Santa Barbara, CA -> Flagstaff, AZ

My alarm went off at six AM. Too bad for me I had been up since five, I get excited before I travel. I was staring at the shade for a very long hour pleading for the sun to rise as slowly as possible. Unfortunately, the sun rose in an ordinary fashion and it became time to leave. I fitted my bag, straightened things out one last time, said goodbye to my parents, and I was off!

It would have felt odd leaving Santa Barbara for the last time in a while if I wasn't so damn tired.

LA has a funny was of saying goodbye. After a pleasant cruise down the PCH with some lovely 'May Grey' fog on the water, I found myself stuck in traffic on the 101 as it came to the 405. Not even seven thirty and already people are trapped in this nonsense. YUCK! One last opportunity to lane split before I have to salivate at gaps in traffic for two months.

You may have noticed one critical step missing from this plan. Breakfast! At eight thirty I pulled in to Pasadena and met Arielle at her favorite breakfast spot for a wake me up. She filled me in on her journey to Hawaii (which she had just returned from) and we chatted. Felt good to see my bestie before I hit the road.

Pictured: Marcel still figuring out how to pour tea properly

Pictured: Marcel still figuring out how to expose shots properly

After fixing my saddlebags so they weren't being liquified by my mufflers (Shout out to Jonathan Handler, my motorcycle touring sensei, for the bags and invaluable advice) I was off to Flagstaff! Up the 210 through my third wave of college stomping grounds in Pomona brought back some memories. Good times. When I hit the 15, it really started to feel like a journey. I stopped for gas and to switch to warm weather gear at in Hesperia. I chatted with the attendant, an older fellow rider, about where I was going and what I was doing. He began to get concerned. "You should have prepared better."

"I'll be fine." I answered nervously.

This was the part of the ride where I began to notice that every other bike on the road was either a massive cruiser or a massive touring bike. Not too many people touring on little Moto Guzzis, go figure.

As the pot of tea began to work its way through me I found myself stopping what felt like every hour or so. At a rest stop somewhere off the 40 in San Bernadino county, I ran into a group of folks from Ventura (not far from where I started) who were heading to Laughlin. I had been there some years before as an overnight stop on a similar car trip. They were there to vacation and gamble, different strokes for different folks I guess.

A Desert Oasis. Location: Who Cares

After this break the miles really started to sink in. I realized that I would be on this for a while. You start to look at anything you can deem remotely interesting when stuck in situations like this. I came to the realization that the San Bernadino county desert has nothing interesting to look at. There seems to be more trash than scrub brush and the rocks are ugly. I can't believe I just called rocks ugly.

A Desert Stop. Location: Who Knows

This is around when I began to grasp the vastness of the desert and our country as a whole. Theres a lot of dirt here, I signed up to see all of it. Oops. This is also around when I began to grasp the emptiness of my stomach. I'm going to let you all in on a little secret. Trucker Indian food. At least in the states near California, any Indian restaurant in any town is going to be amazing provided that it has easy parking for semi trucks. One in ten Californian truckers is Indian, this means that Needles has the best masala chai I've ever had in my life. Unfortunately, the eatery was not doing indoor dining. After I finished my conversation with a friendly Caribbean trucker about food, music, and herb(s) I had to take my meal outside. Restaurants in needles are not equipped for outdoor dining, this is because the weather in Needles is brutal. At two, when I ate my food outside the restaurant on the ground, it was in the mid to high nineties. I have a theory that eating hot food from hot places on hot days is a good combo, today was another brick in that pile of growing evidence.

A Trucker Feast

It continued to scorch all the way to Kingman where the weather finally started to cool from "ouch" down to simply being uncomfortable. It was also where "need to get to where I was going-itis" finally set in. I was more than halfway there, in mere hours I would be in Flagstaff sipping a cocktail, chatting up locals, and getting ready to collapse in the claw-footed bathtub in my Airbnb.

Update: The aforementioned claw-footed bathtub had no drain plug so I had to take a shower and my head was really close to the ceiling. Very strange.

Cocktail: check

Locals: check

Bath: by the time you read this, check

Today's Distance: 534 miles

Today's High: 105F somewhere between Needles and Kingman

Today's Low: 53F Starting off in Santa Barbara

Best Semi Truck Art: "Pray For The Cowman"