Taking the Road Less Traveled: Day 2

Before I begin my tale of day 2, I would like to know where the hell is Joker?! No posts for nearly a week, no comments, no emails, nothing! I'm a little concerned about the abrupt absence of our friend in MA, and I'm just putting out the APB on him now. Joker, send us a friggin' smoke signal or something, will ya?! And now, back to our regularly scheduled program... Day 2 in Williams began early for me. I was up at 6:30 and couldn't go back to sleep. So I hit the shower and got ready for the day. I began my attempts to wake Big D at 7:30. At about 7:45, I called BB to see if they were up. I figured since they didn't get into town until 2:00 a.m., if they didn't want to do the run, we would just stay behind with them and hang out. No worries there, as BB answered all bright-eyed and bushy-tailed; ready to go! I was most impressed with our Cali counterparts' stamina! BB still had some getting ready to do, so I took a walk to the little pancake shop in front of our hotel and got coffee for me and Big D. I finally lured him out of his slumber with a nice hot cup of joe. Once he was ready, we strolled down to room 10 to finally meet our friends. I remember walking across the parking lot, seeing WillyD outside and saying, "It's WillyD!" The rest is history (that I will document for you here.) :) Let me back up a minute, here. AZHD called me at 8:00 a.m. and said he and Linda were at a breakfast place across from his hotel (next door to ours) and the food was great. I told him to go ahead and eat, because Big D wasn't cooperating with me on getting his ass out of bed. Once we met up with BB, Dave and WillyD, we headed to the restaurant for brekkie. AZHD and Linda came over to meet our Cali friends, and they were headed off to register for the Rumble. Breakfast was great. Our waitress looked about 107 years old, but she was a seasoned old bird; never wrote down our orders and got them right! At breakfast, Dave gave me the 'penis talk'. Apparently, when he called us the night before, he said something about having his head up his ass. Because I had enjoyed many glasses of my favorite libation, I responded, "That's because you have a penis." He laughed and it was all good. But apparently the word 'penis' ruffled Dave's feathers. I thought that was ridiculous and told him so. Then I called him a penis. :) When he just laughed at me, I knew I had made a friend for life. After breakfast, we headed over to the starting point for the Rumble. Dave, BB and WillyD still had to register. Since we were early, we decided to walk around and check out the vendors. This is where Big D first had his parts frozen. He noticed the bike had not been running great, and anticipated having issues in the higher elevations we were headed to on the run. He purchased some cryogenically treated spark plugs from the inventor, had them installed, patted and caressed the bike and paid the nice man for the plugs. I need to say that I thought this was all BS. Big D had his doubts, too. But these plugs made a HUGE difference immediately! I will let Big D get into all that on his forum, but the difference was so immense that I had to mention it here. Soon after the plug installation, it was time to roll out. We were escorted by the Williams PD around the town of Williams on The Mother Road, and then our escort rolled aside and off we went. Well, we all stopped for gas, and caught up the rest of the riders later. Stop 1 was the Double Eagle Trading post about 20 miles south of the south rim of the Grand Canyon. Right before we spotted stop 1, we went to a gas station and took pictures with the buffalo. I think this was Dave's favorite stop. The buffalo love you long time, Dave. ;)

Stop 2 was Ski Lift Lodge at Arizona Snow Bowl. On the way to stop 2 we encountered a little rain, but nothing too bad. It was damned cold, though! And at 9,000 feet, everyone's bikes were running like crap, except ours, with the frozen plugs. We had lunch at stop 2 and watched the rain while we ate. AZHD and Dave both left their cameras outside in the rain, but they seemed to be ok. Dave dryed our seats with his ShamWow. My seat had two little puddles on it, and it would have looked like eyeballs on my ass if he hadn't dryed it for me. Thanks, Dave. I had enough eyeballs on my ass later that night. :) Stop 3 was Grand Canyon HD in Bellemont. We were happy to be out of the higher elevations, and into the slightly warmer weather. I did purchase gloves, because my hands were numb and my gloves were in Phoenix. Who needs gloves in Arizona in June, right?! Before we headed out to stop 4, AZHD told us which exit to take. Big D and I were in the lead, and took the exit to go back to Williams and everyone followed us. Once back at the start/end of the Rumble, AZHD and Linda took a ride to see if they could find stop 4. They did, so we all took a quick ride over to get our cards signed. We had come all this way, and I couldn't justify not going to that stop, especially when it was so close. It was Williams Motorsports, and the guy at the shop was pretty cool. He talked to the menfolk about motors and oil, etc. When we left Stop 4, Big D said he needed a nap. So he went back to the room, and I rode with WillyD to the start/end point. We put in our cards for the drawing and stayed for the raffle and biker games. It was funny to watch this local guy with a big ol' green bagger trying to win these games. He kept riding into the hay bales! The town of Williams offered up free beer for everyone, we just had to stay in the parking lot. I thought that was pretty nice of them! When you register for the Rumble, you don't pay any money. You just have to donate a motorcycle-related item for the raffle. We dontated a couple of HD t-shirts, found on clearance. They were easy to pack. :) I won a stuffed HD piggy, with a leather vest and hat on. He's adorable. :) BB won a black baseball cap with HD in blue rhinestones. It looked cute on her. And Dave won some HD book. The assistant police chief told him it was perfect for him, because it had lots of pictures! LMAO! He also said that BB and Dave weren't eligible to win, as they were not American citizens; they were from the People's Republic of California. LOL!!!! After the raffle, we headed over to the hotel to take naps. Big D was up and ready to roll, but we were all done. Big D decided that another hour of beauty sleep wouldn't kill him, so we all napped for about an hour. Without that nap, I wouldn't have made it past 10:00 p.m. After our naps, we rode to Wild West Junction, because the raffle was going to be at 7:00 p.m. We figured we could eat after that. Not that I EVER win ANYTHING, but there was a slight chance. AZHD and Linda were at the steakhouse for dinner, and said they would be at WWJ shortly. So we saved seats for them at our table. BB and I listened to the music while Dave, WillyD and Big D went out front to watch the staged gun fight. Then the raffle started. Things would never be the same after this raffle. They called 3 names for the grand prize, and nobody was there to accept it! Then they called my name!!! I said, "Really?!" I won the grand prize: a $100 gift card to Grand Canyon HD!! As I stated before, I NEVER win ANYTHING! And I had already won the HD pig earlier! :) Then they started calling names for other prizes. I had put my name on Big D's card (good thing I did, because he was watching the gun fight!) and they called my name again! I had won a horse and carriage ride in Williams. BTW...I think Dave & BB brought it home with them. By the end of the raffle, they had called all of our names, except WillyD. When they called AZHD's name, nobody thought quickly enough to go accept his prize. Sorry! So the next name they called was the guy sitting next to BB. Everyone that won something was sitting at our table! There was only one guy that wasn't sitting at our table that won something. This is when Dave came over to me and said, "I'm getting some dirty looks from the locals." To which I replied, "Fuck 'em if they can't take a joke!" AZHD and Linda recommended the steak house for dinner, so we walked over. AZHD and Linda stayed at WWJ and saved our seats. Dinner at Rod's Steak House was EXCELLENT!!! Everything was perfect! We were getting some pretty strange looks from the locals in there, too. Mostly from the prim and proper old ladies, who didn't appreciate us biker types dirtying up their town. Whatev. After dinner, we met back up with AZHD and Linda. They had walked to WWJ, so we rode back to the hotel to drop off the bikes. We would meet them at the Sultana bar. We did a lot of dancing and drinking. And a whole lot of joking around. We even found a mini-buffalo that we had missed earlier! So we jumped a fence to have our pictures taken sitting on Mr. Mini-Buffalo, of course! It really was a great night. It was a late night, too. And we finally decided it was a long ride to Phoenix on Sunday, so we hit the hotel and savored the memories of our day in slumber.

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Next up: Day 3, and our (mostly) BEAUTIFUL ride home! A video of part of our trip to Phoenix will be included in the next post.