timid to sit on one, but you could tell that he thought that they were cool.

Tomorrow we leave Santa Fe and head southeast on route 285 to Roswell, NM. After a brief stop at the Harley store will will proceed northeast to Amarillo, TX. Hopefully our day here in Santa Fe will have taken some of the rain out of the picture for us. We made reservations at a La Quinta near the airport in Amarillo. It is also only a few blocks from the Harley shop there. Guess where we are going.

It was great to take a day and visit with my Brother and his family. Our Mom, other brother, and sister all live on the gulf coast and I have not seen Wayne since hurricane Katrina when we all showed up to help my Mom and sister.

We have traveled 3,473 miles so far and have more than 2000 to go. Because we have had two "days off" (today and the day that Rick crashed) we may have to alter our homeward route in the interests of time. I suspect that we may cut out jog over to Asheville, NC and the trip up the Blue Ridge Parkway. We will probably take Interstate 81 home from Knoxville, TN. Maybe one day there will be a Blue Ridge Parkway blog.