John made the LA to Prescott run.

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Mea Culpa

Editor's note to any artistically sensitive viewers out there: Please remember that if you had to write some software for a project like this, it might look pretty scary too!

Seriously, I know this is a little rough. Lots of this stuff is just placeholders as I try to get time to thrash this together. Anybody who wants to make snide and useless comments, please do so behind my back. If you actually have ideas about colors and layout and other things like that, let me know!

John's Journal

Day Two

Route- I-210 to I-10 out of LA, Hwy 60 North @ Quartzite, AZ, Hwy 71 North @ Aguila, Hwy 89 North @ Congress, AZ, Hwy 89-Alternate @ north of Prescott, AZ, to camp area in Prescott National Forest.

Mileage-(I might be wrong, I will check tonight, but I think I did 700 miles)

Start out around 10 am, again, man there is a lot of traffic for a Saturday. I hope most of it clears out soon. Stop for gas at an Am/Pm, a guy in a jeep says "gee, you sure look a lot like Pete Townsend!" Yeah, like I haven't heard that one before. And I am sure that Pete would be driving around on a BMW. Although, the leathers would be his style.

Finally I get out of all city traffic and start through the desert. One might take a quick look and assume that it is all the same, dry, barren monochromatic land. But if you look around, you see many colors. Although, some with only slight variations. Then, I see a few glorious (here's where my lack of knowledge of things green shows itself) plants washed in a (and here's where my lack of color sense, some would call it color blindness, shows itself) golden yellow. These really make it seem like spring is here and bring a smile to my face. There are so many things that just rush right by the window of a car, including some great smells. Yeah, I remember a few smells very well from yesterday.

Anyone who has driven Hwy 5 from San Francisco to Los Angeles know the stretch I am talking about: the part with the cattle. Ahhh, take a deep breath and fill your lungs with the smell of hundreds and hundreds of cattle, maybe more. But, along with that choice smell, you also get miles and miles of wonderful, fresh clean air. I haven't gotten to too many spring smells, but I anticipate those will be ahead of me.

Lunch at the Courtesy Coffee Shop in Blythe, CA (recommended by the guy at the Shell station). Great, seemingly typical local coffee shop. Guy at the end of the counter eating a dish of ice cream when the waitress warns him of "your other half is walking in, should I hide the ice cream? Will you get in trouble?" He replies, "No," and continues eating.

Later that same day...I figured that I would find a campground somewhere between Prescott and Flagstaff. What I didn't expect was the great hospitality and entertainment that I found. I came through the Prescott National Forest and saw some folks camping in an area that looked nice, so I stopped in. It was kind of rocky and almost a bit too sandy to find a good place to park the bike, but as soon as I pulled in, a dude came over to me and said that there was a great concrete slab close by where I could park without a problem. He introduces himself as Marc, the owner of a mountain bike store in nearby Prescott Valley (Dirt Works), and tells me that he and a bunch of friends are going to have a bonfire tonight and offers me a beer and a hot dog. Wow, just like that, I pick a place and get this great treatment?! This has the makings of a great trip! So, he introduces me all around, great bunch of people, a few kids, wives, girlfriends, gas grill, campers, mountain bikes, these cool mountain-type skateboards, one of those 6-wheeled amphibious vehicles, and a couple of dogs, too. Oh yeah, then there was the bonfire.

I went to help bring some of the wood for the fire closer to the targeted pit with one dude who worked in the Forest Service, so I figured it was OK. And the fire basically was fine, very large and warm at times, mesmerizing as all fires are. But remember the mountain skateboard I mentioned earlier? Do you remember Evil Kneivel? Know what happens when a bunch of mostly guys get together in the woods? Well, thanks to Marcus, there is a new Olympic sport: fire-boarding. Yep, he jumped the fire on the skateboard. I have picture to prove it, too. Oh, yeah, did I mention the Metallica tunes that were on the whole time?

It may sound crazy, and it was, but it was really fabulous to have simply walked into this great group of people and be a part of this getaway they have every year. This is a great sign of things to come! Fate and serendipity seem to be very much at work already. I can't wait to see what happens next.